The countryfolk of the surrounding district are delighted,
and the showmen reap a goodly harvest of francs and centimes; but
these fairs are tiresome and commonplace, much less amusing and
lively than, for example, St. Giles's Fair at Oxford, though very
nearly as noisy. But the kermesse proper, which still survives in
some places, shows the Flemings amusing themselves in something
more like the old fashion than anything which can be seen in the
Market-Place of Bruges or on the boulevards of Brussels or Antwerp.
Indeed, some of the village scenes, when the young people are dancing
or shooting with bows and arrows at the mark, while the elders sit,
with their mugs of beer and long pipes, watching and gossiping,
are very like what took place in the times of the old painters who
were so fond of producing pictures of the kermesses. The dress of
the people, of course, is different, but the spirit of the scene,
with its homely festivities, is wonderfully little changed.
About twenty miles from the French frontier is the town of Ypres,
once the capital of Flanders, and which in the time of Louis of Nevers
was one of the three 'bonnes villes,' Bruges and Ghent being the
others, which appointed deputies to defend the rights and privileges
of the whole Flemish people.
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