"The Dancing Bear" - recalled by Fred Burbidge for George Freeston in the 1950s.

I remember the dancing bear which came annually to the village. The fellow would call round in the morning, door to door - the bear had a collar with an 8 foot pole on it and it stood 7 foot high. It was black with a beautiful coat that shone like silk - and you could stroke it.  It had shining yellow eyes.  Everyone would put something it the cap - perhaps they wanted him to go away! The fellow collected a lot of money and at night put the bear in the stable at the Sun, Moon and Stars and he put it there many times over the years but one time he forgot to give it a drink before he put it into bed. At one in the morning it woke the landlord, it ripped the hayrack down and had broken the stalls.  It was knocking on the door with a piece of wood. The landlord came down and woke the man up, who was asleep in the 'Big Room' where the bear did his dance, and said "your bear is smashing the place up". "Oh dear", he said, "Get me a bucket of water quick and put a pint of beer in it and give it to the bear". "You do it!". So he did and the bear drank it like a child and became as quiet as a child. The landlord valued the custom and said that Phipp's would pay for the repairs to the stable so the bear-man had to pay nothing at all. He went away rejoicing and on to Towcester in the morning. Often, when there wasn't the bear there was a monkey with a barrel organ. The monkey would hop around collecting the money - Italians they were, I think. Anyway, the best show was still the dancing bear in the Big Room with the fellow playing his mouth-organ, playing it to perfection. I think the Big Room was used as a dormitory in the old times for canal workers.

[Note: A long lost street of Northampton, now under the Mayorhold car park, Bearward Street (Berewardstrete 1281), was so named after the 'bear ward' or 'keeper of performing bears,' a common sight in the Middle Ages.  Something that Fred Burbidge recalls from c. 1900 in fact goes back at least 600 years]