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By Root 1697 0

stroke of good luck, the fourteen-year-old stepped out of the factory in time for the 1835 Glasgow Fair. It was the one holiday she could happily celebrate without a home. Established by William the Lion in 1190, the fair opened on the second Monday in July and lasted a full week. Everyone in Glasgow was in a better mood, even the shifty-eyed fences who turned stolen goods into a few coins. A halfpenny admission transported the youngsters through a rainbow of fluttering flags. “The air resounded to the strains of bagpipes, trumpets, trombones, cymbals, bass drums, and touters’ horns. Sideshow touters, dressed in threadbare stage clothes of many and soiled colours, were doing their shouting and cavorting best to attract people with pennies in their pockets.”5

Like all adolescents, Agnes and Janet primped a bit for special occasions, though their clothing was never laundered and was worn until it fell apart. As temperatures rose to a comfortable sixty-five degrees, Agnes and Janet joined the many poor who washed their faces, arms, and feet in the River Clyde, cleansed a bit by runoff from the highland snows. Bathing from head to toe was a rarity for every class, not just the homeless.

With their new friend, Helen Fulton, in tow, the girls linked arms and headed straight to the Glasgow Green, just steps from where Agnes had been born. Early summer harvests brought a temporary freshness to the city’s dingy wynds. Flower hawkers brightened the morning fog, their wagons bursting through the muddy lanes. The sun peeked playfully in and out through the dispersing afternoon clouds as the Gulf Stream warmed the Atlantic winds.

Coal-dust-covered streets surrendered to dazzling yellow and red banners hung across the fairgrounds. “Tumblers performed miraculous feats of gymnastics, bears danced, jugglers juggled and clowns wandered about with fixed smiles painted on tired faces, among pressing crowds of eager urchins, grown-ups and the young men and women-about [sic] town.”6 Before the annual celebration began, the wealthy left town and headed “doun the watter” to summer resorts along the Clyde, deftly avoiding this lower-class festival.

Agnes, Janet, and Helen had been around long enough to know how to sneak into one of the tented shows or beg coins from the older gents leisurely smoking clay pipes. A crowd of thousands from both the city and the countryside pushed and shoved to gain a closer look at conjurers, Punch and Judy puppets, sword swallowers, and fire eaters. The boisterous festivities offered prime pickings for thieves and pickpockets, with hundreds of stalls to be stalked, watches to be stolen, and handkerchiefs to be snatched.

For a ballad singer of any age, it was peak musical season. Agnes had been born with the talent and desire to perform, and her singing often kept her out of trouble. Listening to the competition, she’d be able to pick up a few new songs and expand her repertoire. At the festival, she could get away with wearing a floppy felt hat that covered her convict hair. Laborers came to the fair ready to spend a bit on entertainment and cheerfully pressed a coin into the hand of a pretty grey-eyed girl who belted out favorite tunes like “Rob Roy,” “The Maid Freed from the Gallows,” “Glasgow Peggie,” and “My ’Art’s in the ’ighlands.” There was also a popular ballad about the fair:

Glasgow fair on the banks of the Clyde,

That pure winding stream of the City,

Where all sorts of fun doth preside.

Which help to arouse up my ditty;

Large Booths are arrang’d to the eye.

There’s Horsemanship, Theatres, and Tumbling;

With all sorts of games to rely.

Where losers are always a Grumbling.7

A ten-year-old boy whose family owned a grocery store next to the fairgrounds described what he saw in a book he later published: “the Savages from Africa, the Armless Lady from Newfoundland who could sew and cut watch-papers using her toes, the Fire-Proof Lady who pranced about on a hot iron, the Hercules who could bear tons of weight on his body and toss immense weights around like balls of wool, the Smallest Married Man