One of the quaint features of Charlton fair, formerly held on St Luke’s Day, was the elaborate display of horns; the booths not only being decorated with them, but most of the articles offered for sale having representations of this emblem. For a long time, antiquaries were much divided as to what connection there could be between horns and Charlton fair, and many conjectures were started without any satisfactory result. At last, however, light was thrown on this much-disputed question by an antiquary, who pointed out that a horned ox is the old medieval symbol of St Luke, the patron of the fair. In support of this explanation, it was further added, that although most of the painted glass in Charlton church was destroyed in the troublous times of the reign of Charles I., yet fragments remained of St Luke’s ox ‘with wings on his back, and goodly horns on his head.’ As an additional illustration on this point, we may quote the following extract from Aubrey’s _Remains of Gentilisme and Judaisme_: ‘At Stoke-Verdon, in the parish of Broad Chalke, Wilts, was a chapel dedicated to St Luke, who is the patron saint of the horn-beasts and those that have to do with them; wherefore the keepers and foresters of the New Forest come hither at St Luke’s tide with their offerings to St Luke, that they might be fortunate in their game, the deer, and other cattle.’ Many of those, also, who visited Charlton fair wore a pair of horns on their heads, and the men were attired in women’s clothes; a mode of masquerading thus described by a writer of the last century: ‘I remember being there upon Horn fair-day; I was dressed in my landlady’s best gown, and other women’s attire.’ Referring to St Luke’s Day, Drake tells us in his _Eboracum_ that a fair was annually kept up at York for all sorts of small-wares, and was popularly known as ‘Dish-fair,’ from the large quantity of wooden dishes exposed for sale. It was also characterised by an old custom of ‘bearing a wooden ladle in a sling on two stangs about it, carried by four sturdy labourers; this being, no doubt, in ridicule of the meanness of the wares brought to the fair.’ At Paignton fair, Exeter, it was customary, says a correspondent of _Notes and Queries_, to draw through the town a plum-pudding of immense size, and afterwards to distribute it to the crowd. The ingredients which on one occasion composed this pudding were as follows: four hundred pounds of flour, one hundred and seventy pounds of beef-suet, one hundred and forty pounds of raisins, and two hundred and forty eggs. It was kept constantly boiling in a brewer’s copper from the Saturday morning to the Tuesday following, when it was placed on a car profusely decorated and drawn along the streets by eight oxen.