Horn Fair

DESCRIPTION: "As I was a-walking one morning in spring," the singer meets a girl on a horse going to Horn Fair. He asks to ride her horse. She would not be fit to be seen when she arrives. He says he is going there anyway. They aren't the only couple at the fair
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1904 (Palmer-FolkSongsCollectedBy-Ralph-VaughanWilliams)
KEYWORDS: horse travel sex
FOUND IN: Britain(England(Lond,South))
REFERENCES (2 citations):
Palmer-FolkSongsCollectedBy-Ralph-VaughanWilliams, #92, "Horn Fair" (1 text, 1 tune)
ADDITIONAL: Jacqueline Simpson, _The Folklore of Sussex_, B. T. Batsford, 1973, p. 125, "(As I was a-walking one fine summer morn)" (1 text)
Roud #2482
NOTES [80 words]: Palmer-FolkSongsCollectedBy-Ralph-VaughanWilliams gives a short history of Horn Fair (at Charleton, Kent), based on Captain Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. The fair goes back to the early Middle Ages, and folklore says that it was established as a result of one or another early king being involved with a woman of the place then being discovered by her husband. Of this there is little proof, but the fair was real until it was shut down in 1874. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.2
File: VWP092

Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List

Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography