Fairs (Fr. foire, from Lat. feriæ, 'holidays'), great periodical markets, some of which are chiefly devoted to one kind of merchandise, while others, of a wider scope, afford opportunity for most of the sales and purchases of a district. Fairs have long been regularly held in most parts of Europe and in many parts of Asia; but, as they belong rather to a state of things which is passing away than to modern civilisation, they have not been established or have not acquired the same importance in America. In Italy, towards the close of the 5th century, we first find authentic accounts of fairs specially designed as marts for commerce, and in Greece it has been suggested that at the celebrated Greek games trade was no entirely subordinate object. Thus, Cicero tells us that as early as the age of Pythagoras large numbers of people attended the religious games for the purpose of trading; and we know how at Delphi and other places a fair was held almost every year. In modern Europe they appear to have been associated with the church festivals, which were found to afford convenient opportunities for commercial transactions, the concourse of people being such as took place upon no other occasion. This origin of fairs is commemorated in their German name Messe—i.e. 'mass' (compare the -mas, for 'mass,' in such words as Lammus, Martinus, &c.) Some festivals, from circumstances of place and season, speedily acquired a much greater commercial importance than others, and began, therefore, to be frequented by buyers and sellers even from remote parts of the world. When the ordinary means of communication between countries and opportunities for the exchange of commodities were very limited, fairs were of great use. Princes and the magistrates of free cities found it to their advantage to encourage them, and many privileges were granted, which in some places still survive. Courts of summary jurisdiction—commonly called in English 'pie-powder' (Fr. pié poudré), from the dusty feet of the suitors—were established distinct from the ordinary courts of the county or city, for the determination of questions which might arise during the fair. In connection with all this the practice was necessarily adopted of publicly proclaiming the commencement and duration of the fair, and this still subsists where scarcely any other vestige remains of the old privileges of fairs.
In western Europe the goods exposed for sale at fairs are chiefly those in respect of which there is a frequent change of fashion. While in some parts of the Continent persons of all ranks still wait for the great yearly fairs to make their principal purchases of clothing and of manufactured articles of every description, such things as corn, wine, spirits, tea, coffee, sugar, tobacco, oil, &c. are seldom seen in them. It is otherwise, however, in places on the outskirts of civilisation; and almost all the produce of great provinces is sold, and all that their inhabitants require is bought, at such fairs as those of Kiakhta and Nijni-Novgorod. In France much of the European commerce of the middle ages was transacted at the famous fairs of Champagne and Brie, where the merchants of Italy, Spain, and France congregated. The British fairs really of much use at the present day are those at which horses and live-stock are exposed for sale, and even these have greatly decayed in importance: of these some held on the borders of the Scottish Highlands and elsewhere in Scotland were wont to be frequented by buyers and sellers from all parts of the kingdom. Such are the fairs or trysts, as they are called, at Falkirk, Doune, &c. At other great yearly fairs in the south of Scotland lambs and wool are sold; and fairs chiefly for the sale of the annual produce of pastoral districts are common in almost all parts of the world.
Of the three annual fairs at Leipzig the most important are the Easter and Michaelmas fairs, each of which lasts three weeks. The chief articles sold are leather, cloth, and furs. The Leipzig Book-fair is a fair in name only, being really an occasion for the settlement of accounts among booksellers and publishers; it occurs at the time of the Easter fair. Next to the Leipzig fairs those of Frankfort-on-Maine are the most important in Germany. The great fairs of Beaucaire in France, of Frankfort-on-Maine and Frankfurt-on-the-Oder in Germany, of Pesth and Debreczin in Hungary, of Sinigaglia, Alessandria, and Bergamo in Italy, and of Nijni-Novgorod (q.v.) in Russia are among the most important in Europe; the last, which attracts representatives from all parts of the Russian empire, occupying a site comprising 7 sq. miles. The fairs of Tanta in Upper Egypt, of Kiakhta and Irbis in Siberia, of Mecca in Arabia, and of Hurdwar in Western India are also of very great importance. That of Kiakhta is a sort of barter-market, where almost all the commercial transactions between the Russian and Chinese empires take place. The fairs in Britain have latterly sunk for the most part to insignificance, and in many instances have entirely disappeared. They were gatherings adapted to a comparatively backward state of society, when the provincial stores of goods were few, and the means of communication defective. The prevalence of good roads, populous towns with dealers in miscellaneous wares, and improved methods of transport have superseded the necessity for the ordinary class of fairs, and in consequence they have in some cases degenerated into mere scenes of merriment. Such were Bartholomew Fair (q.v.), Greenwich Fair, Glasgow Fair, and Donnybrook Fair, near Dublin; all either extinct or nearly so. The boisterous merriments at these fairs were of old the devices employed as likely to attract a great concourse of people; hence each fair had its sport or drollery—football, wrestling, yawning, endgelpaying, throwing at cocks, sack-races, flying dragons, grinning through horse-collars, mock-giants, monstrous fishes, soaped pigs, smoking-matches, eating hot hasty-pudding, whistling, wheelbarrow races. At Stourbridge Fair, one of the most important in the kingdom, an excellent proclamation was issued in 1548 by the university of Cambridge in 'crying the fair,' containing among other 'comaunds' this clause: 'No brewer sell into the fayer . . . a barrel of good ale above two shillings—no long ale, no red ale, no sopye ale, but good and halsome for man's body, under ye payne of forfeyture.' It has been remarked that fairs were established for the most part on the frontiers of the kingdom, or on the marches of ancient provinces; or at the foot of high mountains, at the beginning or end of the snow-season, which for months shuts up the inhabitants in their valleys; or in the neighbourhood of famous cathedrals or churches frequented by flocks of pilgrims; or in the middle of rich pastures. A fair at Christ's Kirk, in Aberdeenshire, held in May, when the nights are very short, began at sunset, and ended an hour after sunrise: it was called 'Sleepy Market.' In America the word fair is used rather for what would in England be called an industrial exhibition, bazaar, or 'fancy fair.' See Cornelius Walford's Fairs, Past and Present (1883).