"Mercy o' me, what a multitude are here! They grow still too; from all parts they are coming, As if we kept a fair here." In _Lear_ (iii. 6. 78) Edgar, in his random talk while pretending to be insane, cries: "Come, march to wakes and fairs and market-towns!" The "wakes," mentioned so often in connection with fairs, were annual feasts kept to commemorate the dedication of a church; called so, as an old writer tells us, "because the night before they were used to watch till morning in the church." The next day was given up to feasting and all sorts of rural merriment. In the churchwardens' accounts of the time we find charges for "wine and sugar," for "bread, wine, and ale," and the like, for "certain of the parish," for "the singing men and singing children," and others, on these occasions. At these wakes, as at the fairs and other large gatherings, whether festal or commercial, hawkers and peddlers came to sell their wares and merchants set up their stalls and booths, often in the very churchyard and even on a Sunday. The clergy naturally denounced this profanation of the Sabbath, but it was not entirely suppressed until the reign of Henry VI. Stubbes, in his _Anatomy of Abuses_ (1583), inveighed against these wakes, as against the May-day sports (page 176 above), especially on account of the money wasted at them, "insomuch as the poor men that bear the charges of these feasts and wakes are the poorer and keep the worser houses a long time after: and no marvel, for many spend more at one of these wakes than in all the whole year besides." Herrick, in his _Hesperides_ (page 196 above) took a more cheerful view of such rural holidays:-- "Come, Anthea, let us two Go to feast, as others do. Tarts and custards, creams and cakes, Are the junkets still at wakes; Unto which the tribes resort, Where the business is the sport. Morris-dancers thou shalt see, Marian too in pageantry; And a mimic to devise Many grinning properties. Players there will be, and those Base in action as in clothes; Yet with strutting they will please The incurious villages. * * * * * Happy rustics, best content With the cheapest merriment; And possess no other fear Than to want the wake next year;" that is, to miss or lack it. RURAL OUTINGS.