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Patea Mail, 15 March 1882, Page 3

An Old Englishe Fayre (says a telegram this afternoon) is to be held in Auckland at Easter. All shows are to be admitted to the ground free, but those who want to see the shows-must pay—that is Old English custom and law too. But fayres in the old time were not like each other. There was Bartlemy fayre, famous in the sixteenth century; with its booths of strolling players, and fortune-tellers, and pickpockets, and stalls for selling clothing, and pots, and leather-girths, and spectacles, and wigs. Fairs were important institutions, up to thirty years ago. Railways killed them, by introducing the modern commercial spirit. They flourished in the Middle Ages and almost till our day os out-door shopping carnivals, with a spice of roystering merriment. The fair still lingers in the draper’s occasional sales at an alarming sacrifice.

Three farms near Patea are about to be declared infected with scab. Messrs Symes’s Whenuakura farm, Mr P. Burke’s and Messrs Newland’s new run on the west side of Patea river, have got the infection from stray sheep said to have come from Major Turner’s land.

A young fellow named M’Killock died to-day in Patea. He had been hurt when a youth by the breaking of machinery in a flax mill, one piece fracturing his skull near the forehead. It was not properly trepanned, and the sunk bone gave him trouble at times, causing fits. He was attacked in this way a few days ago, and has sunk rapidly.- * 4