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Title: The Gypsy's Parson - his experiences and adventures
Author: Hall, George
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Gypsy's Parson - his experiences and adventures" ***
Transcribed from the J. B. Lippincott edition by David Price, email
ccx074@pglaf.org
[Picture: The Rev. George Hall. Photo: Brigham]
THE
GYPSY’S PARSON
HIS EXPERIENCES AND ADVENTURES
* * * * *
BY
THE REV. GEORGE HALL
RECTOR OF RUCKLAND, LINCOLNSHIRE
* * * * *
_ILLUSTRATED_
* * * * *
PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
LONDON: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON & CO. LTD.
* * * * *
TO
MY WIFE
MY COMPANION
ON MANY A GYPSY-JAUNT
* * * * *
“_They cast the glamour o’er him_.”
* * * * *
“YOU must forgive us. We are barbarians. . . . We are ruffians of
the sun . . . and we must be forgiven everything.”
“It is easy to forgive in the sun,” Domini said.
“Madame, it is impossible to be anything but lenient in the sun.
That is my experience. . . . But, as I was saying, the sun teaches
one a lesson of charity. When I first came to live in Africa in the
midst of the sand-rascals—eh, Madame, I suppose as a priest I ought
to have been shocked by their goings-on. And, indeed I tried to be,
I conscientiously did my best, but it was no good. I couldn’t be
shocked. The sunshine drove it all out of me. I could only say, ‘It
is not for me to question le bon Dieu, and le bon Dieu has created
these people and set them here in the sand to behave as they do.
What is my business? I can’t convert them. I can’t change their
morals—I must just be a friend to them, cheer them up in their
sorrows, give them a bit if they’re starving, doctor them a
little—I’m a first-rate hand at making an Arab take a pill or a
powder—when they are ill, and I make them at home with the white
marabout.’ That’s what the sun has taught me, and every sand-rascal
and sand-rascal’s child in Amara is a friend of mine.”
“You are fond of the Arabs, then?” she said.
“Of course I am, Madame. I can speak their language, and I’m as much
at home in their tents, and more, than I ever should be at the
Vatican—with all respect to the Holy Father.”
(Conversation between Domini and Father Beret in _The Garden of Allah_,
quoted here by the kind permission of Mr. Robert Hichens.)
PREFACE
NOT a few writers have essayed to study the Gypsies in dusty libraries.
I have companioned with them on fell and common, racecourse and
fairground, on the turfy wayside and in the city’s heart. In my book,
which is a record of actual experiences, I have tried to present the
Gypsies just as I have found them, without minimising their faults or
magnifying their virtues. Most of the Gypsies mentioned in the following
pages have now passed away, and of those who remain, many have, for
obvious reasons, been renamed.
For the majority of the pictures adorning my book, I owe a profound debt
of gratitude to my friend, Mr. Fred Shaw; also, for their kind permission
to include several pictures in my “Romany Gallery,” my cordial thanks are
due to Mrs. Johnson, of Yatton, Rev. H. H. Malleson, Mr. William
Ferguson, Mr. T. J. Lewis, Mr. H. Stimpson, and Mr. F. Wilkinson.
The phonetics contained in this work are based upon a system invented by
my friend, Mr. R. A. Scott Macfie, of the Gypsy Lore Society, whose
innumerable kindnesses I most gratefully acknowledge.
G. H.
RUCKLAND RECTORY,
NEAR LOUTH,
LINCOLNSHIRE.
CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. GYPSY COURT—MY INITIATION INTO GYPSYDOM 1
II. CHARACTERS OF THE COURT—READING BORROW 16
III. NORTH-COUNTRY GYPSIES 32
IV. MY POACHING PUSSY—A ROMANY BENISON—MY FIRST TASTE 41
OF HEDGEHOG
V. A GYPSY BAPTISM—ROMANY NAMES 52
VI. I MAKE A NEW ACQUAINTANCE 57
VII. THE BLACKPOOL GYPSYRY 71
VIII. A TRENTSIDE FAIR 89
IX. TAKEN FOR TRAMPS—AN EAST ANGLIAN FAMILY 99
X. PETERBOROUGH FAIR 118
XI. A FORGOTTEN HIGHWAY—“ON THE ROAD” WITH 134
JONATHAN—THE PATRIN—THE GHOST OF THE HAYSTACK
XII. THE GYPSY OF THE TOWN 152
XIII. WITH THE YORKSHIRE GYPSIES 172
XIV. A NIGHT WITH THE GYPSIES—THE SWEEP OF LYNN—LONDON 186
GYPSIES—ON EPSOM DOWNS
XV. TINKERS AND GRINDERS 205
XVI. THE INN ON THE RIDGEWAY—TALES BY THE FIRESIDE 213
XVII. HORNCASTLE FAIR 229
XVIII. A GYPSY SEPULCHRE—BURIAL LORE—THE PASSING OF 238
JONATHAN
XIX. _BITSHADO PAWDEL_ (TRANSPORTED) 247
XX. A ROMANY MUNCHAUSEN 256
XXI. THE GYPSY OF THE HILLS—IN THE HEART OF WALES—A 262
WESTMORLAND HORSE FAIR
XXII. FURZEMOOR 278
GLOSSARY OF ROMANY WORDS 291
GYPSY FORE OR CHRISTIAN NAMES 299
INDEX 303
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
THE GYPSY’S PARSON _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
A ROMANY LASS 6
THE CAMP IN THE LANE 20
A DAUGHTER OF “JASPER PETULENGRO” 28
ON THE MOORLAND 36
A NORTH-COUNTRY GYPSY GIRL 36
ROUND THE CAMP-FIRE 48
A CHILD OF THE CARAVAN 48
A REST BY THE WAY 62
A WAYSIDE IDYL 68
CHILDREN OF THE OPEN AIR 68
ON THE LOOK-OUT 72
THE GYPSY’S PARSON WITH HIS FRIENDS 86
FRIENDS AT THE FAIR 86
A MAID OF THE TENTS 112
ON THE EVE OF THE FAIR 118
MIDLAND GYPSIES 128
SOUTH-COUNTRY GYPSIES 128
NETTING RABBITS 139
’NEATH THE HEDGEROW 139
THE GYPSY’S PARSON ON THE ROAD 142
GYPSIES AT HOME 146
COMRADES 146
“A MOTHER IN EGYPT” 160
HOUSE-DWELLING GYPSIES 172
A GYPSY LAD 184
ON THE RACECOURSE 202
A TINKER OF THE OLDEN TIMES 208
A WELSH GYPSY TINKER 208
A ROMANY FIDDLER 222
HORNCASTLE HORSE FAIR 230
READY FOR THE FAIR 232
YARD OF THE “GEORGE” INN, HORNCASTLE 232
A LONDON GYPSY 246
“BLACK AS A BOZ’LL” 258
OLI PURUM 264
A GYPSY HARPIST 264
A HAPPY PAIR 268
A CHAT BY THE GATE 268
’NEATH CAUTLEY CRAG 272
A BOTTOMLESS POOL 272
A WANDERING MINSTREL 274
BROUGH HILL HORSE FAIR 276
GYPSY CHILDREN 280
CHAPTER I
GYPSY COURT—MY INITIATION INTO GYPSYDOM
A TANGLE of sequestered streets lying around a triple-towered cathedral;
red roofs and gables massed under the ramparts of an ancient castle; a
grey Roman arch lit up every spring-time by the wallflower’s mimic gold;
an old-world Bailgate over whose tavern yards drifted the sleepy music of
the minster chimes; a crooked by-lane leading down to a wide common loved
by the winds of heaven—these were the surroundings of my childhood’s home
in that hilltop portion of Lincoln which has never quite thrown off its
medieval drowsiness.
Not far from my father’s doorstep, as you looked towards the common, lay
a narrow court lined with poor tenements, and terminating in a bare yard
bounded by a squat wall. Every detail of this alley stands out in my
memory with the sharpness of a photograph; the cramped perspective of the
place as you entered it from our lane, the dreary-looking houses with
their mud-floored living-rooms fronting upon the roadway, the paintless
doors and windows, the blackened chimneys showing rakish against the sky,
all combined to make a picture of dun-coloured misery. There were, it is
true, a few redeeming features gilding the prevailing drabness of the
scene. The entrance to the court had a southerly outlook upon green
fields stretching up to the verge of the Castle Dyking, or, to revive its
more gruesome name, “Hangman’s Ditch,” so called from the grim
associations of a bygone day. From these fields a clean air blew through
the court, rendering it a less unwholesome haunt for the strange folk who
dwelt within its precincts; while not half a mile distant lay the breezy
common, a glorious playground for the children of Upper Lincoln.
Seeing that this court and its denizens were destined in the order of
things to make a profound impression upon my childish imagination, I may
as well develop the picture rising so vividly before my mind’s eye.
It was somewhere in the fifties of the last century, a few years, that is
to say, before my entrance into the world, that several families of
dark-featured “travellers” had pitched upon the court for their Gypsyry,
a proceeding at which our quiet lane at first shrugged its shoulders,
then focussed an interested gaze upon the intruders and their ways, and
finally lapsed into an indulgent toleration of them. Thus from day to
day throughout my early years, there might have been seen emerging from
the recesses of Gypsy Court swarthy men in twos and threes accompanied by
the poacher’s useful lurcher; nut-brown girls with their black hair
carelessly caught up in orange or crimson kerchiefs; wrinkled crones
smoking short clays, as gaily they drove forth in their rickety
donkey-carts; buxom mothers carrying babies slung, Indian fashion, across
their shoulders, and bearing on their arms baskets replete with pegs,
skewers, and small tin-ware of home manufacture. As for children, troops
of the brown imps were generally in evidence, their eldritch shrieks
rending the air between the portals of the little court and the gate
opening upon the common.
No observes could possibly miss the fighting scenes and the ringing
shouts which made the court echo again. A passionate folk are the
Gypsies, a provoking word being at any time sufficient to call forth a
blow. Even as I write these words, visions of gory fists and faces
obtrude themselves through the mists of past days.
However, the Gypsies were never reported to be otherwise than polite
towards the outsider who ventured into the alley. Diplomats rather than
hooligans were they. “Let’s ’eave ’alf a brick at ’im,” is not the
Gypsy’s way with a stranger who happens to stroll into the camp. At the
same time I would not have it imagined that the inhabitants of the
squalid court were of the best black Romany breed; far from it, they were
mostly of diluted blood, else how came they to turn sedentary at all?
For pure Gypsies (or _Romanitshelaw_, as they call themselves), the
aristocrats of their race, abhor settled life, preferring to die on the
road rather than wither inside four walls.
On the occasion of a horse fair in the city, our lane would resound with
the clanging of hoofs beyond the ordinary, and in front of the taverns
there was much rattling of whipstocks on the insides of hard hats, in
order to enliven some weedy “screw,” and so reward its owner for hours of
patient “doctoring” in a corner well screened from prying eyes. Then
when the autumnal rains set in, and the leaves began to flutter down in
showers, there would come from afar the rumbling of Romany “homes on
wheels,” driven townwards by the oncoming of winter. To me it was always
a saddening sight to watch the travel-stained wanderers hying to their
winter quarters through miry streets heavy with mist and gloom.
_Staruben sî gav_ (town is a prison), an ancient vagabond was heard to
remark on a like occasion.
A spectacle far more inspiriting was the departure of a Gypsy cavalcade
from the city on a gay spring morning. For into the dingy purlieus where
the travellers had wintered more or less cheerlessly, stray sunbeams and
soft airs had begun to penetrate. Tidings had reached them that away in
the open something had stirred, or called, or breathed along the furzy
lanes and among the tree boughs, and forthwith every Romany sojourner
within the ash-strewn yards of the city became eager to resume the free,
roving life of the roads. How often have I longed for the brush of an
artist to depict the company of merry Gypsies—men, women, and bairns,
horses, dogs, and donkeys, jingling pot-carts and living-wagons bedizened
with new paint, starting from the top of our lane for the open country,
just when the wind-rocked woods were burgeoning and every green
hedge-bottom had a sprinkling of purple violets.
Now until my eleventh year I had seen no more than the mere outside of
Romany life, and I might never have had any Gypsy experiences to relate
but for a trivial blood-spilling, which, as I look back upon it, may well
be called my initiation into Gypsydom. Indeed, the small incident I am
about to mention had for me a most important result, insomuch as it made
me akin to Gypsies for the rest of my life.
My earliest schools were dames’ academies—there were two of these
old-time institutions in our lane. Approached by a dark passage, the
second of these had for its lecture-hall a large brick-floored room,
whose presiding spirit was a dwarfish lady of sixty-five or more, before
whom we sat in rows at long desks. The school consisted of about a score
of children who were awed into subjection by a threatening rod of supple
ash, half as long again as the tapering stick around which the
scarlet-runners in your kitchen garden love to entwine themselves. This
dread implement of discipline, reared in a recess near our mistress’s
desk, would oft descend upon the head of a chattering boy or girl, and to
the tip of that rod my own pate was no stranger.
[Picture: A Romany Lass. Photo: Valentine & Sons]
Among my acquaintances at this school was a Gypsy girl whose parents
dwelt at the sunny end of the aforementioned court. A year or two my
senior, Sibby Smith was a shapely lass, having soft hazel eyes and a
wealth of dark hair crowning an olive-tinted face. Lissom as whalebone,
she had a pretty way of capering along the lanes with hedgerow berries or
leaves of autumn’s painting in her hair, and I, a silent, retiring boy,
would watch her movements with admiring eyes. Fittingly upon that lithe
form sat a garb of tawny-brown, with here a wisp of red and there a tag
of yellow, mingled as on the wings of a butterfly. The girl had a
harum-scarum brother, Snakey by name and slippery by nature, a little
older than herself, with whom out of school hours she would be off and
away searching the bushes for birds’ nests, or ransacking the thickets
for nuts; and one day in school I remember how she pulled out
inadvertently with her handkerchief a catapult—a Gypsy can bring down a
pheasant with the like—and falling with a clatter at our teacher’s feet,
the unholy weapon was straightway confiscated, whereat Sibby’s face grew
darker by a shade, as with her pen-nib she savagely stabbed the desk on
which our copybooks were outspread. A roamer in all the copses and lanes
around our city, and enjoying the freedom of the camps which tarried for
little or for long in the old brickyards fringing the common, this
schoolmate of mine expressed the out-of-door spirit in her very gait, and
as she pirouetted along the causeway, you caught from her flying figure
the smell of wood smoke and the mossy odour of deep dingles.
In all the world it is hard to find the elusive Gypsy’s compeer.
Whimsical as the wind, and brimful of mischief as an elf of the wilds,
Sibby was to me the embodiment of bewitching mystery. From a hillock by
the hedge I have watched her seize a skittish pony by the mane and,
leaping astride its back, gallop madly along a lane, to return a few
moments later, breathless and dishevelled. This was her frolicsome mood.
Never very far below the surface of the Gypsy nature lurks a feeling of
disdain, waxing fierce at times towards everything and everybody outside
the Romany world. To this mood the Gypsy life appears to be the only
life worth living, and the Gypsy is the only real man in the world. All
other ways and all alien folk are suspect. There were times therefore
when Sibby’s eyes would pierce me through with arrows of detestation as
though one had hailed from beneath the eaves of a constabulary. Yet the
next day, every shred of this dark feeling would be flung to the winds,
as under a scented may-bush the girl was romancing merrily or instructing
me in the peculiar whistle giving warning of the approach of Velveteens
or a policeman.
Is there in the whole bag of humanity, I wonder, a nut harder to crack
than the Gypsy?
One afternoon in turning a corner sharply on my way home from school, it
happened that I ran full tilt into Sibby Smith, and before I could say
“Jack Robinson” I received such a blow on the mouth as sent me sprawling
all my length on the road. There was, I suppose, something ludicrous in
the sight of a prostrate boy with his legs in the air; so at least the
girl seemed to think, for immediately she burst into laughter, and her
merriment being ever of an infectious sort, I found myself laughing too,
though inwardly I thought my punishment unmerited. A moment later,
however, as I stood wiping the blood from my lips, the puzzle was
explained. There in the dust lay a half-eaten, red-cheeked apple which
the Gypsy had been munching when the shock of the collision sent it
flying from her hand; hence the blow that descended upon me so swiftly.
Nor after the lapse of nearly forty years have I forgotten the forceful
stroke that laid me low on that autumn afternoon.
On stormy days, when the loud-lunged gusts made a fanfaronade in the
chimney-stacks at home, it was my delight as a boy to seek the brow of
the grassy escarpment overlooking our common, and at that time I knew
nothing more glorious than a tussle with the wind roaring over the
hilltop. Leaping on the springy turf, hatless and bare-armed, fighting a
make-believe giant of sonorous voice, what high glee of spirit was mine!
In those days the escarpment boasted a row of windmills, old-fashioned
structures, built partly of timber and partly of brick and stone, and
loud was the whirring of sails thereabouts in a brisk wind. At the head
of a cleft in the hillside, known as “Hobbler’s Hole,” was a mill which
had fallen into desuetude, and its great sails, shattered by a tempest,
lay in tangled heaps on the thistle-grown plot around the building. To
the tall thistles, tufted with downy seed, came goldfinches, dainty
little fellows, shy as fairies. Hitherward came also visitors of another
kind, for, as might be expected, the unwritten invitation to such a
harvest of firewood had duly spread to Gypsy Court. More than once in
the twilight Sibby got me to help her in carrying off fragments of
timber, and to a boy with _Tiger Tom the Pirate_ secreted in the lining
of his jacket, these small adventures were not without a tang of the
picaresque. As time went on, the door in the basement of the mill and
most of the window-frames were dragged piecemeal from their places to
boil Gypsy kettles, but there still remained the massive ladder giving
access to the dusty chambers wherein nestled the strangest of shadows.
Every youngster who came to play in Hobbler’s Hole knew quite well that
the mill was haunted. Readily enough we climbed the worm-eaten ladder in
broad daylight, and scampered about the resounding floors, or sat at the
frameless windows pelting bits of plaster at the jackdaws flitting to and
fro, but to think of invading the mouldering mill in the dusk hour when
hollow and common were visioned away into shadowy night was another
matter. Ah, then the mill took on an eeriness befitting a very
borderland of goblindom.
Picturing the crumbling ruin and the wrinkled declivity dipping below it
towards the common, I recall how Snakey Smith said one day to me, “I
likes to sit afore a fire on the ground. You don’t feel nothing like so
lonesome as you keeps pushing sticks into the fire and watching ’em burn
away.” The words aptly express a Gypsy’s joy in a fire for its own sake,
regardless of utilitarian considerations. At the moment there may be no
kettle waiting to be boiled, no black stockpot demanding to be slung on
the crooked kettle-prop, yet, for the pure pleasure of the thing, a Gypsy
will light a small pile of dead sticks, and, lounging near, will gaze
wistfully at the spiral of thin, sweet smoke upcurling between the trees
in the lane.
Without a doubt, if “you’s been a bit onlucky,” or, if your sky is cloudy
with sorrow, there is solace in a fire, as in a folk-tale and in the
voice of a violin. Did not Provost M‘Cormick, lawyer and lover of
Gypsies, find his Border Tinklers, amid their brown tents and shaggy
“cuddies,” reciting traditional tales to banish gloom? “Whenever he saw
me dull he wad say, ‘Come on, Mary, and I’ll tell ye a fairy tale,’ and
wi’ his gestures, girns, and granes, he wadna be lang till he had us a’
roarin’.”
A Gypsy who resided in a derelict railway carriage on a Cheshire common,
having lost a dear child, refused to be comforted and even declined to
take food. To his old fiddle he confided his grief, his body swaying to
and fro as he drew forth plaintive airs from the strings.
Wandering one evening in cowslip-time below the decrepit windmill, I came
to a stile in the hedge, and, passing into the lane, I found Sibby and
Snakey heaping dead wood upon a fire on the margin of the common.
“There!” exclaimed the Gypsy girl, “I know’d somebody was a-thinking of
me, ’cos my boots kept coming unlaced.”
“Well, well, you made me jump, _baw_ (mate), you did,” put in her
brother. “How did you _jin_ we were _akai_?” (know we were here).
“See,” said I, “what a pother you are making. I caught a whiff of your
smoke right on top of the hill.”
With that I dropped down beside the fire, and, yielding the soul to the
witchery of red-gold flames dancing against the dark, it was easy enough
to glide into the realm of Faerie. Sibby, who had been lying at full
length before the fire, now gathered herself into a cross-legged posture,
and, lapsing into meditation, sat twisting a black elf-lock round her
forefinger. A touch of the “creepy” world seemed also to have fallen
upon Snakey, for he lay in silence staring into the beyond as though he
had sighted fairy faces peering between the brier sprays; or was it that
the knotted tree-bole leaning from the hedge had begun to make grimaces?
At last the boy awoke with a start. By his side lay a maiden ash-plant
with numerous hearts and rings neatly cut on its green bark, and,
whipping out a knife, he proceeded to add further touches to his _kosht_
(stick). This led me to talk of my own achievement of that day in
carving my initials on a beech tree not far from where we were sitting.
Whereat Sibby remarked—
“Why, it was only last week that me and mother went in our cart past
Dalton Brook, and we pulled up to look at the old tree what has _dui
vastaw_ (two hands) cut into it by Orferus Herren, and there they were
right enough. It was his brother Evergreen who broke his neck by
tumbling headlong into a stone-pit, wasn’t it, Snakey?”
“For sure it was, _pen_ (sister), and our uncles Fennix and Euri were
well-nigh killed the same way right up agen Scotland, as I’ve heard dad
say times and agen.”
“How was that?” I asked.
Then followed Snakey’s story, which, as well as I remember, ran (in his
own words) something like this—
“One night my uncles Fennix and Euri was crossing a moor among the
mountains, a long way up into the North Country. They’d been sitting all
the day in a _kitshima_ (tavern) and at last they begins to think it were
time to be marching to their stopping-place, some five miles away across
the moor, a wery nasty country with deep pits and ponds in it. It was
getting dark and the teeny stars were shining above the mountains. Well,
my uncles made off with a deal of bustle at first along a beaten track,
but after going a mile or two, down comes a fog—a clear thick ’un it
was—and they soon got off the path and were lost. It looked like ’em
having to _besh avrí_ (lie out) all night, as poor Jacob did. Only my
uncles didn’t see no silver ladder with angels dancing up and down on it,
and _mi dîri Duvel_ (God) sitting atop of it. But just as they were
about dead beat after poddling up and down for I can’t tell you how long,
they walked as nigh as nothing over the edge of a deep pit. It were a
narrow shave, for they only managed to save theirselves by clutching at
the bushes atop of the pit. Then what do you think, _baw_? They just
turned round, and there afore ’em stood a terrible crittur rearing itself
up and groaning loud. Their hearts was in their mouths. They thought
their time had come.
“‘If that ain’t a _mulo_ (ghost), my name’s not Fennix,’ whispered my
uncle.
“‘_Keka_’ (No); ‘it’s the wery _Beng_ (Devil) hisself,’ says Euri.
“And there they stands a-dithering like leaves, till at last my uncle
Fennix pulls hisself together and walks on a yard or two, staring hard
afore him, and weren’t Euri glad above a bit to hear his brother say in
his nat’ral voice, ‘Come on, it’s nobbut a blessed _dunnock_ (steer)
after all.’ And with that the crittur kicked up its heels and galloped
away, and by a bit of luck my uncles stumbled right on to a cartway as
led ’em straight to the tents.”
Among Gypsies, when the tale-telling mood is on, story will follow story,
often until drowsiness supervenes; for these folk dearly love a tale, and
are themselves possessed of no small store of family legends and
folk-narratives.
“Now, it’s your turn, sister. Let’s have that tale about Old Ruzlam
Boz’ll’s boy.”
Without stopping for a moment to think, Sibby began to reel off what was
evidently a well-known and favourite story, punctuating her sentences by
picking from her gown and flinging at me sundry prickly balls of burdock
seed, telling of what prowlings in the woods!
“It’s donkey’s ears (_i.e._ long years) since Ruzlam Boz’ll’s wife had a
baby boy born’d in a tent near a spring what bubbled out betwixt two
rocks, and every summer they used to _besh_ (rest) by the same spring.
By and by, when the dear little boy grew big enough, his mammy sent him
every morning to fill the kettle. But one day he got a surprise. There
on the grass by the spring what should he see but a new silver shilling.
Of course he picked it up and put it into his pocket, and never said
nothing about it when he got back to the tent. Next morning he found
double the money at the spring-head, and so it went on until his pockets
were chinking full of silver, and for all that he never breathed no word
about his luck. But one day Old Ruzlam heard the boy rattling the money
in his pockets, and forced him to tell where he got it from. Next
morning the daddy went off, laughing to hisself and thinking of the nice
heap of silver he was going to pick up, but after he had looked up and
down and all over, he found just nothing at all, leastways he saw no
money; but as he stood scratting his head, puzzled-like, there, on one
side of the spring, he saw a dear little teeny old man, and on the other
side a dear little teeny old woman, and, saying never a word, they
stooped down and flung water right into Ruzlam’s eyes. So away he ran
home, and there, if he didn’t find his boy had gone cross-eyed. What’s
more, he never came right agen.”
Thus, by pleasant steps amid scenes not lacking in glamour, I advanced
little by little in my knowledge of these fascinating straylings with
whom no stranger ever yet found it easy to mingle as one of themselves.
CHAPTER II
CHARACTERS OF THE COURT—READING BORROW
A FEW miles outside my native city, there stands on the bank of the Roman
Fossdyke a lonely house known as “Drinsey Nook,” formerly a tavern with
bowling greens, swings, and skittle alleys, a resort of wagonette and
boating parties out for a frolic in the sunshine. Often on bygone summer
eves have I loitered about the old inn gleaming white amid its guardian
trees, but best of all I loved to see the beechen boughs drop their fiery
leaves upon its mossy roof in the fading of the year.
To-day, as of yore, the brown-sailed barges, laden with grain or scented
fir-planks, glide lazily past the place, and a motor-boat will at times
go racing by, to the alarm of the waterhens which had almost come to look
on the sleepy canal as their own.
Does it ever dream of its gay past, I wonder—this old forgotten house
fronting upon the rush-fringed waterway?
One golden October morning, my father, who had a passion for boating on
our local waters, hired a small sailing craft, and, the breezes aiding
us, we were wafted along the Fossdyke as far as the said riparian house
of call. Hour after hour we wandered in the beech woods stretching
behind the inn, resting now on some protruding snag or fallen bole to
watch the squirrels at play, and again pushing our way breast-high
through sheets of changing bracken to the hazel thickets where the nuts
hung in clusters well within reach of our hooked sticks.
Linked with this ramble in the time of the falling leaves is an
impression I have never forgotten. “Look,” said my father, pointing to a
decayed stump of a post almost buried amid dank moss, “this is all that
remains of Tom Otter’s gibbet-tree.” I shuddered as he told how in other
days he had heard the chains clanking in the wind, and he went on to
relate that _his_ father was among the crowd of citizens who, starting
from Lincoln Castle one March morning in the year 1806, followed the
murderer’s corpse until it was hanged in irons on a post thirty feet high
on Saxilby Moor. For several days after the event, the vicinity of the
gibbet resembled a country fair with drinking booths, ballad singers,
Gypsy fiddlers, and fortune-tellers.
The impressions of childhood are enduring; and just as the smell of the
wallflowers after an April shower will revive for you, dear fellow, the
vision of a garden walk under a lichened wall, and the dainty step of
your lady love by your side, so for me the wild scent of withering
bracken in the red autumn glades prompts my fancy to envisage anew the
gruesome scene as depicted by my father on that October day long gone by.
Nor is this all.
To mention the name of Tom Otter is to call up for me more than one
swarthy inhabitant of Gypsy Court who lived to make old bones and sit by
the fire telling tales and smoking black tobacco. I have but to close my
eyes to behold a procession of these “characters” straggling out of the
dark court, their faces and figures lingering for a moment in memory’s
beam of light, then passing again into the shadows. And what strange
stories are wrapped up in the names and lives of some of these folk;
quaint comedy, grim tragedy, riotous passion, tales of love, laughter,
and tears.
There was old Tom, nicknamed “Tom o’ the Gibbet,” whose patronymic was
_Petulengro_, which is Gypsy for Smith.
Each of the great Romany clans, be it known, duplicates its surname, one
form being used before the _gawjê_ (non-Gypsies, aliens); the other form,
of cryptic import, is for the brotherhood of the blood.
Old Tom Petulengro, further known as “Sneezing Tommy,” owing to his
liking for snuff, carried on a thriving trade in wooden meat-skewers and
pegs, and in his backyard you might see him with infinite patience
cutting up willow rods or splitting blocks of close-grained elder-wood;
and for years I never used to hear in church the familiar words of the
Psalmist, “Our bones lie strewn before the pit, like as when one heweth
wood upon the earth,” without seeing that narrow yard with its shining
axe lying midst a litter of chips and splinters. Elder-wood is still in
request for meat-skewers, and to this day not a few country butchers
prefer to use the Gypsy-made article. Old Tom used to say, with a
twinkle in his eye, that he _found_ nearly all his raw material on his
journeys up and down the countryside. For, as you could not fail to
observe, it was a habit with some of the dwellers in Gypsy Court to
absent themselves periodically with their light carts and tents. Halcyon
days were those for the court Gypsies.
Let it be remembered that the County Council legend, “No camping
allowed,” had not yet begun to hit you in the eye from among the bramble
brakes on bits of wayside waste. The rural constable of that time had
not the conveniences his successor enjoys in the bicycle and the village
telephone. There were farmers who still retained a soft place in their
hearts for the Gypsy, and many a country squire viewed the nomads of the
grassy lanes with a kindly eye. If a carriage-horse grew restive in
passing a roadside fire at twilight, up from the hedge-bottom sprang an
obliging fellow who led the animal safely along and thereby won a cheery
word from the squire or his lady. Even Velveteens would hob-nob with the
jovial campers on the lord’s waste, and, quaffing a dram from their black
bottle, would toss a rabbit into the lap of a Romany mother and go on his
way. Here and there of course were tiresome believers in the hoary
policy of harassment and oppression—
“Pack, and be out of this forthwith,
D’you know you have no business here?
‘No, we hain’t got,’ said Samuel Smith,
‘No business to be anywhere.’
So wearily they went away,
Yet soon were camped in t’other lane,
And soon they laughed as wild and gay,
And soon the kettle boiled again.”
[Picture: The Camp in the Lane. Photo: Fred Shaw]
Reverting to Tom Petulengro’s sobriquet, I confess it provoked my
curiosity not a little. Tom _o’ the Gibbet_—what could the strange “tag”
mean? Time passed, even a few years, and one day its origin came to
light during a talk with Ashena Brown, Tom’s married sister, an elderly
Gypsy with a furrowed countenance and deep-set eyes which flashed with
fire as she grew excited in her talk. I can see her bowed figure and
long jetty curls, as in fancy I again stoop to enter the low-ceiled abode
in the smoky court where I listened to her chatter to the persistent
accompaniment of a donkey’s thump, thump, in an adjoining apartment.
“Wonderful fond o’ the County o’ Nottingham was my people,” said the old
lady. “They know’d every stick and stone along the Trentside, and i’ the
Shirewood (Sherwood), and many’s the time we’ve stopped at Five Lane Ends
nigh Drinsey Nook. Why, my poor dear mammy (Lord rest her soul) was once
fired at by a foot-pad as she were coming outen the public upo’ the bank
there. The man’s pistol had nobbut powder in it, for he only meant to
_trash_ (frighten) her into handing up her _lova_ (money), but she had
none about her, for her last _shukora_ (sixpence) had gone in _levina_
(ale). And after that, my mammy allus wore a big _diklo_ (kerchief)
round her head for to hide her cheek as were badly blued by the rascal’s
powder.
“Ay, and I minds how my daddy used to make teeny horseshoes, knife
handles, and netting needles, outen the bits o’ wood he _tshin_’d (cut)
off the gibbet post, and wery good oak it was. Mebbe you’s heard o’ Tom
Otter’s post nigh to the woods? Ah, but p’raps you’s never been tell’d
that our Tom was born’d under it? The night my mammy were took bad, our
tents was a’most blown to bits. The wind banged the old irons agen the
post all night long, as I’ve heard her say. And when they wanted to name
the boy, they couldn’t think of no other name but Tom, for sure as they
tried to get away from it, the name kept coming back again—Tom, Tom,
Tom—till it sort o’ dinned itself into their heads. So at last my daddy
says, ‘Let’s call him Tom and done with it,’ and i’ time, folks got
a-calling him Tom o’ the Gibbet, and it stuck to him, it did. There,
now, I must give that here _maila_ (donkey) a bite o’ summut.”
But I have not done with Tom Otter.
Here is a story even more “creepy” than the last. Ashena is again the
speaker. “I’ them days I’d some delations as did funny things that folks
wouldn’t never think o’ doing nowadays. I’d an uncle as used to talk to
the _Beng_ (Devil). If anything went wrong wi’ a hoss, he’d say,
‘_Beng_, do this, and _Beng_, do that,’ like we talks to the _Duvel_
(God) when we says ’ur prayers. But he weren’t eddicated, you see, he
didn’t know no better. And whenever uncle and aunt used to pass by Tom
Otter’s gibbet, they’d stop and look up at the poor man hanging there,
and they allus _wuser_’d (threw) him a bit o’ _hawben_ (food). They
couldn’t let theirselves go by wi’out doing that.
“And there was a baker from Harby, and whenever he passed by the place he
would put a bread loaf on to the pointed end of a long rod and shove it
into that part o’ the irons where poor Tom’s head was, and sure enough
the bread allus went. The baker got hisself into trouble for doing that,
as I’ve heard our old people say.”
Commenting on a parallel instance, occurring about the year 1779, in
which some women were wont to throw up to a gibbeted man a bunch of
tallow candles for him to eat, the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in his _Book of
Folk-Lore_, writes: “Obviously the idea was still prevalent that life
continued to exist in the body after execution.”
In the procession of “characters” issuing from the dark court, I see two
familiar figures, the parents of my Gypsy schoolmate, who would surely
have arrested even a stranger’s gaze.
Partly from age, and partly from the habit of his calling, Plato Smith
the tinman stooped somewhat, yet his legs, which were long in comparison
with his body, carried him over the ground fast enough. A nearer view of
the old man’s countenance revealed certain scars concerning which tales
were told to his credit as a fighter. True, he had on one occasion been
worsted by an adversary, for the bridge of his nose diverged somewhat
from the straight line, a record of a telling blow. Always alert, Plato
looked the picture of spryness when soap and water had removed all traces
of the workshop, and he had donned a green cutaway coat, a bright yellow
neckcloth, and a felt “hat of antique shape,” high in the crown and broad
of brim, which was pulled well over his eyes whenever he went out. It
was whispered that none knew better than he how to whistle a horse out of
a field, but in this art I fancy he had grown rusty of late years. To be
sure, his long record as a poacher had brought him occasional lodgments
in the local house of detention, yet so ingrained was this Gypsy habit
that he could hardly refrain from chalking his gun-barrel and sallying
forth on moonlit nights.
A riverside incident associated with Sibby’s father is as fresh in my
memory as if it happened but yesterday. A stream neither broad nor deep
is our homely Witham, crawling onward through fenny flats to the North
Sea. It was here that I learned on summer days to pull an oar in an old
black coble, and to glide steel-shod over the ice in the Christmas
holidays. Along a certain reach of the river, I was initiated by an
elder brother into the mysteries of angling on those tranquil evenings
when the bold perch showed their heads above water, like the fishes that
listened to St. Anthony’s sermon. Now it fell upon a day that my brother
and I were crossing the river by ferry-boat, a few miles outside the
city, our companions being Plato Smith and an ecclesiastic from the
minster-close—four happy anglers were we. At one end of the
flat-bottomed ferry-boat stood the parson fingering his rod and whistling
a lively tune, when, in midstream, there was a sudden hitch in the chain,
flinging the perspiring ferryman upon his face, and at the same time
precipitating our friend from the minster-close headlong into the river.
Never have I seen a wild duck, or a white-pate coot, disappear more
cleanly from sight than did our brother of “the cloth” into the liquid
element. Thanks mainly to Gypsy Plato’s resourcefulness, he was
extricated pretty quickly, and we left him in the care of an innkeeper,
in whose parlour at dusk we met him in borrowed raiment, looking more
than usually pallid of countenance beneath the broad eaves of our kindly
host’s old-fashioned Sunday “topper” padded to fit with a vivid red
handkerchief.
A personality even more striking was Plato’s consort, Abigail, as you saw
her sunning herself under the parapet of the Witham bridge hard by the
“Three Magpies” Inn, her black eyes blinking as a gust from the river
flapped the loose ends of her gay kerchiefs which she wore three or four
deep, meeting on her bosom in old-time style. Hooked like a falcon’s
beak, her nose drooped over her pursed lips towards a prominent chin,
giving her a witchlike mien. Quadrupled strings of corals encircled her
wizened neck, and a black velvet bodice bedecked with silver buttons, a
skirt of bold check pattern, and a poke-bonnet formed her customary
walking attire. Often, on her homeward way after her daily round with
the basket, have I met her puffing a small black pipe as she shuffled
along our lane. By _didakais_ (half-breeds) she was certainly feared,
and they maintained it was bad luck to meet her first thing of a morning,
and were known to turn back on seeing her in the street. “Her eyes make
you feel that queer” was a common saying, and it follows that she ranked
high as a fortune-teller. Seldom a fair passed but you met her in the
noisy throng, chaffing the _gawjê_ (gentiles), or surrounded by a group
of village Johnnies and Mollies eager to have their palms read. What a
picture she made as she stooped to tighten the girths of her shaggy
donkey at whose head stood the wild, dusky Sibby with a spring wind
whisking her black locks about her cheeks, out on the open road beyond
the town, for maid and mother were devoted companions on many a foray
into the villages dotted over Lincoln Heath.
Another conspicuous character of the court was a quaint little hunchback,
a pedlar by trade, whose sad deformity and resentful temper caused him to
become the butt of every street gamin’s joke. He would often be seen in
company with Sammy Noble, a wooden-legged vendor of firewood. The pair,
I regret to say, called too frequently at taverns, and more than once I
have seen them assisted home by kindly policemen, or “peelers,” as they
were then called, who if resurrected to-day in their long black coats and
chimney-pot hats, would surely be taken for nothing short of cathedral
dignitaries.
The hero of the Gypsy colony was a tall athletic fellow, “Soldier”
’Plisti (or Supplistia) Boswell, who also bore the nickname of “Jumping
Jack,” of whom I give a reminiscence or two here.
One day a country squire was driving a pony chaise along a lane, and,
rounding a corner, he came upon a ring of Gypsies roasting hedgehogs.
Imagine his astonishment to see a slender lad spring up, and, running a
few yards, take a flying leap clear over the pony’s back, a feat so
pleasing to the squire that he called the boy to his side and, presenting
him with a bright crown-piece, offered—so the tale runs—“to keep him like
a gentleman for life.” In return for which kindness, the Gypsy was
expected to disown his people, a condition which was not jumped at by
Jack.
’Plisti’s home in Gypsy Court was one day the scene of a singular
incident. A fox closely pursued by the hounds dashed through the open
door of the living-room, where before the fire lay the Gypsy asleep and
snoring. Reynard in his haste managed to sweep the sleeper’s face with
his brush; and mighty was the yell that burst from ’Plisti’s throat on
being thus disturbed, causing the fox to seek refuge in a hovel hard by,
where the dogs fell upon him. A brother of mine who was in the court at
the time obtained possession of the brush, and the trophy was given a
conspicuous place in our home.
In those days it was no unusual course for the Gypsy lads to enlist in
the Militia, and ’Plisti looked every inch a soldier as he marched
homeward from the morning’s drill on the common. In play he would level
his musket at you, and laugh like a merry boy, if you caught his spirit
and made believe that you were wounded. If he was proud of his scarlet
jacket, his characteristic Gypsy vanity led him to glory in shirts of
dyes so resplendent that in comparison the vaunted multi-coloured coat of
Joseph would indeed have been thrown into the shade.
The Gypsy spell cast upon me in childhood was now reinforced by my
discovery of the autobiographical writings of George Borrow. It was in
my teens that I devoured _Lavengro_ in its original three-volume form.
By taper-light in an attic bedroom at home, or in some hollow on the
common where the battered race-cards whitened the base of the gorse
bushes—our old common is the annual scene of the Lincolnshire Handicap—I
thrilled over the boy Borrow’s encounter with the Gypsies in the green
lane at Norman Cross. I followed him through the crowded horse-fair at
Norwich, and into the smoky tents pitched upon Mousehold Heath. But the
episode which impressed me most of all was the fight with the Flaming
Tinman. The _dramatis personæ_ of that narrative would pursue me even
into my dreams. _The Romany Rye_, with its vivid picture of Horncastle
Fair, was pleasant enough reading, though not nearly so fascinating as
_Lavengro_. Little did I think that the coming days were to bring some
of Borrows originals within my ken.
[Picture: A daughter of “Jasper Petulengro”]
How far Borrow’s Gypsies are portraits of individuals, and to what extent
we are able to identify them, are questions which have often been asked.
Don Jorge would probably have denied the charge of individual
portraiture, yet there is no doubt that he had definite prototypes in his
mind’s eye when penning his narratives. Just as in _Guy Mannering_, Sir
Walter Scott portrayed an actual Jean Gordon under the name of Meg
Merrilies, so we know that Borrow has given us his old friend Ambrose
Smith under the now famous cognomen of “Jasper Petulengro,” a fact made
plain by Dr. Knapp in his monumental work {28} familiar to all Gypsy
students. Shortly before his death at Dunbar in October, 1878, Ambrose
Smith and his wife Sanspirela (a Heron before marriage), together with
their family, had been noticed and befriended by Queen Victoria. To wit:
the following entry in _More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the
Highlands_.
“_August_ 26_th_, 1878.—At half-past three started with Beatrice,
Leopold, and the Duchess in the landau, and four, the Duke, Lady Ely,
General Ponsonby, and Mr. Yorke, going in the second carriage, and
Lord Haddington riding all the way. We drove through the west part
of Dunbar, which was very full, and we were literally pelted with
small nosegays, till the carriage was full of them; then for some
distance past the village of Belheven, Knockendale Hill, where were
stationed in their best attire the queen of the gipsies, an oldish
woman [Sanspirela] with a yellow handkerchief on her head, and a
youngish, very dark, and truly gipsy-like woman in velvet and a red
shawl, and another woman. The queen is a thorough gipsy, with a
scarlet cloak and a yellow handkerchief around her head. Men in red
hunting-coats, all very dark, and all standing on a platform here,
bowed and waved their handkerchiefs.”
In the seventh chapter of _The Romany Rye_, Borrow tells how he one day
got his dinner “entirely off the body of a squirrel which had been shot
the day before by a chal of the name of Piramus, who, besides being a
good shot, was celebrated for his skill in playing on the fiddle.”
Nieces of Piramus Gray, whom I know, have testified to their uncle’s
excellence as a marksman, and on the authority of Sinfai, a daughter of
Piramus, I have been told that Ambrose Smith’s praise of her father’s
fiddling was well founded.
“About a week ago my people and myself” (the speaker is Ambrose,
_i.e._ Jasper Petulengro) “were encamped on a green by a plantation
in the neighbourhood of a great house. In the evening we were making
merry, the girls dancing, while Piramus was playing on the fiddle a
tune of his own composing, to which he had given his own name,
Piramus of Rome, and which is much celebrated amongst our people, and
from which I have been told one of the grand gorgio composers who
once heard it has taken several hints.”
The gifted fiddler was at that time only a slim fellow of twenty-eight
summers. Long years afterwards, when Piramus was a very old man and I a
youth of twenty, I remember seeing him in our Lincolnshire town of Louth,
where he was still tapping with his tinker’s hammer and fondling his
violin in his cottage at the River Head. A story which the old man never
tired of telling was that of his brother Jack’s heroism.
Upon a day, many years ago, the children of Piramus were boating on a
river, and, their craft capsizing, all were flung into the stream. Jack,
who happened to be on the bank, leaped in and saved all but two, the
oldest and the youngest, who were drowned. In his day Piramus had
excelled as a fighter, and certainly the knotty fists of the aged tinman
looked as if they had done service in the bruising line.
Two visitors who loved to cheer the last days of Piramus were his
daughter Sinfai and her husband, Isaac Heron, who have themselves now
passed away. Whenever I think of the tall figure of Old Isaac, I recall
one evening in the summer of 1876, when a camp of the Herons lay just
outside of Lincoln. What appeared to be a Gypsy trial was in progress,
and I remember the inward thrill on beholding those Herons in a ring,
chattering like a flock of daws. Inside the circle stands a young man,
bare-headed, stripped of coat and vest, and gesticulating wildly. Now he
flings his arms about, and now he thrusts his fingers through his shaggy
black hair. On his brow the sweat stands in beads. I can hear the name
“Wilhelmina,” as it comes in a piercing shriek from his lips. The old
men and women are muttering together as calmly they look on. In that
throng were Isaac and Sinfai, along with some of the older Yorkshire
Herons, Golias, Khulai, and others.
In after years I came to know very intimately many members of the clan
Heron, and among them a niece of that weird old hag, Mrs. Herne (to use
Borrow’s spelling of the name), who sent the poisoned cake to Lavengro in
Mumper’s Dingle.
Having had a romantic interest in the Gypsies aroused in me thus early, I
naturally looked forward to the days when I should leave home and meet
the people of the _kawlo rat_ (black blood) in other parts of the
country.
CHAPTER III
NORTH-COUNTRY GYPSIES
A TYPICAL colliery village in a bleak northern county was the scene of my
first curacy. Silhouettes of ugliness were its black pit buildings,
dominated by a mountain of burning refuse exhaling night and day a
poisonous breath which tarnished your brass candlesticks and rendered
noxious the “long, unlovely street” of the parish. What in the name of
wisdom induced me to pitch my tent in such a spot, I can scarcely say at
this distance of time, unless perhaps it was a mad desire to rub against
something rough and rude after having been reared in the drowsy
atmosphere of pastoral Lincolnshire.
But if the picture which met my gaze on parochial rounds possessed no
inspiring feature, you may take my word for it that the setting of the
picture was undeniably charming. Close at hand lay the valley of the
Wear, by whose brown and amber waters, broken by frequent beds of gravel,
I used to wander, trout-rod in hand, or, wading ankle-deep in bluebells,
I added to my store of nature-knowledge by observing the ways of the
wood-folk—the tawny squirrel on his fir-bough, the red-polled woodpecker
hammering at a decayed elm-branch, or a lank heron standing stiff as a
stake on the margin of a pool.
Across the airy uplands at the back of the village runs a road which was
ever a favourite walk of mine. Away in the distance, Durham’s towers
lift their grey stones, and nearer across the fields, “like a roebuck at
bay,” rises the castle, which together with the lordship of Brancepeth,
Geoffrey, grandson of the Norman Gilbert de Nevil, received as dowry with
Emma Bulmer, his Saxon bride. Right well I came to know the weathered
walls of Brancepeth Castle, where in fancy I used to hear the blare of
bugle (_not the motor-horn_), and to a dreamer it is still a place where
“the swords shine and the armour rings.”
One June day I took the byway over the hills, and as I leaned upon a gate
looking towards the castle, a sound of wheels not far off was heard on
the gritty roadway, and from round the corner a party of Gypsies hove in
sight. There were two or three carts bearing the name of Watland, with
several comely people aboard, and lagging in the rear came a pair of
shaggy colts, whipped up by a shock-headed lad of fifteen. When I
greeted these wanderers, they drew rein and descended from the carts, and
standing there in the sunshine on the road, they appeared to me more than
anything like a gang of prehistoric folk risen from some tumulus on the
moor; features, garments, horses, vehicles—all were tinctured with Mother
Earth’s reds and browns picked up from wild heaths, clay-pits, and sandy
lanes. To my mind the sight was an agreeable variation from the daily
procession of miners so black with coal-dust that you could not for the
life of you distinguish Bill from Bob, or Jack from Jerry.
“Are you stopping about here?” I asked, after an exchange of salutations.
“Yes; come and see us to-night on top o’ the moor. We’ll be fixed up by
then.” Turning to his wife, the leader of the party said—
“Ay, doesn’t he remind you of that young priest up yonder by Newcastle,
what used to come and take a cup of tea with us?”
There was something about these Watlands which impressed me. Although
obviously poor, they were light-hearted—I had caught the lilt of a song
before they came in sight. A blithesome spirit of acceptance, a serenity
drawn from Nature’s bosom was theirs, and I could imagine them whistling
cheerily as they bent their heads to buffeting storms.
“Take no thought for the morrow,” is the Gypsy’s own philosophy. Were
real road-folk ever able to tell you the route of the morrow’s itinerary?
Break of day will be time enough to discuss the next stage of the
journey.
Sundown’s fires burned redly behind the black pines, as I found myself on
the moor, a wide expanse tracked by little paths worn by passing feet, a
haunt of whin-chats, grasshoppers, and bright-eyed lizards—sun-lovers
all.
Knowing the whimsicalities of the Gypsy nature, I had half expected to
draw a blank after dawdling through the afternoon at Brancepeth Castle.
I wondered whether my luck would be the same as on a past occasion
whereon it happened that down a green lane I had located a picturesque
lot of Gypsies who might almost have stepped straight out of a Morland
canvas, and most anxious I was to secure a few snapshots, but
unfortunately my camera had been left at home.
“You’ll be here all day, I expect?”
“To be sure we shall, my _rai_, you’ll find us here _koliko sawla_
(to-morrow morning), if you’s a mind to come.”
Preferring to act upon the _carpe diem_ principle, I returned with my
camera as expeditiously as I could, and though but an hour and a half had
elapsed, alas! my birds had flown. Homewards I trudged, a joy-bereft
soul for whom the world had suddenly grown empty.
This leads me to remark that the Gypsies are far from easy to photograph.
The degree of friendship does not enter into the problem. I have known
strangers to pose readily, while old friends have doggedly refused to be
“took.” Once a friend and I had talked one of the reticent Herons into a
willingness to be photographed. Yes, on the morrow he would be “took.”
But with the morrow his mood had changed. “No, _raia_, not for a
thousand pounds.”
I remember photographing a Gypsy girl under curious conditions. Said I,
as she sat upon the grass—
“You’ll allow me to take a little picture? Your hair is so pretty, and
you have a happy face.”
[Picture: A North-Country Gypsy Girl. Photo. H. Stimpson]
But, no, my words were wasted. Bad luck followed that sort of thing, a
cousin of hers had died a fortnight after being “took.”
“But isn’t there some charm for keeping off bad luck?”
Looking thoughtful for a moment, she replied—
“Oh yes, if you’ll give me a pair of bootlaces, you can _lel mi mui_
(take my face) as many times as you _kom_” (like).
I had a pair of laces, _but they were in my boots_. Nothing daunted,
however, I went off to a shop in the village half a mile away, and was
soon back again presenting the laces to the girl with an Oriental salaam.
Then I got my picture.
[Picture: On the Moorland. Photo. Chas. Reid]
Reverting to the Watlands, I was not disappointed. There in a hollow on
the moor I found them squatting around their fires. Wearied by travel,
some of the elders had retired for the night. “_Dik lesti_’s _pîro_”
(look at his foot), said one of the boys, pointing to a man’s bare brown
foot protruding from beneath a tent cover. Within view of Durham’s
twinkling lights we sat, and my tobacco pouch having gone the round, we
were soon deep in the sayings and doings of the Watlands of other days,
for when business is off Gypsies ever talk of Gypsies. As I looked at
these folk, it seemed as though behind them through the dusk peered the
shades of Romanies of an older, weirder sort, who shunned contact with
cities and hated _gawjê_ (non-Gypsies) with a bitterness unknown to-day.
Here is a tale of the old times, obtained from grizzled “Durham” Mike
Watland, and translated more or less into my own words.
“When I was a little fellow, I used to listen with delight to a
blood-curdling story which my grandfather used to tell as we sat
watching the red embers die out at night. One time he found himself
in a strange predicament, and got such a “gliff” as he had never
experienced before. This of course was many years ago, for my
grandfather lived to the age of ninety-four, and I am one of the
third generation of a long-lived family of Gypsies. The ways of our
people were a bit different then. In those days, you saw no harm in
taking anything you had a fancy for, if you could get it. My
grandfather was a young fellow, and on this particular morning he
crossed a moor and came to a hamlet containing three or four
straggling houses, and near one of these stood a cowshed and a low
barn. In passing the shed he saw hanging there a nice porker which
had been killed early that morning, and round it was wrapped a sack
to prevent dogs or cats from gnawing it. All this my grandfather
observed as he hawked his goods at the cottage door, inwardly
resolving to pay Mr. Piggy a visit by night. All was quiet when at a
late hour he re-crossed the moor and arrived at the shed, on entering
which he put out his hands and felt for the pig where he had seen it
hanging in the morning, but, no, it had been removed. It then
occurred to him that for greater safety it might have been carried
into the low-roofed barn, so in he went and felt all along the
cross-beam. He was right. Sure enough the pig’s face struck cold to
his hand. Quickly he cut the rope, and, slinging piggy across his
shoulder, was soon making his way back to the camping-place. But
crossing that rough land with a heavy load was no easy task, and you
may be sure that the farther he went the heavier it became. When
descending a slope, he caught his foot in a hole, and down he tumbled
with his burden. Now as he arose and laid hold of the rope in order
to hoist the pig once more, the moon came out from behind a cloud,
and revealed the face of—_a dead man_! For a moment he stood
mesmerized by fright, then sick at heart he proceeded to acquaint the
nearest constable with the fact. The corpse was identified as that
of a feeble-minded cottager who had hanged himself in the barn.”
One day I was exploring the city of Durham, for my early life in Lincoln
had imbued me with a love of old architecture, and the nave of Durham
minster profoundly gratified my love of the sombre, when, lo, just over
the way, I saw a weather-beaten _vâdo_ (living-van), and near it was the
owner, looking up and down the street as if expecting someone to appear.
Crossing the road, I greeted the Gypsy, who turned out to be one of the
Winters, a North-Country family to whom has been applied (not without
reason) the epithet “wild,” and I remembered how Hoyland, in his
_Historical Survey of the Gypsies_, had written—
“The distinguished Northern poet, Walter Scott, who is Sheriff of
Selkirkshire, has in a very obliging manner communicated the
following statement—‘ . . . some of the most atrocious families have
been extirpated. I allude to the Winters, a Northumberland clan,
who, I fancy, are all buried by this time.’”
But Sheriff Scott was wrong.
The Winters had only changed their haunts, and on being driven out of the
Border Country had moved southward.
As I stood chatting with Mr. Winter, his handsome wife came up with a
hawking-basket on her arm. I shall always remember her in connection
with a story she told me.
“One day I was sitting on a bank under a garden hedge. It was a hot
day and I was very thirsty. I said aloud, ‘Oh, for a drink of beer.’
Just then a voice came over the hedge, a nice, clear, silvery voice
it was, like as if an angel from heaven was a-talking to me—‘You
shall have one, my dearie.’ And in a minute or two a kind lady came
down with a big jug of beer. How I did bless that lady for her
kindness to a poor Gypsy, and I drank the lot. About a month
afterwards, I heard of the death of that lady, and I vowed to myself
and to the _rawni_’s _muli_ (lady’s spirit) that I would never touch
another drop of beer as long as I lived, and I never have done and
never will no more.”
CHAPTER IV
MY POACHING PUSSY—A ROMANY BENISON—MY FIRST TASTE OF HEDGEHOG
MY clerical life has been spent for the most part in green country
places, chiefly amid wind-swept hills. Consequently one has learned to
delight in the creatures that run and fly, the wild things of wood and
wold and brookside, and this love of Nature and her children has never
left me; it has companioned with me throughout my wanderings. Give me
now an elevated crest commanding a broad sweep of field and forest, with
the swift rush of keen air over the furze bushes, a footpath among the
thorn-scrub where the finches chatter, the sedgy bank of a moorland
stream from which I can hear the “flup” of the trout, or the call of the
peewits somersaulting in the sunlight: simple pleasures are these, yet
they bring a world of happiness to a man who loves the wilds more than
cities, and the windy wold better than the stifling street.
Contrary to the popular notion that Lincolnshire is no more than a dreary
expanse of black fenland soil intersected by drains of geometric
straightness, I may point out that there are two well-defined hill ranges
extending almost throughout the county—the chalk and greensand Wolds, and
the limestone “Heights,” running parallel after the manner of the _duplex
spina_ of Virgil’s well-bred horse.
On the western edge of the Wolds, overlooking a richly varied landscape,
nestles the hamlet where I made my first home after marriage, and the
country lying around our hilltop parsonage was an ideal hunting-ground
for a naturalist. Borne on the rude March gales the wild pipe of the
curlew greeted the ear as you met the buffeting gusts along the
unfrequented ridgeways, and over winter snows an observant eye might
trace the badger’s spoor. On summer evenings when the far-away minster
of Lincoln was a purple cameo upon an amber ground, and the shadows
creeping out of the woods began to spread over the hills, a brown owl
would sail by on noiseless wings, or Reynard might be seen trotting
across the sheep-nibbled sward towards the warren below the clustering
firs.
Rambling along the wold one gleaming autumn afternoon, my attention was
attracted by the rapid movements of some diminutive, fluffy-looking
creature, which to a casual saunterer might have been a wren or a
hedgesparrow; but after having stood quietly for a moment or two, a dark
velvety ball of fur darted towards me, and in a most confiding manner ran
over my boots, and sniffed at the stout ash-plant which I invariably
carry with me along the lanes. For some time I stood watching the
unconscious play of this tiny mouse. At last, however, I made a move and
my wee friend fled like a thought to his retreat in the hedge.
On another occasion, I was seated in my old oak stall in the village
church. It was a harvest festival, and a college friend was in the midst
of his sermon, when I distinctly felt something nibbling at the hem of my
cassock. It was a plump grey mouse, and on moving my foot I saw him
speed down the aisle like an arrow. As fortune had it, the ladies in the
front pew, being properly rapt in the eloquent discourse, escaped the
disquieting vision of my church mousie.
These mice incidents, with a few more like them, were strung together and
dispatched to the _Pall Mall Budget_, edited at that time by Mr. Charles
Morley. My literary effort was duly printed, with pleasing sketches from
the pencil of that peerless lover of pussies, Mr. Louis Wain, the then
president of the Cat Club.
It was in the same parish that I had a favourite pussy, “Tony” by name,
who would daily follow me to church, and wait at the vestry door for my
reappearance after matin-prayers. But, alas, he acquired the poaching
habit, a sure path to destruction, as I learned one day to my sorrow in
passing the keeper’s gibbet at the end of a woodland glade.
One of my rambles with this pussy I recall quite vividly. One afternoon
I set off across the wold intending to make pastoral visits upon a few
outlying cottagers. I had got about half a mile from home, and, looking
round, there was Tony just at my heels. I strolled along, and presently
heard a squealing, and out of a clump of nettles came my cat dragging a
plump rabbit. It was dead, and the cat, panting after his effort, looked
up at me, as much as to say, “You’re not going to leave it here, are
you?” Whereupon I remembered the saying of an old Gypsy, “If you had a
dog that brought a hare or a rabbit to your feet, wouldn’t it be flying
in the face of providence to refuse to take it?” So, picking up the
rabbit, I put it in one of the roomy pockets of my long-tailed coat, and
went on. The cat persisted in following. By and by, we drew near to a
disused quarry, where the cat captured a second rabbit, which went into
the other pocket of my long coat. By this time I began to feel the charm
of the sport of that gentleman who sallies forth on “a shiny night at the
season of the year.” The pastoral visits had now perforce to be
abandoned, but on turning my face homeward, oh, horrors! there, not a
hundred yards away, was a man on horseback, accompanied by a dog, and,
seeing them, my cat scooted along a gulley up the hill, and was gone. I
could not disappear quite so easily. However, as I did not altogether
fancy a strange dog sniffing at my coat-tails, I made a detour, and the
horseman passed a good way below me on the slope. You should have seen
my wife smile as I plumped two nice bunnies on the kitchen table. We
observed that those rabbits tasted quite as good as any you purchase at a
game-dealer’s stall in the market.
* * * * *
Gypsies, as all the world knows, are fond of the hedgehog.
They do not keep him as a pet. They eat him, and roast hedgehog
accompanied with sage and onions is a dish for an episcopal table. I
never see one of these prickly fellows without being reminded of several
experiences.
Once in passing along a town street on my way to the Archdeacon’s
Visitation, I noticed not far ahead of me an elderly woman stepping out
with a swinging stride. Her face I could not see, but she wore a
tattered shawl about her shoulders, and her black hair was done up in
small plaits like a horse’s mane at fair-time. “Gypsy,” said I to
myself, and, hastening alongside, I greeted her in the Romany tongue.
The words had a magical effect. Instantly she wheeled round and scanned
me up and down with a puzzled air. There before her, wearing an orthodox
collar and black coat, stood a parson who nevertheless talked like a
Gypsy. Now in common with some ladies of high degree, nearly all Gypsy
women enjoy a whiff of tobacco smoke. This old lady, however, declined a
gift of the weed on the ground that “the brantitus” had troubled her of
late, but she gladly stepped with me into a snug coffeehouse close by,
where over our steaming cups we conversed aloud in the Gypsy language, to
the complete mystification of the prim-looking manageress whose curiosity
kept her hovering near. What that good woman’s thoughts were, I have not
the faintest idea. I only know that she seemed amazed at the sight of a
Gypsy in easy intercourse with a simple-looking cleric who appeared to be
enjoying himself. Both, too, were speaking a queer-sounding language
understandable to each other, but utterly incomprehensible to the
listener. What could it all mean? Well, Gypsies at anyrate are not
without a sense of humour; indeed, no one enjoys a bit of fun more than
they. Taking in the situation at a glance, my Gypsy companion gave me a
sly look, and, waving her hand playfully, exclaimed, “Never mind him,
missis, he’s nobbut an Irishman, and can’t a boy and his mither talk a
word or two in their own language?”
On my taking leave of the Gypsy mother, she bestowed this benison upon
me: “The Lord love you, my son, and _may you always have a big hedgehog
in your mouth_.”
Hedgehog, as I have said, is a dainty dish with Gypsies, and the old
woman was no more than kindly wishing that there might ever be a titbit
ready to slip into my mouth.
* * * * *
I am not likely to forget the occasion of my first actual taste of this
Romany delicacy.
Charley Watland (brother of “Durham” Mike), a wide traveller, had told me
much of the delights of a certain old-fashioned Midland horse-fair,
concluding one of his glowing descriptions by inviting me to meet him in
mid-September at this fair. Thus it came to pass that I set out one fine
morning with my face towards the distant hills of Leicestershire. Of the
day-long journey, I am now concerned only with its closing scenes.
Pushing up a long, tiring hill, I spied over a hedge in the dusk two or
three _vâdê_ (living-vans), some low tents with flickering fires before
them, and dark figures moving to and fro. With what energy I had left, I
climbed over a fence and made straight for the Gypsy fires. A tall
_Romanitshel_, leaning against a tree-bole, was singing snatches of a
song in which I caught the words _Beng_ (Devil) and _puri-dai_
(grandmother), but, on seeing a stranger approach, he ceased. The Romany
greeting, which I flung on the evening air, caused a stoutish woman to
thrust her head from the doorway of the nearest caravan.
“He’s one o’ the Lees, I’ll be bound. He talks like ’em. He’s come back
from over the _pâni_” (water). Which, being interpreted, meant that I
was a “lag’s” boy returned from over-sea. The idea tickled me so that I
laughed outright.
Beside the fire which was burning brightly at the feet of the tall Gypsy
man, children and dogs were rolling over one another in perfect
happiness, and at my elbow a lad, peering into my face, exclaimed—
“I’ll swop _diklo_s (kerchiefs) with you, _rai_.”
“No, you won’t,” I replied; “mine’s silk and yours cotton.”
“_Pen mandi_, _baw_” (Tell me, friend), I inquired of the tall man under
the trees, “Is Charley Watland here this time?”
“_Keka_, _mi pal_, the _puro_’s _poger_’d his _hĕro_ (No, my brother, the
old man’s broken his leg) at Peterborough. He’s got kicked by a hoss,
and he’s in the infirmary.” This was bad news, for I had hoped to meet
my friend here and spend the night with him.
[Picture: Round the camp-fire. Photo. F. R. Hinkins]
A little way across the fields the lights of a village gleamed through
the darkness, and, making my way thither, I sought for a resting-place,
but in vain. Every available bed was already engaged. In and out of the
taverns passed horse-dealers and rollicking Gypsies. Groups of Romany
lads and lasses stood talking in the lane. Burly women with foaming jugs
bumped against you in the shadows. Between the barking of dogs and the
whinnying of horses, a word or two of Romany floated now and then to
one’s ear.
[Picture: A child of the caravan. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Tired after my day in the open air, I turned into a by-lane to think
matters over. A gentle wind rustled the leaves on the trees, and on the
eastern horizon a growing light told of approaching moon-rise. I sat on
a fence and watched Old Silver appear above the hills. Away from the
village, I began to notice the sights and sounds of night. An owl on
velvety wing fluttered by. Little birds cheeped in the thicket behind
me. Field-mice squeaked in the grass on the bank. I began to feel cut
off from the world. What was I to do? Walk about all night? Make a bed
on the bracken in a neighbouring wood? Renew my search for a more
civilized couch in one or other of the adjacent villages? Tramp down the
long dusty road to a small town some few miles off, where I knew of more
than one snug hostelry? Why indeed? Was I not out for adventure? I
resolved to ask the Gypsies to give me a bed. Therefore, without further
ado, I slipped through a gap in the hedge, and made tracks for the Gypsy
fires already mentioned.
“Hello, here’s the _rai_ back again.” It was the tall Gypsy’s wife who
spoke. My tale was soon told, and I was promptly offered a corner under
Arthur West’s tilt-hood placed tent-wise on the ground. Now that my mind
was at ease, I sat me down by the fire near which a savoury smell of
supper arose. It was astonishing how quickly we cleaned the bones of
several bird-like objects set before us.
“Did you ever taste of these little things afore?”
“Well, whatever they are, I shouldn’t mind if they had been larger.”
At this they all laughed aloud.
“_Dawdi_, the _rai_ doesn’t _jin_ he’s _haw_’d _hotshwitshi_” (Fancy, the
gentleman doesn’t know he’s eaten hedgehog).
So this was the much-vaunted Romany dish, nor did it disappoint me. The
blended flavours of pheasant and sucking-pig are still present to my
memory as I recall that moonlit meal washed down by a jug of brown ale.
On awaking next morning, I realized the truth of the saying, “Gypsies get
something straight from heaven which is never known to people who sleep
in stuffy houses and get up to wash in warm water.”
When I recall awakenings in lodgings with the bedclothes, valances,
curtains, falderals, antimacassars, all heavy with suggestions of
humanity, I marvel no more at the Gypsy’s choice of a bed of crisp
bracken or sweet straw, with maybe a wisp of dried river-mint or wild
thyme mingled with it.
Walking bare-foot in the dewy grass with the Gypsy children, we made our
toilet together in the open, with the light airs of the wold playing
about us. Then came breakfast by the wood fire, and during the meal my
host’s donkey affectionately put his cold nose on the bare of my neck.
In a little while we stood on the common where the fair was in full
swing, and, strolling among the horses and dealers, I spied a
curly-haired son of old Horace Boswell, just arrived from Leicester, who
found time to tell me a funny tale about his father.
Since early morn Horace had been riding a lively horse, and, dismounting,
handed the reins to a pal and walked a few yards into the fair. As he
was looking about him, he lighted upon George Smith of Coalville, who,
arching his bushy eyebrows and stroking his great beard, stood shocked at
the sight of a Gypsy walking unsteadily. As a matter of fact, Horace’s
legs had not yet thrown off the cramp of many hours’ riding on a skittish
animal. When solemn George opened his mouth it was to ask a question—
“Do you drink beer, my good man?”
“Well, my kind gentleman,” replied Horace, “afore I answers that
question, I’d reely like to know whether it’s a simple inquiry or an
inwitation.”
This was too much for the worthy philanthropist who, turning swiftly on
his heel, went his way swinging his Gladstone-bag and gingham.
About the middle of the afternoon I sought out my hospitable friend
Arthur West before quitting the fair, and, looking me straight in the
eyes, he said, “Are you quite sure that you have enough _lova_ (money) to
see you home? For if I thought you hadn’t, I should chuck a handful on
the _drom_ (road) and leave it for you to pick up.”
How shall we ever get you to understand the spirit of these wanderers;
you who coddle yourselves in hot, close rooms; who are wedded to the life
of a mill-horse jogging in convention’s dusty track, and whose souls are
imprisoned within the dimensions of a red-ochred flower-pot?
CHAPTER V
A GYPSY BAPTISM—ROMANY NAMES
QUITTING the Wolds, described in the preceding chapter, I took up my
abode in a large village situated on Lincoln Heath, where I had further
opportunities of pursuing my Gypsy studies round about home.
In a sinuous turfy lane which ran behind our house, the Gypsies would
pitch their camp from time to time, and one of these wandering families
conceived the notion of renting a cottage in the village. In my mind’s
eye I can see that little house, wearing a lost, desolate air. It stood
in a walled-in yard, where loose stones lay strewn, and the ridge of the
red-tiled roof sunken in the middle threatened a collapse.
Unaccustomed to sleeping under a roof, and a rickety one at that, the
Gypsies fled in alarm from their chamber one wild, boisterous night,
fearing lest the chimney-pots should tumble in upon them. Near by stood
their green caravan, and snugly abed therein they felt secure from all
harm. Next day a timid rap came at the Rectory door, and a black-eyed
girl whispered in my ear that her mother would like the baby, a few hours
old, to be christened. This I did, and a day or two afterwards I was
agreeably surprised to meet the Gypsy mother with her baby taking the
fresh air on the high road. What mother in any other rank of life could
carry her child in the open so soon after its birth?
“It’s a way we have,” said Walter Heron, when explaining to me that a
plate, cup, and saucer are set apart for the mother’s use during the four
weeks following the birth of a child. The vessels are then destroyed in
accordance with an old puerperal tabu. This custom is still observed in
all good Romany families.
Tom Lee, an English Gypsy, broke up a loaf of bread and strewed the
crumbs around his tent when his son Bendigo was born, for some of the
old-time Gypsies hold the notion that bread possesses a protective magic
against evil influences. Seated one day in the tent of Bendigo Lee on
the South Shore at Blackpool, I questioned him about his father’s
practice. “In the days when I was born,” he replied, “there were people
that could do hurt by looking at you, and I s’pose my _dadus_ (father)
sprinkled the crumbs lest any evil person going by should cast harm upon
me.”
A distinct survival of the belief in the evil eye.
* * * * *
Romany “fore,” or Christian names, {53} are often peculiar, and afford
much material for reflection.
Whence come such names as Khulai, Maireni, Malini, Mori, Shuri? In these
names Sir Richard Temple discerns Indian forms or terminations. The
Anglo-Romany names, Fenela, Siari, and Trenit, have been identified by
Mr. H. T. Crofton with the Continental forms, Vennel, Cihari, and
Tranitza, the last being a common feminine Gypsy name in Hungary.
Euphonious and out-of-the-way names are irresistible to the Gypsy.
“What metal is that box made of, sir?” asked a Gypsy mother on seeing a
gentleman’s cigarette-case.
“Aluminium,” was the reply.
“What a beautiful name for my gell’s baby!”
According to Charles G. Leland, a Gypsy father, hearing two gentlemen
talking about Mount Vesuvius, was greatly impressed by the name, and
consulted with them as to the propriety of giving it to his little boy.
Gypsies dislike to be addressed by their peculiar “fore” or Christian
names in the presence of _gawjê_; hence to the postman, Ènos become Amos,
Fèmi—Amy, and Poley—George, and so on. As a rule, you find a Gypsy is
unwilling to impart his true name to a stranger. May not this reluctance
be due to a lingering subconscious belief that the possession of one’s
true name would enable a stranger to work harmful spells upon the owner?
Time was when the belief was widely spread that the utterance of a man’s
true name drew him to the speaker. Medieval records are full of
legendary accounts of spirits who were summoned by the casual
pronunciation of their names. Until lately there were peasants in the
North of Ireland and Arran who absolutely refused to tell their names to
a stranger because such knowledge, it was believed, would enable him to
“call” them, no matter how far he was from them, and whenever he cared to
do so. They also believed that any spell worked on the written name
would have the same effect as if worked on the owner.
It is a fact that not a few Gypsy surnames are identical with those of
ancient noble families, _e.g._ Boswell, or Bosville (sometimes contracted
to Boss), Gray, Heron, Hearne, or Herne, Lees, Lovells, and Stanleys. It
has been surmised, by way of explanation, that the Gypsies soon after
their arrival in this country adopted the surnames of the owners of the
estates on which particular hordes usually encamped, or the names of
those landed families who afforded protection to the persecuted
wanderers.
Speaking of the Gypsies, Gilbert White of Selborne, says, “One of these
tribes calls itself by the noble name of Stanley.” This mention of the
Stanleys reminds me that once on Gonerby Hill, near Grantham, on the
Great North Road, I met a young man who looked like a mechanic out of
work, yet his bearing was that of a Gypsy. In our talk he admitted that
he was of Romany blood. He had been a horseman in Lord George Sanger’s
circus, but something had gone wrong and he was thrown out of employ. At
first he gave his name as Richardson (not a Gypsy name), but he
afterwards told me that his grandfather, a Stanley, had been transported,
for which reason the family assumed the name of Richardson.
CHAPTER VI
I MAKE A NEW ACQUAINTANCE
FOR several years I was curate-in-charge of a parish abutting upon the
Great North Road, and during that time I used to meet many Gypsies on the
famous highway. There passed along it members of the Boswell clan,
making their way from Edinburgh to London; the dark Herons, after
spending the summer months in the Northern Counties, came by this route
to their winter quarters at Nottingham; a lawless horde of Lovells also
knew this road well. Sometimes these Gypsies would turn aside from the
dusty highway for a brief rest in the green lanes across an adjacent
river, but they rarely tarried longer than a day. With one of these
Gypsies I became intimately acquainted, and this is how our friendship
began.
One May morning I had been strolling along the aforesaid road, and,
turning towards the river where it is spanned by an old mill-bridge, I
loitered there in expectation of the arrival of a pack of otter-hounds,
visitors from another county; for complaints had long been accumulating
to the effect that _Lutra_ had been making depredations among the fish,
game, and poultry all along the reaches of the river. Adjoining the
bridge was a watermill where often might be heard the humming of the
great wheel and the roar of foam-flecked water. Mellowed by time’s
gentle touch, the irregular outlines of the building seemed verily as if
arranged to be imaged on canvas; timbers and weathered stones were
everywhere mottled with rosettes of orange and grey lichen, and when the
sunbeams warmed the tints and tones of the old mill into rich masses of
colour you experienced a thrill which made you wish to repeat it.
A little way off, our river was crossed by a shallow ford rarely used by
vehicular traffic, which mostly passed by the bridge. Once a year,
however, the miller closed the bridge in order to preserve a right-of-way
through his yard, and on this occasion toll was taken of every cart,
while a free way was allowed by the ford. But the astute fellow usually
arranged that the closing of the bridge should coincide with a market day
at the nearest town, and he would choose a time when the river was
swollen by flood-water beyond its ordinary dimensions, thus rendering the
ford a dangerous crossing.
After waiting awhile, a murmur of deep voices broke upon my ear, as with
a rush and a splash about a score of bonny, rough-coated dogs burst into
view round a bend in the stream. It was not in my plans to follow the
dogs, so when the pack and its excited companions had gone by, I
proceeded leisurely along a lane leading towards the green uplands
looking down upon the valley.
A little way up the lane I came upon two dark-featured lads, and, going
up to one of them who was tacking strips of straw-plait upon the top of a
three-legged table, I said—
“You seem very busy this morning.”
“We must do something for a living.”
“You’re certainly a good hand at your business. How long are you
stopping here?”
“That’s more nor I know.” (This with a shrewd look at me from top to
toe.) “Ax grandfather, up yonder wi’ the hosses.”
Higher up the lane, and almost hidden by outlying tangles of bramble and
wild-rose, sat a man of sixty or more, puffing tobacco smoke from his
black clay, and near him on the wayside three horses ripped the tender
grasses.
Looking up at me with a start, the man said—
“Well, you fairly took me by surprise, sir. For a wonder I never heard
you a-coming. I must be getting deaf.”
“_Romanitshel_?” (Gypsy) I queried.
“_Âvali_, _mi tshavo_” (Yes, my son), he replied; “you’s been among our
people, that’s plain, or you wouldn’t talk like you do. Mebbe you’s
heard tell o’ Jonathan Boswell—that’s me. But I must be off now with
these here hosses to the smithy. We’s _besh_in _akai_ (stopping here)
for a day or two. Our wagon’s in the _kitshima_ (tavern) yard just past
the mill.”
“Well, Jonathan, I want you to bring one of those Gypsy-tables the boys
are making to my place this afternoon; don’t fail to come. I shall _dik
avrî_ for _tîro mui_ about _trin ora_” (look out for your face about
three o’clock).
“Right, I’ll be there, _raia_.”
In due course the Gypsy presented himself at my door in company with his
two grandsons, and among them they carried three tables. I had only
asked for one, but Jonathan was such a “find” that I gladly purchased all
the articles and bade the little party follow me into the garden. The
two grandsons displayed a remarkable knowledge of trees, which they were
able to identify not merely by their foliage, but by the character of
their bark. Wild birds they knew by note and flight as well as by
plumage. There is so much a Gypsy boy knows about nature.
How meagre, by contrast, is the information possessed by the average
County Council schoolboy; which reminds me that I was once giving an
object-lesson to a class of fifth-standard children attending our village
school. We were seated on a river bank whose insect life and botanical
treasures I had been pointing out to an interested group of listeners.
As nothing had been said about the scaly denizens of the stream, I
concluded my talk by putting a question to the entire class.
“Hands up, those who can tell me the names of any fish to be found in
this river.”
Quickly a dozen pink palms were uplifted, and I could see that several
lips were bursting with information. Imagine my surprise when I was
informed—“red-herring, sprats, and mackerel.”
On the following evening I went across the fields to see my friends by
the watermill. The amber light of sunset was falling upon green hedge
and rippling river. From a thorn bush a nightingale jug-jugged
deliciously. There was poetry in the air. Nor was it dispelled by the
discovery that my friends had drawn their “house on wheels” into the
grassy lane leading down to the ford.
Seated on a mound of sand, Jonathan was chatting with a stranger who had
the looks of an Irishman. I joined them, but no sooner had I dropped a
word or two of Romany than the stranger arose, saying, “I don’t
understand your talk, so I’d better be going.” He then left us, and,
seeing he had gone away, old Fazenti, Jonathan’s wife, stepped down from
the living-wagon, and our discourse became considerably enlivened by her
presence.
Speaking of _duker_in (fortune-telling), she said, “It’ll go on while the
world lasts,” which was Fazzy’s way of saying that the credulous will be
in the world after the poor have left it. “It’s the hawking-basket that
gi’s us our chance, don’t you _dik_ (see)? I takes care never to be
without my licence, and the _muskro_ (policeman) would have to get up
wery early to catch old Fazzy asleep. Did I ever have any _mulo-mas_?
{61} Many’s the time I’ve had a bit. In spring, when lambs are about,
that’s the time for _mulo-mas_.
“A good country for hedgehogs is this, but we don’t eat ’em in the
spring. The back end of the year is the best time for ’em; there’s a bit
of flesh on ’em then. When you find one, if he’s rolled up in a ball,
you rub his back with a stick right down his spine, and he’ll open out
fast enough. Then you hit him hard on the nose, and he’s as dead as a
door nail. The old way of cooking him was to cover him with clay and
bake him in the fire. When he was cooked you tapped the clay ball, and
the prickles and skin came away with the clay. Nowadays we burn down the
bristles, then shave ’em off, draw and clean him and roast him on a spit
before a hot fire. He’s wery good with _puvengri_s (potatoes), sage, and
onions. _Bouri_s (snails) are good to eat in winter. You get them in a
hard frost from behind old stumps of trees. You put salt on ’em and they
make fine broth. Wery strengthening is _bouri-zimen_” (snail broth).
[Picture: A rest by the way. Photo. Fred Shaw]
While we were conversing, Jonathan’s grandsons passed by with a lurcher.
“A useful dog, that, I should think,” said I.
“_Kushto yek sî dova_ for _shushiaw_ and _kanengrê_” (A good one is that
for rabbits and hares), replied the old man. “I minds well the day I
bought him off a man with a pot-cart as was stopping along with us. We’d
got leave from a farmer to draw into a lane running between some clover
fields, and we were just sitting down to a cup o’ tea when a keeper comes
along and says—
“‘I’m afraid some of you fellows have been up to mischief, because
there’s a hare in a snare along this hedge.’
“‘Then it’s somebody else’s snare, not ours,’ I says, ‘for we’s only just
got here, and yon farmer as give us leave to stop will tell you the same
if you ask him.’
“‘Well, see here,’ says the keeper, ‘there’s a rabbit for your pot. Keep
a sharp look out, and mind you let me know if anybody comes to fetch that
hare. There’s my cottage up yonder.’
“Then he went away, and would you believe it, a bit after the moon got up
we see a man coming across the field and straight to that snare he went,
and as he was taking the hare out of it, there was a tap on his shoulder
from the keeper. Now, who do you think the man was that got catched so
nicely? _It was the willage policeman_. And that night I bought that
here _jukel_ (dog), I did, and me and the dog had a fine time among the
_shushiaw_ (rabbits) after the keeper and the policeman had gone away.
About a week after, the _muskro_ (policeman) had to appear in court, and
a wery poor figure he cut afore the _pukinger_ (magistrate). You see, he
was catched proper, and couldn’t get out of it no-how. The pot-cart man
and me had to go up as witnesses.”
“You’ll know this countryside well, I expect. Do you ever spend the
night in Dark Lane, as I believe they call it?”
“One time we used to stop there a lot, _rai_, but they won’t let us now.
How’smiver, we _hatsh odoi_ (encamp there) for a _râti_ (night) at odd
times, spite of everybody.”
This remark was accompanied by a half-smothered chuckle from Jonathan,
who, while filling his pipe from my tobacco pouch, seemed to be
ruminating upon a reminiscence which presently came out.
The said lane lies pleasantly between a neighbouring village and the
river, and about the month of May the grass down there begins to be
sweet, but woe to the Gypsies whom the constable finds encamped
thereabouts.
Jonathan went on to tell how he and his party once passed a night very
happily there when the may-buds were bursting. And this is how it was
done.
In a wayside tavern the Gypsy had heard it whispered that the County
Police had gone to the town for the annual inspection, which involved a
temporary absence of the constables from their respective localities.
But, to make quite sure of this, on arriving at the village of F—,
Jonathan sought out a certain cottage and thus addressed himself to a
constable’s wife—
“Is the sergeant at home?”
“No, my man. What do you want him for?”
“A pony of mine has gone astray, and I want him to let me know if he
hears anything about it. Perhaps he’ll be at home to-night?”
“He won’t, I’m afraid.”
“Thank you, ma’am.”
Thus Jonathan camped down Dark Lane with impunity.
One morning shortly after my meeting with Jonathan, a Gypsy mother called
at my Rectory. She led her black-eyed, five-year-old boy by the hand.
Brown as a berry, the handsome little fellow would have served admirably
for an artist’s model, and his mother had many pleasing touches of Gypsy
colour about her attire. From beneath a bright red _diklo_ (kerchief)
which she wore, a few black curls straggled out on to her forehead, and a
gay bodice showed under her green shawl. The woman said that she had
heard so much of me from her father—Jonathan Boswell—that she had come on
purpose to see me. I invited her into the kitchen, and over bread and
cheese and ale we chatted.
“Ain’t we all delated, _raia_, come to think of it? There’s a Man above
as made us all.”
Quickly I made friends with the little boy, and at my request his mother
afforded our household no small delight by leaving her son with us for
the day. The tiny lad was entirely unaccustomed to house ways, and his
behaviour was a study. On seeing a Christmas card with the Christ-child
lying in the manger guarded by a white-winged angel, he exclaimed, “I
know what that is” (pointing to the heavenly visitant); “we often sees
’em flying over the fields. _It’s a seagull_.”
With great readiness he joined in the games of my children, such as
shuttlecock and battledore, skipping, and the like. Sitting at a table
for a meal was evidently a novel experience for the little chap, and it
was amusing to see him slip off his chair and squat on the hearthrug,
putting his plate on his knee as though a Gypsy boy ought not to do
exactly as the _gawjê_, and he used his fingers freely in lieu of fork
and spoon. After the meal we sat round the fire, and talked of his life
on the road.
“I found a hen’s nest in the hedge-bottom, this morning, I did.”
“Any eggs in?” I asked.
“Yes; three.”
“Did you take them?”
“No, I left ’em—_till there was more_.”
Then I told him fairy tales of green woods, ghosts, and goblins, and he
became excited, springing once or twice from his chair, as if he would
like to have danced about the room.
“Oh, I knows a lot about _mulo_s” (ghosts), said the little Gypsy.
“There’s different sorts—milk-white ’uns and coal-black ’uns. When we’re
abed at nights, they come screaming round our wagon and flapping at the
windows. My daddy gets his gun and shoots, then we hears ’em no more for
a bit. But they are soon back agen, and I’m that frit when I hears ’em,
I can’t sleep. When mammy’s going out with her basket of a morning, and
daddy’s gone somewhere to see about a hoss, I daren’t go far into the big
wood agen our stopping-place, ’cos of the black pig what lives there.
Daddy has seen it, and nobody can’t kill it, for you can bang a stick
right through it without hurting it. Mammy allus says, ‘Don’t you never
go into that wood, else the black pig’ll get you.’”
We showed him picture books, and, pointing to an ass and a foal, he said,
“My daddy’s got a little donkey just like that, three months old, and
when it’s bigger I shall ride on it, like that man’s doing in the
pictur’.”
We rambled in the Rectory garden, and he quickly found a hedgehog in its
nest. All the senses of this little fellow were extremely alert.
In the early evening his mother returned for him, and their meeting was a
pretty sight. Placing her hawking-basket on the ground, she picked up
her laddie in her arms and kissed him. Slowly the pair walked away,
casting more than one backward glance at the house.
A few days later, news reached me of a Gypsy arrival in a green lane
about a mile from my Rectory. I therefore hastened across the fields,
and, long before sighting the party, whiffs of wood-smoke, which the
breeze brought my way, told that they were already encamped. On reaching
the spot, Farmer W—’s best bullock pasture, I spied Jonathan’s cart along
with other vehicles drawn up with their backs towards a high hedge.
There were fires on the grass, and from family groups merry voices rang
out on the air. In the lane a troop of children were hovering around a
little black donkey, a pretty young foal, which allowed them to fondle it
to their hearts’ content. What a picture it was which greeted
me—tree-boles, tilt-carts, and hedgerows lit up by the fading sunlight,
and the blue smoke of the fires wafted about the undulating field dipping
down to the river. Quickly I dropped into a corner by one of the fires,
and the mirth was just at its height when up rode Farmer W— on his
chestnut cob.
[Picture: A Wayside Idyl. Photo. Fred Shaw]
“Where’s that scamp of a Boswell?” he shouted angrily.
Jonathan stepped forward, hanging his head somewhat.
“What does all this mean?” asked the farmer. “I thought it was only for
yourself that you begged leave to stop here. Who the divil’s all this
gang?”
“I really couldn’t help it,” said Jonathan. “They stuck to me, and would
come in. They’re all delations of mine, don’t you see, sir?”
A look from the Gypsy made me step forward and plead for the party, which
I did with success.
[Picture: Children of the Open Air. Photo. Fred Shaw]
About the middle of June I was again in Old Boswell’s company. Under a
hedge pink with wild-roses, we sat smoking and waiting for the fair to
begin on Stow Green, a South Lincolnshire common. Already horses were
assembling and dealers were beginning to arrive in all sorts of
conveyances. Hot sunshine blazed down upon the common, whose only
building was a wretched-looking lockup, around which lounged several
representatives of the county constabulary. Wandering in and about the
motley throng, I caught a whisper going the round that a fight was to
take place before the end of the day. It had been explained to me that
this fight was not the result of any quarrel arising at the fair. It had
been arranged long beforehand. Whenever a difference arose between two
families, champions were told off to fight the matter out at Stow Green
Fair.
Somewhere about the middle of the afternoon, as the business began to
slacken, a number of people were seen to move to one corner of the
common. Evidently something was afoot. I wandered across and found a
crowd consisting mainly of Gypsies, and in order to get a better view, I
climbed upon a trestle table outside a booth. In the middle of a ring of
people stood two of the dark Grays, stripped to the waist, and, at a
signal given by an elderly man, the combatants put up their “maulers” and
the fight began. It was by no means a one-sided contest, the men being
well matched with regard to weight and strength. Blow followed blow in
quick succession, and at the first drawing of blood the Gypsy onlookers
became excited, and the entire crowd began to surge to and fro. Of
course, the police hurried up, but soon perceived that it was useless to
interfere.
“Let ’em have it out,” cried many voices. After a breathing space, the
fighters again closed in, and, parting a little, one of them stepped back
a pace or two and, springing towards his opponent, dealt him a heavy blow
which determined the battle, and all was over. At this juncture, the
table on which I and others stood suddenly gave way, and we were
precipitated to the grass, but no harm was done, beyond a few bruises and
the shattering of sundry jugs and glasses.
An echo of a fighting song haunts me as I recall this Gypsy contest on
Stow Green—
“Whack it on the grinders, thump it on the jaw,
Smack it on the tater-trap a dozen times or more.
Slap it on the snuff-box, make the claret fly,
Thump it on the jaw again, never say die.”
After the fair was over I sat under a hedge and took tea with Jonathan
and Fazenti.
A hare’s back adorned my plate.
“Why, mother, I didn’t know that this was in season.”
“My _dinelo_ (simpleton), don’t you _jin_ (know) _it’s always in season
with the likes of us_?”
CHAPTER VII
THE BLACKPOOL GYPSYRY
IT has been said that if an architect, a caterer, and a poet were
commissioned to construct out of our existing south and east coast
resorts a place which, in its appeal to the million, might compare with
Blackpool, they would utterly fail, a saying not to be questioned for a
moment.
Yet the sight which thrilled me most, as I beheld it years ago, was not
the cluster of gilded pleasure-palaces in the town, but the gay Gypsyry
squatting on the sand-dunes at the extremity of the South Shore.
Living-vans of green and gold with their flapping canvas covers; domed
tents whose blankets of red and grey had faded at the touch of sun and
wind; boarden porches and outgrowths of a fantastic character, the work
of Romany carpenters; unabashed advertisements announcing Gypsy queens
patronized by duchesses and lords; bevies of black-eyed, wheedling
witches eager to pounce upon the stroller into Gypsydom; and troops of
fine children, shock-headed and jolly—all these I beheld in the Gypsyry
which is now no more. “Life enjoyed to the last” might well have been
its epitaph.
Those were the days of Old Sarah Boswell and her nephews Kenza and Oscar;
Johnny and Wasti Gray; Elijah Heron and his son Poley; Bendigo and
Morjiana Purum; the vivacious Robinsons; Dolferus Petulengro and Noarus
Tâno; some of whom, alas, “have joined the people whom no true Romany
will call by name.”
[Picture: On the Look-Out. Photo. T. J. Lewis]
Hot June sunshine flooded the sandhills on the afternoon of my entry into
the encampment, which, by the way, was made strategetically from the
rear. Thus it was that I lighted upon the retired tent of the oldest
occupants of the Gypsyry. Unlike the alert and expectant Romany mothers
and maids who hovered about this Gypsy town’s front gate, Ned Boswell’s
widow sat drowsing at the tent door, overpowered by the midsummer heat.
I was about to turn away, intending to revisit the old lady later on,
when her son Alma, the lynx-eyed, popped upon me from round the corner,
and in a sandy hollow a little way off we were soon deep in conversation.
“Now, _rashai_,” said Alma, after we had talked awhile, “there’s one
thing I would like to ask you. Where do you think us _Romanitshel_s
reely origin’d from?”
Here I was confronted by a question which has been asked throughout the
ages, and addressed to myself how many times?
Who are the Gypsies, and where did they come from? Bulky tomes have been
filled with scholarly speculations upon these questions, and so varied
have been the conclusions arrived at that we appear to be no nearer to
the solution of the mystery than when about the year 1777 the German
Rudiger first made known to the world that the Gypsies spoke an Indian
dialect, which discovery is said “to have injured more than it served in
the quest after the origin of the Gypsies, because it has prevented
scholars from searching for it.” Taking philology for our guide, we may
believe that the ancestors of our Gypsies tarried for centuries in
North-West India, a region which they quitted with their faces set
towards the west not later than about 1000 A.D. To quote the words of an
authority {73} on the linguistic side of the problem: “Their language
proves that they once inhabited Northern India, but as no Indian writers
have left any documents describing this people, their mode of life in
India, and the most interesting point of all, why they emigrated, must
for ever remain a matter for conjecture. It is, however, surprising what
can be proved from our present knowledge of their language, which, it is
generally admitted, must rank as an independent eighth among the seven
modern Indian languages of the Aryan stock, based on Sanskrit. To begin
with, the grammatical peculiarities of the language of the Gypsies
resemble those of the modern Aryan languages of India so closely that it
is impossible not to believe that they were developed side by side.
Comparing Gypsy and Hindi, for example, we find that their declensions
are based exactly on the same principle, that neither has a real genitive
case, that both decline their adjectives only when used as nouns. Now it
is generally held that these modern forms came slowly into existence
throughout the eleventh century, when the old synthetical structure of
the Sanskrit was broken up and thrown into confusion, but not quite lost,
while the modern auxiliary verbs and prepositions were as yet hardly
fully established in their stead. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely
that the Gypsies left India before the tenth century, when they could
have carried away with them, so to speak, the germs of the new
construction, absorbed on Indian soil.”
From the words they borrowed from Persia, Armenia, and Greece, we know
that the wanderers passed through these countries on their way westward,
but, since no Arabic or Coptic words are found in the Gypsy tongue, we
infer that they were never in Egypt. The theory of the Egyptian origin
of the _Romanitshel_s probably arose from legends which they themselves
set afloat.
Two stories were repeated by the Gypsies. They said that they were
Egyptian penitents on a seven years’ pilgrimage. The Saracens had
attacked them in Egypt, and, having surrendered to their enemies, they
became Saracens themselves and denied Christ. Now, as a penance, they
were ordered to travel for seven years without sleeping in a bed. A
second story was that their exile was a punishment for the sin of having
refused hospitality to Joseph and the Virgin Mary when they fled into
Egypt with the newborn Christ-child to escape the anger of Herod.
Associated with the Gypsies are other legends which may have been
invented by them for similar purposes. An old tradition asserts that
Caspar, one of the three Magi, was a Gypsy, and that it was he who (as
their ruler) first converted them to the Christian religion. The
Lithuanian Gypsies say that stealing has been permitted in their favour
by God because the Gypsies, being present at the Crucifixion, stole one
of the four nails, and therefore God allows them to steal, and it is not
accounted a sin to them.
Needless to say, the foregoing statements were not delivered to Alma
Boswell. Of their actual history the Anglo-Romany folk know nothing, but
this does not prevent them from holding some curious notions about
themselves. So, in response to Alma’s question about the origin of the
Gypsies, I replied that great scholars believed his race to have come
from India.
“Oh, I think they’re wrong,” said Alma. “Far more likely we came from
the land of Bethlehem. Being a _rashai_ (parson), you’ll know the Bible,
I suppose, from cover to cover. Well, you’ve heard of the man called
Cain. Now, don’t the Old Book say that he went away and married a
black-eyed camper-gal, one of our roving folks? I reckons we sprang from
them. We was the first people what the dear Lord made, and mebbe we
shall be the last on earth. When all the rest is wore out, there’ll
still be a few of our folks travelling with tents and wagons.”
Such was Alma’s idea of the origin of the Gypsies.
“But there,” he continued, “you must read my Uncle Westarus’s big book
all about our people. There was a doctor and a lawyer, wery kind
gentlemen, real _bawrê raiaw_ (swells), who used to talk to my uncle for
hours on end, and they wrote down every word he said, and then he wrote
them a sight of letters, wery long ones, and they are all of ’em in
print. So if you reads that book, you’ll larn all as is’ known about
us.”
Alma’s Uncle Westarus was certainly a remarkable Gypsy, possessing quite
a library, which he carried about with him on his travels. It is on
record that at the age of fifty-five his library included several volumes
of fiction, history, poetry, and science, a large Bible, a Church of
England Prayer Book, Burns’s _Justice_, as well as English, Greek, and
Latin dictionaries.
For the information of those who may not already know it, the volume
designated by Alma “my uncle’s book” is a most valuable _vade mecum_ for
Gypsy students entitled _The Dialect of the English Gypsies_, by Dr. Bath
Smart and Mr. H. T. Crofton.
There was a strong dash of Gypsy pride in Alma’s remark that the Boswells
were the only real Gypsies left. “These others all about us are _kek
tatsho_” (not genuine), he said, with a wave of the hand; “they’re only
half-breeds.”
“But,” I queried, “are not the Herons and Lees good Gypsies?” Then,
veering from his first statement, he admitted that the families I had
named might be allowed a place among the old roots.
Then followed a discussion about grades of Gypsy blood. These were
classified by Alma—
1. The Black _Romanitshel_s, “the real thing.”
2. The _Didakai_s, or half-breeds, who pronounce the Romany words _dik
akai_ (look here) as _did akai_.
3. Hedge-crawlers, or mumpers. “There’s a lot of ’em up London way,”
said Alma. “We’d scorn to go near the likes of them—a _tshikli_ (dirty)
lot, not Gypsies at all.”
In his last remark Alma certainly hit the nail on the head. The
distinction between the Gypsy and the mumper cannot be too strongly
emphasized. Anyone who has known members of our old Gypsy families, such
as the Boswells, Grays, Herons, Lees, Lovells, Smiths, Stanleys, and
Woods, will never again make the grave error of confounding the Gypsy
with the mumper.
Rising from our hollow in the sand, we walked a little way between the
tents, and when Alma took the railway crossing for a ramble in the town,
I betook myself to his mother’s tent. Having just aroused from sleep,
the old lady was somewhat absent-minded, but she was quickly on the alert
at hearing my greeting in Romany.
“What gibberish is it you’re talking, my gentleman?”
“You understand it well enough, I’m thinking, mother.”
So blank was her look, so well-feigned her ignorance, that for the nonce
it seemed that after all the ancient language of the tents was a delusion
and a dream.
Then methought of a plan I had tried before. Having for many years made
a study of Gypsy pedigrees, I have often been able to give a temporary
shock to a Gypsy’s mind by telling him the names of his
great-grandfathers and of his uncles and aunts, paternal and maternal.
“How came you to know all this, Mr. Hall?” my Gypsy will ask. “You
certainly don’t look an old man.”
It was now my turn to pretend ignorance.
“If it’s not being very inquisitive, Mrs. Boswell, I am wondering what
your maiden-name may have been?”
“That I won’t tell you, and nobody in this town knows what it was.”
“Is that really so? Fancy, no one in Blackpool knows your maiden-name.”
“Not a soul.” (This very solemnly.)
“Then what if I can tell you?”
“Well, what was it, my gentleman?” eyeing me curiously.
“You are one of the Drapers—Old Israel’s daughter, if I’m not mistaken”
(looking straight into her large eyes as though reading the information
at the back of her brain), “and your two sisters were Rodi and Lani.”
If a stone figure had spoken, she could scarcely have looked more amazed,
and, quite forgetting herself, she exclaimed—
“_Av adrê_, _mi tshavo_, and _besh tălê_” (Come inside, my son, and sit
down).
Mrs. Boswell’s manner was now so amiable, and her voice so soft, that as
she handed me cake and tea, I felt as if I had known her all my life.
All who have ever met a pure-bred Gypsy will know what Romany politeness
is, and how charming a sense of the fitness of things these wanderers
possess. As one who has worked hard at Gypsy genealogy, I have myself
often been surprised at one thing. A member of the _kawlo rat_ (black
blood) will betray no inquisitiveness in regard to his tiresome
interlocutor who may be a perfect stranger to him. How many of us, I
wonder, would care to be subjected to such an inquisition as we sometimes
inflict upon a Gypsy by our interrogations as to his ancestry? Yet the
Gypsy apparently takes it all with complacence and good humour.
When taking mine ease behind the scenes in a Gypsy camp, it has often
amused me to observe how extremes meet. After all, the tastes of the
high and the low are not so very far removed. If the duchess is proud of
her blue blood and her ancestral tree, so is the Gypsy of her black blood
and lengthy pedigree. I have known “swells” who liked their game so
“high” that it almost ran into the fields again, a taste akin to the
Gypsy’s liking for _mulo-mas_. The Gypsy mother’s love for her black
cutty joins hands with the after-dinner cigarette in my lady’s boudoir.
It goes without saying that politeness is a stamp of both extremes.
In the cool of the evening I wandered inland to a sequestered camp, where
Isaac and Sinfai Heron, those aristocrats of their race, sat by their
fire in an angle where two hedgerows met.
“We likes a bit o’ quiet, you see,” said the slender, gracious Sinfai,
when I asked why they had pitched on a spot so far from Blackpool’s South
Shore.
“Get the _rai_ one o’ the rugs to _besh oprê_” (sit upon), said Isaac to
his grandson Walter, who trotted off briskly to a large tent, and
reappeared with a smartly striped coverlet, which he spread for me
beneath the hedge. A second grandson, with a similar alacrity, set off
at Sinfai’s bidding to find sticks for the fire. The devotion of these
lads to their grandparents seemed to spring from a sense of comradery
rather than reverence, and the quaint deference paid in turn by the old
people to the boys impressed me not a little—a thing I have often
observed in Romany camps.
Old Isaac’s memory carried him back to Mousehold Heath of the long ago,
and, listening to his talk, one could see the brown tents and smoking
fires amid the ling and fern. Among the Gypsies reclining by those fires
were the Smiths, the Maces, the Pinfolds, and the Grays—Sinfai’s folk—and
of course some of the old Herons. Niabai, Isaac’s father, would sit
mending kettles, for, like many of the Gypsies of those days, he was a
tinker by calling, and when on travel would carry his grindstone on his
back. Sometimes of an evening, “Mister Burrow” would walk up on to the
Heath for a chat with Niabai and his wife “Crowy,” so called by reason of
her very dark features. Borrow picked up from Crowy many a Romany _lav_
(word). Gypsy fights were common on the Heath, and at times the fern
would be trampled down by the crowds who came from far and near to
witness these thrilling scenes.
Old Isaac had two uncles of whom he made mention—William Heron, always
known as “the handsome man,” and Robert Heron, known as “the lame man.”
Examples of a remarkable exactness of observation are Borrow’s
pen-portraits of the two last-named brothers contained in the
Introduction to _The Zincali_. The writer does not mention them by name,
but when I submitted a memorized version of these word-pictures to my
friend Isaac he at once recognized his uncles, William and Robert.
Let us open _The Zincali_.
Handsome William is standing by his horse. He is tall, as were all the
men of his clan.
“Almost a giant, for his height could not have been less than six
feet three. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive
anything more perfectly beautiful than were the features of this man,
and the most skilful sculptor of Greece might have taken them as his
model for a hero and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty—a
rare thing in a Gypsy; the nose less Roman than Grecian—fine, yet
delicate; the eyes large, overhung with long, drooping lashes, giving
them almost a melancholy expression; it was only when the lashes were
elevated that the Gypsy glance was seen, if that can be called a
glance which is a strange stare, like nothing else in the world. His
complexion was a beautiful olive, and his teeth were of a brilliance
uncommon even amongst these people, who have all fine teeth. He was
dressed in a coarse wagoner’s slop, which, however, was unable to
conceal altogether his noble and Herculean figure. He might be about
twenty-eight.”
William is said to have persisted in carrying his own silver mug in his
coat pocket, and would drink out of no other vessel. “I’d scorn to wet
my lips with a drop of drink out of a _gawjikeno kuro_,” meaning the
publican’s mugs.
Robert, William’s elder brother, remained on horseback, looking “more
like a phantom than anything human. His complexion was the colour of
pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and
clothes. His boots were dusty of course, for it was midsummer, and his
very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most
of his teeth were gone, and as to age, he might be thirty or sixty. He
was somewhat lame and halt, but an unequalled rider when once upon his
steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit.”
Robert was always considered the wizard of the clan. Never having been
married, he dispensed with a tent, preferring, like some of the deep
Woods of Wales, to sleep in a barn. He was nicknamed “Church” Robert,
because he was a reader and had a wonderful memory, and sometimes going
to church he listened to lessons and psalms and would afterwards reel
them off like a _roker_in _tshiriklo_ (parrot).
When I made a move to go, Old Isaac drew himself to his full height and
said, “_Av akai apopli_, _rashai_” (Come here again, parson), and the
boys to whom I had mentioned my roving experiences urged me to come and
camp near them. “Let us put up a tent for you here next to ours.”
Sinfai, who walked to the field-gate with me, slipped into my pocket a
_bita delaben_ (small gift), a green wineglass.
A sunset of rare beauty was reddening the sandhills when I returned to
the Gypsyry on the South Shore. For a while I walked up and down in the
miniature fair, and before I turned my face towards the town, lights
began to appear in the tent baulks and the stars came out over the
darkening sea.
Next morning I was walking along the spacious sea-front with Archie Smith
for companion, and in the distance appeared a little man pushing a
grinding-barrow. Quickening our steps, we overtook him and found he was
Elijah Heron on his morning round. I inquired where he was stopping, and
promised to visit him later in the day. My companion, the lively Archie,
was reeling off for my benefit a list of the inhabitants of the South
Shore Gypsyry, and had just mentioned Bendigo Purum, when, rounding a
corner, we met the man himself, a very swarthy Gypsy—almost black, one
might say.
“_Roker_ of the _Beng_,” whispered Archie, “and you’ll _dik lesti_” (see
him).
Farther along in a narrow thoroughfare we observed several Gypsy women
out a-shopping, their gay _diklo_s and blouses making splashes of bright
colour in the crowded street. It seemed to me that Blackpool was alive
with Gypsies. In the afternoon I returned to the South Shore, and,
hearing the strains of a violin proceeding from a gorgeous red blanket
tent in a field near the railway, I made my way thither, and to my joy I
discovered Eros and Lias Robinson at home.
Here is a song which I heard from the lips of Lias—
“_Mandi’s tshori puri dai_
_Jaw_’d _adrê kongri_ to _shun_ the _rashai_;
The _gawjê saw sal_’d as _yoi besh_’d _talê_;
_Yoi dik_’d ’_drê_ the _lil_, but _yoi keka del-aprê_;
The _rashai roker_’d agen _duker_in, _pen_’d _dova sos_ a _laj_,
But _yov keka jin_’d _mandi duker_’d _yov_’s _tshai_,
_Puker_’d _yoi_’d _romer_ a _barvdo rai_.”
_Translation_.
“My poor old mother
Went into church to hear the parson;
The gentiles all laughed as she sat down;
She looked into the book, but she could not read;
The parson talked against fortune-telling, said it was a shame,
But he never knew I had told his daughter’s fortune,
Told her she’d marry a wealthy squire.”
Lias was full of reminiscences of wanderings through the heart of Wales,
and I listened with keen interest to his talk about the deep Woods. In
my readings of Leland’s writings I had come upon the mention of Mat Wood
whom, in after years, I had the good fortune to meet in Wales. During
his Welsh wanderings, Lias had met several sons of John Roberts, the
harpist, concerning whom I had learned much from Groome’s delightful
book, _In Gipsy Tents_. Here I may mention that Old John Roberts was an
occasional visitor to Lincolnshire in days gone by. He travelled widely
with his harp, on which he was a talented player. My wife, who hails
from the Fen country, remembers John’s visits to her native village of
Fleet, near Holbeach in Lincolnshire, where he would play on the parish
green, as well as on the lawns of private houses. A venerable-looking,
bearded man, who might have passed for a clergyman, he was a welcome
guest in the home of my father-in-law, where he would play old airs to a
pianoforte accompaniment.
[Picture: The gypsy’s parson with his friends. Photo. Fred Shaw]
The afternoon and evening which followed my morning ramble were crowded
with Gypsy experiences. At the back of a large tent sat Kenza Boswell
fiddling, while his daughters danced with exceeding grace.
Next, Noarus Tâno, in one of his skittish moods, kept me in fits of
laughter for ten minutes. He was the humorist of the Blackpool camp.
Entirely unaccustomed to controlling his imagination, Noarus will tell an
extraordinary tale in which he himself plays a part, with no other object
than to amuse his hearer, or to lift himself a little higher in your
esteem. And just as no one is expected to believe the narratives of
Baron Munchausen, so the Gypsy in telling his “lying tale” is perfectly
content with the laughter of the listener. This gay spirit of
exaggeration certainly stamps the following tale told by Old Tâno.
[Picture: Friends at the fair. Photo. Fred Shaw]
The scene is the kitchen of the village inn, and poultry-lifting is the
topic of conversation. It is Noarus who speaks—
“There’s a farmer’s wife up in the willage what’s been blaming a
two-legged fox for robbing her hen-roost. I say it’s some low dealer
what comes out of the town with a light cart on a shiny night when
the stormy winds are blowing, so as folks shan’t hear him at work.
You knows the sort, but us Gypsies has a different way. When did you
ever know any of us to meddle with anythink in these here parts?
Don’t your farmers buy ponies off us? Ain’t we highly respected by
the gentle-folk for miles round? Why, there was a squire up in
Yorkshire, a prize-poultry fancier, as know’d my people wery well.
We often camped on his land and never meddled with nothink. He
trusted us so much that he comes down to our tents one day and says
to my daddy—
“‘I want to beg a favour of you, Tâno. I’m going abroad for a while,
and I want you and your son to take charge of my poultry farm while
I’m away.’
“Well, my daddy and me took charge of his prize fowls, and when he
come back again, how do you think he found things, my gentlemen?”
The company, profoundly impressed by the speaker’s discourse,
exclaimed with one voice—
“All right to a feather.”
“Nay, that he never did. _We_’d _ate the hull blessed lot_!”
Mindful of my promise to visit Elijah Heron, I sought out his tent, and I
had to stoop very low to get in the doorway. In my pocket was a heavy,
silver-mounted brier pipe possessing a large amber mouthpiece. This I
presented to the old man, and it was good to see his face light up with
pleasure. “_Tatsheni rup si kova_” (Real silver is this), he said,
pointing to the mountings. “A _swêgler_’s _kek kushto_ without _tuvalo_”
(A pipe’s no good without tobacco), I remarked, handing him a cake of
Black Jack. He lighted up and looked as happy as a king.
Noticing that I was slightly deaf, he recommended oil extracted from
vipers as good for deafness. The mention of snakes took him back to his
sojourn in the Antipodes. “I never talks of _saps_ (snakes) but I thinks
of the days when I was travelling in ’Stralia. One night I got leave
from a farmer to stop near a river, but I didn’t _hatsh odoi_ (remain
there) for more than an hour or two, for I found there was _saps_
about—nasty, hissing critturs. A black man as come down to the river to
water some hosses told me that the _saps_ sometimes _maw_’d (killed)
animals near the river, so I packed up my traps and kept on the road all
night. Give me Old England, I say. I’m right glad to be back here.”
* * * * *
In a little tent hard by, I heard Poley and his wife singing as I said
“Good-night” to Elijah. Happy, twinkling eyes they were that looked out
at me from that little tent door as I passed. I envy you that merry
heart, Poley, that evergreen spirit of yours, and, recalling your face, I
see again the array of Gypsy tents as twilight dropped its purple veil on
Blackpool’s pleasant shore.
CHAPTER VIII
A TRENTSIDE FAIR
OVERNIGHT a welcome rain had fallen upon a thirsty land, and morning
broke cool and grey, with a lively breeze stirring the tree-tops, and
shaking the raindrops from the grasses, as I strode along the banks of
the river Trent, with my face set towards West Stockwith Horse Fair. The
long, dry summer was drawing to a close, and there was an agreeable sense
of novelty in the rain-drenched aspect of the countryside. After a
harvest prematurely ripened by an exuberance of sunshine, brown-cheeked
September was now hastening to splash here a leaf and there a spray with
rich colour, and on this particular morning it seemed to me that reeds,
flags, and willows were taking on autumnal tints earlier than usual.
Occasionally, from the river bank, I spied a water-rat or a coot swimming
amongst the sedges, and once on the path stretching before me a pert
wagtail—the Gypsy bird—foretold, as the Gypsies say, a coming encounter
with roving friends.
Pleasantly enough my early morning walk terminated at the old-world
Trentside village of my destination. By this time, between the vapours
rolling overhead, the sun had appeared, and was gilding the barges moored
to a primitive quay below the long line of straggling houses. On the
Lincolnshire side of the Trent quite a colony of Gypsy vans had drawn up
on a turfy plateau, and their owners were now to be seen crossing the
river by ferry-boat, their laughter floating to me over the water. This
was by no means my first visit to the riverside horse fair, and after
refreshing at one of the inns, I went down the lane to the fair-ground
occupying two fields, in the larger of which were already assembled
horses and dealers in a state of lively commotion beyond a fringe of
ale-booths and luncheon tents; while in the smaller field were gathered
numerous Gypsy families with their carts and smoking fires.
Never in my life do I remember to have witnessed such a horde of ancient
vagabonds of both sexes as on this occasion, and with no little delight I
stood and gazed upon the picture. What struck me in particular was the
motley character of the party. Decrepit great-grandfolks mumbling
together; grandfathers in ragged garb and battered hats; wizened
grandmothers sucking their pipes; aged uncles and aunts in time-stained
tatters; wives in their teens dandling babies; bright-eyed children
drumming happily on the bottoms of inverted pots and pans; merry lads and
lasses, interspersed amongst an assembly of the quaintest rag dolls it
has ever been my fortune to behold. It seemed to me as if all the old
Romany folk of several counties had met together for the last time in
their lives.
Moving into the larger field, I had not gone far before I felt a tug at
my sleeve, and, looking round, I saw the two lads whom I had met with
Jonathan by the watermill. They led me straight to a little covered cart
drawn under the hedge where Boswell was conversing with ’Plisti Smith.
As I have said elsewhere, the play-spirit is strong in the Gypsy, even in
his latter years, and while talking with my two friends up came a
comical-looking Gypsy, Charley Welch, who must have been nearer ninety
than seventy, and, picking up a potato lying on the ground—the large
field had grown a crop of potatoes that summer—he laughingly dropped it
into Jonathan’s coat pocket.
“There, don’t say that Old Charley never gave you nothink.”
After that I walked with Jonathan among the horses, and we came upon
Flash Arno and Black Înan, who found time to accompany us to one of the
refreshment booths where the talk ranged through a variety of topics.
Înan knew Mister Groome, the book-writer, up Edinburgh way. He had met
him there not long before in company with my friend Frampton Boswell. I
soon found that these Gypsies did not hold with folks writing books about
their race and telling the _mumpli gawjê_ (nasty gentiles) about their
ways.
No one loves a little fun more than the Gypsy, and generally he means no
harm by his playful romancing. After all, he is but a grown-up child,
and loves to make-believe. The Gypsy’s world is a haphazard one, in
which luck plays a large part. He knows nothing of the orderly cosmos of
providence or science. I make these remarks by way of prelude to
examples of this spirit.
Who can help laughing inwardly as the Gypsy weaves a romantic tale about
you, all for the benefit of a stranger? And in the course of my
morning’s ramble through West Stockwith Fair I had several experiences of
the kind.
“See that little dealer over there?” said Peter Smith, indicating a small
Gypsy man holding a tall black horse by a halter. The animal looked
gigantic by the side of its owner.
“Come along with me, and while I _roker_ (talk) to him, _maw puker_ a
_lav_” (don’t speak a word). Then we both went up to the little Gypsy,
and with the gravest of countenances Peter began to spin a long romance
all about an imaginary sister of mine who lived at Brighton and was
wanting just such a horse as the one before us. It really was a fine
animal, and I could not refrain from stroking its glossy skin.
Peter continued: “This here gentleman doesn’t ride hisself, you see, but
his sister has asked him to look out for a horse, and this one ’ull just
suit her.” I found it difficult to preserve silence, but somehow I
managed to do so. Finally, Peter took me aside and talked mysteriously
about nothing in particular, and quietly bade me walk away. A few
minutes later I beheld Peter quaffing a large mug of ale evidently at the
little man’s expense.
Moving in and out among the throng, I presently walked out along the
road, and there I came upon Hamalên Smith, who, after some talk,
suggested a bit of fun. Pointing to a Gypsy camp down a lane, he said—
“That’s Belinda Trickett sitting by the fire with her children. Go you
down the lane and have a little game. I’ll stop here and see how you get
on. You don’t know the woman, I suppose?”
“Not I. She’s a stranger to me.”
“That’s all right. Togged as you are, she’ll never take you for a
parson, not she. Mind you look severe-like and say to Belinda, ‘Is your
husband at home? What’s his name?’ It’s Harry, but she’s sure to say
it’s something else.”
Down the lane I went, and, approaching Mrs. Trickett and family, I drew
out a notebook and pencil—a sure way to frighten a Gypsy. Why these
things should suggest “police” I can scarcely say, but they do. The
woman’s clay pipe dropped from her mouth and fell upon the grass, and
beneath the brown of her cheeks a pallor crept. Mrs. Trickett was
alarmed.
“What is your husband’s name?”
“George Smith.”
“When will he be at home?”
“I can’t say. He’s gone to the fair.”
Under their mother’s shawl three tiny children huddled like little brown
partridges beneath an outspread wing, a sight which caused me some
pricking of heart. The biggest child kept saying, “What does the _gawjo_
want, mammy?” Just then I looked up the lane and saw a man coming down,
who by his jaunty air I guessed was the woman’s husband.
“_Kushti sawla_ (Good morning), Mr. Trickett; take a little _tuvalo_.” I
handed him my tobacco pouch. “I’ve come a long way to see you. Ask me
to sit down a bit, now I’ve got here.”
Mrs. Trickett’s face was a study in wonderment, as I sat down for a
friendly chat. “_Dawdi_,” said she, “you did _trasher mandi_ (frighten
me). I thought there was _tshumani oprê_” (something up).
When Hamalên Smith, from the top of the lane, saw that the episode had
arrived at a happy termination, he strolled down the lane and joined us.
A far-travelled Gypsy is Hamalên, and many a tale can he unfold.
“One morning,” said he, “a policeman came up to my wagon and told me
as how twenty-four fowls was missing from the next field to where we
was stopping. Somebody had stole ’em in the night. ‘Of course you
suspects us,’ says I to the policeman, ‘but you’re wrong. We’ve
never touched a feather of ’em.’ However, nothing would do but the
man must search my wagon from top to bottom, and for all his trouble
he found nothing. I know’d very well I hadn’t touched ’em, and I was
telling him the truth.
“‘Wait a bit,’ says he. ‘Didn’t I see _three_ vans in this field
last night as I was going along the high road?’
“‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘My boys have gone on in front with the other
wagons.’
“Says he, ‘That looks suspicious. I must make haste and find them.
Where have they gone?’
“‘I can’t say, for I don’t know myself.’
“‘Well, I shall have to come with you, and you must show me where to
find them.’ The policeman jumped up and sat on the seat along with
me and my wife, and off we went to find the boys. Of course it was
plain to see by the wheel-marks just outside the gate which way they
had turned, but when we got to the cross-roads about three miles
furder on, the road was that hard and dry that no wheel-marks could
be seen. Now I could easily have misled the policeman, but I thought
it best to try to find the boys as quick as I could, for I didn’t
believe for a minute they had done it. Looking down the road, I saw
the boys’ _patrin_ (guiding sign). The policeman didn’t know what I
was looking at, and it wasn’t likely as I should show him our signs,
so I says we’ll take this road, and we turned off to the left.
“‘How did you know which way the boys had gone?’ asked the policeman.
‘Was it some thing tied on that tree bough hanging over the road?’
“‘I never sees nothing on the tree bough,’ says I.
“I thought to myself the policeman must have been reading some tale
about the Gypsies. Anyway, he had heard something about _patrin_s
and such-like, but I wasn’t going to be the one to larn him our
signs, so I changed the subject.
“‘Yon’s my boys on in front,’ says I. The policeman began rubbing
his hands and smiling. At last we caught up with the boys, and the
policeman searched inside the two wagons and found nothing. Then he
says—
“‘I might as well look on the top,’ and he climbed on to the roofs of
the wagons.
“‘Hello, what have we here?’ says he, in a way that made me turn
warm. He lifted up a dead pigeon.
“‘Where did you get that from?’ I asked the boys.
“‘Picked it up a bit o’ way down the road. It had just killed itself
on the telegraph wires by the wood side.’
“After that, the disappointed policeman went away, and the thieves
were never found out.
* * * * *
“Another time we draw’d into a rutted lane lying off the high road.
We had our three wagons, and at night we always covered the big one
up, because we didn’t sleep in it. It was a nice quiet lane, and we
thought there would be nobody to trouble us as there was no willage
near. But about midnight a man knocked on the wagon and woke us up.
“‘What are you doing here?’
“‘No harm, I hope. We’ll clear out first thing in the morning.’ He
said he’d been knocking at the big wagon what was covered up, and he
couldn’t make anybody hear.
“‘Well,’ says I, ‘whatever you do, don’t you touch that big wagon
agen.’
“‘Why, what’s in it?’
“‘Wild beasts, for sure—_a lion and a tiger_.’
“You’d ha’ laughed at the way that man made hisself scarce. Next
morning, as we draw’d out of the lane, we met a policeman.
“‘I hear you have some wild beasts in that big wagon of yours.
Wasn’t it a bit dangerous stopping so near the highway?’
“‘Well, we’re clearing out in good time.’
“‘Get along with you then.’
“A few miles furder on the road we come to a little town, and as it
was market day we pulled up in the big square, and I took the cover
off the big wagon. Just as I was doing this, who should come up but
the policeman we’d met in the early morning.
“‘Where’s those wild beasts of yours?’ says he.
“‘Oh,’ says I, ‘I’ll soon show you.’ And I went inside my brush and
carpet wagon and brought out two big rugs, and I showed him a tiger
skin and a lion skin, both lined with red. ‘There’s my wild beasts,’
said I.
“Talk about laughing, I thought that policeman would never ha’
stopped.”
CHAPTER IX
TAKEN FOR TRAMPS—AN EAST ANGLIAN FAMILY
DAY after day, in the woods around our village, the autumnal gales roared
and ravened with unabated fury, snapping brittle boughs, cracking
decrepit boles, and piling up drifts of brown leaves around grey roots
protruding like half-buried bones through the mossy woodland floor. Then
right in the midst of it all came a spell of calm weather, as if summer
had stolen back to her former haunts in sylvan glade and ferny lane.
Call it by what name you please, this brief season of sunny repose
following upon the heels of the tempestuous equinoctials is a time when
some of us are impelled, as by a primal instinct, to shake off the collar
of routine and take the road leading over the hill into what realm of
adventure beyond.
Fully a week the summer-like interlude had held sway in the land. Upon
the newly-turned furrows shimmered a golden light. A dreamy haze trailed
its filmy skirts over hill and dale. In narrow lanes invisible threads
of spiders’ silk stretched from hedge to hedge, and wayside tangles again
were silvered over with a fine dust suggestive of July. Amid the
lingering clover-flowers bees buzzed and blundered. Through the still
air, leaves of maple and chestnut, like red-winged insects, twirled down
to the grass, and the tall elms in the village churchyard littered their
yellow foliage upon the graves. Everywhere, serenitude, repose, peace,
save in restless hearts chafing at the humdrum of tasks grown monotonous
by reason of long-continued performance. For who with a soul fully awake
can resist the lure of the road at gossamer-time?
Thus it came to pass one afternoon that my wife and I, slipping out of
our drowsy village, took the upland way which after numerous windings
brought us into the Great North Road. Our plans were of the flimsiest.
It mattered little whether we went north or south, so long as we were
absent for a few days. On reaching the far-famed highway we stood under
the branching arms of a finger-post, and tossed pennies to determine the
course of our itinerary. “North” having won the toss, we footed it gaily
in that direction. To be sure, our semi-Gypsy garb, donned for this
jaunt, was not long in taking on a coating of road dust, and we were
about to shake off this clinging powder, when the rattle of wheels was
heard behind us, and almost immediately a dogcart slowed down by our
side, and the driver, a rubicund farmer, amicably invited us to take a
lift, an offer which was gladly accepted, and we climbed aboard the
conveyance.
“I’ve allus had a feeling for folks like you, and I offens give ’em a
lift as I’m passing back’ards and forrards on the ramper. Afore I pulled
up just now I says to myself, ‘They’ve seen better days, I’ll be bound.’
Maybe you’ve been in the army? Leastways, I thought you seemed to hold
yourself up pretty straight in your walk. I’ve done a bit of soldiering
myself. Once at a big do-ment in London, I was in the Queen’s Escort.
Yes, I’ve been about a bit in my time. I dessay you two’s got a goodish
way to go yet afore you come to your night’s lodgings.
“Ay, dear me,” he went on, “we offens has your sort calling at our
place—my farm’s a few miles farther along this way—and one day not long
since a poor chap knocked at our door and asked for work. He was a
parson’s son, so we gave him a lightish job and fed him well and bedded
him in the barn for three or four nights, till his sore feet got right
agen. Poor fellow, he worn’t much good at labouring work, but we liked
to listen to his tales; he could tell you summut now.”
Thus he rambled on after the manner of a garrulous Guardian of the Poor
who had acquired an interest in tramps.
“Yon’s my place among the trees, so I must leave you here.”
We thanked him for his kindly lift, and, rounding a bend in the highway,
were glad to relieve our pent-up feelings in laughter over the good man’s
misconception.
Now, as everyone knows, who has journeyed along it, the fine old turnpike
abounds in travellers of every shade and grade. Not once or twice on its
turfy wayside have I fraternized with “Weary Willies” boiling their tea
in discarded treacle-tins. Even now as we went along, two or three
tramps passed by, one of them coming up to beg a few matches, the others
scarcely giving us a glance.
Hearing the rumble of an approaching vehicle, we looked towards the bend
of the road, and round it came what looked like a carrier’s cart drawn by
a horse apparently old, for it proceeded slowly, and the cart creaked and
jolted as if it, too, were ancient. As it jogged nearer, I saw it
contained but a single occupant—a brown-faced little man who wore a faded
yellow kerchief—and, stepping into the roadway, I greeted him with _sâ
shan_ (how do?). Whereupon he pulled up. “I heard what you said just
now, but you’ve made a mistake. I’m no Romany—I’m a showman, an Aunt
Sally man, bound for Retford.”
Now a Gypsy will frequently deny his blood. Knowing that his kind live
under a ban, he has no desire to draw attention to himself. But, looking
at this Aunt Sally man, I saw that he had told the truth. His face was
freckled. No real Gypsy freckles. After all, as Groome says, “It is not
the caravan that makes the Gypsy, any more than my cat becomes a dog if
she takes to living in a kennel.”
Our road now became a gradual descent into a clean, flower-loving
village, where amid the trees we caught the gleam of a large canvas booth
in a field, and there were knockings of a mallet to be heard. Nor was it
long before we learned what was afoot. Within a tavern’s comfortable
parlour, a coloured playbill informed the world that Harrison’s
travelling theatre would that evening present a sensational drama—_Gypsy
Jack_—and in due time we found ourselves seated among the cottagers and
farm-hands, enjoying a highly entertaining, though garbled, version of
Mr. G. R. Sims’s _Romany Rye_. Opening with a Gypsy encampment in which
the gaily dressed Lees sat talking round a fire in a forest glade, we
were successively shown Joe Hackett’s shop, the race-course at Epsom, the
deck of the _Saratoga_, the cellar near Rotherhithe, and the Thames by
night. The play seemed a not inappropriate episode in our Gypsy jaunt.
Years afterwards, during one Derby week, I saw Mr. Sims’s _Romany Rye_
remarkably well played at a South London theatre. In connection with
this play an amusing story is told. The managers of the Princess’s
Theatre in London were anxious that the new drama should be announced in
the “Agony” column of _The Times_. Like many another one, the
advertisement clerk at _The Times_ office could make nothing whatever of
the mysterious words _Romany Rye_.
“What the deuce is this _Romany Rye_?” he asked the bearer of the strange
document.
“If you please, sir,” said the messenger, whom the manager of the theatre
had sworn to secrecy—“if you please, sir, I think it’s the name of a new
liver-pad.”
“Well,” remarked the official, “_The Times_ is a great paper and can do
without padding. Take it away.”
And the advertisement was declined.
* * * * *
From the door of the canvas theatre it was an easy walk to the little
town of Newark-on-Trent, at one of whose pleasant hostelries we spent the
night, our window overlooking the ruined castle by the waterside. It had
been in our minds to continue our walk next morning along the Great North
Road, but at breakfast a small paragraph in a newspaper brought about a
quick change in our plans. The item of news ran thus—
“_THE ROMANIES AGAIN_.
“Our friends, the gipsy Greys, are still with us in Grimsby, lamented
Mr. Councillor E— last evening, and he wanted to know whether
something could not be done to get them to clear out. The Town Clerk
had assisted them somewhat, and one or two had gone, but there were
still four families encamped at the back of T— Street, New Clee.
Inspector M— said he had visited the encampment and he must say that
the caravans were very clean. They could not be said to create a
nuisance. ‘It is not the tents that are a nuisance,’ replied the
lively representative of the H— Ward, ‘but the parties themselves,
who trespass in the backyards of the houses in that neighbourhood.
It is no uncommon thing on waking up in the morning to find a donkey
or a goat in your backyard or garden.’ The Inspector stated that
Eliza Grey, the owner of the vans, had informed him they would all be
going away in a few days.”
It was the sight of the Romany family name which altered our plans. The
East Anglian Grays are a good type of Gypsy not to be encountered every
day, hence we decided to lose no time in taking the train for Grimsby.
It was a crawling “ordinary” by which we travelled, and at a little
wayside station a few miles out of Newark, a lithe, dark fellow carrying
a pedlar’s basket stepped into our compartment, and at once I recognized
in him my old friend Snakey Petulengro. How his face lit up on seeing
me, for we had not met for years. I was so much struck by his altered
bearing that I could scarcely believe my eyes. He seemed now as gentle
in his manner as once he had been wild. The sight of him brought back
Gypsy Court and all its associations. He said he had left the old home,
his father and mother having passed away. On my inquiring about his
sister Sibby, he said she had married a Gypsy and, tiring of Old England,
had gone to ’Merikay. As Snakey quitted the carriage at Lincoln, an
observant passenger remarked—
“There goes one of Nature’s gentlemen.”
By mid-afternoon the slender hydraulic tower glowed rosily in the
sunlight above Grimsby Docks; and since the fishing-port had no
particular charm for us, we proceeded to Cleethorpes, preferring the more
airy shore and being eager to see the Gypsies. As might be expected, the
summer-like day had brought a goodly number of late holiday-makers to the
sands, and as we moved in and out among the groups near the pier foot, I
heard a donkey-boy address someone not far away—
“Would the lady like a ride?” The lad’s features, bearing, and tone of
voice were distinctly Gypsy, and, seeing he was within hail, I looked
towards him and said—
“_Dova sî kushto maila odoi_” (That’s a good donkey there).
His face beamed with delight, and from his lips sprang the question—
“_Romano Rai_?” (Gypsy gentleman?)
“_Âwa_; _kai shan tîro foki hatsh_in?” (Yes; where are your people
camping?)
In gratitude for the explicit directions he gave, I placed a sixpence in
his hand, and his remark was “_Dova_’s too _kisi_, _raia_” (That’s too
much, sir). “A _hora_ (penny) would have been _dosta_ (enough) for
_mandi_” (me). This boy was one of the Grays, and, following his
instructions, we had no difficulty in locating the Romany camp.
It was early evening when we strolled forth upon an expanse of grass
parcelled into building plots, where in a corner between the hedgerows
were drawn up, with the doorways facing south, several substantial _vâdê_
(caravans) near which some large tents had been erected. The Grays, who
were silently moving to and fro, revealed by their interested
side-glances that they had already heard of somebody’s inquiries
concerning themselves, and when we advanced to offer our civil and
friendly greetings to two women who were washing pots before an outside
fire, every politeness was shown to us. They rose and spread a horse-rug
for us upon the ground. “_Dai ta tshai_” (mother and daughter), thought
I; nor was I wrong. The older woman, diminutive, lean, and somewhat bent
with age, informed me that she was Eliza Gray, and the younger was her
daughter Lena. As we talked by the fire, a goat appeared and rubbed its
nose affectionately against Eliza’s knee. Said she: “This is an old pet
of ours. We’s had it for years. I picked it up in Scotland.”
In late September the sun goes down early, and a chilly wind now set in
from the North Sea. In the baulk of the old lady’s tent a coke brazier
was glowing invitingly, so we all moved under cover, and, seated on a
dais of clean straw covered with rugs, listened to tales and talk, the
brazier’s crimson gleam being our only light. After some discussion of
mutual acquaintances, the conversation drifted towards _duker_in
(fortune-telling), a subject never very far from the thoughts of a Gypsy
woman.
“How I’ve _sal_’d” (laughed), said Eliza, “at those _dinelê gawjê_
(foolish gentiles) what come to our tent to be _duker_’d. One time I put
a crystal on a little table covered with oilcloth, and I ax’d the young
lady if she couldn’t see her sweetheart in it. ‘Yes, I can,’ she says,
‘and it’s just like his face, but oh, lor, in this glass ball he’s got a
tail.’ I nearly laughed straight out, for I’d sort of accidentally put
the crystal on top of a monkey picture. The oilcloth was covered with
all sorts of beastses, don’t you see?”
A superstitious family, the Grays have a characteristic way of recounting
their own traditions. Here is one of Eliza’s tales—
“Once we were stopping by a woodside. The back of our tent was nigh
agen a dry ditch full of dead leaves, and one night we lay abed
listening to sounds, a thing I can’t abide. Well, there was rummy
folk about in them days, so when we hears a footstep in the wood just
t’other side of that there ditch, I ups wi’ the kettle-prop and peeps
outen the tent, and listens, but no, never a sound could I catch; all
was still as the grave. Till long and by last there comes a rustling
in the leaves, and the bushes parts like something trying to make a
way through. Then I lifts up the kettle-prop, and I says to myself,
if blows are to be struck, Liza had better be the first to strike,
when there, straight afore me, stands a woman waving her poor thin
arms about, but saying nothing. At that I drops the kettle-prop and
screams, and my man Perun jumps straight up. ‘They’re killing my
Liza, they are.’ But by that the _muli_ (ghost) had gone like a
flash of lightning. Next morning we ax’d at the keeper’s house down
the lane, and the missis tell’d us as how a _rawni_ (lady) was once
_maw_’d (murdered) in that wood, so it would be her _muli_ as I saw
that night. Oh, yes, I believe in _mulê_, I do.”
During the telling of this tale two of Eliza’s sons, Yoben and Poley,
sauntered up and stood listening behind their sister Lena. It was Yoben
who now added his contribution of ghost-lore.
“Why, yes, of course, mother, there’s _mulê_ (ghosts). Don’t you
remember after Dolferus died, his voice used to speak in the tent to
Delaia? She says it really was his voice as nat’ral as life, and it
made her shiver to hear it. One day she went to a parson for advice.
He told her the next time it spoke, to say: ‘I promise you nothing.
Begone!’ Well, sure enough, the voice came again, and she remembered
to say what the parson had told her, and she never heard the voice no
more. My Uncle Ike asked Delaia one day—
“‘I say, my gal, did you really hear Dolferus’s voice?’
“‘Yes; it was his and no one else’s.’
“‘Is that the _tatshipen_ (truth), my gal?’ Ike seemed anxious to
know the truth of the matter.”
* * * * *
“Dreams is funny things,” put in Poley, “and I’ve had some wery queer
’uns in my time. Once I dreamt I was walking along a narrow shelf of
rock, and on one side of me was a stony wall like a cliff, and on the
other side the edge of the path hung over a terrible steep place.
Right away below was a river of fiery red stuff pouring along. You
could smell it. I thought this rocky road was the path to heaven,
and I was trying to get there, but, ’pon my word, it was no easy
matter. Now I see’d a tiger chained to the rocky wall on my left
hand, and a bit furder on a big lion was tied up. These here
critturs was hard to get past. I had to go wery near the dangerous
edge what looked down on to the burning river. What a fright I was
in; it made the sweat run off me. Sometimes I had to crawl on my
hands and knees to get round a big rock in the middle of the path. I
felt as if I never should get where I wanted to. Well, after a lot
of scrambling and slithering, for my feet gave way sometimes—I had
naily boots on—I got to the top of the path, and in the dazzling
light, like the sun itself on a summer day, there sat a grey-haired,
doubled-up man, a wery aged man, with his chin resting on his hand.
It was the _Duvel_ (God), and when he see’d me coming, he sat up and
held up his hand, forbidding me to go any furder. He didn’t speak a
word, but I knew that his uplifted hand meant ‘Go back.’ And just
then I woke. That’s my dream of trying to get to heaven.”
* * * * *
“There’s a lot about heaven and hell in God’s Book, isn’t there,
_rashai_?” said Old Eliza. “A _rawni_ (lady) used to read all about
them places to us on a Sunday, but that were years ago, and I used to
like to hear her talk about the blessed Saviour riding on a _maila_
(donkey) into the big town. She said they nailed him to a cross on
Good Friday, and when we was young I remember we all used to fast on
that day. We ate no flesh—nothing with blood in it—it would be a sin
to do that. If we took anything to stay our hunger it was nothing
but dry bread, and our drink was water. We didn’t _tuv_ (smoke), and
we didn’t _tov_ our _kokerê_ (wash ourselves) on that day. I don’t
know whether there be such places as heaven and hell. I reckons we
makes our own destiny. Heaven and hell’s inside us; that’s what I
think.”
Lena, however, had her own ideas. “This life is everything there is, I
reckons, and when we’re dead, that’s the end of us. Life is sweet, mind
you, and we’s a right to be as happy as we can. Mother’s getting old,
you see, and has had her fling. I mean to have a good time. Why, last
Sunday me and Poley was going off to get some nuts in the woods, but
mother stopped us—
“It’s _Beng_’s work getting nuts on the dear Lord’s day.”
“Yes,” says Yoben; “I’ve heard our old daddy say that the _Beng_ likes
nuts, and I’d sartinly scorn to go getting them onlucky things on a
Sunday; I wouldn’t like to put myself in the _Beng_’s power, like poor
Zuba Lovell.”
“What about Zuba?” asked my wife.
Then Yoben told a weird tale.
[Picture: A Maid of the Tents]
“A handsome lass was Zuba, but bad luck dogged her like her own
shadow. One night she came back to the camp, for she lived with her
old people, and, throwing down a few coppers she had in her hand, she
said—
“‘There, mother, what do you think of that for a hard day’s work?’
She had done wery badly, you see. Luck never seemed to come her way
at all. And after supper she wandered out a little way from the
camp. The moon and stars was shining as she walked round and round
an old tree, a blasted old stump, black as a gallows-post. As she
kept on walking round it, she said aloud, ‘This game won’t do for me.
It’s money I want and money I’ll have. I’d sell my blood to the
_Beng_ to have plenty of money in my pocket always.’ The words was
hardly out of her mouth when a black thing, like the shadow of the
tree, rose up from the ground, and, lor, there was the wery _Beng_
hisself, and after he’d promised her what she had wished for, he
wanished. And after that no more grumbling from Zuba; no more
complaints about her bad luck. She always had plenty of money now,
and she bought herself trinkets and fine clothes till everybody was
’mazed at her, and of course she had kept it to herself what took
place that night by the old tree. Days and weeks went by, till one
night Zuba was missing from the camp. Her old folks sat up by the
fire waiting for her, but no Zuba came. At last her daddy set out to
look for her, and there by the foot of the tree lay Zuba’s frock and
shawl, and when he took ’em back to his wife’s tent, the poor woman
screamed and fainted right away, and old man Lovell walked up and
down all night, saying, ‘Oh, my Zuba, my blessed gal, we shall never
see you no more,’ and they never did. The _Beng_ had fetched her.
That’s the end of Zuba Lovell.”
While listening to these tales in the tent, the flight of the hours
passed unobserved, till a distant clock boomed out the hour of ten.
“You’ll _wel apopli_ (come again), my dears?” said Eliza, as we retired
amid the smiles and bows of the Gypsy family.
Next morning found us again in the camp. Already the Gypsies had
breakfasted, and were making preparations for “_tov_in-_divus_”
(washing-day). Sun and wind promised an ideal day for such a purpose.
It was a thing to be noticed that the articles about to be dealt with lay
in two heaps on the grass.
Among the Gypsies there is a ceremonial rule which holds it to be
_mokadi_ (unclean) to wash together in the same vessel “what you eat off
with what you wear.” This was the meaning of the separated articles, and
then I observed two zinc vessels lying ready on the ground. Said Old
Eliza to Lena, “I’ll take this lot, and you take that lot.” To begin
with, they both cleansed their hands and arms in hot water, and as they
did this I remarked how brown were Lena’s arms, whereupon she replied
with a laugh—
“_Âwa_, _raia_ (Yes, sir), monkey soap won’t fetch that off”—a modern
rendering, I take it, of Ferdousi’s saying, “No washing will turn a Gypsy
white.”
Now as our friends were about to become much occupied, we proposed to
stroll round the camp and pay calls on the other Gypsies in the same
field. “Stop a bit,” said Eliza, and, slipping into the tent, she came
out with a black bottle. “You’ll take a drop of my elderberry wine and a
bite o’ cake,” pouring out the claret-coloured liquid into two glasses
fished out from an inner recess. While enjoying this snack on the grass,
I took out from a breast pocket a white unused handkerchief which I
spread on my knee. Presently Old Eliza slyly took it by the corner and
twitched it away, giving me in place thereof a neatly folded napkin
brought from the tent, and I saw that I had broken a Gypsy custom in
converting a handkerchief into a crumbcloth. Said the old mother, “That
_mol_ (wine) is old, and should be _kushto_ (good). It’s some we buried
in a place till we came round again.”
In another corner of the field were encamped Fennix Boswell and his
stepson Shanny, and, going forward, we found the pair seated at their
tent door handling fishing-rods. On seeing us they rose and invited us
into the tent, where we sat down. Shanny showed us some of his pencil
drawings.
“I’ve got one of a parrot somewhere; I must find it,” said he.
“_Âwali_, _muk man dik o roker_in-_tshiriklo_” (Yes, let me see the
talking-bird), I replied, and in a minute or two he handed me a really
clever sketch.
These two Gypsies had just come down from Scotland, where they had been
travelling during the summer months, and we got talking about Kirk
Yetholm. The Blythes, related to old King Charley Faa, were
acquaintances of theirs. It appears that one of the King’s sons named
Robert, a rollicking fellow, was fond, as Gypsies are, of practical
jokes, and some of his escapades are still remembered in the Border
Country. One of Fennix’s tales about this fun-loving Faa may well find a
place here.
* * * * *
One spring morning Bobbie started off on a foray with some of his pals.
The air was clear, and a soft wind was blowing over the Lammer-moors on
whose slopes the lambs were gambolling. The Gypsies had walked a few
miles, and the mountain air had sharpened the edge of their appetites.
Looking round for a farmhouse or a cottage where they might ask for a
kettle of boiling water to brew their tea in the can—such as few of the
Faas would ever travel without—Bobbie was the first to espy some
outbuildings, at the back of which stood a shepherd’s cottage, and,
taking upon himself to be spokesman, he bravely started off for the
cottage, the men resting meanwhile at the foot of the hill. As he
approached the door, a fine savoury smell greeted Bobbie, making him feel
ten times more hungry than before. He knocked gently at the door, which
stood ajar, but no one came, and all was quiet within. He repeated his
knock, and, taking a step forward, found the kitchen empty. Before the
fire stood a tempting shepherds-pie of a most extraordinary size, and its
appetizing steam quite overcame any scruples which otherwise might have
lurked in the heart of Bobbie Faa. Not for one moment did he hesitate,
but, nipping up the dish, he speedily ran down the hill with the pie
under his arm. Not knowing how he had come by it, his mates could
scarcely believe their eyes when he laid the pie on the grass, and they
praised the gude-wife who had so kindly given them such a feast. When
the dish was empty, he gave it to a pal, telling him to take it back to
the gude woman and say how much they had enjoyed the pie. It happened to
be a sheep-shearing day, and the shepherd’s wife had gone to call her
husband and his fellows to their dinner. She had just returned to the
kitchen when the Gypsy lad arrived with the empty dish, and on handing it
back to her with smiles and thanks, a torrent of abuse was poured forth
on the poor boy’s head, as the woman now grasped the situation and became
aware of the fate of her pie. Just then her husband and the other
shearers appeared round the corner, and, hearing what had befallen their
dinner, the infuriated men seized the lad and gave him a sound drubbing.
CHAPTER X
PETERBOROUGH FAIR
THE twentieth century has witnessed a remarkable revival of certain
old-time pleasures in the form of pageants and pastoral plays,
folk-songs, and dances, but it should not be overlooked that in our midst
still linger those popular revels, tattered survivals of medieval mirth,
called pleasure-fairs, held periodically in most of our old country
towns. It is true, these ancient fairs are not what they were, Father
Time having laid his hand heavily upon them, with the result that not a
few of their features which were reckoned among our childhood’s joys have
vanished.
[Picture: On the Eve of the Fair. Photo. Rev. H. H. Malleson]
Gone are the marionettes, the wax-works, the ghost-shows. Departed, too,
are many of the mysterious little booths, behind whose canvas walls queer
freaks and abnormalities were wont to hide. Perhaps, however, when the
travelling cinema has outworn its vogue, the older “mystery” shows will
reappear by the side of the Alpine slide, the scenic railway, and the joy
wheel.
Still renowned for their wondrous gaiety are a few of our larger fairs,
whither huge crowds flock by road and rail for a few hours of rollicking
carnival. I have in mind such events as Barnet September Fair,
Birmingham Onion Fair, the October merry-makings at Hull, Nottingham
Goose Fair, and the like, but even these, owing to a variety of reasons,
are now of shrunken dimensions.
Fairs of whatever sort are generally occasions of friendly reunion, not
only for show-people and _gawjê_ visitors, but also for Gypsies who love
to forgather on the margins of the fair-ground, or upon an adjacent
common, where they compare notes and discuss the happenings since their
last meeting.
Borne on the crisp October air, the chimes of Peterborough floated over
the city roofs, reaching even to the fair-grounds, where I was one of the
large holiday crowd which hustled and laughed and tossed confetti in
mimic snow-showers. When in quest of Gypsies, the first half-hour you
spend in wandering about a fair is a time of pleasurable excitement. Who
can tell how many old friends you may meet, or what fresh dark faces you
are about to encounter?
As I was saying, the crowd was hilarious, and, having so far recognized
no Romany countenance up and down the footways between the coco-nut shies
and shooting-galleries, swing-boats and merry-go-rounds, it occurred to
me that a little more breathing-space might be found upon the open
pasture where horses were being bought and sold, and, pushing along in
that direction, I was brought to a standstill at the foot of the steps
leading down from a gilded show-front. Walking with the airs of a fine
lady, there came down those steps a young Gypsy attired in a yellow gown
and tartan blouse, with a blazing red scarf thrown over her shoulders
upon which her hair fell in black curls. It was this coloured vision as
much as the block in the footway that held me up for the nonce. Another
moment, and Lena Gray, Old Eliza’s daughter, brushed against my shoulder,
yet, as often happens in a crowd, she failed to see me. Therefore, into
her ear I dropped a whispered Romany phrase at which she started, and,
recognizing me, exclaimed—
“_Dawdi_, _raia_, this _is_ a surprise!”
It was but a few steps to the sheltered spot in a field opposite the
horse-fair where her brother Yoben sat fiddling by the side of the
living-van. Even before we came up to him, something arrested my
attention—the unusual shape of his violin, which, as Lena informed me,
her brother had made out of a cigar-box picked up in a public-house.
Our field corner had a most agreeable outlook. Beyond a stretch of
greenest turf, dotted with caravans and bounded by the reddening autumn
hedgerows, lay the pleasure-fair, a sunlit fantasia of colour, from
which, like feathery plumes, ascended puffs of white steam topping
numerous whirling roundabouts. Pleasant it was to sit out here in the
calm weather chatting with the Grays, whom I had so recently met on the
Lincolnshire sea-border, and even while we conversed there passed by a
little party of gaily-dressed Gypsies—two rather portly women of middle
age and two slender girls.
“Who are those people?” I asked.
“Some of the _gozverê_ (cunning) Lovells,” replied Lena. Then I
remembered that for some time past I had carried in my notebook several
cuttings grown dingy with age, relating to traditional practices
characteristic of this family. Two paragraphs will suffice as specimens.
“A domestic servant told a remarkable story yesterday before a West
London magistrate. She said that a gipsy called at the house and
asked her to buy some laces. She refused, and prisoner then offered
to tell her fortune for a shilling. Witness agreed, and the woman
told her fortune, and she (witness) gave her two shillings, and asked
her for the change. Prisoner said she would tell her young man’s
name by the planet. Witness had a half-sovereign and two half-crowns
in her purse, and prisoner asked her to let her have the coins to
cross the palm of her hand with. She handed her the coins, and the
woman crossed her palm. She then asked her to fetch a glass of
water, and, on her returning with it, told her to drink it.
Afterwards she told her to pray, and then, apparently putting the
10s. and the two half-crowns in her pocket-handkerchief, placed the
handkerchief in her bodice, and told her not to take it out for
twenty minutes. After that the woman left.
“The magistrate: ‘Did you take the handkerchief out?’
“‘Well, I waited for twenty minutes or so, and then I took it out,
and instead of the 10s. and the two half-crowns I found two pennies
and a farthing.’ (Laughter.)”
Obviously, the above is a variant of the ancient Gypsy trick known as the
_hokano bawro_ (big swindle). Something equally Gypsy, as we shall see,
clings to our second example.
“The local police have had their attention engaged during the week in
connection with an alleged extraordinary occurrence whereby a
shopgirl became, under supposed hypnotic influence, the dupe of two
gipsy women. From inquiry it appears that on Saturday afternoon two
gipsy women, having the appearance of mother and daughter, entered a
baby-linen shop, and seem to have exerted such a remarkable influence
over the girl that she was induced to hand over to them articles of
wear amounting in value to between £8 and £9. Before they left the
shop she recovered her self-possession sufficiently to express doubt
as to whether they would return with the goods or money, and her
fears were allayed somewhat by receiving from her visitors in the
shape of security a lady’s beautiful gold ring and chain.
Subsequently the young lady, suspecting the genuineness of the
pledges, took them to a jeweller, who declared the value of the ring
and chain to be not more than a couple of shillings. The shopgirl is
unable to account for her want of self-possession in the presence of
the gipsies, and states that she felt she might have given them
anything they asked for. There were a good many gipsies located in
the district, but on a visit to the encampment in company with the
police the girl did not recognize her two visitors. The remarkable
occurrence has given rise to much comment in the locality.”
Here is something strangely akin to the Romany mesmerism to which
allusion is made by “The Scholar-Gipsy,” whose
“. . . mates had arts to rule as they desir’d
The workings of men’s brains;
And they can bind them to what thoughts they will.”
As is well known, Matthew Arnold’s poem is based upon the following
passage in Joseph Glanvill’s _Vanity of Dogmatizing_:—
“That one man should be able to bind the thoughts of another, and
determine them to their particular objects, will be reckoned in the
first rank of Impossibles; Yet by the power of advanc’d Imagination
it may very probably be effected; and story abounds with Instances.
I’le trouble the Reader but with one; and the hands from which I had
it, make me secure of the truth on’t. There was very lately a lad in
the University of Oxford, who, being of very pregnant and ready
parts, and yet wanting the encouragement of preferment, was by his
poverty forced to leave his studies there, and to cast himself upon
the wide world for livelyhood. Now, his necessities growing daily on
him, and wanting the help of friends to relieve him; he was at last
forced to joyn himself to a company of Vagabond Gypsies, whom
occasionally he met with, and to follow their trade for a
maintenance. Among these extravagant people, by the insinuating
subtility of his carriage, he quickly got so much of their love and
esteem; that they discover’d to him their Mystery; in the practice of
which, by the pregnancy of his wit and partz he soon grew so good a
proficient, as to out-do his Instructours. After he had been a
pretty while well exercis’d in the Trade; there chanc’d to ride by a
couple of Scholars who had formerly bin of his acquaintance. The
Scholars had quickly spyed out their old friend, among the Gypsies;
and their amazement to see him among such society, had well-nigh
discover’d him; but by a sign he prevented their owning him before
that crew; and taking one of them aside privately, desir’d him with
his friend to go to an Inn, not far distant thence, promising there
to come to them. They accordingly went thither, and he follows;
after their first salutations, his friends enquire how he came to
live so odd a life as that was, and to joyn himself with such a
cheating beggerly company. The Scholar-Gypsy having given them an
account of the necessity, which drove him to that kind of life; told
them, that the people he went with were not such Impostours as they
were taken for, but that they had a traditional kind of learning
among them, and could do wonders by the power of Imagination, and
that himself had learned much of their Art, and improved it further
than themselves could. And to evince the truth of what he told them,
he said he’d remove into another room, leaving them to discourse
together; and upon his return tell them the sum of what they had
talked of; which accordingly he perform’d, giving them a full account
of what had pass’d between them in his absence. The Scholars being
amaz’d at so unexpected a discovery, earnestly desir’d him to
unriddle the mystery. In which he gave them satisfaction, by telling
them, that what he did was by the power of Imagination, his Phancy
binding theirs; and that himself had dictated to them the discourse
they held together, while he was from them: That there were
warrantable wayes of heightening the Imagination to that pitch, as to
bind another’s; and that when he had compass’d the whole secret, some
parts of which he said he was yet ignorant of, he intended to leave
their company, and give the world an account of what he had learned.”
One sometimes wonders whether the world would have cared one jot about
the revelations which the Oxford Scholar here promises, for to the
majority the “Gypsies” are almost tabu.
In a letter which I received from that perfect Scholar-Gypsy and
Gypsy-Scholar, the late Francis Hindes Groome, he tells how he once
stumbled upon a typical critic.
“Three or four years ago I gave a lecture on Gypsies at Greenock, and
a well-dressed man came up after it.
“‘There were some things,’ he remarked, ‘that I quite liked in your
lecture, but on a good many points _you were absolutely wrong_.’
“‘Of course you’ve studied the question?’ I asked him.
“‘Yes,’ he replied. ‘I looked up the article “Gypsies” in Dr.
Brewer’s _Dictionary of Fable_ just before coming along.’”
Talking of critics reminds me how I once received something of a shock to
the nerves during the opening sentences of a lecture on “Gypsy Customs.”
Not far from the platform where I stood, there sat a well-to-do
horse-dealer who, having married a pure-bred Gypsy, was presumably in
possession of “inside information.” The vision of his face, all
alertness and curiosity, caused me a momentary disturbance. What would
this critic make of my disclosures? How would he take my revelations?
Warming to my subject, however, I was made happy by my auditor
interjecting such remarks as “That’s right.” “He’s got it.” “Where does
the man get it all from?” Sometimes he would punctuate his exclamations
by vigorously slapping his knee and laughing aloud. Certainly his
ejaculations added a piquancy to my tales gathered from Gypsy tents.
* * * * *
But to return to Peterborough Fair.
About the middle of the afternoon, as I stood on a grassy mound
overlooking the horses, I spied near a group of animals my old friend,
Anselo Draper, flourishing a long-handled whip. This swart East Anglian
roamer wore a dark brown coat of Newmarket cut, slouch hat of soft green
felt, and crimson neckerchief neatly tied at the throat. Along an open
space between the rows of horses sauntered his two pretty daughters,
Jemima and Phœbe, bareheaded and bare-armed, their laughing voices
ringing out merrily, while at their heels followed two little brothers
cracking whips as became budding horse-dealers.
Quite a head above the Gaskins and Brinkleys with whom she was talking
loudly, stood Wythen, Anselo’s wife, who, happening to look my way,
smiled and came towards me, holding out the empty bowl of her pipe.
“Got a bit of _tuvalo_ (tobacco) about you, _rashai_ (parson)? I’m dying
for a smoke.”
“_So bok ke-divus_?” (What luck to-day?) I inquired, handing over my
pouch.
“_Bikin_’d _tshîtshî_” (Sold nothing), she replied, jerking her whip
towards the ponies, “but I’ll _duker_ (tell fortunes) a bit this
evening,” adjusting her black hat with its large ostrich feathers and
gaudy orange bow set jauntily at the side.
[Picture: Midland Gypsies. Photo. Fred Shaw]
On my pretending to ridicule _duker_in, she said—
“Look here, now, what’s the difference between a Gypsy telling fortunes
at a fair and a parson _roker_in (preaching) in church of a Sunday?”
“If that’s a riddle,” said I, “it’s beyond me to answer it.”
“Well, when folks do bad things, you foretell a bad future for them,
don’t you? And when they do right, you promises ’em a good time? What’s
the difference then between you and me? I’m a low-class fortune-teller
and you’s a high-class fortune-teller. You’s had a deal of eddication.
My only school has been the fairs, race-courses, and sich-like. But I
bet I can tell a fortune as well as you any day. Let me tell yours.”
And she did.
[Picture: South-Country Gypsies. Photo. Fred Shaw]
As we stood there and talked, I noticed that the woman looked worried
about something, and presently I heard her say to Anselo, “I haven’t
found it yet.” It was a brooch that she had lost. Then I told how once
I lost and found a ring. One Sunday morning just before service, I stood
on the gravel swinging my arms in physical exercises as a freshener
before going to church, and suddenly I heard the tinkle of my ring on the
yellow gravel. As only a few minutes remained before church time, I
thought of a child’s method of finding a thing quickly, and, turning
myself round three times, I tossed upon the ground a smooth black pebble,
and, going, forward, lo, there was the ring close to the pebble.
Eyeing me curiously, Wythen remarked—
“Do you know what we says about people as does that sort of thing? Well,
we reckons they has dealings with the _Beng_ (Devil).
“When I was a little ’un, my old granny would do things like that, and
she used to say that when you sees a star falling you must wish a wish,
and if you do it afore the _stari pogers_ (the star breaks) your wish
will come true.”
It seems that among Gypsies “wishing a wish” sometimes means a curse. It
was at Peterborough Fair in 1872 that Groome saw a blind Gypsy child—made
blind, he was told, through the father wishing a wish. Akin to this is
the belief in the evil eye. A Battersea Gypsy mother would not let her
baby be seen by its half-witted uncle, for fear his looking at it should
turn its black hair red.
After leaving Wythen, I sauntered along, making mental notes of Gypsies
all around, among whom were local Brinkleys, the far-travelled Greens,
some Loveridges, and other Midland Gypsies. I was about to move away
towards the pleasure fair, when a dealer standing near some ponies caught
my eye. I had never seen the man before, but as he looked a thorough
Gypsy, I drew alongside and accosted him in Romany. For a moment he
stared at my clerical frock-coat and broad-brimmed hat, and then calmly
remarked—
“I say, pal, you look born to them things you’ve got on, you do really.
You reckons to attend fairs at these here cathedral places, don’t you?
Didn’t I once see you at Ely, or was it Chester?”
To this man I was nothing more than a Gypsy “dragsman” disguised in
clerical garb. Accordingly, he lowered his voice as he said—
“See this here pony? Will you sell it for me? You’ll do it easy enough
with your experience. On my honour it ain’t a _bongo yek_ (wrong ’un),
nor yet a _tshordo grai_” (stolen horse).
“What about the price?” I asked.
“If you get a tenner for it,” he replied, “there’ll be a _bâ_ (sovereign)
for yourself. What say?”
“_Saw tatsho_ (All right). _Jaw_ ’_vrî konaw_” (Go away now). And in
less than ten minutes after taking my stand by the little animal, I had a
bid from a young farmer of the small-holder type. His offer was
accompanied by some adverse criticism. Who ever heard a man praise the
horse he intended to buy?
“Examine the pony for yourself,” said I.
He looked at its teeth. He lifted its feet one by one. He pinched and
punched it all over. The pony was next trotted to and fro, and so
pleased was the farmer with the animal’s behaviour that he promptly
handed over ten pounds and led the pony away. On seeing that I had
completed the business, my Gypsy friend, who was just round the corner,
came up, and on my giving up the money, he put one of the sovereigns into
my hand. When I got away I had a good laugh to myself, and it took me
some time to get my face straight.
Walking back into the heart of the town, I saw a dusty, ill-clad party of
Gypsies going slowly along with a light dray drawn by a young horse with
flowing mane and long tail, and when they reached the corner where I was
standing, I spoke to the woman who was at the horse’s head. She said she
was a Smith, and when I pointed to the name Hardy on the dray, she
remarked, “Oh, that’s nobbut a travelling name.” It may be noted that
Gypsies are extremely careless about their names.
At a later hour in a field behind the pleasure fair, I found the
comfortable _vâdo_ of my friend, Anselo Draper, and tapped at the van
door with the knob of my stick. Quickly the door opened, and thrusting
out his dark, handsome head, Anselo shouted, “_Av adrê_, _baw_” (Come in,
friend).
What a contrast! Outside: a very babel of blaring sounds, a dark sky
reflecting the glow of a myriad naphtha flares. Within: cosiness and
warmth, red curtains, glittering mirrors, polished brasses, and a good
fire. Over the best teacups (taken tenderly from a corner cupboard)
Anselo and his wife talked of their travels. They had been as far north
as Glasgow that summer, and had sold a good _vâdo_ (van) to one of the
Boswells at Newcastle Fair. They had decided to winter at
Southend-on-Sea. “We shall make a tent, a big one, and very jolly it
will be with a _yog_ (fire) in the baulk. To be sure, there will be
plenty of mumpers (low-class van-dwellers) around us, but we shall not be
the only _tatshenê Romanitshel_s (real Gypsies) stopping there.”
Next, Anselo plunged into an account of a low dealer’s trick at the horse
fair. It seemed that this dealer had sold two horses to a farmer for
forty pounds. A stranger coming up to the farmer offered to buy them at
a higher price, so into a tavern they retired to talk things over.
During drinks the stranger continually offered more money for the horses,
and the farmer remained there a longer time than was good for him. At
last when the man was hopelessly muddled the stranger disappeared. Nor
had the horses so far been seen again.
“But there’s not so much of that done as there was. My father knew a
Gypsy who died up in Yorkshire, a desprit hand at _grai-tshor_in
(horse-stealing), and to this day they say, ‘If you shake a bridle over
his grave, he’ll jump up and steal a horse.’” Both Wythen and Anselo
laughed merrily as I told a tale I once heard of a Gypsy who had been
“away” for a space. Coming out of the prison gate, he was met by a
fellow who asked him what he had been in there for.
“For finding a horse,” was the reply.
“But surely they would never jug you for finding a horse?”
“Well, but you see I found this one before his owner had lost him.”
Anselo admitted that this sort of thing was not at all uncommon in the
old days, and two of his uncles had to take a trip across the water for
similar practices.
When I left my friends and hastened to catch my train, the pleasure fair
was in full blast, noisy organs, cymbals and drums, shrieking whistles,
and the dull muffled roar of innumerable human voices, sounds which long
haunted my ears, and, looking back from the moving train, there still
floated from the distance the din and rattle of the receding fair.
CHAPTER XI
A FORGOTTEN HIGHWAY—“ON THE ROAD” WITH JONATHAN—THE PATRIN—THE GHOST OF
THE HAYSTACK
“WE was all brought up on this Old Dyke. We’s _hatsh_’d (camped) on it
in all weathers. I knows every yard of it. Ay, the fine _kanengrê_
(hares) we’s taken from these here fields.”
The speaker was my old friend, Jonathan Boswell, who with his tilt-cart
had overtaken me whilst strolling along the grass-grown Roman Ermine
Street which traverses the broad Heath stretching southward of Lincoln.
At the Gypsy’s cheery invitation, I joined him on his seat under the
overarching tilt. Behind us were the diminishing towers of the old city,
and right on ahead the chariot-way of the Imperial legions ran, straight
as an arrow along the Heath. Not a wild expanse, mind you, like your
Yorkshire moorland with its wimpling burns and leagues of heather, though
I daresay our Heath, now so admirably tilled, was savage enough in the
days when “the long, lone, level line of the well-kept warpath, marked at
intervals with high stones or posts as a guiding-line in fog or snow,
stretched through a solitude but rarely broken, except by the footfall of
the legionaries and the plaint of the golden plover sounding sweet from
off the moorland.” Turf-covered from hedge to hedge for many a mile, the
High Dyke, as the old road is now called, may well be described as a
forgotten highway. Indeed, I have tramped along it mile on mile without
meeting a soul, unless mayhap it was a sun-tanned drover slouching at the
heels of half a dozen bullocks, or a village lad asleep in a
hedge-bottom, with a soft-eyed motherly cow or two grazing not far away.
On this particular morning near the end of April, an unclouded sun lit up
the verdant cornlands and larch spinneys. It shone upon the loins of the
sturdy nag between the shafts. It touched into a brighter gold the
gorse-bloom on the wayside bushes, and provoked the green-finches to
fling their songs into the air from lichened palings and bramble sprays.
Onward we journeyed, bumping and jolting over the uneven turfy road, and
occasionally dodging the mounds of earth thrown up by the burrowing
rabbits. What a picturesque figure my companion presented in his faded
bottle-green coat adorned with large pearl buttons. His close-fitting
dogskin cap imparted to his swarthy, sharply-cut features a not
inappropriate poacher-like air, and I fancied the old man’s wrinkles had
deepened on his brow since our last meeting, just after his wife’s death
up in Yorkshire.
Sitting back under the hood, Jonathan here burst out with a pretty little
reminiscence.
“D’ye know, my pal, what this here bit o’ the Old Dyke brings to my mind?
Ay, deary me, it takes me back to times as’ll never, never come no
more—the days when I were a lad along with my people, and our delations
a-_besh_in (resting) on this here wery grass we’s passing over. See,
there, under that warm bank topped with thick thorns: well, I’s slept
there times on end with my dear mammy and daddy in our tent, and my
uncles and aunts would be _hatsh_in (camping) right along this sheltered
bit. I can see it all while I’s talking to you—the carts with their
shafts propped up and the smook a-going up from the fires afore the
tents, and the ponies and donkeys grazing under the trees yonder. Ay, my
son, them were the times for the likes of us.
“There’s one thing I minds” (this with a merry twinkle in his eye).
“I’ll tell you about it. It were a fine summer morning, somewheres about
six o’clock. My mammy and daddy was up making a fire to boil the kettle.
I heard ’em bustling about, and I ought to ha’ been up to help, but I
were lazy-like that morning. Then comes my daddy a-talking quick to
hisself, and I know’d summut were the matter. He lifts up the _tan-kopa_
(tent-blanket) and hollers at me as I lay stretched out upo’ the straw—
“_Hatsh oprê_, _tshavo_, _kèr sig_. _De graiaw_ and _mailas saw
praster_’d _avrî_. _Jaw_’_vrî_ an’ _dik_ for _len._’ (Get up, boy, make
haste. The horses and donkeys have all run away. Go forth and look for
them.)
“I were out and off in a jiffey. I never stopped to get dressed. What’s
more, me not thinking what I was a-doing, I throws away the only thing I
had on my back—my shirt—just as you toss off your coat when you’s in a
hurry, and away I goes down the long road to find the animals. Whilst I
were away, all the family, my big brothers and sisters, and them
delations as I spoke of, had gathered round the fires for _sawla-hawben_
(breakfast), an’ they hadn’t finished when I got back with the hosses and
donkeys. I’d clean forgot how I were fixed, an’, my gom, didn’t they
laff when they set eyes on me; an’ my blessed mammy, she shouts—
“‘_Kai sî tîro gad_, _m’o rinkeno tshavo_?’ (Where’s your shirt, my
pretty boy?) Into the tent I dived, an’ I weren’t long dressing, for I
wanted to be gitting my share o’ the _balovas_ an’ _yora_s (ham and
eggs).”
Occasionally the spinneys skirting the deserted road obscured the view of
the far-off Wolds, but one could forgive these temporary interventions,
for the sprays of larch and beech hanging out from the little woods were
delicate in their new spring garb, and as the breezes caught them they
rose and sank with a beautiful feathery droop. Now across the fields on
our left hand there came into view a familiar landmark, Dunston Pillar,
concerning which I once heard a story from the lips of Bishop Edward
Trollope, a whilom neighbour of mine.
At one time Lincoln Heath was a vast unenclosed rabbit warren dotted over
with fir woods and quarries, and at times travellers lost their way upon
it. So Dunston Pillar was erected, and a lantern was placed on top to
guide benighted wayfarers over the Heath. Doubtless the old lighthouse
served its purpose well, yet it did not always enable people to reach
their own homes in safety, for the locality was infested with robbers on
the look out for travelling gentry. Not far from the Pillar stood an old
coaching inn, the “Green Man,” and one night, after assisting their
driver to his box, two gentlemen who had been carousing there thought it
prudent to remind their man thus: “John, be sure you keep the Pillar
light upon your right, and then we shall reach Lincoln safely.” However,
when the two awoke at daybreak and found themselves still near the
Pillar, one of them called out, “Why, John, where are we?” Upon which,
John replied drowsily from the box, “Oh, it’s a’ roight, sir, the
Pillar’s on our roight.” And so it was, for he had been driving round it
all night.
As we jogged along, Jonathan would occasionally jerk his whip towards a
rich pasture, and with a sly wink would say, “We’s _puv_’d _our graiaw_
in that field more than once.” Let me explain. In order to give their
horses a good feed, the Gypsies when camping on the High Dyke would turn
their animals overnight into a nice fat pasture, taking care, of course,
to remove them early in the morning.
At this point we drew rein, and took a meal under the lee of a plantation
in whose boughs thrushes fluted and willow-wrens made fairy music. Not
far away, couch-grass fires sent their smoke across the level surface of
a loamy field, making the air of the lane pungent with the scent of
burning stalks. Seated there under the spreading trees, my Gypsy
companion related a poaching incident with some gusto, for it is next to
impossible to dispossess the Gypsy of the notion that the wild rabbits
frisking about the moors and commons are as free to him as to the owner
of the lands on which they happen to be playing.
[Picture: Netting Rabbits. Photo. F. R. Hinkins]
“One time when our folks was camping on the Dyke a keeper comes up to
the fire. It was evening, and we was having some stew, and the
keeper joined us. He were a pleasant, good-company fellow, wery
different from keepers nowadays, and after the meal was over, my old
mammy says to him, ‘There’s two things that’s wery good—a drop of
brandy to warm the cockles o’ your heart, and a bit o’ black ’bacca
to warm your snitch-end.’ And the keeper agreed. Then my daddy
brings out a black bottle and mixes him a drink in a teacup, and us
boys come peeping into the tent to listen to the tales what daddy and
the keeper got a-telling. I can see ’em all a-sitting there now, my
old mam a-puffing her _swêgler_ (pipe) and the keeper and daddy
blowing a big cloud till you couldn’t hardlins see across the tent
for smook. But mam never gave us boys nothink from the bottle, and
when the keeper began to get jolly, my dad tipped us a wink, and off
goes three of us wi’ the dogs, and we had a good time in the big
woods. Nobody came near us, and we didn’t carry the game home that
night lest we might meet a _gawjo_. We know’d a thing better than
that. We hid the game in a leafy hollow, and sent some of the big
gells in the morning with sacks, and they brought all home safe.”
[Picture: ’Neath the Hedgerow. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Two miles onward we stopped a few minutes at Byard’s Leap to look at the
large iron horseshoes embedded in the turf. It is these shoes that help
to perpetuate the local legend which gives the hamlet its name. Here is
the Gypsy version of the tradition.
“Hundreds and hundreds of years ago, there was a wicked witch what
lived in a stone-pit wi’ big dark trees hanging over it. This woman
did a lot of mischief on the farms all round, witching the stock in
the fields, and she cast sickness on people young and old. They say
the witch was once a beautiful girl who sold her blood to the _Beng_
(Devil), and that’s how she got her powers. At last she grew wery
ugly, and still went on working great harm. One day the folks of
that neighbourhood met together and tossed up to see who was to kill
the witch. It was a shepherd who had to do it, though it went
against his mind, as he had often played with the witch when she was
a beautiful girl. However, he promised to put an end to her, and set
off to choose a horse to ride on. All the horses on the farm were
driven down to a pond. One of them was a blind one, an old favourite
of the farmer’s, which he wouldn’t allow to be killed. Now, while
the horses were drinking, the shepherd was to _wuser_ a _bâ_ (throw a
stone) over the horses’ backs into the water, and the one that looked
up first was the one he was to ride. Well, if the poor old blind
horse didn’t lift up its head, so he saddled it and bridled it and
rode off to the stone-pit. When he got there he shouted, ‘Come out,
my lass, I want to speak to you.’
“‘I’m suckling my cubs;’—she had two bairns, and the shepherd was
said to be their father—‘wait till I’ve tied my shoe-strings, and
then I’ll come.’ Soon she came out, and, springing on to the horse’s
back behind the shepherd, she dug her claws into the animal’s flesh,
while the shepherd rode poor blind Bayard—that was the horse’s
name—towards the cross-roads, and on the way there the _grai_ (horse)
gave a tremendous jump—sixty feet—and both the riders were thrown
off; the witch was killed on the spot, the shepherd was lamed for
life, and the blind horse fell down dead.”
Starting from the first set of four horseshoes in the turf, I measured
the distance in strides to the next set of four, and, roughly speaking,
found it to be sixty feet.
Here our roads diverged, Jonathan going westward towards the “Cliff,”
while I took the turn for Sleaford.
Within three weeks from this meeting with Jonathan on the High Dyke, I
had business calling me to the town of Newark-on-Trent, where, as luck
had it, the May horse-fair was in full swing, and under the shadow of the
Castle by the waterside I met my Gypsy friend once more. In a corner of
the fairground, which was crowded with horses, I found Jonathan in
company with one of the Smiths, and the two men were drinking ale out of
big horn tumblers rimmed with silver. Petulengro had a nice _vâdo_, and,
going up to it, I read the name “Bailey, Warrington.” He explained that
he was breaking new ground, and therefore had taken a change of name.
Like most Gypsies, he had some pets—two dogs, a bantam cock and hen, a
jackdaw, and a canary. As Jonathan had absorbing business on hand, I did
not see him again until evening, when I joined him in his tilt-cart, and
we set off towards Ollerton. Underneath the vehicle were slung several
tent rods, notched, or numbered, in order to facilitate the erection of
the tent. Said he, “I’m expecting my nephew to join us to-morrow—that’s
Charley—he’s promised to come after us, so I must lay the _patrin_s
(signs) for him.”
Let us see how this is done.
At a crossing of two highways, a few miles out of the town, Jonathan went
to the hedge-bottom and plucked a bunch of long grass, then upon a
clearing among the tussocks on the wayside he divided the bunch into
three portions, carefully placing these with their tips pointing in the
direction which we were about to take.
[Picture: The Gypsy’s Parson on the Road. Photo. Fred Shaw]
“There now,” said the old man, “I’ve got to do this at every cross-road,
for there’s no telling exactly where we shall stop to-night. But Charley
is bound to find us, for he’ll _dik avrî_ for _mandi_’s _patrin_” (look
out for my sign).
There are many varieties in the form of the _patrin_, for no two families
use exactly the same sign. I have heard Gypsies who were about to
separate into parties, discussing the particular form of _patrin_ to be
used by the advance guard, so that those who were following would know
exactly what to look for, and whereabouts on the roadside they might
expect to find it.
A Suffolk friend, whilst sitting unobserved on a fence in the twilight,
watched some Gypsies laying a _patrin_ formed of small elm twigs, their
tips indicating the direction taken. A peculiar form of _patrin_ I once
saw was a wisp of grass tied round a sapling in the hedgerow.
For myself, I never see a _patrin_ on the roadside without recalling
Ursula’s pathetic story in _The Romany Rye_. Readers who know their
Borrow will remember how the woman followed her husband for a great many
miles by means of his signs left on the wayside.
Between Kneesall and Wellow a halt was made, and, having lit a fire of
sticks under the shadow of a wood, we warmed some stew in a black pot.
As we sprawled on the grass, a fox dashed across the road with a rabbit
dangling from its jaws, and Jonathan shouted in the hope of making
Reynard drop the bunny, but in vain. Then I told him how once I saw a
fox capture and kill a rabbit on the slope of a warren. He was about to
trot off with his prey when I gave a lusty shout which made him halt and
look round at me for a moment. Seeing that I was quite a hundred yards
away, Reynard dropped the rabbit, scratched a hole, and buried his
capture, carefully spreading the loose earth and stones over the place
with his sharp nose. Then he made for the woods. Now, though I searched
diligently for that buried rabbit, I could not for the life of me
discover it, the entire surface of the warren-slope being so dotted over
with recent rabbit-scratchings strewn with small stones.
While Jonathan was making some small repair of the harness, I drew from
my pocket a few newspaper cuttings and letters, in one of which was a
dialogue between two Gypsies, a tiny boy and an aged man, who had met
upon the road—
“BOY. _Sâ shan_, _baw_, has _tuti dik_’d _mi dadus ke-divus_?
MAN. _Keka_, _mi tshavo_, _mandi keka jin_s _tuti_’s _dadus_. _Sî
yov_ a _bawro mush_ wiv _kawlo bal_?
BOY. _Âwali_, _dova sî mi dadus_, _tatsho_.
MAN. Has _yov_ a pair o’ check _rokamiaw_?
BOY. _Âwa_, _dova_’s _mi dadus_.
MAN. Has _yov_ a _loli baiengri_ wiv _bawrê krafnê_?
BOY. _Âwa_, dat’s _mi dadus_, feth.
MAN. _Dawdi_, _mandi dik_’d _lesti tălê o drom odoi_ a-_mong_in a
_puri_ pair o’ _tshokaw_ to _tshiv oprê lesti_’s _nongê pîrê_.
BOY. _Dova sî keka mi dadus_, at all.”
_Translation_.
“BOY. How do, mate. Have you seen my father to-day?
MAN. No, my boy, I don’t know your father. Is he a big man with
black hair?
BOY. Yes, that’s my father, sure.
MAN. Has he a pair of check trousers?
BOY. Yes, that’s my father.
MAN. Has he a red waistcoat with big buttons?
BOY. Yes, that’s my father, faith.
MAN. Lor, I saw him down the road there a-begging an old pair of
boots to put on his bare feet.
BOY. That’s not my father at all.”
“A bit o’ the old style, I call that,” was my companion’s comment.
After we had yoked in and were about to start off, my old Gypsy pulled
out his handkerchief to catch a sneeze on the wing. He was successful,
and, unnoticed by him, a little wooden animal fell to the grass. On
picking it up, I handed back to him a dog with a tail broken off and one
foot missing, and he grabbed at it excitedly, saying—
“I wouldn’t _nasher_ (lose) that for a deal.”
This little fetish I remembered to have seen on a former occasion.
Jonathan had put it on the top of a gatepost and was talking to it, as he
puffed a cloud of tobacco smoke. For some reason, he was never willing
to discuss the subject.
[Picture: Comrades]
Pursuing our journey, we came to the little town of Ollerton, and after a
halt at one of the inns we travelled onward through Edwinstowe until we
reached a tract of ferny, heathery country, where we drew up, unyoked and
unharnessed the horse, and in wonderfully quick time had our little tent
erected. You have sometimes heard people say, “Poor Gypsies,” yet if you
had travelled with them, as I have, you would hear it said, “Poor _gawjê_
(gentiles), we feels sorry for ’em, cooped up in their stuffy houses.”
[Picture: Gypsies at Home. Photo. Fred Shaw]
There is nothing so healthy as a tent under the open sky, with the wind
blowing freely around you and the birds singing their canticles in the
woods hard by. I speak from experience in regard to tent life, for under
Jonathan’s tuition I learned long ago how to construct a Gypsy’s tent of
ash or hazel rods thrust into the ground and their tapering ends bent and
fixed into a ridge-pole, the whole being covered with coarse brown
blankets pinned on with stout 3-inch pins. (The Gypsies use the long
thorns of the wild sloe, or thin elder skewers.) In such a tent I have
slept nightly for many months in succession. It is grand to sit at your
tent door, building castles in the air, which at any rate cost very
little in upkeep.
Bosky Sherwood with its oaks and birches and uncurling bracken stretched
away towards the west, and, strolling along the unfenced road, lo, an old
woman with her apron full of sticks was seen coming down a glade. She
turned out to be Rachel Shaw, whom we accompanied to where, round a
corner, the camp of the Gypsy Shaws lay within a secluded alcove. This
was a pleasant surprise. Here, by the fire, sat Tiger Shaw and his three
grown-up daughters, fine strapping girls. I had often heard of
“Fiddling” Tiger, whose children were said to be excellent dancers. It
was said of their father that he could play tunes by thumping with his
fists upon his bare chest. We sat chatting with them till the moon rose,
a full golden disk, over the woods. The night air was sweet with forest
smells exhaling from bursting oak-buds and sheets of wood hyacinths. A
rare place for owls is Sherwood, and more than once as we sat there, a
broad-winged bird came out of the black shadows and flew away hooting
down the road.
Old Tiger, who hails from the Low Country between Lynn and St. Ives,
remembers when the “Jack o’ Lantern” used to flicker by night in those
parts in the days of his childhood, and of ghost tales he has a rich
store. One of his best tales is the ghost of the haystack, which I give
in my own words.
“One night a Gypsy and his wife went to take some hay from a stack at
the back of a mansion. As they were getting it, they looked up and
saw on the top of the stack a wizened old man wearing a
three-cornered hat, a cut-away coat with silver buttons,
knee-breeches, silk stockings, buckled shoes, and by his side hung a
curious sword. At this sight they stood amazed, then, gathering
courage, the Gypsy woman looked up and said—
“‘If this is your hay, sir, may we take a handful for our pony?’
“The figure on the stack never spoke, but nodded his head, so they
took a lot, and, departing, left a trail of hay reaching from the
stack to the camp. Next morning the squire of the mansion came
along.
“‘You rascally vagabonds, you thieving rogues, how dare you steal my
hay? If you had asked me, I’d have given you some.’
“‘But we _did_ get leave.’
“‘How so?’
“Then they described the gentleman on the stack, giving the details
as already told. At this the squire turned deathly pale, and laid
hold of a fence to steady himself.
“‘Why, you’ve seen my old grandfather who has been dead years and
years, and if he gave you leave, you can get as much of that hay as
you please.’
“And you may be sure they did.”
The first grey light of dawn was creeping down the road and waking the
life of the woods, when we were called from our slumbers by a cheery
“Hello,” and Jonathan sprang up to receive his nephew, who had already
drawn his _vâdo_ upon the grass; indeed, before we had dressed, Charley
had gathered sticks for the breakfast fire, and by the time that our meal
was finished, the sun was gilding the tree-tops. Now we were ready for
the departure, and, moving along the road, we found the Shaws also taking
the _drom_ (road). By the side of the _vâdo_ walked Tiger’s girls, their
loosened hair blowing in the wind, and going along they gathered the
yellow cowslips.
Onward through the gorsy lanes we travelled together as far as Mansfield,
where our merry party became divided, the Boswells taking the highway
leading through North Derbyshire to Sheffield, the Shaws going westward
towards Matlock, and myself setting off in a southerly direction.
Just where Robin Hood’s Hills begin to rise beyond the red-stemmed pines
of the Thieves’ Wood, I came upon a resplendent caravan of the Pulman
type drawn up on the wayside turf a long way from any village. Near by
sat two persons, a man past middle age, wearing a kilt and
tam-o’-shanter, who had for companion a pretty lass in her teens, with
long brown hair. On the ground between them stood a big crystal jar, and
with long forks the two were spearing cubes of preserved ginger. Their
backs being turned towards me, they gave a little start of surprise as I
went up, and, raising my hat, inquired, “Dr. Gordon Stables?”
“That’s my name,” said he, and, inviting me to join them on the grass, he
dispatched the girl for another fork, with which very soon I, too, was
spearing for ginger.
Here before me was the “Gentleman Gypsy,” whose writings had been
familiar to me since boyhood.
“You’ll think it strange,” said he, “when I tell you that I have no
memory for faces, but I rarely fail to remember the look of any tree I
have once seen by the roadside.”
When Gypsies were mentioned, the good doctor had grateful reminiscences
of them. During many years of road-travel he had often come upon the
wandering folk, and he liked them. They were cheerful people who never
forgot a kindness. They were most obliging withal, and readily lent
their horses to pull his somewhat heavy “house on wheels” up the stiff
inclines. Altogether, he had a very good word for the Gypsies.
By mid-afternoon I was standing in the churchyard at Selston, where lay
the fragments of the headstone of a Romany chief, Dan Boswell. An
irreverent bull was declared to have been responsible for the shattered
condition of the stone upon which a quaint epitaph was now faintly
visible. It ran as follows:—
“I’ve lodged in many a town,
I’ve travelled many a year,
But death at length hath brought me down
To my last lodging here.”
My late father-in-law, formerly a curate of Selston, remembered how
Gypsies paid visits to this grave and poured libations of ale upon it.
The adjacent common, long since enclosed, was once much frequented by the
nomad tribes.
My resting-place that evening was the pleasant Midland town of
Nottingham, and right soundly I slept after my long day on the road.
CHAPTER XII
THE GYPSY OF THE TOWN
IN the sunny forenoon I was walking in one of the airy suburbs of
Nottingham, and, passing by the entrance to some livery stables, I
noticed on a sign-board in prominent yellow letters on a black ground the
surname of Boss. This it was that brought me to a standstill in front of
the large doors in a high wall. “A Romany name,” I said to myself. “I
ought to find a Gypsy here;” and, pushing open one of the doors, I saw
before me an office with masses of brown wallflower abloom beneath a
wide-open window.
“Come in,” said a mellow voice, in response to my knock at the little
door in the porch, and, entering, I was confronted by a handsome man of
fifty, evidently the master of the establishment, neatly dressed, well
groomed, and unmistakably Romany.
“Mr. Boss?”
“That’s so.”
“_Romanitshel tu shan_?” (You are a Gypsy?)
“_Âvali_, _baw_. _Av ta besh tălê_” (Yes, mate. Come and sit down.)
The words were accompanied by a low, musical laugh that was pleasant to
hear. He then conducted me to a garden seat where we sat and talked in
the May sunshine. Generally my companion would use the inflected dialect
of the old-time Gypsies, but at intervals he dropped into the _pogado
tshib_, the “broken language,” as spoken by the average English Gypsy of
to-day. For which lapses he apologized: “I wonder what my old dad would
say to hear me _roker_in like a _posh-rat_?” (talking like a half-breed).
“One of the old roots was my daddy, who could talk for hours in nothing
but ‘double-words’” (_i.e._ inflected Romany). “There were the
‘double-words’ and the other way—the broken language. Some of us young
upstarts never picked up all the ‘double-words’ our parents used, and now
the poor old language is fast going to pieces. What with these Gypsy
novels and their bits of Romany talk—my girl reads them to me—why,
everybody is getting to know it. I once heard a gentleman say that our
language was a made-up gibberish. But he was wrong. It’s a real
language, and an old one at that. But, as I was saying, it’s getting
blown very much nowadays. Why, down in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex there
are whole villages where you can hear Romany talked on all sides of you.
The little shopkeepers know it. The publicans can _roker_ (talk Gypsy) a
bit. The stable-boys throw it at one another. And you can’t stir in the
lanes without meeting a kiddie with the eyes and hair of a Gypsy—blest if
you can.”
Noticing my flow of the _kawlo tshib_ (black language, _i.e._ Romany),
Boss tapped me familiarly on the knee: “I can’t reckon you up at all,
_rashai_ (parson). How have you picked it all up? Have you been sweet
on a Gypsy girl, or have you _romer_’d _yek_?” (married one).
Then with all a Gypsy’s restlessness, he sprang up and led me to his
villa residence over the way, where, apologizing for the absence of his
wife, he introduced me to his daughter, a tall girl of twenty or more,
gentle, refined-looking, with fathomless Gypsy eyes and an olive tint in
her cheeks.
“I’m going to take the _rashai_ for a drive,” said he. “We’ll be back
for tea.”
In the tastefully ordered drawing-room I chatted with Miss Boss, whose
Romany rippled melodiously. A piece of classical music stood open on the
piano, and several recent novels lay scattered about. On her father’s
return within a few moments, I caught the sound of a horse pawing
impatiently outside, and presently I was seated with Jack Boss in a smart
yellow gig behind a slim “blood” animal. As we drove through the town my
companion pointed to a carriage-horse in passing: “_Wafodu grai sî dova_”
(a trashy horse is that), and when I translated his words he chuckled
merrily. “To think that you know _that_, and you don’t look a bit like a
Gypsy. Not a drop of the blood in you, I should think. You puzzle me,
you really do. Perhaps you’ve got it from books. I’ve heard of such
works, but have never seen them. I suppose you priests can find it all
in Latin somewhere? Now, to look at me you’d never think—would you?—that
I’d been born in a little tent” (he bent his fingers in semblance of
curved rods) “and had travelled on the roads. But that’s years ago, yet
I like to think of those days. If they were rough times, we had plenty
of fun. Don’t I remember going with my old dad to visit the Grays and
Herons, Lovells and Stanleys, in their tents—real Gypsies if you like.
You don’t often _dik_ a _tatsheno Romanitshel konaw_” (see a true Gypsy
nowadays). “It gave me a deal of pleasure the other day to meet Ike
Heron in his low-crowned topper and Newmarket coat. One of the old
standards is Ike. Perhaps you know him?”
* * * * *
By this time we were speeding between green hedgerows in the open
country, and when at last we pulled up at a wayside hostelry, nothing
would do but I must drink my Gypsy’s health. Then the horse’s head was
turned for home. Romany topics being still to the fore, and having
recently heard of the passing of George Smith of Coalville, I asked my
companion if he had ever met the parent of the first “Moveable Dwellings’
Bill.”
“I can’t say that I ever crossed his path, and I don’t know that I
particularly wanted to. His letters in the papers used to _rile my
people terribly_. We weren’t quite so bad as he painted us. It was
plain enough that he knew nothing of the real Romanies, nothing whatever.
Why, his “gipsies” were nothing but the very poorest hedge-crawlers, with
never a drop of our blood in their bodies. The man meant all right, very
likely, but as for his methods—well, the less said about them the
better.”
As we parted after tea at his garden gate, I wished my Gypsy _kushto bok_
(good luck).
“A good thing _that_, Mr. Hall, and may we both have more of it.”
I retain very pleasant memories of that afternoon spent in the genial
company of Mr. Jack Boss, whom I have since met several times at
horse-fairs in different parts of the country.
* * * * *
It has fallen to my lot to know a number of Gypsies who have made their
homes in our cities, and who, though moving in respectable circles, still
retain the old secret tongue of the roads, as well as a marked spirit of
detachment from most of the ideas of the people among whom they live.
Pride of race remains. No matter how high he may climb, the pure Gypsy
is proud of his birth and secretly despises all who are not of his blood.
When talking of breezy commons, green woodsides, rabbits, pheasants, and
the like, I have seen the eyes of a house-dwelling Gypsy grow wistful as
he sighed at the visions and memories arising within him.
The sedentary Gypsies are now largely in the preponderance. Not that the
tendency to settle is entirely a thing of our times. Fifty years ago,
the Gypsy colony hard by my childhood’s home told of a movement not then
by any means new. Twenty years earlier, did not Ambrose (Jasper) Smith
say to Lavengro?—“There is no living for the poor people, the
_chokengris_ (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are
becoming either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle a bite of
grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire
upon.”
Many years prior to this complaint, the wholesale enclosing of the
commons, the harassing attentions of the press-gang, the flooding of our
roads by Irish vagrants, the barbaric administration of “justice,” and
the pressure of the times generally, had caused many a Gypsy to adopt a
sedentary life. Numbers of old-fashioned Romany families, finding life
no longer tolerable in England, were allured to the colonies by glowing
accounts received from migrated friends of the freedom and manifold
opportunities for making a living across the sea. All along since those
times it may be said that no year has passed without witnessing the
settlement of many Gypsies.
Some of my happiest “finds” in the way of house-dwelling Gypsies were
several aged members of the great Boswell clan, living in the town of
Derby, and to them I owe many reminiscences of Gypsy life in bygone days.
It was from Lincolnshire _Romanitshel_s of the same clan-name that I had
first learned of the Derby colony whose Gypsy denizens were so
entertaining that if ever I found myself within a few miles of their
Midland town I could in no way resist going to see them. It must have
been many years since first they settled there, and yet they would talk
of Lincolnshire as though they had quitted its highways and byways but
yesterday. Moreover, these Boswells were related to some of Borrow’s
originals, a fact which in my eyes lent no small glamour to these folk.
One cool spring evening I stood in a cramped yard in Derby, and, tapping
at a cottage door, I heard a tremulous voice inviting me to enter.
Within that little room my aged friend, Coralina Boswell, was warming her
thin hands at a few glowing coals in the grate. A flickering candle on
the chimney-piece cast a fitful yellow gleam on the old lady seated on
the hearthrug not far from a truckle bed. Wrapped about her shawl-wise
was a portion of a scarlet blanket throwing up her features, swarthy and
deeply seamed, into strong relief. She begged me to take the only chair,
which I drew up to the fire.
“I am glad to see you, my son. I’m a lonely old woman. My _tshăvê_
(children) are all far away.” Here she picked up a black pipe which she
had laid down on my entering, and went on chatting about her family,
mentioning a daughter named Froniga.
“That sounds like Veronica.”
“Yes, we name’t her after the one that wiped the dear Lord’s face wiv a
_diklo_” (handkerchief).
This set her thoughts a-wandering, and she went on to tell how last night
she saw strange things.
“I was in a _wesh_ (wood), thick and green, and I went on and on, and I
felt wild beasts rubbing agen me, but they never hurted me, ’cos my
blessed Saviour was a-sitting wiv His angels among the clouds just above
the roundy tops o’ the big trees. It was beautiful to see Him there.
And sometimes, as I sits here, I sees Him come into this room, as real as
when you came in yourself.
“What made you come so far to see the likes o’ me? It’s wery kind o’
you. I’s travelled all through your country, and a nice part it is. I
remembers the green fields all lying in the sun by the riverside.”
(Clearly she was thinking of the Trentside haunts of her clan.)
“Now, my son, will you _tshiv_ some _kosht_ on the _yog_ (put some wood
on the fire) and light that _vâva mumeli_ (other candle) on the
chimbly-shelf?”
On the walls of the room were several black-framed funeral cards, in the
midst of which was a blurred enlargement of a Romany _vâdo_ (cart), and,
seeing my eyes wandering towards this picture, Coralina broke out again—
“Ah, that’s my _rom_’s (husband) wagon there, as we’s travelled in many a
year, and there he is on the steps a-looking at me so loving-like. I
_roker_s (talk) to him sometimes, forgetting he’s been gone this many a
year.
“Mine’s a lonely life, and what would become of me I don’t know, if I
hadn’t some kind delations living in this _gav_” (town).
As I stepped out into the narrow yard, a bright moon silvered the
battered door and the little crisscross window of Old Coralina’s abode,
and, walking along a crooked street, I thought of the strange life of the
woman I had just left, an existence in which dreams and visions passed
for realities.
[Picture: A Mother in Egypt. Photo. Fred Shaw]
In the same town lived another aged Gypsy, Eldi Boswell, whose days were
chiefly spent on a couch-bed smoking and dreaming. Too decrepit to leave
her cottage, she loved to bask in the glow of the fire, and I recall no
more picturesque Gypsy figure than Old Eldi, with her furrowed face and
her long, dark ringlets straggling out from beneath a once gorgeous
_diklo_. It was easy to see that she had been a beauty in her time, and
in confidential moments she would say that in her young days she had
often been taken for her cousin, Sanspirela Heron (the lovely wife of
Ambrose Smith), whose forename was (in _Lavengro_) changed by Borrow to
Pakomovna. Certainly one could not help being struck by Old Eldi’s large
eyes. Much has been written about the peculiarity of the Gypsy eye,
Borrow and Leland in particular having enlarged upon this topic. Not of
a soft, steady hue like that of a pool in the moorland peat, it is a
changeful eye of glittering black endowed with a strange penetrative
quality.
Born about the year 1820 at Susworth, a hamlet on the Lincolnshire bank
of the Trent, Eldi remembered not only the names, but a host of tales in
which bygone Gypsies played a part.
My father, a schoolmate of Thomas Miller at Gainsborough on the Trent,
used to speak of the riverside Gypsies whom Miller presents in his
writings: _e.g._ in _Gideon Giles the Roper_ he gives pictures of the
Boswells, who were probably some of Old Eldi’s folk.
For instance, if I had been reading in Borrow’s _Gypsy Word-Book_ about
that famous old rascal, Ryley Boswell, I would say to Eldi—
“Did you ever know Old Ryley?”
“Sartinly, I minds him well enough. ‘Gentleman’ Ryley, they used to call
him. He was a tinker, like the rest of our _mushaw_ (men), but he
wouldn’t carry his creel (grinding-outfit) on his back like other people.
He must have it on a little cart, and a pony to draw it.”
“Is it true that he had more than one wife living with him at the same
time?”
“Well, yes, he had three wives. There was Yoki Shuri. You’s heard tell
of her, sure-ly—a wery clever woman she was at getting money. Then there
was Lucy Boswell, Old Tyso’s gell, a nicer woman never breathed, but
Ryley was rough with her and made her sleep in a little tent with his
dogs Musho and Ponto. Nobody blamed her when she left him and went to
’Merikay with her six children. Then there was Charlotte Hammond as went
away and took on with Zacky Lee. A lot of those Lees round London sprang
from them. In his best days Ryley had heaps of money and travelled all
over the country. He had a fine black mare, Bess Beldam, and he rode on
her a-hunting with the gentry up in Yorkshire. He was partic’lar fond o’
that country, was Ryley. I minds how fine he looked on his splendid mare
as had silver shoes, and him in a coat with golden guineas for buttons.
I’s heard of him riding slap-dash through a camp, springing over the
tents and scutching the _nongê tshavê_ (naked children) with his
_tshupni_ (whip): ‘I’ll let ’em know who I am—Ryley Boswell, King of the
Gypsies.’ But at last his luck left him, and he took hisself off to
London with his Yoki Shuri. Even to her as stuck to him through all, he
was unkind. One day he tied her to a cart-wheel and leathered her, ’cos
she told him of his ill-doings. At London, they lived in the Potteries,
but he never did no good in the big city. One day, as he was skinning a
rabbit, he scratched his hand and got blood-poisoning, and died in a
little house underneath the railway arches. They buried him in Brompton
Churchyard.”
Thus she would spin on at great length about Ryley Boswell.
Another time she would talk about the Herons. She was old enough to
remember Niabai and Crowy (the parents of my aged friend, Ike Heron), as
well as “handsome” William, “lame” Robert, Miller, Lusha, and other
members of the same family. According to her account, these fellows were
a tall, dark, big-boned, rough set.
Asked if she had ever known any Gypsy called Reynolds, Eldi replied—
“To be sure, there was Reynolds Heron as married my Aunt Peggy.”
Then I understood how Ambrose Smith (_alias_ Reynolds) came in his last
years to adopt for his own travelling surname the Christian name of his
wife Sanspirela’s father, Reynolds Heron, concerning whom it is recorded
that he used to fast on the five Fridays next after the season of Lent,
in memory of the five wounds of the Saviour.
I used to like to hear Eldi talk of the days when artists, squires, and
their ladies would pay visits to the camp. “There was my husband’s Aunt
‘Norna’—her proper name was Lucretia Boswell—she was a beautiful woman,
and Mr. Oakley painted a picture of her wearing an orange shawl about her
shoulders. She never married, and always travelled with her sister
Deloraifi, who never married neither. Ay, when I was a barefooted gell
with the wind a-blowing my hair about, the painting-gentlemen would get
me to sit for my picture; and squires would stop us in the lanes and try
to pick up our words.”
Rascalities of which modern Gypsydom knows nothing would creep into
Eldi’s memory-pictures. I mean the wayside robberies, the bloody fights,
the sheep and horse stealing of the rough old days of her girlhood. She
would get so rapt away in the past that she would speak of people dead
and gone as though they were living still, and, awaking to the present,
would remark with a deep-drawn sigh—“But, there, I’s seen none of ’em for
a wery long time.”
Under the heading of “A Modern Enchantress,” the following note,
describing my Gypsy friend, was communicated by an Irish clergyman to
_The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_ of the year 1890:—
“A short time since, a clergyman stopping at my house told me that
some time ago, when he was assisting in the work of All Saints’
Parish, Derby, he had residing in the parish a Gypsy family named
Boswell. One of the family was sick, and he found the greatest
difficulty in getting into the house; and when he did get in, the
sick man told him that the sooner he cleared out of the house the
better—if he came to talk about religion. In fact, it was only by
most judicious management, and by promises not to speak about
religion till the sick man spoke of it first, that he was able to
establish a footing in the house. But after a little time he got on
quite friendly terms with the family. He then discovered that when
any of the family were sick an old aunt came into the room and seemed
to perform a kind of incantation over them. His description of her
performance was very like what we read about Eastern Dervishes. She
gradually worked herself up into a species of frenzy, flinging her
arms about and muttering a kind of incantation or prayer, until her
voice ascended into a wild scream and descended again into a whisper
as the frenzy passed away, and she was left lying exhausted and
apparently in fainting condition on the floor. When she arrived at
this state she was immediately carried out of the sick-room by her
relatives.”
A grey morning with a lowering sky and splashes of rain had given place
in the early forenoon to a brilliant day, and sunbeams lit up the
Humber’s wharves and shipping as I stepped from the steam ferry upon the
Corporation Pier at Hull. Often before had I visited this busy seaport
on Gypsy errands, and the cause of my present visit was to seek out the
whereabouts of the descendants of Ryley Boswell, renowned in Gypsy
history. From Borrow’s _Romany Word-Book_ I had gathered that Ryley
hailed from Yorkshire, and Eldi Boswell of Derby, and the London
relatives of Yoki Shuri had informed me that Hull was a likely place to
locate some of Ryley’s offspring. A few inquiries brought me the
information that a Gypsy and his wife kept a little grocery store in a
back street, which I had no difficulty in finding, though, reconnoitring
outside the shop, I saw in its exterior nothing suggestive of the Romany.
Going inside, I rapped with my foot on the floor, and a middle-aged
woman, only distantly resembling a Gypsy, responded to my summons.
Pointing to a barrel of ruddy Canadians, I made request in Romany for two
apples, and immediately a change came over her face. The sound of the
Gypsy language produced a beaming smile where solemnity had sat. After
making a further purchase, I was invited into the living-room, where I
had no sooner sat down than the woman’s husband, looking still less like
a Gypsy, entered, but on my giving him a _sâ shan_ (how do?) he laughed
outright, and we had some fun. It tickled me not a little to hear the
pair discussing my physiognomy.
“Why, he’s got Newty’s _nok_ (nose), that he has now.” And the wife
asked me if I had brought news of a fortune left to them by their Uncle
Newty in Australia.
“Newty—well, I _have_ heard of him. Wasn’t he _bitshado pawdel_
(transported) to Hobart Town for horse-stealing? But for whom do you
take me?”
“One of Newty’s sons, for sure. And here’s your father’s photograph”
(handing me a daguerreotype in velvet-lined case). “Now look at yourself
in the glass. Why, you’re the wery spit of Uncle Newton.”
So I found myself taken for a grandson of Old Ryley and Yoki Shuri, and
my shopkeeping friends were themselves actual grandchildren of those
Gypsies of renown. Here was a lucky find, and since I was out upon a
genealogical errand, I availed myself of the present opportunity to scoop
in a goodly store of facts for my increasing collection of Romany
pedigrees.
A few years after this visit to Hull, a correspondent in Australia
imparted to me a number of facts relating to transported Gypsies. Here
are a few of his personal recollections of Newton Boswell (or Boss), whom
he had known as a travelling knife-grinder at Launceston in Tasmania.
“Newton, familiarly known as ‘Newty,’ seemed a nice quiet fellow,
tall and spare, with the remains of good looks. Polite and
well-spoken, he was not particularly Gypsy-looking, except for his
walk and build—not particularly dark. At the same time he _did_ look
like a Gypsy. His eyes were of a mild brown. He wore a big felt hat
and a coloured handkerchief. He told me that he had been popular
with ladies, that one lady who had a large house (in New South Wales,
I think), and with whom he worked as a servant or driver, took a
particular fancy to him, but he left that situation because he wanted
to be on the move. He said he did not like remaining long in one
place. Newton confirmed Borrow’s description of Ryley, in regard to
his wearing gold coins as buttons on his clothes, and other details.
When I read him parts of Borrow’s books, he was astonished to find in
print many facts familiar to himself. He once brought round his
fiddle for me to hear him play, which he did in the energetic,
spirited style peculiar to the race. He told me that he had
travelled all over Australia.
“Once, many years ago, there came up to Newton’s grinding-barrow in
Sydney a handsome, dark, beautifully dressed, young lady who, looking
him fixedly in the eyes, said—
“‘There’s a Romany look about you.’
“‘I beg your pardon, madam?’
“‘There’s a Romany look about you.’
“‘Why, madam, do I look any different from anybody else?’
“‘Well, you are wearing a yellow handkerchief round your neck.’
“‘Can’t anybody wear a coloured handkerchief, madam?’
“‘Yes, they can, but they don’t.’
“‘Well, madam, I _am_ a Gypsy—a pure-bred one too—my name is
Boswell.’
“‘And so am I a Gypsy—my name is Lovell.’
“She gave Newton a sovereign and invited him to call at her house.
He subsequently learned that she had married some well-to-do man (a
non-Gypsy) in England, who had brought her out to Australia, and that
on his returning suddenly from a trip to the Old Country, he shot her
in a passion of jealousy, and then shot himself.”
Some weeks later I was again exploring Hull for Gypsies. To me few
things are more agreeable than to hear Romany spoken unexpectedly.
Walking along a city street, if suddenly amid the din of the traffic I
hear a Gypsy greeting, I experience a very pleasant emotion.
In passing along the Anlaby Road, I heard from behind me, “_Sâ shan_,
_rashaia_?” (How do, parson?) and, looking round, I saw Mireli Heron’s
son, a jovial, harum-scarum fellow who has found a permanent home in
Hull. I remember him as a travelling Gypsy, and his garb was then
characteristic and becoming, but he had now adopted a coat, collar, and
tie of the prevailing fashion. The Gypsy of the town, I find, has no
desire to attract attention to himself; hence he becomes subdued in
appearance, more’s the pity. Having settled, he becomes “respectable,”
drab-coloured, unpicturesque.
At my request young Heron walked across with me to the Spring Bank, and
on the way thither he pulled up at a photographers shop window, and,
pointing to a picture, asked—
“What would you call that in _Romanes_?” (Gypsy).
“Why, a _kuskti-dik_in _rakli_ (a good-looking girl), to be sure.”
“_Keka_, _keka_ (no, no), I don’t mean that. What’s our word for
‘picture’?”
“_Dikamengri_.”
“_Keka_, that’s the word for a looking-glass.”
“Well, what would _you_ say?”
“_Stor-dui_-graph” (_Four_(4)-_two_(2)-graph, hence photograph).
The Romany tongue is plastic, and a Gypsy will playfully coin new words
in this fashion. As a Gypsy once said, “There’s always a way of saying a
thing in _Romanes_, if you can find it out.” Certain it is, if a Gypsy
has no old word for a thing, he will not be long in coining a new one.
Entering the Spring Bank Cemetery together, my companion pointed out the
grave of Yoki Shuri, the faithful consort of Ryley Boswell (or Boss), and
upon the neat stone I read this inscription, “In memory of Shorensey
Boss, who died Jan. 18, 1868, aged 65 years.” From a bush planted on the
grave I plucked a sweet white rose.
Further, I learned from my companion that Old Ryley’s son Isaac, commonly
called “Haggi,” had died in Hull only a few years previously. Like his
brother Newton, he too had visited Australia, and, returning to this
country, had settled in Hull, and was daily seen in the streets with a
grinding-barrow. A girl whom Haggi brought with him from Australia told
me (this was a few years later) that when as a child she was naughty,
Haggi would frighten her by saying, “If you’re not good, Old Ryley will
get you, and he’ll _maw tut_” (kill you).
One summer, when holidaying with my family at the breezy Yorkshire
coast-town of Bridlington, I heard that there were Romanies living in a
house at a little inland town, and, cycling over the hills, I spent a
pleasant hour in the home of a Gypsy, who in a sweet voice sang the
following ballad:—
“There were seven Gypsies all in a row,
And they sang blithe and bonny, O!
They sang until at last they came
Unto the yellow castle’s hall, O!
The yellow castle’s lady, she came out,
And gave to them some siller, O!
She gave to them a far better thing,
’Twas the gold ring from her finger, O!
At ten o’clock o’ night her lord came home,
Enquiring for his lady, O!
The waiting-maid gave this reply,
She’s gone with the roving Gypsies, O!
Come saddle me my milk-white steed,
Come saddle for me my pony, O!
That I may go by the green-wood side,
Until I find my lady, O!
So all through the dark o’ night he rode,
Until the next day’s dawning, O!
He rode along the green-wood side,
And there he found his lady, O!
Last night you laid on a good feather bed,
Beside your own married lord, O!
To-night in the cold open fields you lie,
Along with the roving Gypsies, O!
What made you leave your home and your lands?
What made you leave your money, O!
What made you leave your own married lord,
To go with the roving Gypsies, O!
What cares I for my home and my lands,
What cares I for my money, O!
What cares I for my own married lord,
I’ll go with the roving Gypsies, O!”
On leaving, I placed a silver coin in the singer’s tawny palm, whereupon
she sprang from her stool by the fire and gave me a resounding kiss on
the cheek.
CHAPTER XIII
WITH THE YORKSHIRE GYPSIES
AS I have said, Gypsies settled in houses now greatly outnumber their
roving brethren. Hence it has come to pass that nearly every town in the
land possesses a Bohemian quarter where you are met by dark faces and
sidelong glances speaking of Gypsy blood. Nor can the student of Gypsy
life and manners afford to neglect these haunts despite their dinginess,
for as often as not they contain aged Gypsies whose memories are well
worth ransacking for lore and legend, and in “working” these queer
alleys, one has often picked up choice reminiscences of bygone Gypsy
life.
[Picture: House-Dwelling Gypsies. Photo. Fred Shaw]
One morning I was walking under the grey walls of Scarborough Castle,
and, coming out upon the sparkling North Bay, I ran into the arms of a
_mush-fakir_ (umbrella-mender), who looked as if there rolled in his
veins a blend of Scottish and Irish blood, but I was mistaken, for he
told me he was Welsh and bore the name of Evans. Far-travelled, his
peregrinations had ranged from Aberdeen to Penzance, and seldom have I
met a man of his class so overflowing with varied knowledge. He asked me
if I knew William Street in Scarborough, but as a newcomer I admitted
that I had not so much as heard of the locality, and made request for
further information.
“I reckon William Street ’ll just suit you,” he declared. “It’s full o’
tinkers and grinders, Gypsies and sweeps, and the like.”
“A regular Whitechapel,” I suggested.
“Now you’ve hit it,” said he laughingly.
I asked him where he was residing in that street.
“At the Model, to be sure, and if you ax for Long Ambrose, you’ll find
they all know me.”
I further inquired of him as to the Gypsy inhabitants of that quarter,
and he gave me a list of the “travellers” who had settled there. These I
called upon leisurely during a holiday extending over three weeks. One
day I would look up one or two of them, and a few days later I renewed my
visitation by dropping in upon several others, and so on until this
little gold-mine was exhausted.
From the sea-front it was a change scarcely Aladdin-like to find oneself
in smoky William Street, a byway shut in by dingy walls, which in the
deepening dusk took on an air of mystery. A little way down the street,
I knocked at the door of Inji Morrison, but as there was no response I
lifted the latch, and, putting my head inside the room, I spake aloud,
“_Putsh man te av adrê_” (Ask me to come inside). A sound of shuffling
feet was heard, with tripping steps in the rear, and an old crone
tottered forward, along with her granddaughter, dark-eyed and
twenty-five. Following them into the kitchen, I saw the floor scattered
with willow pegs in various stages of manufacture. The pair accorded me
a genial welcome, though they scanned me curiously as if wondering what
sort of Gypsy I might be. When I mentioned some black foreign
_Romanitshel_s whom I had seen, the old mother remarked—
“I shouldn’t like to _dik lendi_ (see them); they would make me think of
the _Beng_.”
Then, as the old lady was dull of hearing, her granddaughter (in an
aside) said—
“You mustn’t mind, _rai_, what granny says; she’s getting old. As for
the _Beng_, there ain’t no sich pusson, I don’t think. There’s nothing
bad comes from below. There’s the springs we drink from, and the dearie
little flowers we love to gather. And there’s nothing but good comes
from above; the blessed sunshine and the light o’ moon and the rain that
falls—why, all of ’em’s good things, ain’t they? The badness is on’y
what people makes.”
Now through the open door leading to a cramped backyard came a hairy
terrier, followed by a small boy with saucy eyes and long, black curls
falling upon the shoulders of his ill-fitting coat. A great-grandson
from a few doors lower down was this quicksilver pixy, who sat himself at
our feet and cuddled the terrier near a few red embers in the grate.
“Mend the fire, my gal,” said Old Inji. And when the wood blazed and lit
up the room, granny filled her pipe from shavings cut from a cake of
black tobacco.
“I’ll never go to Seamer Fair no more now my man’s dead. ’Tain’t likely
as I could. ’Twouldn’t be the same, would it?”
“Seamer Fair, when is that?”
“Why, next week. There’ll be _dosta Romanitshel_s _odoi_ (many Gypsies
there) and music and dancing. Ay, and fighting too.”
Then she fell to rambling about her former life on the road.
* * * * *
Another day I sat with Vashti Boswell in her cottage down one of the
numerous yards branching out of William Street. Handing me a rude stool,
the work of some Gypsy carpenter, she sat herself on the fender. On her
forehead was a deep indentation which she said was made by a blow from a
poker at the hand of a mad relative. In vivid words she described the
occasion of that blow, and one pictured the desperate struggle between
the two women, till Vashti, fainting from loss of blood, fell in a heap
on to the floor, but not before Izaria, a stalwart fellow, attracted by
his mother’s screams, had rushed into the house and snatched the weapon
from the mad woman’s hand.
A little higher up the street lived this same son and Vashti’s nephew,
Joel Boswell, who were sent for, a neighbour’s child acting as messenger.
I have often noticed that Gypsies will call in their kinsfolk who live
near to share in the pleasure and excitement, likewise in the “grist,”
implied by a _rai_’s visit. Much to my surprise Vashti knew all about
Gypsy Court at Lincoln, and little wonder when she presently told me that
her husband was a half-brother of my old friend, Jumping Jack.
Talking of the past, Vashti declared that very few Gypsies in her day
went to church for marriage.
“My man and me jumped the besom, we did. That’s how we was married.
Like many more, we didn’t get _parson’d_, but we thought our old way just
as binding as if we’d been to church. My man were a good ’un as long as
he lived, and weren’t that enough for the likes o’ me?”
“Then you remember Jumping Jack?” I asked.
“_Âwa_ (yes), and he could jump too. He once cleared the backs of three
horses standing side by side, and I’s seen him jump the common gate times
and agen. When my husband was living, we used to travel Lincolnshire,
and now lots of us are living in houses scattered all over the _tem_”
(country).
At this juncture, Joel disappeared for a few moments, and on his return
bore a large jug of foaming brown ale, which was his way of welcoming the
_rai_, and pipes were soon in full blast.
It was from Joel’s lips that I heard about Mordecai Boswell, who died at
Retford many years ago. Mordecai was a fine-looking man, his hair
falling in long curls. He wore a dark green coat with big pearl buttons
and a broad collar, while his low-crowned hat might well have been a
family heirloom. He had a dancing booth at fairs, and would fiddle,
while his sister Matilda danced and played the tambourine. Frampton
Boswell used to join him at the St. Leger and other big races, and they
didn’t do badly with the dancing booth.
One day a _gawjo_ was chatting with Mordecai, and the talk turned upon
_hotshiwitshi_ (hedgehog).
“I couldn’t fancy eating that creature,” said the _gawjo_. “It makes me
feel queer to think of it.”
“Look here,” said Mordecai, “I’ll bet you a half-crown that before many
days are past you’ll have had some.”
The _gawjo_ grinned and shrugged his shoulders. Time went on, and the
_gawjo_ one day came upon Mordecai and his family having dinner on the
roadside.
“Won’t you have a bite with us?” said Mordecai.
“What’s that on the dish?” asked the _gawjo_.
“Duck,” replied the Gypsy, with a grave face. The _gawjo_ sat down and
was soon enjoying what looked remarkably like a duck’s leg. When the
meal was over and pipes were brought out, Mordecai got a-talking.
“Well, my pal, where have you been since I saw you last, and how have you
been faring? Has any Gypsy got you to swallow a bit o’ _hotshiwitshi_?”
“No, not likely. Didn’t I tell you that that nasty creature should never
touch my lips?”
“Then you’ve done it to-day. You’ve had _hotshi_ for dinner, and you
seemed to enjoy one of the legs finely. You smacked your lips over it
anyway. Hand up that half-crown.”
He did so, and, turning pale, walked away.
“I say, _rai_,” remarked Izaria, “did you know there’s some of the black
Herrens (Herons) stopping at Robin Hood’s Bay, not far from here? I seen
’em at Scarborough a little while back, and I shouldn’t wonder if some of
’em’s at Seamer Fair next week.”
Making a mental note of these two places, I resolved to visit them.
Then, happening to mention the _mush-fakir_ whom I had encountered near
the Castle, Joel said, “I once had an uncle as was very fond of this here
town, I mean Elisha Blewitt, as married Mordecai’s sister Sybarina; my
uncle was a _mush-fakir_, but he’s been dead for years. As for that
there man you spoke of, I believe there’s a long-legged _gèro_ (man) in
the same line o’ business living at the Model.”
Next day in the same quarter I waylaid Fennix Smith in company with a
Gypsy named Swales, who were about to set forth in a two-wheeled cart
drawn by a thin-legged pony, their destination being Malton. On their
way home they would call at “No Man’s Land,” where they expected to find
some of their travelling friends drawing up for Seamer Fair. Between
their legs I noticed a lurcher curled up, and, pointing to it, I said, “I
see you mean to have some sport on the way.”
“Yes, and we shan’t forget to bring you some-think, pass’n, if we has
good luck.”
After the pony-cart had rattled out of the street, I turned into the yard
of the Model, where several grinding-barrows stood under a lean-to, but I
failed to recognize Long Ambrose’s property among them, and, entering the
house, I learned that my _mush-fakir_ might be expected home at any time.
Walking up the street, I came upon a stalwart Gypsy woman standing at her
open door. Her husband, I gathered, was a tinker, and not a prosperous
one at that, judging by his wife’s tattered gown and woebegone air.
During our talk about her relations who travelled Lincolnshire, two
pretty little children continually tugged at her gown.
“If you go to Seamer Fair, _rai_, you’ll be sure to find some of my
folks, the Smiths, along with the Herrens and Youngs.”
Just then I heard a man whistling, and round the corner appeared Long
Ambrose pushing his barrow. In the yard of the Model we conversed, and
on his referring to Gloucester, I asked if he knew any of the Carews,
horse-dealers of that city.
“Oh yes, there was one of them sold a dyed horse to match a black
carriage-_grai_, and a wery ‘fly’ cove he was, but he got found out, and
had to do ‘time’ for that affair.” My _mush-fakir seemed_ to have
travelled everywhere.
* * * * *
Mindful of the intimation let fall by Izaria Boswell that there were
black Herons to be found at Robin Hood’s Bay, I made my way thither afoot
one brilliant July morning. A cool air from the sea tempered the sun’s
powerful rays, and it was good to inhale the sweetness of the summer
meadows where the haymakers were busy. Overhead the bent-winged silvery
gulls passed to and fro, and among the wayside bushes yellow-hammers
trilled their song which in childhood we translated by the words, “a
little bit of bread and no cheese.”
Perched on the top of a lofty cliff overlooking the North Sea, the
village of Robin Hood’s Bay seems almost to overhang a precipice, and on
stormy nights the wind roaring up the cliff flings the salt spray far
inland. The whole of the coast hereabouts is a delicious panorama of
rock-bound bays and coves.
On arriving at the village I had no difficulty in locating my Gypsies. A
fisherman, sun-tanned and jovial, pointed a stubby finger towards a
grassy plot whereon stood three caravans, and it was with a thrill of
pleasure that I drew near. Yes, there on the short turf sat one-armed
Josh and Nettie, his wife. Our greetings were hearty, and as we talked,
up came one of the Youngs.
“You are just the man I want to see, _rashai_,” and, taking out a
crumpled newspaper, he said, “There’s something in here about stopping
the Gypsies from camping at Scarborough.”
After a hunt through the paper, I came upon a report of a meeting of the
wiseacres of the town, and read their speeches about the “nuisances” said
to be created by the Gypsies.
“But there ain’t any Gypsies there now _we’s_ come away,” said Young.
“The people stopping there are only poor _didakai_s (half-breeds) and
_mumpari_. We don’t call _them_ Gypsies.”
The speaker was one of the purest-bred English Gypsies I have ever met.
Pure Gypsies draw a marked line between dirty, low-class van-dwellers and
themselves; but unfortunately the world at large makes no such
distinction, immensely to the detriment of the true _Romanitshel_.
East Yorkshire is a favourite country with the Herons and Youngs. Both
Josh and Nettie love it well, as did also some of their forelders. It
was at Robin Hood’s Bay that Nettie’s Aunt Whipney died long years ago.
I well remember a little tale about this old Gypsy. Tinker Ned, her
husband, had “found” a _kani_ (hen) for the pot. It was a small one, and
Whipney cooked it. When the tinker came home at a later hour than he had
promised, he asked—
“Where’s that _kani_? Have you cooked it?”
His wife answered by putting two fingers into her mouth, meaning, that
she had consumed the little fowl. Thereupon Tinker Ned picked up a loose
tent rod and gave her a good thrashing.
Close by sat Nettie’s daughter-in-law, Isabel, and her children, bonny
bairns, tumbled happily on the grass. As I looked at these Gypsies, all
of them pictures of blooming health—clear-eyed, clean-limbed, bare-headed
in sun and breeze—I reflected not without sadness on the fact that the
tendency of modern legislation is to curtail and render more difficult
the free, roving life of these children of Nature.
It was now late in the afternoon, and over tea we talked of other times
and old Gypsy ways. Nettie told of her own mischievous tricks when she
was a child, how she used to hide her mammy’s pipe in a tuft of grass
near the tent, and then watch her hunt up and down for it; her sister
Linda and she would have a good laugh to themselves over the trick, and
then what tales their old mother would tell them by the fire o’ nights.
One of these stories related to a horse belonging to some Irish Gypsies,
the O’Neils.
He was an aged animal and a favourite of the family. One day he fell
down and broke his back. Quite still he lay, and, taking him for dead,
they removed his skin, but in the morning he came and kicked at the
_vâdo_. He was a sight awful to behold. Now it happened that near at
hand lay a pile of sheepskins, so they hurriedly clapped some of these on
the poor horse and bound them round and round with willow withies. In a
little while the animal recovered, and the O’Neils used to clip a crop of
wool off him every year. And since the willow sticks took root and grew,
the Gypsies were able to cut materials sufficient to make many baskets.
Folk-stories of this character are classified by lorists as “lying
tales,” and in a subsequent chapter I shall give a sheaf of such stories
familiar to all our Boswells and Herons, wherever you may light upon
them.
It was Nettie’s daughter-in-law who, after listening to a ghost tale from
me, protested—
“_Mulos_ (ghosts)—I’ll tell you what I thinks about ’em. Folks who die
and go to the good place won’t never want to leave it, and as for people
what go to the bad place, I reckons they’ll have to stop there. ’Tain’t
likely they’ll ever have a chance to come back.”
Looking up the footpath leading to the camp, I saw Isabel’s little boy
dragging a dead bough behind him. Said Josh, waving his stump of an arm
towards the approaching child—
“The worst thing we Gypsies does nowadays is to pick up a dead stick or
two for the fire, and if we goes into a _wesh_ (wood) for a little
_shushi_ (rabbit) for the pot, well, I reckon there’s plenty left for
them as has a deal too many. If we sets a snare, it ain’t so cruel as
the keeper’s teethy traps, and the lord and lady as employs the keeper
talks in the Town Hall agen cruelty to animals—so I hear. Oh dear, it
makes me larf!”
As I turned to take a farewell look at the group, I saw the Gypsies
stretched at full length, puffing their pipes, while away beyond them lay
the deep blue sea, and the rugged coast trending north and south in
exquisite bays. It was a sight to cherish in the memory.
A cool rain in the early hours had given place to a hot July morning, as
I entered the village of Seamer already astir with its horse-fair.
Making my way between knots of colts and droves of ponies at whose heels
Gypsy boys were waving pink glazed calico flags, I went to where one of
the North-Country Smiths stood gesticulating before a group of
prospective buyers of colts, and discovered in him Elias Petulengro’s
son, Vanlo, whom I had known at Lincoln. Presently he walked across to
me and held out a hand of friendship. All around us were Yorkshire
travelling folk, and while chatting with Vanlo I witnessed a curious
thing. Three policemen stood talking together, and one of them had his
hands behind his back. A Gypsy, sidling up, slipped a half-crown into
this policeman’s hand. I saw his fingers close over the coin, yet he
never by the slightest sign betrayed this act of the Gypsy, which passed
unobserved by the other constables. Petulengro, who witnessed it,
explained that this sort of thing is not uncommon. It obtains little
privileges. “The _muskro_” (policeman), said he, “will turn a blind eye
to that Gypsy’s fire on some wayside to-night.”
[Picture: A Gypsy Lad. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Strolling through the fair, I spied old Clara Smith smoking a black clay
under a stone wall, and by her side sat her daughter Tiena and one of her
male relations, whom I had once met on a bleak fell in North-West
Yorkshire. It was he who told me the following tale as he sat making
pegs among the ling:—
“When I was a boy, I was taking _puvengri_s (potatoes) from a field, and
I looked up, and there stood a tall man staring at me over the hedge.
“‘You come along with me,’ he shouted, and, taking him for a policeman in
plain clothes, I obeyed, and went with him to a big building which I
thought was the Sessions House. There were many people inside, and a
gentleman was talking to them. At last he looked hard at me, and said,
‘Thou art the man.’
“So I jumped up and said, ‘Yes, I know I am, but I didn’t mean to do it.
It was my uncle as made me go. I’ll never steal potatoes no more.’ And
because I would keep on talking like a Philadelphia lawyer, they turned
me out without passing sentence on me. Next day I was walking with my
uncle, and the tall man as took me off to the place, passed by. ‘That’s
the policeman as arrested me,’ says I.
“‘Why, you silly boy,’ said my uncle, ‘that there man is the evangelist,
and he took you to his chapel, he did.’”
CHAPTER XIV
A NIGHT WITH THE GYPSIES—THE SWEEP OF LYNN—LONDON GYPSIES—ON EPSOM DOWNS
“IT ain’t fit to turn a dog out o’ doors, that it ain’t, so you’d better
make up your mind to stop all night.”
Saying this, Gypsy Ladin closed the porch door, but not without
difficulty, for a gale was battering upon the wayside bungalow. Half an
hour ago, as I hurried along the willow-fringed “ramper” on my way to see
this old Romany pal, black rain-clouds, bulging low over the fenland
wapentake, had foretold an approaching storm; and now with the descent of
the May night the tempest had burst in full fury upon the land.
Torrential rain, swift swelling rushes of wind, and brilliant flashes of
lightning made me glad to be housed with my friend in his fire-lit room.
Hidden by a dense hedge from the highway, this Gypsy abode stood back
amid a cluster of apple trees, and a daylight view of the place would
have revealed to you an entirely nondescript habitation, with here a
home-made porch, and there a creeper-grown extension sheltering a green
caravan in which Ladin and his wife Juli have travelled many a mile over
the smooth causeways of the far-reaching flats.
Let me picture for you the tiny apartment where we now sat happily
blowing clouds of tobacco smoke. Over the wide fireplace, which occupied
one side of the room, rose a high mantelpiece surrounded by coloured
prints of Derby winners, divided one from another by glistening
horse-bits and brass-bound whips. Opposite the fireplace a small
casement looked out upon a bulb-garden aglow by day with hyacinths,
tulips, and narcissi—a common sight in the Fens. The side walls were
adorned with portraits of Gypsy relatives deceased and living, and the
brazen ornaments on parts of a van-horse’s harness gleamed in the rays of
the pendant lamp. Before the fire sat my friend and his wife, a tall,
striking woman of the old-fashioned Draper clan, and along with us were
two youthful sons of the house, Rinki and Zegul, smart, quick-eyed
fellows, who occupied a home-made bench opposite my seat of honour in the
chimney corner. At our feet lay a dark lurcher, a type of dog whose
peculiar qualities are well appreciated by Gypsies.
I have already spoken of my friend as “Gypsy” Ladin, but his ruddy
complexion and grey eyes are scarcely suggestive of the pure Romany.
About the good “black blood” of his wife, however, there can be no manner
of doubt. Probably my friend would agree with the roving _gawjo_, who,
having married a pure Gypsy, declared that the mingling of gentile and
Romany crafts was a desirable blending of qualities. Did not Lazzy
Smith, renowned in Gypsydom, once say—
“Ain’t it in the Bible that God’s people should multiply and be as
one? It ain’t no sort o’ use at all a-goin’ agen the dear blessed
Lord’s words. Why, a cross is good, even if it be only in wheat,
ain’t it, now?”
Belonging to East Anglia, Ladin’s forelders have mingled a good deal with
the Herons who formerly travelled the counties bordering upon the North
Sea. Himself akin to the Chilcots and Smiths, Ladin has inherited not a
few traditions of these families.
“Do you remember Yoki Shuri Smith?” I asked.
“You mean Old Ryley’s wife? Ay, I mind her well, but Ryley I don’t
remember. Shuri”—Ladin shivered as he uttered the name—“was looked upon
as a _tshovihawni_ (witch) by our folks. We allus thought it unlucky to
meet her on the road of a morning. I’ve known my folks turn back,
saying, ‘It ain’t no use going out to-day.’”
After a discussion of Shuri’s “powers,” I ventured upon a tale of my own
experience of a witch who lived in a parish of which I was formerly
curate-in-charge.
About a fortnight after my arrival at the Rectory, our aged gardener took
me into his confidence.
“Excuse me askin’ if you’ve seen Old Betty what lives agin the well at
the bottom of the lane? You must mind you don’t never get across wi’
that woman, or she’ll sartinly mek things awk’ard for you.”
The man’s meaning was that Betty had “peculiar powers.” A widow of sixty
or more, she attended no place of worship, and rarely covered her grey
head with anything more than a shawl. Besides her allowance from the
parish, she managed to make a little money by selling ointments for
wounds and sores, and many a cure has been wrought by means of her
home-made compounds. My first meeting with her was on the Feast of St.
Thomas, called in those parts “Mumping Day.” At my door stood Old Betty
asking for a bit of silver, and a few yards behind her came several other
widows. Hesitatingly I stood just over the threshold, when suddenly,
before I could step aside, a lot of soft snow slid from the house-roof
with a splash upon my bare head, while Old Betty and her companions
laughed loud and long. The village gossips duly spread it abroad that
Betty had, by her “peculiar powers,” brought down the snow upon the
parson’s head. Anyway, I resolved for the future to be more prompt in
the exercise of that unfailing charm against Betty’s witchcraft—a silver
shilling.
* * * * *
“Did you ever see my Aunt Sarah at Blackpool?” said Juli.
“Yes, I once had tea in her tent on the South Shore. Did she and her
_rom_ (husband), Edward, ever travel on this side of England?”
“Sartinly, they did. Ned’s daddy, Tyso, lies buried in your country.
Poor old man, many’s the time I’ve heard the tale about him and the
shepherd boy.”
“What was that?”
* * * * *
“Well, Tyso was once _hatsh_in (camping) on a Norfolk common and got
a-talking with a boy tending sheep. Says the boy to Tyso—
“‘I can tell you where there’s a buried box full o’ money.’
“‘Show me the place,’ says Tyso.
“The boy took him to a little low, green hill, and then they fetches a
spade and digs into it. Sure enough they bared the lid of an old iron
chest with a ring on top, and both of ’em tugged hard at the ring, but
the box wouldn’t budge an inch. Just then Tyso swore, and the ring
slipped outen their hands, and down went the box and they never see’d it
no more.”
* * * * *
“One time the Herrens (Herons) used to come about here a good deal.
There was handsome William, a wery notified man he were. Then there was
Old Niabai and Crowy. Their son Isaac had a boy born at Lynn close by
here—that was Îza. You’ll know him sure-ly. I’ve often met Ike’s
half-brother Manful in Lynn. I can see him now, a little doubled-up old
man. I ’spects you’s heard tell of Manful’s diamond? One day in a
public, he catch’d sight of something shining among the sand—they sanded
the slab floors in them days—and, whatever the thing was, it shone like a
bit of cut-glass, and at first he thought it wasn’t worth stooping for,
but when the taproom was empty he picked it up, and _dawdi_! if it wasn’t
a diamond as big as a cobnut. So away he takes it to a pawnbroker’s
shop, and the head man told him it were worth hundreds of pounds. My
dear old dad once saw it with his own eyes.”
* * * * *
While the black trees shuddered outside in the tempest, Ladin next told a
story I shall never forget.
* * * * *
“When my uncle, Alfred Herren, and his wife Becky was a-travelling in
Shropshire, they draw’d their wagon one night into a by-lane—so they
thought—just outside the village, but daylight show’d ’em it were a
gentleman’s drive leading up to a red mansion among the trees. Did my
uncle pull out when he found he’d made a mistake? No, for a wery good
reason he stopped where he was. His missis had been took ill in the
night, and a little gell were born. The doctor gave no hopes at all for
the wife, and just when things looked blackest, a groom on horseback came
up from the mansion, and, slamming on the wagon-side with his whipstock,
shouted—
“‘Clear out of here, you rascally Gypsies, afore my master sees you.’
“Uncle Alfred put his head outen the door, and said—
“‘Stop it, my man. There’s a woman a-dying in here. I’d take it kind of
you to go to the big house yonder and ask the good lady to come and pray
by a dying Gypsy.’
“Off goes the groom with the message, and soon the squire’s lady come
along carrying a basket of good things, and did all she could for Becky,
but the poor thing died. After that the parson came to christen the
baby.
“‘What name?’ he asks.
“‘Flower o’ May,’ says my uncle. The wagon stood under a may-tree, and
the flowers were dropping on the grass like snow. Now, the squire and
his lady come along. Says he—
“‘The Almighty has never given us the blessing of a child, so we would
like to adopt this little girl of yours and bring her up as our own.
Here’ (holding up a bag) ‘are one hundred sovereigns. Take them, my good
man, and let us have the baby.’
“‘Nay,’ says my uncle, ‘you may keep your bag of gold. I can’t never
part wi’ my little gell.’
“Years went by, and at last my uncle fell ill and died. Then my own
parents took care of the little gell, and they changed her name to Rodi,
for they couldn’t abide to hear the name Flower o’ May no more; it
reminded ’em too sadly of them as had gone.”
* * * * *
On arising from my couch next morning, it was a pleasure to find that the
air was moderately quiet, and patches of blue were showing between the
rolling clouds. Breakfast over, my friends showed me round their garden
gay with flowering bulbs. Gypsy-like, they had numerous pets—a pair of
long-eared owls, a jackdaw, a goldfinch, some dainty bantams, and two or
three pheasants in a wired poultry-run. Now the Gypsies came as far as
the highway to see me off. Tender leaves and twigs strewed the road, as
I mounted my bicycle, and after pedalling through several villages, the
roofs of King’s Lynn began to appear ahead. A turn in the road at last
brought me to a bridge spanning the broad river Ouse discoloured by
flood-water. In a yard of the tavern just across the river, the chimneys
of several Gypsy vans were to be seen. I therefore dismounted to make
inquiries. Sunning himself on a bench outside the inn, sat a tall Gypsy
man emptying a mug of Norfolk ale.
“_Sâ shan_, _baw_?” (How do, mate?) said I, sitting down beside him. He
turned out to be one of the Kilthorpes, and his pals in the yard were
Coopers from London.
* * * * *
An hour or two later, as I was loitering at a street corner in Lynn, I
observed not far away a two-wheeled hooded cart drawn by a tired horse.
From under a dark archway they emerged, and, coming into the light, I
noticed an old woman under the hood smoking a pipe, and just then, from
behind the cart stepped a sweep, who disappeared into a coal-yard,
carrying a sack in his hand. Following him, I heard him say—
“Half a hundred-weight, missis.” A burly woman, having weighed out the
coal, poured it into the sack—a bottomless receptacle—and the black lumps
were scattered about the floor.
“_Muk man peser_” (Let me pay), said I, from behind the sweep. Whereupon
the grimy old fellow looked round with an amazed stare.
“_Pariko tuti_, _rai_” (Thank you, sir), he stammered out, and, producing
a piece of string, he tied the sack bottom securely, and the two of us
picked up the littered coal.
“Where are you living?” I asked.
“_Pawdel_ the _pâni_” (Across the water) “in West Lynn. We’ve been away
for three months, and we’re going round to our house now. Come across
to-night. Anybody will tell you where Old Stivven lives.”
When the yellow street-lamps were twinkling in the dusk, I groped my way
down a long dark passage, and at the foot of a flight of slippery wet
steps, found a black coble moored. For ten minutes or so I waited till a
man in a jersey appeared and rowed me across the broad, rolling Ouse. At
the “White Swan” inn I made inquiry for my sweep, and was given an
address, and discovered a sweep, but, alas, he wasn’t my man at all, and
I began to think Old Stephen had tricked me. But now I was given another
address, where I found my man and his wife in their living-room, amid a
spread of blankets and bedding airing in front of a bright fire. For a
while we talked, and then at the sweep’s suggestion we moved across to
the “White Swan.”
Stephen had formerly travelled with Barney Mace, an uncle of Jem, the
world-famed pugilist, who had a boxing booth which he took to country
fairs up and down the land, and in order to _tâder_ the _gawjê_ (draw the
gentiles), Stephen and Poley (Barney’s son) would engage in a few rounds
just outside the booth.
The sweep had known Old Ōseri Gray, commonly called “Sore-eyed Horsery,”
who died some years ago at King’s Lynn. He was a renowned Gypsy fiddler.
If he heard a band play a tune, he would go home and reproduce the air on
his violin, putting in such variations, grace-notes, shakes, and runs,
that none of his fellows could compare with him.
* * * * *
Among the sweep’s reminiscences was a curious story about an eccentric
Gypsy who had a fancy for carrying his coffin in his travelling van. The
man had a daughter, a grown woman, who went about with him, his wife
having died some years before. One afternoon while she was away with her
basket in the village, her father took out the coffin and was busy
repainting it when a thunderstorm descended. The Gypsy took shelter in
his _vâdo_, which was drawn up near an elm tree on a bit of a common.
Picture the grief and dismay of his daughter on returning to find her
father a corpse, for a flash of lightning had struck the tree and the van
and killed the old Romany. On the day of the Gypsy’s funeral, the vicar
of the parish had the flag flying half-mast high on the church tower,
which everybody said was a kindly feeling to show for one who was only a
wandering Gypsy.
On asking my sweep about the house-dwelling Gypsies of Lynn, he directed
me to the abode of the aged widow of Louis Boss (son of the famous Ryley
Boswell or Boss), and a charming reception she gave me in her spotless
cottage in a retired court. The sweep had told me of this old lady’s
liking for snuff, and a visit to a _tuvalo budika_ (tobacco shop) enabled
me to give her a little pleasure. By the fireside she refilled her shiny
metal box, and, having offered me a trial of the pungent dust, herself
took deep, loving pinches, with the air of a connoisseur. Indeed, the
snuff cemented our friendship forthwith. Here I am reminded of a story
telling how Dr. Manning (of the Religious Tract Society) once employed
snuff in a very different fashion. When visiting Granada in Spain, he
was beset by a begging crew of swarthy men, women, and children, and as
he stood in the middle of the clamouring horde, he took out his
snuff-box. Immediately all the Gypsies wanted a pinch. He obliged them,
so long as the snuff lasted, taking care to keep a tight hold of his
silver box. Soon the Gypsies were all sneezing and laughing
immoderately, and amid the commotion the good doctor managed to make his
escape.
The road from King’s Lynn to East Dereham led me through villages astir
with Whitsuntide festivities. At one point I turned down a by-lane, and,
resting at the foot of a tree within view of Borrow’s birthplace at
Dumpling Green, I observed a party of donkey-folk trudging along with
their animals towards Dereham. Local mumpers were these people, a
draggle-tailed lot, and I could not help reflecting upon the difference
between the poor wanderers who now pass for Gypsies and the Petulengros
and Herons of Borrow’s time.
In the church of East Dereham, one’s fancy pictured the boy Borrow in the
corner of a pew fixing his eyes upon the dignified rector and parish
clerk “from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of
the wondrous works of the Most High.”
It was like living in _Lavengro_ to wander about the alleys and lanes of
old Norwich and through the ling and fern on breezy Mousehold above the
town. Up there amid the camping sites and the fighting-pits, it was not
without sadness that I read on a notice-board—“No Gypsy, squatter, or
vagrant shall frequent, or resort to, or remain upon the Heath.” O
shades of Jasper Petulengro and Tawno Chikno, changed indeed are the
times since the days when ye loved and fought and trafficked within the
precincts of beautiful old Norwich!
Concerning my trip by boat from Yarmouth to London, which was entirely
lacking in Gypsy interest, nothing need be said here.
London is in parts strongly tinctured with Gypsy blood. Let anyone walk
along the streets which have been built upon the sites of the old
metropolitan Gypsyries, and he will surely see dark faces and black eyes
telling how the Gypsies still cling to these localities. All around
Latimer Road Station, which stands upon the Potteries, Gypsies are to be
found living in narrow courts and dingy lanes.
On my way to Epsom on the eve of the Derby, I passed a few happy moments
with my aged pal, Robert Petulengro, in whose back room at Notting Hill I
have often been regaled with racy stories and touching reminiscences of
old-time Romany life. There is something suggestive of the cleric in
Bob’s demeanour, and a stranger would never suspect that my
placid-looking friend had led a wild, roving life. It is when he loses
himself in a tale that his mild ministerial air gives place to a vivacity
characteristically Gypsy.
To the Gypsyry on the Potteries came nomads named Heron and Leatherlund
in the year 1854. (Some of their descendants still reside at the backs
of the mews in Notting Hill.) They were the survivors of a sad disaster
which in the previous year had befallen a party of hop-pickers at Hadlow
in Kent. Through the kindness of a Gypsy woman who was “saved from the
flood,” I am able to reprint a portion of an old tract giving the Rev. R.
Shindler’s version of “The Medway Disaster.”
“In Kent you may still be told of a sad catastrophe which befel a
party of hop-pickers, in the year 1853, as they were returning to
their temporary habitations after a day’s work. The scene of the
alarming event was in the parish of Hadlow, near Tunbridge, Kent. It
is well known that thousands of poor people flock down into Kent for
the hopping. Some of these are Gypsies; some may be described as
house-cart people, who travel from place to place for the greater
part of the year, selling their wares—brushes and brooms, tin-ware,
earthen-ware, and such-like; but by far the larger part emerge from
the lanes and alleys and courts of London. To the last especially,
but to the others also, the hopping proves, when the weather is fine
and the hops good, a pleasant recreation as well as a profitable
employment. A number of people of Gypsy character and habits were
employed by a farmer who resided in the parish of Tudely, and who had
hop gardens also in Hadlow parish. It is a good rule among the
hop-farmers, that when their gardens are any considerable distance
from the homes of the natives or the encampments of the strangers,
the pickers should be conveyed in wagons to and from the gardens. In
this case, the river Medway had to be crossed in going to and from
the gardens, and the only means of crossing was a wooden bridge of
considerable span, and high above the current. The bridge was
considered dangerous, especially for spirited horses, who were
alarmed at the noise made by their own feet. The bridge was rendered
even more dangerous by reason of the rather frail open wooden rails
which flanked it right and left.
“On the morning of the day on which the catastrophe occurred, several
parties passed over the bridge in safety, and in the evening parties
of natives, or ‘home-dwellers,’ had returned without any mishap; but
as a party of Gypsies and suchlike were being conveyed back, the
horses suddenly took fright, ran the wagon against the side of the
bridge, which gave way, and wagon, horses, and people were
precipitated into the strong current below, and no less than thirty
were drowned. I was then pastor in a neighbouring parish, and had
taken a deep interest in the religious condition of the hoppers,
preaching in fields and stackyards and elsewhere near their
encampments, and distributing tracts and New Testaments. The sad
event mentioned above stirred my heart a great deal, and I felt
impelled to write a short tract. The thirty hop-pickers were buried
in Hadlow churchyard in a common grave, the spot being marked by a
monument recording the names of those who perished in the waters of
the Medway.”
There are in Battersea numerous “yards” under railway arches, where
living-vans of “travellers” used to be seen all the year round. Very
much diluted is the Gypsy blood to be found nowadays in these “yards.”
It is these degenerates, mostly Londoners bred and born, who at times
give so much trouble to the local authorities in Surrey.
Upon Hampstead Heath, and at Wormwood Scrubbs, a sprinkling of Gypsy
faces may be seen among the show-folk on a Bank Holiday, and at Edmonton,
Mitcham, and near Southend-on-Sea, I have met Gypsies all the year round.
If the Yorkshireman goes to see the St. Leger because he has an
instinctive love of horse-flesh, the Cockney resorts to Epsom Downs on
the Derby Day to smell the scent of green turf and to take part in the
most stupendous picnic in the world.
Not merely to see a crowd of nearly a million human beings, but to sample
Epsom’s Gypsies, was the object of my visit to the Downs one
unforgettable June day. London’s unyielding pavements mean for me, after
a day or two of them, an unpleasant foot-soreness, hence it was a relief
to step forth upon the springy sward outside the Downs Station. Like
children let loose from school, my fellow-travellers from town laughed
and joked, whistled and sang, as briskly they moved towards the course.
It was among the gorse bushes on the sunlit hilltop that I caught my
first glimpse of the Gypsies, and to one acquainted with the swart
_Romanitshel_s of East Anglia and the Northern Counties, the folk of the
ramshackle carts and tiny tents were distinctly disappointing. Ruddy,
fair-haired, and poorly-clad, were many of them; what a falling off from
the horde of dark Gypsies assembled at some of our North-Country fairs!
While I was chatting with a metropolitan policeman, up came a tall Gypsy
girl vending what purported to be tiny squares of cedar wood, though the
specimen I purchased for threepence smelled a good deal more like the
innermost layer of the red bark abounding in the strips of pine forest
around Tunbridge Wells. When I inquired of the damsel as to what Gypsies
were present on the Downs, she replied, with a low laugh, “You’s never
got to go far in these parts for to catch an Ayre. My dad’s an Ayre, but
my _dai_ (mother) was a Stevens. Over there” (pointing to a town of
Gypsy caravans and a country fair combined opposite the Grand Stand)
“you’ll find some of the Matthews, Penfolds, and maybe a few of the
Bucklands.”
[Picture: On the Racecourse. Photo. Valentine]
Crossing the course, I made my way to the part of the Downs indicated by
Cinderella Ayre, and though I rubbed shoulders with a good many sunburnt
travellers in corduroys, and show-women in gowns of red and green, the
first real Gypsy it was my good fortune to meet was Davy Lee, the ancient
vagabond who “planted” the _duker_in-_mokto_ (fortune-telling box) upon
George Smith of Coalville. Although nearly blind, Davy managed to dodge
in and out of the crowd, and, taking me up to his wagon, found time to
chat about his father, the renowned Zacky Lee.
“My daddy was stopping one night in a field, and before going to bed, he
looked out and there was his white donkey—leastways so he fancied. It
was roaming about, and he set off to catch and tether it, so as he
shouldn’t lose it. But do whatever he would, he could never get up to
the animal. The nearer he tried to come at it, the furder off it allus
was, till at last he know’d that what he’d been chasing all night was not
his donkey at all, but the Devil.”
Lounging on the grass, I noticed that the great event of the afternoon
had arrived. Sleek, lean horses cantered along the course and passed out
of sight. Amid a confused hubbub of voices, several moments went by.
Now the glasses were levelled, and a profound silence settled on the
crowd. All eyes were turned upon a little knot of horses appearing round
Tattenham Corner. Then the sound of many voices swelled into a roar and
died down again when the numbers went up.
Prominent at these races in days gone by was Matthias Cooper, a Gypsy to
whom the late King Edward, when Prince of Wales, would toss a golden
sovereign. A well-known figure was Matty, attired in white hat, yellow
waistcoat, black cut-away coat, and white trousers. Hovering about this
old Gypsy was an air of the Courts and the Wilderness, for had he not
mingled with royalty nearly all his life, this old “Windsor Froggie”? It
was from him that Charles G. Leland obtained most of the materials that
went to make his work entitled _The English Gipsies and their Language_.
Matty is now no more, but his sons, Anselo and Wacker, still attend the
Epsom races year by year.
The great carnival was at last subsiding when I found myself in the tent
of Anselo Cooper and his wife, with whom I took tea. I am not likely to
forget my ride from the course to Epsom Town. As the Coopers were not
leaving till the end of the week, they begged a lift for me from some
friends of theirs who were going to the town. Our “carriage,” a
two-wheeled affair, was drawn by a gaunt, long-legged horse, and along
with some strange dark Gypsies I sat upon a pile of smoky tent-covers.
We sped along the Down-land in a fashion which rocked us terribly. The
very policemen laughed as we went by, but we reached the town in safety.
CHAPTER XV
TINKERS AND GRINDERS
A PLAGUE of an incline to joints stiffened by age, the Steep Hill at
Lincoln is for me aureoled by all the fair colours of youth. Have I not
more than once rent my nether garments in gliding down the adjacent
hand-rail? Likewise in the time of snow have I not, defiant of
police-notices, made slides where the gradient is sharpest?
Now it happened one day that under the shadow of the ancient, timbered
houses just below the crown of the hill there stood at his workshop on
wheels a Gypsy tinker whose wizened figure and general air of queerness
would have charmed a Teniers, and I, a town boy with no small capacity
for prying, hovered at his elbow, studying his operations. Suz-z-z-z-z
went the tinker’s wheel, as the sparks scattered in a rosy shower from
the edge of a deftly handled blade. Then of a sudden something happened,
causing me to jump as one who had been shot. There was a dull thud of a
falling body, followed immediately by a shrill cry issuing from the
throat of a sprawling pedlar—
“Stop my leg, stop my leg!”
A glance at the poor fellow revealed the whole story. His wooden leg,
having become detached from its moorings, was rolling down the paved
incline. Several persons were passing at the time, and more than one
made a dash to recover the defaulting limb, but, youth’s suppleness
favouring me, I managed to capture the elusive treasure, and up the hill
I bore it in triumph. With admirable agility the tinker reattached the
limb, and the pedlar went on his way rejoicing.
“Gimme yer knife, boy,” said the tinker.
I had one resembling a saw, which he whisked from my hand and duly
restored with a nice edge. He then resumed his work as though nothing
worthy of remark had happened to stay the song of his wheel.
A craft of hoary antiquity is that of the nomad metal-worker. An
Austrian ecclesiastic, in the year 1200, describes the “calderari,” or
tinkers, of that time: “They have no home or country. Everywhere they
are found alike. They travel through the world abusing mankind with
their knavery.”
Four hundred years later, an Italian writer gives an account of the
tinker who enchants the knives of the peasants by magnetizing them so as
to pick up needles, and for this he accepts payment in the shape of a
fowl or a pie. To this day in Eastern Europe, the smith, usually a
Gypsy, is regarded as a semi-conjurer who has dealings with the Devil.
In Scotland you will find numberless “Creenies, crinks, and tinklers” who
roam in primitive Gypsy fashion, with donkeys, ramshackle carts, tents,
and a tinker’s equipment. If you have dropped into the shepherd’s
cottage in the heathery glen, or the lone farmhouse on the Lowland fell,
you will have noticed the horn spoons and ladles, or the rude
smoothing-irons. These are the handiwork of the tinklers of a bygone
generation.
Two or three generations ago most of our English Gypsies were wandering
tinkers carrying their outfits on their backs.
For my own part, I have everywhere found the caste of tinkers a cheerful,
happy-go-lucky fellowship, and in talks with them I have observed that
they generally know a few Gypsy words, even when it is clear that they do
not belong to the dark race.
Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, in _Henry IV_. (First Part, Act 2, Scene 4), is
made to say, “I can drink with any tinker in his own language.” This
language, or jargon, known as _Shelta_, {207} has been the subject of
much learned writing.
My first lesson in Shelta was taken near the Shire Bridge, where the
Great North Road, approaching Newark-on-Trent from the south, quits
Lincolnshire for the county of Nottingham. A favourite halting-place is
this for wayfaring folk of all sorts. Seated on Mother Earth’s green
carpet, a tinker and his wife were taking tea, and at their invitation I
sat beside them for a chat. Presently I showed two bright new pennies to
the tinker, saying—
“If you’ll tell me what these are in _Shelta_, they’re yours.”
[Picture: A Tinker of the Olden Times. By permission of Mrs. Johnson]
In a moment he replied, “_Od nyok_” (two heads), and I handed over the
coins. With a comic gesture he queried—
“Yer wouldn’t like to larn a bit more o’ thet langwidge, would yer?”
[Picture: A Welsh Gypsy Tinker. Photo. Fred Shaw]
“Rat-tat-tat” went the old brass knocker one morning at the side-door of
my house, and on being informed that a tinker was inquiring for me, I
hastened to see what manner of man he was. Before me stood a battered
specimen of the Romany of the roads, and with a view to testing his
depth, I asked—
“Do you ever _dik_ any _Romanitshel_s on the _drom_?” (see any Gypsies on
the road).
“You ’ave me there, mister,” said he. “Upon my soul, I dunno what you’re
talkin’ about.”
The man’s face was a study in innocence.
“You know right enough what I’m saying,” I continued in Romany.
My man could endure it no longer, and, exploding with mirth, he turned
and shouted to his brother, who stood near a grinding-barrow on the road.
“_Av akai_, Bill, ’ere’s a _rashai roker_in _Romanes_ as fast as we can”
(Come here, Bill, here’s a parson talking Gypsy). “Bring that _shushi_
(rabbit) out o’ the _guno_” (sack).
With unaffected goodwill, the two Gypsies insisted on my accepting the
rabbit as a token of friendship. This I did gladly, asking no questions
as to how they had come by a newly-killed rabbit. After grinding my
garden axe, they both set off whistling down the road.
* * * * *
One day a Gypsy tinker, whom I had met a few times, took me aside,
saying—
“My sister lives in the next street” (he told me the number). “She has a
pony, a poor, scraggy thing, which she wants to get rid of badly. Go you
and say to her—
“‘I hear you have a nice little cob to sell.’ And when she brings it
round for you to look at, say—
“‘Bless my soul, do you think I’d buy a hoppy _grai_ like _dova_?’” (a
lame horse like that).
Presently, at that sister’s threshold, I waited for the pony to be
brought round, which on arriving proved to be a miserable-looking animal
indeed. The woman looked first at me, then at the pony, which limped
badly, while its bones showed through its skin.
Said I, “Well, really, I didn’t expect to see quite such a _wafodu kova_”
(wretched thing).
Readily entering into the joke, she laughed heartily. She had taken me
for a _dinelo gawjo_ (gentile simpleton), and to her astonishment I had
turned out to be a Gypsy of a higher sort.
* * * * *
At one time I used to have frequent visits from a travelling tinker, and
when his grinding-barrow was standing in my yard, I would chat with him
while he was doing some little job. He was an interesting fellow who had
seen something of the world. He had a remarkable knowledge of the
medicinal properties of wild herbs, and would spend hours by the chalk
stream in our valley, grubbing up liverwort of which he would make
decoctions. One morning he was in the tale-telling mood.
“It was this very barrer what you’re looking at now. You notice there’s
lots of bits of brass nailed on it for to catch the sunshine. I likes my
barrer to look cheerful. Well, there was a fellow came to me with summut
wrapped up in brown paper, a flat thing it was, and he says, ‘I want you
to buy this here off me.’ Says I, ‘Let’s have a look at it,’ and when he
opened it out, it was a fine bit of copper-plate with summut engraved on
it. I asked him what the engraving was about, for you know I can’t read.
He says, ‘It’s an architex business plate, that’s all, and you can have
it for a shilling.’ So I bought it and nailed it on to my barrer among
the other bits of brass and things. Well, happens that a parson was
a-talking to me one day, and I noticed his eye lighted on this here
copper-plate. Says he, looking wery serious, ‘I’m afraid this will get
you into trouble, if a policeman sees it.’ ‘How’s that?’ I asked.
‘What’s wrong with the copper-plate?’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘it’s a plate for
printing £5 notes. Where did you get it from?’ And I told him. You may
be sure I soon had that plate off my barrer, and, turning to the parson,
I says, ‘Perhaps you’ll buy it off me, for a sort of nicknack?’ And he
gave me half-a-crown for it.”
Looking slyly at me, the tinker remarked—
“When that parson got home, being a man of eddication, he would know
where to get the right sort of paper, and then he would make £5 notes
cheap, you bet.”
* * * * *
For several Christmas Eves past, this tinker’s boy and a little pal have
walked some miles from a neighbouring town to sing carols at my Rectory
door. They possess good voices and sing very tunefully some of the old
carols, “God rest you, merry gentlemen,” and the like.
One summer afternoon, in the market-place at Hull, I met two grinders
coming out of a tavern, near which stood a tinker’s barrow belonging to
one of them, Golias Gray, a Gypsy, whom I had seen before at fair-times
in the seaport town. “Black as the ace of spades” is Golias, and he was,
as usual, sporting a yellow shirt. His pale-faced companion, a stranger
to me, after a little talk, waxed communicative, and, whilst his Gypsy
pal resumed his grinding of knives, he gave me a short list of words in
_Shelta_ (Tinker’s Talk).
SHELTA. ENGLISH.
Binni Little.
Bog To get.
Buer Woman, wife.
Cam Son.
Gap To kiss.
Gosh To sit.
Granni To know.
Hin One.
Ken House.
Minkler Tinker.
Mizzle To go.
Monkeri Country.
Mush Umbrella.
Nyok Head.
Od Two.
Sonni To see.
Stammer To spit.
Stimmer Pipe.
Sweebli Boy.
Thari To speak.
Tober Road.
CHAPTER XVI
THE INN ON THE RIDGEWAY—TALES BY THE FIRESIDE
AT one time I had a great liking for long jaunts in search of
fossils—cross-country rambles extending over two or three days. Thus I
came to know many a deserted quarry and unfrequented byway of our county,
as well as the bedchambers of sundry remote wayside inns—“hedge-taverns,”
perhaps some would have described these lonely little houses of call.
Occasionally, however, I lighted upon an inn which had seen better days,
a sleepy old house with mullioned casements, a worn mounting-block of
stone, and a rude iron ring still fixed in the wall near the deep porch
before which an unfenced stretch of sward dipped towards the roadway.
Let me recall one of my geologizing expeditions on an early March day. I
had been successful in my quest, and my knapsack, laden with stony
spoils, was not very light. But what matter? It was fine to be striding
along a ridgeway with a roaring gale behind, and every wayside tree
whistling like a ships rigging in a storm. Going along that road, I
stretched out my limbs, and in so doing the very thews and sinews of the
mind became more elastic. Straight from the reddening west blew the wild
whirling wind, which, like some old giant, frolicsome yet kind, spread
out its open palms upon my back, fairly shoving me along. This was
living—this fine exaltation, this surging up of joyous emotions; and from
a gnarled ash tree a storm-thrush with throbbing speckled throat told the
same tale of a heart set free from every care. Such was my mood when at
a turn of the road a red-shawled figure, surely a Gypsy, appeared for a
moment and as suddenly was lost to sight down a gloomy yew-fringed drive
leading to the rear of a low grey mansion. She’ll be out again
presently, thought I; so I resolved to await the woman’s reappearance.
Meanwhile, like a spreading forest fire, the sunset flung its flaming
crimson far over the land. Tree boughs and boles caught the glow, and
underfoot the very grasses burnt by winter frosts seemed dyed with blood.
Across a riot of sundown colours, black rooks were heading for their
resting-place in the upland woods rugged against a castle-phantasy of
lurid cloud piled up in the east.
Loitering there, methought of the wandering Gypsies who in other days had
passed along this desolate road. I seemed again to behold a gang of
slouching Herons, swarthy, black-eyed, secretive, accompanied by their
pack-ponies and donkeys carrying tent-rods, pots, and pans. Who shall
say what processions of old Romany souls, long departed, here visit the
glimpses of the moon?
The moments flew by, but no Gypsy came. A little longer I waited, pacing
sharply up and down the roadway, then as the red shawl had not put in an
appearance, visions of a cosy meal by the fire of a certain inn began to
beckon alluringly, so I started on my way again. Soon I forgot all about
the Gypsy, who by this time had probably done a good stroke in the
_duker_in line among the servants of the mansion. However, a rutted,
grassy lane turning off to the left drew one’s eye towards a gorsy corner
where the chimney of a Gypsy van flung a drooping trail of smoke over the
tangles, and, going forward, I shouted in the doorway, “Anybody at home?”
A man’s scared face looked out. Perhaps he had expected a command to
quit his corner and draw out into the windy night. A moment later in a
tone of relief, he said—
“Now I know who you are. You’ll be the _rashai_ I met wi’ Jonathan
Boswell by the watermill. Don’t you remember I moved away when you began
to _roker_ (talk)? My pal Boswell wanted to have you to himself. That’s
why I took my hook. But come inside a bit. This wind’s enough to blow
your wery _bal avrî_” (hair off).
How strange it is that if a Gypsy has seen you anywhere for a few
moments, he is able to identify your very shadow for ever after.
Gladly I joined Old Frank in his cheery _vâdo_, which certainly suggested
comfort and gaiety to this traveller on the wild March evening.
“You gave me a bit of a shock,” said Frank. “At first I took you for a
_muskro_ (constable), but as soon as the light of my lamp fell on your
face I reckernized you in a minute.”
We talked awhile of Old Jonathan, whose faithful consort Fazzy had passed
away up in Yorkshire. This brought to mind the red-shawled woman whom I
had seen down the road.
“That’ll be my _monushni_ (wife). I expect her home di-rectly. When she
comes, you pretend to be a _muskro_”—this with a broad grin. “Say
roughish-like, ‘Wasn’t your name Liddy West afore you was married?’ Then
draw out a bit of paper, a letter folded long or anythink like that’ll
do, and say, ‘I’ve come to take you for fortune-telling.’”
No one understands the whole art and mystery of practical joking better
than the Gypsy, and he dearly loves to play pranks even upon his fellows.
It is part and parcel of the Gypsy’s innate spirit of mischief, examples
of which I have seen not a few in my time.
* * * * *
Having acquiesced in the joke, our talk presently ran on _muskro_s.
“_Muskro_s _sî jukel_s” (policemen are dogs), said the Gypsy.
“There was a pal of mine who was up to card games [sharping?], and at
Doncaster Races he happened to drop a word or two in _Romanes_ (Gypsy
tongue) to a mate. A _muskro_ was standing near, and bless me if he
didn’t _jin_ the _tshib_ (know the language), and of course my pal and
his mate was _lel_’d _oprê_ (taken up). ’Pend upon it, _muskro_s is
_jukel_s.”
A good step farther along the road stood the tavern, the “Black Boy,”
whose swinging sign of an Ethiopian countenance I was eager to see, since
I was to spend the night there in order to resume my fossil-hunting on
the morrow.
“Come and see me a little later at the _kitshima_ (inn) down the road,
and mind you bring the missis and your fiddle.” As I rose to go, I
noticed Frank gave a sidelong glance at my bulging knapsack, and in order
to satisfy his curiosity, I took out a fossil, a fine _gryphea incurva_,
on seeing which he drew back, holding up his hands in real or mock
horror, I could scarcely say which.
“_Dâbla_, that be one of the Devil’s toe-nails, wery onlucky stuff to
carry about you! Wherever did you get it from?”
“Off the _Beng_’s _pîro_ (Devil’s foot), to be sure,” I said, with a
laugh, and renewed my invitation pressingly. He promised to come.
What a relief to stretch your limbs before a glowing fire inside an
old-fashioned inn, when boisterous winds are shaking the window-panes and
driving the loose straw from the cobbled yard into the hedge bottoms. No
stranger at this house on the ridgeway, I know every nook of the room.
There is the old gun still reared up in yonder corner. From nails in the
cross-beams hang flitches of bacon and bulky hams. Plates and dishes
arranged on racks glitter in the firelight. The pewter mugs on the
dresser and the bright copper warming-pan hanging on the wall reflect the
glow of the ruddy flames darting up the wide chimney. Here and there
hang modern oleographs whose crude tints have been softened by smoke.
Tea is set on a table over which a lamp hanging from a hook in the
ceiling casts a pleasant radiance. During my meal the landlord, ruddy of
countenance, looks in and greets me in a friendly way. From his talk
with his wife, a slight, frail-looking woman of seventy who sits darning
by the fire, I gather that a horse is very ill in the stable, and any
moment the veterinary surgeon is expected. Presently, the barking of a
dog in the front of the inn announces his arrival in a gig, and the
landlord hurries out with a storm-lantern in his hand. In a few minutes,
the two men enter, and before the fire the burly vet rubs his hands,
talks in clear, sharp tones, then, tossing off a “scotch” smoking hot, he
wishes us good-night. Whereupon the innkeeper goes off to the stable.
Tea over, a small maid with chestnut hair and spotless pinafore clears
the table, and I move to the high-backed settle opposite the landlady.
In the fire-grate a huge chunk of wood burns brightly, and every now and
then a puff of wood-smoke comes out into the room.
Addressing the old lady, I inform her that I am expecting some visitors
to see me to-night, and they are stopping in a little lane down the road.
“Why, we had those Gypsies up here this morning. Their faces are well
known round here, though we don’t have them so much as we used to do.
You take an interest in Gypsies, don’t you, sir? At least I’ve heard it
said that you do. They don’t often set foot inside your church, I should
think?”
“Sometimes they do, and their reverent behaviour would certainly put to
shame some of the more regular attenders. If their unfamiliarity with
print leads them to hold a borrowed book upside down, they do at anyrate
kneel upon their knees instead of squatting upon the benches, and I have
never once known them to go to sleep during sermon-time.”
Speaking about Gypsies and churches, I am reminded of a funny experience
I once had all through a Gypsy cabman’s mistake.
* * * * *
I had promised to take an afternoon service at a village church miles
away in the country, and the road to it was unfamiliar to me. On my
naming the place, the driver said that he knew every inch of the road,
and, trusting myself in his hands, we bowled along for several miles, and
at last struck off into a tangle of green lanes. A few minutes before
the hour of service—three o’clock—my driver put me down at an old grey
stone church, saying, “Here we are, sir.” Entering the church, I found a
congregation assembled, and, going into the belfry, I asked for the
vestry wherein to robe.
“We ain’t got one here. Our pass’n dresses hisself in his house and
comes in at that little door.” The sexton then conducted me to a
chantry-chapel full of dusty figures of knights and their ladies lying
side by side with their feet resting upon their hounds. There I robed
and awaited the ceasing of the bells. When they stopped, I stepped
towards the prayer desk, when, to my astonishment, there appeared through
the small door in the chancel a fully-robed parson, white-headed and
bowed with age. We met and exchanged astonished glances.
Said I, “I’m afraid there is some mistake.”
He shook his head. “I’m deaf, and can’t hear a word you say.” He then
went to his desk, and knelt before commencing evensong.
It was an uncomfortable five minutes for me. I could hear the
congregation tittering and the mixed choir giggling. In despair I went
to the lady organist, and asked for the name of the church. Her reply
made it clear that I had come to the wrong village, and, rushing out by
the chancel door, I sought my cabby, whom I rated soundly for his
blunder. Fortunately my destination was no more than a mile and a half
farther on.
* * * * *
In a little while, the tavern door opened noisily, admitting a rush of
wind. There was a sound of naily boots on the threshold, and Gypsy Frank
and his wife entered. In a few moments they were happy enough on the
black settle with mugs of good Newark brew in front of them.
Just before the Gypsies had arrived, I had been studying a pocket-map of
the locality, and once again I had an old impression confirmed that many
out-of-the-way country districts are dotted over with place-names bearing
witness to the prevalence of Gypsy encampments in the past. I mean such
names as “Gypsy Lane,” “Gypsy Nook,” “Gypsy Dale,” and the like. On the
map I had noted a “Gypsy Corner,” “Gypsy Bridge,” and “Gypsy Ford.”
It was about “Gypsy Ford” that I put a question to Old Frank sitting by
my side, and he described the shallow crossing at a bend in the river
over which before now I had passed by a narrow plank-bridge. According
to my Gypsy, one night many years ago a quarrel arose in the Romany tents
encamped near the ford, and in the course of a fight between two kinsmen,
one of them was slain. Speedily a grave was dug, and, the corpse having
been covered up, the Gypsies fled the spot. This affair became widely
known, and little wonder that a legend arose about a “something” having
been seen in the neighbourhood of the ford.
“You’s mebbe heard,” said Frank, “about Gypsy Jack’s wife, ‘Flash’
Rosabel, who was drownded at the ford on just such a wild night as this.”
“‘Let’s camp in the lane on this side of the water,’ says Jack’s wife.
“‘_Keka_’ (No), says he, ‘not in this _drom_ (road) where the _mulo_
(ghost) walks. With a bright moon like this, our _grai_ (horse) will see
to pull us through the river all right, never fear.’
“Anyway, he whipped up the horse and steered straight into the ford. And
then a sad thing happened. There had been a deal o’ rain and the stream
was bigger and stronger than Jack had any idea of. Somewheres about the
middle of the river, the hoss was swept off its feet, the wagon tumbled
over on to its side, and poor old ‘Flash’ Rosabel was carried away and
drownded. Jack allus said that the _grai_ must have _dik_’d the _mulo_”
(the horse must have seen the ghost). “That’s a tale what’s been told by
many a traveller’s fire.”
[Picture: A Romany Fiddler. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Just then the publican came in, panting after a tussle with the wind,
and, being on good terms with my Gypsy friends, he said, “I’m glad to see
you’ve brought your music. Gi’ us a tune, Frank.” Then the Gypsy,
taking his fiddle from its baize bag, screwed up the strings, and, having
tuned them to his liking, gave us a merry air from memory’s repertoire.
At the back of the clear cantabile of the air, you heard the deep roar of
the storm. Once I went to the window and looked out into the night.
Athwart the white moonlit road lay the sharp black shadows of the ash
trees rising from the far hedgerow, and, as I watched the swaying,
writhing boughs, a lonely horseman sped past, a phantom he seemed more
than a living being, and, returning to my nook in the ingle, I heard in
fancy all through the Gypsy’s music the haunting clatter of the
night-rider’s horse, and wondered what mysterious mission had called him
forth on this riotous March evening. Now the fiddler ceased, and his
pewter was forthwith replenished. “Good ale, this,” says Frank, wiping
his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why, yes,” put in the landlady,
looking over her spectacles, and glad, if the truth be known, to give her
darning a rest; “it’s Newark ale, and no better drink could any man wish
for; we’ve sold nothing else for years.”
Said the landlord, who by this time had recovered his breath—
“That was a strange case as I see’d in the paper t’other day about the
wise woman getting ‘trapped’ by the constable’s wife as went to have her
fortune told. The paper said as how a crystal ball were used, but I’m
blest if I knows how anybody can expect to see their future in a thing o’
that sort.”
“Dunno so much about that,” remarked Old Liddy, who had been dreaming
over the fire. “A woman as had a crystal once told my dad he would go to
prison in a fortnight, and sure enough he did, along wi’ a conjurer who’d
been up to his tricks, and dad says to him when they was in jail, ‘A
mighty poor conjurer you be, my fine fellow, if you can’t conjure us out
of this place.’ I believes there _is_ summut in crystals.”
* * * * *
And then I was tempted to tell how a clairvoyant’s crystal once did me a
good turn. Let me explain that many years ago, when I was a curate on
the Wolds, our Rector’s aged wife used to bring me rare wild-flowers to
be named, and thus I won a place in the lady’s good books.
Time passed, and the Rector’s wife died. Not long after, I moved away to
another sphere of work. Then came the news of the decease of the old
Rector himself. One morning, twenty years after quitting that Wold
parish, a letter reached me, asking if I had been a curate with Canon A—
in such and such years, and further inquiring whether my wife Elizabeth
was still alive. Of course I had no difficulty in satisfying the writer
of the letter, and his speedy reply brought an agreeable enclosure in the
form of a cheque, a little legacy bequeathed to us by a codicil to the
will of the old Rector’s wife who loved wild-flowers. But the strangest
part of the story is yet to come. During a visit to London, the wife of
the present parson of our old parish visited a clairvoyant who by the aid
of a crystal declared that in the drawing-room of her home stood a small
brass handled writing-table containing several drawers, in one of which
would be found on examination a bundle of papers long neglected. On
returning home, the writing-table was duly searched, with the result that
the forgotten codicil was disclosed, and in it were mentioned some
legacies bequeathed to friends, several of whom had since passed away,
but my wife and I happened to be among the survivors. Thus there came to
us, as I have said, an agreeable arrival by the morning post, so that if
“seeing is believing,” my wife and I ought nevermore to scoff at
clairvoyants and their crystals.
* * * * *
“_Dawdi_!” (expression of surprise) exclaimed Liddy, with something of a
gasp in her voice, while Old Frank looked wonder struck.
“Well, that licks all I’ve ever heard,” said the publican, slapping his
knee in punctuation of his surprise. “Now let’s have another tune,
Frank.”
Whereupon the fiddler broke into a Scottish air with variations, his body
swaying to and fro the while. During several staves, the player laid his
cheek on the violin in a fashion so comical that at the end of the tune I
could not refrain from remarking—
“You reminded me just now, my pal, of Wry-necked Charley the
_boshomengro_” (fiddler). With a good-natured grin he replied—
“So you know that tale about the fiddler?”
And here it is, in my own words.
Charley Lovell, a fiddler of renown, was returning one evening after a
tiring day’s fiddling at a village feast. On the way to his tent, which
was pitched in a disused quarry, the Gypsy took from his pocket a few
coins he had received by way of payment. “Poor luck, I call it, to be
paid like this for such hard work.” Thus commiserating himself, he
trudged along the sunken lane leading to his tent. Imagine his surprise
to find at the tent door a tall gentleman dressed in black broad-cloth.
Dark of complexion, black-eyed, and polished in demeanour, the stranger
turned to meet the Gypsy.
“Good evening, sir,” said Charley, bowing low, for he had the sense to
perceive that a gentleman stood before him. “Pray what can I do for
you?”
“A great kindness,” responded the stranger, “for I have heard of your
skilful playing upon this wonderful instrument” (tapping Charley’s fiddle
with his finger), “and I wish to know if you will come to play at a dance
of mine to-morrow night.” The place and hour were named, and the Gypsy
promised to be there.
“Open your hands, my man;” and into them the stranger emptied a pocketful
of silver coins, and departed, smiling over his shoulder at the perplexed
Gypsy. All that night Charley tossed restlessly on his bed of straw. “A
fore-handed payment, and generous too. Who can that dark gentleman be?”
In the morning the Gypsy betook himself to a neighbouring priest, who, on
hearing his story, looked grave.
“You have made a bargain with the Devil.”
“Then tell me how I can get out of it.”
“You must keep your engagement, for, if you don’t, the Devil will fetch
you.”
“But what am I to do when I get there?”
“If you do as I say, all will be well. When you are asked to strike up,
you must be sure to play nothing but slow, solemn psalm tunes. Mind you
do as I say.”
At the appointed hour the trembling fiddler stood on the moonlit sward
within the walls of a ruined castle. Awaiting his arrival was the tall
dark gentleman surrounded by his guests, an array of lords and ladies in
silks and satins. When the signal was given for the fiddler to commence
his music, Charley drew his bow over the strings, evoking none but psalm
tunes, solemn and slow, as the priest had advised. After a few moments
of this sort of music, the Devil marched up to the Gypsy, and, fixing his
large black eyes upon him, said—
“Give us something more lively at once.”
“I cannot,” said the Gypsy.
“Then, take _that_!”—and the Devil struck Charley a smart blow on the
cheek, twisting the poor fellow’s head on one side, and so it ever
remained. After that, he was always known as “Wry-necked” Charley.
As the clock was striking the hour of ten, the rural tavern’s
closing-time, my Gypsy friends stepped out into the night.
All through the long hours the wind howled in the chimney and rattled the
casements, and one traveller at least slept but fitfully in his
four-poster draped with curtains of red damask.
In the morning the landlord informed me at breakfast that a tree had been
blown down across the road, and, while “rembling” under his overturned
straw-stack, a fine fox was found smothered, and, “See here,” he said, “I
shall always think of last night whenever I look at this,” holding up a
beautiful tawny brush.
The storm-rack was still scudding overhead as I bade adieu to the quaint
pair on the footworn doorstep of the “Black Boy” on the ridge way.
CHAPTER XVII
HORNCASTLE FAIR
LIKE Lincoln, York, and Chester, the town of Horncastle originated within
the boundaries of a Roman _castrum_, and to this day an old-world
atmosphere clings to its narrow, cobbled streets.
Readers who know their Borrow will recall the visit of “The Romany Rye”
to Horncastle in the August of 1825, in order to sell a horse which he
had purchased by means of a loan from his Gypsy friend Jasper.
Nowhere perhaps are the changes wrought by the passing years more plainly
seen than at a horse-fair of ancient standing. Horncastle has
inhabitants who remember when the great August Horse-Fair occupied fully
a fortnight or three weeks, and was widely recognized as an event of the
first rank. Within my own observation, this fair, like others of its
kind, has declined with swift strides. In my time, buyers would be
present from all parts of the country, as well as from the Continent, and
members of our best Gypsy families invariably made a point of attending.
In all these respects, however, the once famous fair has dwindled in a
very marked manner.
Let me describe a twentieth-century visit to the August horse-mart.
Having approached the town along a bold ridgeway commanding a countryside
yellowing to harvest, I arrive to find the place astir with dealers and
horses. Though now but a one-day affair, the mart is not without its
pleasing aspects to a lover of such scenes. The chief centre of business
is known as the Bull Ring, where well-clad dealers from our English
towns, horsey-looking men slapping their thighs with malacca canes, rub
shoulders with rubicund farmers from Wold and Marsh, grooms and Gypsies.
Not for the purpose of buying or selling horses have I come hither, but
for no other reason than to meet the Gypsy families who usually turn up
at the fair.
[Picture: Horncastle Horse Fair. Photo. Carlton]
Behind the Parish Church of St. Mary, in a pasture pleasantly open to the
sun, numerous caravans are drawn up under the hedges. It is here that
the better sort of Gypsies congregate. Down Hemingby Lane lies an
encampment of poorer travellers, and some of the same sort of people have
drawn into the yard of the “New Inn.” In the course of the day I shall
visit these three companies of Gypsies.
Meanwhile, passing over the Bain Bridge, I step inside the old Parish
Church and, taking out from my pocket a well-thumbed copy of _The Romany
Rye_, I turn to the passage where Borrow talks with the sexton about the
rusty scythes hanging on the wall. Just then a lady, evidently an
American tourist, who has been looking up Tennyson’s footprints, which
abound hereabouts, asks:—
“Can you tell me anything about those strange-looking things on the
wall?”
Various theories have been advanced to account for the presence of these
old scythe-blades within the sacred building, the popular opinion being
that they were used as instruments of war at Winceby Fight on 11th
October 1643. So much, indeed, Borrow seems to have gathered from the
sexton, but the better-informed authorities of to-day think that they are
relics of the rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace in the year 1536.
Quitting the fine old church, I passed out into the fair, and straightway
met a Gypsy fingering a telegram. “Will you read it for me, please?”
The message was from a popular Baroness who was desirous of borrowing a
caravan for a bazaar; and as I pencilled a reply on the back of the
telegram, the Gypsy declared that he would sleep in a tent till his
“house on wheels” returned to him.
I have always known that Gypsies readily help one another when in
trouble. This man, before going off with his telegram, told me a
pleasing thing. It appears that an aged Gypsy, whose horse had died
suddenly, had no money to buy another with, but a pal of his, going round
with a cap among the Gypsy dealers at the fair, had quickly taken ten
pounds, which were handed up to the old man who was now able to buy
himself an animal.
In _The Romany Rye_, Borrow speaks of the inn where he put up as having a
yard which opened into the principal street of the town. On entering
that yard he was greeted by the ostlers with—“It is no use coming
here—all full—no room whatever;” whilst one added in an undertone, “That
’ere a’n’t a bad-looking horse.” In a large upstairs room overlooking a
court, the newcomer dined with several people connected with the fair.
[Picture: The “George” Inn Yard at Horncastle. Photo. Carlton]
During former visits to Horncastle I had tried to identify Borrow’s inn,
but without result. Happily, on the present occasion, I came upon a
local antiquary from whom I gathered that Borrow’s inn was undoubtedly
the “George,” now converted into a post office. Strolling down the
quondam inn-yard, my friend pointed out the bow-window through which the
jockey so neatly pitched his bottle of pink champagne. Also, he told a
good tale of the fair in its palmy days—
[Picture: Ready for the Fair. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Public-houses, though very numerous in the town, were yet unable to
supply the fair folk with all the drink they required, and any
householder could take out what was called a Bough Licence on payment of
seven shillings and sixpence. Having decided to take out such a licence,
a man and his wife obtained a barrel of beer and displayed the customary
green bough over their door. On the eve of the fair the husband said to
his wife—
“I’ll see if this beer is good.”
“You won’t without paying for it.”
“Very well, my dear, I’ll have three-pen’orth,” handing over the coins to
his wife.
He appeared to enjoy it so much that she said—
“Let me have three-pen’orth,” handing the pence to her husband. Then he
had another drink, passing the threepence back again. And the same
coppers passed to and fro until the barrel was empty.
* * * * *
It was to Horncastle Fair, years ago, that Jem Mace came with his master,
Nat Langham, to whom he had been introduced at Lincoln Fair, where Nat
had a sparring troupe which he had brought down from the metropolis. At
Horncastle, Jem had a tremendous glove-fight with the local champion, who
was the terror of the district. This fellow was bigger and older than
Mace, who was then only in his eighteenth year, and for a long time the
issue was doubtful, but at last the Horncastle champion was licked to a
standstill, and had to give in.
Walking down a crooked by-lane, past a shop where a chatty little tailor
sat repairing a scarlet hunting-coat (the South Wolds Kennels lie a few
miles outside the town), I found a camp of Gypsies in a field, and near
one of the fires on the grass sat Liddy Brown, a crone of seventy years,
puffing a black pipe, her curls peeping from beneath a gay _diklo_
(kerchief). In the course of our talk, she spoke of our hilly country,
and recalled the days when her folk had pack-donkeys and camped in the
green lanes on the Wolds. A grand-daughter of Fowk Heron, she had some
diverting reminiscences of her mother Mizereti, and her aunts Cinderella
and Tiena. The last-named was bitten by a mad dog, and thereby came to
an untimely end.
Returning to the town, I looked into the “New Inn” yard and found a
number of Gypsies stopping there. The women and girls had donned their
smartest fair-going raiment. As I viewed these wanderers, it was not
easy to realize that they were the lingering remnants of the once
powerful tribes of Browns and Winters hailing from the Border country in
the days of Sheriff Walter Scott.
Passing through the archway of the inn, I mingle again with the crowd,
but no thimblengro, no Irish Murtagh, no Jack Dale meet the eye, though,
curiously enough, from the racing stables at Baumber, where the Derby
winner of 1875—Prince Batthyany’s Galopin—was born, there are two or
three jockeys looking more than usually diminutive among the burly
dealers in the street.
Towards the end of the afternoon the fair began to slacken. The few
remaining groups of horses seemed to have gone to sleep in the sultry
Bull Ring. Already farmers were moving off in their light traps, and
dealers were making for the railway station. Going along the riverside
path I saw a Gypsy man asleep at the foot of a tree, and, climbing a
fence, I found myself in the encampment behind the church. The scene was
enlivening. Seated around their fires most of the Gypsies were making
ready for the evening meal. Near a little tent the aged Mrs. Petulengro,
a veritable “Mother in Egypt,” was lighting her pipe. Her grand-daughter
coming out of the tent offers her a stool to sit upon, but the old lady
scorns the idea. “I should tumble off a thing like that. I’m better
down here,” pointing to a sack spread by the fire beside which two
kettles are hissing.
In various parts of the field the Petulengros are gathered together.
Here are tall Alfy and Hook-nosed Suki, “Rabbitskin” Bob, and
“Ratcatcher” Charley. During supper, I had to listen to a disquisition
on lying from Suki. Put into a nutshell, her ideas amount to this: Lying
is of two kinds. There is lying for a living, else how could any sort of
business be carried on. But business deceptions are not to be mentioned
in the same breath with nasty lies which are meant to “hurt a body.”
“Do you remember, _rashai_, that time we met you by Newark, when Elijah
was with us? A jolly old fellow he were. He often got into _staruben_
(prison) for fighting but never for stealing. He would go through an
orchard, like that one there” (pointing to some apple-trees close by),
“but do you think he’d ever pick up an apple? Not he, he’d never steal
nothink, wouldn’t Elijah. He could stand hard knocks, and would only
fight a better man than hisself. He was that tough, nothing ever hurt
him. He would lay asleep under a wagon with never a shirt on him and
take no harm.”
Elijah was one of three brothers—tall, powerful fellows. Sometimes the
trio, Elijah, Master, and Swallow, would enter a lonely tavern, and
having ordered ale would depart without paying for it. When the publican
protested, the Gypsies displayed their brawny arms and huge fists before
his face. One day they had performed this favourite trick several times,
and were paying an evening call at a village inn, where they sat a long
time. Waxing quarrelsome, the brothers first brawled among themselves,
and afterwards got at cross-purposes with a farmer in the tap-room. In
the course of a tussle with this person, Swallow fell upon him as he lay
on the floor, and, as they struggled there, a steel rush-threading needle
of large size, used in mending chair bottoms, dropped from the Gypsy’s
pocket. Seizing this, Elijah pricked the farmer in the ribs, and then
flung the needle at the feet of Swallow, who picked it up. The farmer’s
cries attracted the attention of a village constable who was going by.
“Eh, what’s the matter here?” said the constable, stepping into the
tap-room.
“These Gypsies are trying to murder me,” said the farmer. “One of ’em’s
stuck me with a long knife as he’s got about him.”
The pockets of the Gypsies were searched, and the steel needle was found
upon Swallow. As the constable held it up between his fingers, the
farmer cried—“That’s it. That’s what he tried to kill me with.”
The three brothers were arrested and underwent their trial, with the
result that Elijah and Master were sent to prison for a year, but poor
Swallow, although innocent of the charge made against him, was
transported for fourteen years.
By that Gypsy fire the evening meal passed pleasantly enough, and when at
a later hour I returned to the town, the darkened houses were framing the
cobbled street, and through the open window of a tavern I caught a soft
Romany phrase along with the clinking of glasses. And then from under
the archway of the inn yard a dwarfish Gypsy, mounted on a lean horse,
rode off with a great clatter into the dusk.
CHAPTER XVIII
A GYPSY SEPULCHRE—BURIAL LORE—THE PASSING OF JONATHAN
IN Tetford churchyard, not far from my Rectory on the Lincolnshire Wolds,
lies the grave of two celebrated Gypsies, Tyso Boswell and Edward, or “No
Name,” Hearn (Heron), who were killed by lightning on 5th August 1831.
The incident seems to have made a profound impression upon our Gypsies,
and to this day it is everywhere remembered among the Anglo-Romany clans.
A large company of the Boswells and Hearns (Herons) appear to have halted
at Tetford on their way to Horncastle August Fair, at that time a
horse-mart of great importance. Overtaken by a thunderstorm, Tyso and No
Name were sheltering in a barn, whither they had gone for some straw,
when a stroke of lightning descended fatally upon them.
An aged Gypsy, Lucy Brown (born in the year 1807), once informed me that
she remembered the incident quite clearly. Said she, “We were camping
atop of Tetford Hill, just above Ruckland Valley, when the lightning
struck the poor fellows. We were on our way to Horncastle Fair. I mind
it all, _rashai_, as if it had happened only yesterday.”
In Westarus Boswell’s autobiography, recorded (in his own words) by Smart
and Crofton in their work _The Dialect of the English Gypsies_, are some
references to this event—
“I was born at Dover. My father (Tyso) was a soldier, and I was born
in the army. My father, when I was born, was in charge of the great
gun (Queen Anne’s pocket-piece). After a while he came home, and
left the army. He came down into Yorkshire, and there he stayed for
many years, and all our family were brought up in that county, and
there we all stayed after he was killed in Lincolnshire. He died
when I was a lad. The lightning struck him and another, both
together. They were cousins. Our people put them both in one grave.
There I left them, poor fellows. I was much grieved at it. He
(Tyso) always dressed well. When he was buried, I took a wife, and
went all over the country. . . . His cousin’s name was called No
Name, because he was not christened till he was an old man, and then
they called him Edward.”
A curious story attaches to “No Name” Hearn. His parents took him to
church to be christened, and when the parson said, “Name this child,” the
Gypsy mother answered, “It’s Jehovah, sir.” “I cannot give your child
that name,” protested the clergyman. Whereupon the Gypsies stalked out
of the church muttering, “He shall be called ‘No Name,’” and by this
fore-name he was known all through his life, although in his old age, as
Westarus Boswell has told us, he was baptized in the name of Edward.
As might be expected, the funeral of Tyso and Edward was attended by many
Gypsies from far and near, and for some years afterwards the grave was
visited annually by relatives, who are said to have poured libations of
ale upon it. A grandson of Tyso relates that he once found a hole “as
big as a fire bucket” in the side of the grave. This he stuffed with
hay, and to my own knowledge the hole is still there, the brickwork of
the vault having fallen inward. Aged folk at Tetford tell how a witch
formerly lived in a cottage near the churchyard. One of her cats
kittened down the hole in the vault, and passers-by would shudder to see
the kittens bolt like rabbits into the Gypsies’ grave.
* * * * *
If the Gypsies possess any religion at all, it may be summed up in one
sentence—reverence for the dead. In bygone ages the Gypsies buried their
dead in wild lonely spots, and though for many years the wanderers have
been granted Christian burial, yet now and then an aged _Romanitshel_ on
his deathbed will express a desire to be laid to rest in the open and not
in the churchyard. Moses Boswell, a Derbyshire Gypsy, requested that he
might be buried “under the fireplace,” _i.e._ on the site of an
encampment of his people. When dying, Isaac Heron said, “Bury me under a
hedge,” a reminiscence of the earlier mode of sepulture. In his
_Lavengro_, Borrow describes the burial of old Mrs. Herne: “The body was
placed not in a coffin but on a bier, and carried not to the churchyard
but to a deep dingle close by; and there it was buried beneath a rock,
dressed just as I have told (in a red cloak and big bonnet of black
beaver); and this was done at the bidding of Leonora, who had heard her
_bebee_ (aunt) say that she wished to be buried, not in gorgeous fashion,
but like a Roman woman of the old blood.”
On the information of some East-Anglian Gypsies, my friend, Mr. T. W.
Thompson, a good tsiganologue, writes: “It must have been somewhere about
1830 when Borrow’s friend, Ambrose Smith (Jasper Petulengro), found one
of the Hernes burying his wife in a ditch near Gorleston, took the body
away and gave it a Christian burial to prevent further trouble befalling
the old man.”
In an entertaining volume entitled, _Caravanning and Camping Out_, Mr. J.
Harris Stone describes a wayside Gypsy burial—
“Some twenty years ago a Gypsy died in an encampment near Lulworth Cove
in Dorset, and a friend of mine, who had become great friends with the
tribe because he used to go and sing comic songs to them and perform
simple conjuring tricks, was asked to the funeral. He told me that the
coffin was black, and the burial took place at the cross-roads—not
exactly in the centre of the roadway where the highways crossed, but on
the patch of roadside waste at the angle of one of the roads. Water was
sprinkled on the coffin and earth thrown on, in the course of the ritual
in Romany, but no parson was present.”
Near the grass-grown sand-dunes of an East Lincolnshire parish is a
camping-place frequented by Gypsies for many years past. In turning up
the soil thereabouts not long ago, some labourers came upon a human
skeleton, probably that of a Gypsy who had been buried there.
I give these instances because it has been strongly asserted that
Christian burial only has been the Gypsies’ usage for the last two
hundred years.
Sometimes a careful watch is kept over the body between death and burial.
A Welsh correspondent who had an opportunity of observing this practice,
writes: “I found my Romany friends seated around a fire, and close by in
a van lay the dead wife of one of the company, awaiting burial on the
morrow. Gypsies about here do not go to bed from the time of a death
till after the funeral. They sit in company around the fire, and now and
again fall back and doze, but at least three must keep awake. If only
two were awake, one might drop off to sleep and that would leave only
one. Fear of the ghost is given as the reason why they sit in company by
the fire.”
As a rule, the corpse is attired in the best clothes worn during life.
Sometimes the garments are turned inside out, a practice in Bulgarian
mourning. When Zachariah Smith was buried in Yorkshire four years ago
the following articles were enclosed in his coffin: a suit of clothes,
besides the one he was wearing, watch and chain, a muffler, four pocket
handkerchiefs, a hammer, a candle, and twopence.
On the day after the funeral, old-fashioned Gypsies destroy the
possessions of the dead, money excepted. All consumable belongings are
burnt, while the crockery, iron utensils, and other articles are broken
and dropped into a river, or buried, if no water is near. Jewellery is
often disposed of in a similar manner. The horse of the deceased is
either shot, or sold to the knackers to be destroyed. Fear of the ghost
is the explanation of these ceremonies. So long as the possessions of
the dead person remain intact, the ghost is believed to hover about them.
In order, therefore, to dispel the ghost of the dead, his belongings are
destroyed.
Another observance, expressing in a striking manner the grief of the
bereaved, is seen in their abstention for many years, or for ever, from
the favourite food, beverage, or pastime of the loved one whom they have
lost. One day Richard Petulengro called at my door and was offered
refreshment in the kitchen—“Not any ale, thank you. My brother died a
bit ago, and he was wery fond of it. I don’t touch it now.”
It is recorded of Old Isaac Joule that he would often spend whole nights
watching by his Gypsy wife’s tomb in Yatton churchyard. Her headstone,
which may still be seen, bears the lines—
“Here lies Merily Joule
A beauty bright:
That left Isaac Joule
Her heart’s delight
1827.”
Sometimes unusual articles are laid on graves. Upon his boy’s grave,
Bohemia Boswell deposited a little teapot from which the boy used to
drink. Rodney Smith placed a breast-pin upon his mother’s grave in
Norton churchyard.
Gypsies shrink from uttering the names of the dead. Fear of invoking the
ghost underlies this ancient tabu. One of the Herons had a child named
Chasey, who died, and now he never utters that name. He even invented a
nickname for a friend bearing the name of Chasey, in order to avoid
pronouncing the name of his own dead child.
One day, during conversation with Frampton Boswell, Groome asked—
“How did you get your name, Frampton; was it your father’s?”
“I can’t tell you that, but wait a minute.” And going to his mother’s
caravan, he returned with a framed photograph of a gravestone.
“That was my poor father’s name, but I’ve never spoken it since the day
he died.”
“He don’t want her to walk,” said my old friend, Frank Elliot, in
explanation of a Gypsy’s reluctance to mention his dead sister’s name. A
Gypsy boy was baptized Vyner Smith, but when his Uncle Vyner died, the
boy was renamed Robert, because the name Vyner was too painful a reminder
of the departed relation.
A death-omen among Gypsies is the cry of the “death-hawk” heard over a
camp by night. A Gypsy once told me how two crows and two yellow pigeons
flew to and fro over him in a town street in the early morning. By these
signs he knew that his wife had died in the hospital, and so it proved.
* * * * *
Let me close this chapter with the passing of my old friend Jonathan
Boswell. Not long ago tidings reached me that he had died in his
travelling cart, in which I have spent some happy hours with him on the
road. The last time I saw Jonathan alive he was seated by his fire on a
little lonely common, and near him stood the old cart looking so very
ramshackle that a gust of wind might almost have wrecked it. Among the
tufted bog-rushes, the lambs were gambolling a few yards away. As I sat
with him, my old friend talked of bygone jaunts we had taken together,
and his grandson, who was present, recalled the day he once spent at our
Rectory. With slow and feeble steps Jonathan walked with me to the edge
of the common and waved his cap in farewell. I never saw him again. I
like to think of the old man as, looking back, I saw him holding out his
hand to fondle a lamb whose confidence he had won while camping on the
common.
[Picture: A London Gypsy. Photo. Fred Shaw]
About a month after receiving the news of the death of my old pal, I came
upon his grandson, who told me that the _vâdo_ (cart) had been
_hotsherdo_ (burnt). The fragments which remained after the fire were
duly buried, and the faithful nag had been sent away to the hunt-kennels.
Thus, with the ancient ceremonies of his race, my old friend had been
laid to rest.
TO THE ENGLISH GIPSIES. {246}
“You soon will pass away;
Laid one by one below the village steeple
You face the East from which your fathers sprang,
Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang
Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people
Whom no true Romany will call by name,
The folk departed like the camp-fire flame
Of withered yesterday.”
CHAPTER XIX
_BITSHADO PAWDEL_ (TRANSPORTED)
THICKLY sprinkled with Gypsy names are the “Transportation Lists”
(1787–1867) reposing on the shelves of the Public Record Office in
London; yet as your eye scans those lists of names, how dull and ordinary
they look. It is not until you embark upon the arduous task of tracking
individuals in old newspaper files that you realize the charm of
unearthing buried romances in which the Gypsies played a part.
If, on the one hand, the wildness and roughness of the times are fully
impressed upon your mind, there arises also the unedifying spectacle of
British justices vieing with one another in their ardour for dispatching
Gypsies across the sea on the most trivial pretexts. In the
Transportation Lists both sexes are well represented, and occasionally
one obtains the _aliases_ borne by Gypsies at the time of their arrest.
From a study of these _aliases_, it becomes possible to trace the origin
of some of our modern Gypsy families, for it is quite in keeping with
Romany usage for the children of an expatriated father to adopt his
_alias_.
I have never yet known an elderly Gypsy whose memory lacked a store of
what may be called transportation tales, and, listening to their recital,
I have sometimes been saddened, if not angered. What can we of the
twentieth century think of the “justice” (!) which sent a Romany mother
across the sea for stealing a lady’s comb valued at sixpence, or banished
for seven years a middle-aged Gypsy man for the crime of appropriating
three penny picture-books from a cottage doorway?
Over a few crimson embers on the ground I listened one summer evening to
tales from the lips of one of the old Herons, as we sat together under a
thorn hedge. For a theft of harness Solli Heron (my informant’s uncle)
was sentenced to a lengthy residence in an over-sea colony. The time
came when he and a few Gypsy comrades were led out of prison and placed
in chains on board the coach which was to convey them to the convict
ship. By some means Solli had become possessed of a small file,
wherewith, during the journey by coach, he managed to cut through his
irons and make his escape into a wood. After an exciting chase through
brake and brier, the Gypsy was recaptured and duly shipped across the
sea.
The following story shows that sometimes, when two Gypsies were
implicated in a crime, one of them would endeavour to screen his
companion. From the stables at Claremont House, Esher, during the period
of the Princess (afterwards Queen) Victoria’s residence, a horse and a
mare were stolen by two Gypsies, an elderly man and a younger one. Early
one foggy morning these fellows broke open the stable door and took the
animals away. A hue-and-cry was set up, and, within a few days of the
theft, the red-breasted “Runners” had made an arrest. In court, the
Princess’s coachman declared that he had seen two men near the stable,
but the elder Gypsy persistently affirmed that he had done the business
entirely alone, and his endeavour to screen his mate proved effectual.
The young Gypsy was acquitted, but his companion was transported for life
to Van Diemen’s Land.
The same spirit of self-sacrifice is seen in another incident—
A Gypsy tinker and a sweep were arrested for stealing a pony at a time
when the penalty for horse-stealing was death. Said the sweep to the
tinker—
“Why need two of us be hanged for this job? I’ll swear that you know
nothing about it.”
When the two were brought up for trial, the sweep, while readily
admitting his own guilt, asserted the tinker’s innocence with such
vehemence that the judge and jury believed his tale. The tinker got
twelve months in jail, but the sweep was hanged.
* * * * *
In his _Romany Word-Book_, Borrow mentions the transportation of Fighting
Jack Cooper, “once the terror of all the Light Weights of the English
Ring, who knocked West Country Dick to pieces, and killed Paddy O’Leary,
the fighting pot-boy, Jack Randall’s pet.” Jack Cooper and his brother
Tom were transported under peculiar circumstances. Tom was the first to
be sent away. It appears that the brothers went to a ball where, in the
course of the evening, Jack “pinched” a silver snuff-box, and without
meaning any harm dropped it into his brother’s pocket. Presently the
snuff-box was missed by its owner, and suspicion fell upon the Gypsies.
A policeman was called in, and, while conversing with Tom, offered him a
pinch of snuff. As the Gypsy removed a handkerchief from his pocket, out
flew the snuff-box to his great astonishment, for he was unaware of the
trick played by his brother. Speedily the handcuffs were slipped upon
Tom’s wrists, and in due course he was brought to trial. Before the
judge, Jack swore that Tom was innocent, as indeed he was, but he was
nevertheless sentenced to transportation.
However, Jack’s fate was not long delayed. “Infatuated with love for his
paramour,” (says Borrow), “he bore the blame of a crime which she had
committed, and suffered transportation to save her.” On the expiration
of his lengthy term, he preferred to stay in Australia, where he made
money by teaching young gentlemen the pugilistic art.
* * * * *
There are more stories of this kind showing that innocent persons were at
times sent across the water.
* * * * *
Well-known to the Gypsies of our Midland counties is the story of Absalom
Boswell’s transportation. One night the Gypsy father and his two sons
sat talking in their tent, and, in order to rest his weary feet, the old
man removed his shoes and soon fell asleep on the straw. One of the lads
donned his father’s footgear, and set off with his brother to _latsher_ a
bit of _bokro-mas_, which, being interpreted, means that they went to
steal “mutton.” Their errand was successful, but morning light brought a
policeman to the camp, for the sheep had been missed and suspicion had
fallen upon the Gypsies. An early riser, Absalom had put on his shoes
and was walking abroad. He and his two sons were arrested. There were
no witnesses to the theft, but a footprint had been discovered on a patch
of clay in the farmer’s field from which the sheep had been taken, and
Absalom’s shoe fitted the footprint exactly. On this shred of
circumstantial evidence the old man was transported for seven years,
while his sons were lodged in jail for twelve months.
* * * * *
On Mitcham Common I once heard the following story from one of the
Dightons. Seated on the wayside was a Gypsy making pegs, with his
children playing around him, and, looking up from his work, he was
surprised to see a well-dressed _gawji_ (non-Gypsy) woman staring hard at
him. She stood there without saying a word, until at last she moved
slowly away. Then came a policeman to where the peg-maker sat—
“You must come along with me.”
“What for?”
“You’ll know when we get to the police station.”
A report had been handed in that a young woman had been found
half-murdered in a green lane. She said a Gypsy had done it, and
described the man to a detail, giving the colour of his hair, particulars
of his dress, and the number of his children. “I am an innocent man,”
said the Gypsy, “and the Lord’ll make her tell the truth before she
dies.” He was transported for seven years. Two years afterwards the
lady fell ill, and confessed that the man was innocent. He was
liberated, but on the homeward voyage he died.
* * * * *
Yet another tale from the “tents of Egypt”—
John Chilcot was _bitshado pawdel_ (transported), and his wife took it so
much to heart that she would sit on the tent floor cutting up straw into
pieces about an inch in length. At last she could endure it no longer.
She craved for the sight of her husband, so she _tshor_’d _tshumani_
(stole something), and was sent away too. The strange part of the story
is, that the same farmer who employed Chilcot on his farm in Van Diemen’s
Land, went and hired John’s wife when she was sent out there. The woman
came to John’s cottage one day about sundown, and, looking through the
open door, she saw him lacing his heavy boots, as he muttered to himself,
“I must _tshiv mi tshokaw oprê_ an’ _jaw te __dik de bokrê_” (I must put
my boots on and go to see the sheep).
“_Âwa_, _mi mush_, _tshiv len oprê_ and _kèr sig_” (Yes, my man, put them
on and make haste). John looked up, and, seeing his own wife standing
there, opened his arms and she dropped into them. The two worked
together for months without the farmer knowing who the woman was, then
one day John told him that she was his lawful wife, and they lived
together till their time expired, when they came back to England.
* * * * *
A story is told of one of the old Herons who had been transported, and,
his term having expired, he wrote to his wife and family in England
asking them to send fifty pounds. This they did, and a reply was
received announcing the time of his arrival at a certain port. As a
means of identification, he promised, on landing, to carry a small bundle
of sticks on his right shoulder. His sons met him, and according to his
promise he had the sticks on his shoulder. Now these sons were only tiny
children when their father had been sent away, and did not remember what
his features were like, but of course they were willing to accept him as
their father, and rejoiced accordingly. Then came the meeting between
the old man and his wife. But so completely had his features changed
during the long years of absence that she failed to recognize him as her
husband, even though he pointed to his old bottle green coat still in her
possession. It is said that he turned away sorrowfully, and died soon
after of a broken heart.
* * * * *
Moses Heron was on the Thames in a convict ship going to Australia for
_grai-tshor_in (horse-stealing). Some of his relatives went out in a
boat to see the last of him, as his ship was anchored off shore. Moses
took out his knife and cut his _diklo_ (kerchief) from his neck and threw
it overboard for them to take the knot back to his sweetheart. He cut
the _diklo_ from under his ear so that the knot was undisturbed but
remained just as he had tied it.
Stories of this character might be multiplied indefinitely, but the
instances given will suffice to show how pathetic are the annals of the
Gypsies.
* * * * *
In a lecture delivered before the Leeds Philosophical and Literary
Society, my friend, Mr. R. A. Scott Macfie, has justly estimated the
character of the Anglo-_Romanitshel_s of to-day.
“In Great Britain the Gypsies are at present exposed to a petty
persecution, inflicted ostensibly for their good by illogical persons,
who pretend to believe that they live unnatural lives and should be
driven into town slums for the benefit of their health and morals. They
are harassed by prosecutions on such curious pretexts as sleeping-out,
overcrowding (in tents every inch of which admits the free passage of
God’s fresh air), possessing no dustbin, or neglecting to provide a
proper water supply for their habitations. Yet, on the whole, in this
country they have for the last century received less unpleasant attention
and more sympathy than elsewhere, and it is very noteworthy that they
have responded to this kindness by adopting the civilized conception of
their duty towards their neighbour. I have many hundreds of press
cuttings from British newspapers published during the last few years.
They prove that the Gypsies of this country are never guilty of the
greater crimes. The majority of the convictions are for almost
inevitable offences, such as halting in the road or allowing horses to
stray. Gypsies have, of course, rather primitive views as to rights of
property, especially in respect of what grows or moves upon the earth in
a more or less wild state, yet, while there are an appreciable number of
instances of poaching, fortune-telling, and of certain traditional Gypsy
swindles, most of the cases of so-called theft are very insignificant
petty larcenies—a handful of fruit taken from an orchard, a few swedes
from a field, or a stick or two from the hedge. So conspicuous is the
law-abiding character of the British Gypsies in my records, and in my
personal experience, that I do not hesitate to assert, that, in spite of
their reputation, they are as superior in honesty to the lower classes of
our native population as they are in morality and cleanliness.”
CHAPTER XX
A ROMANY MUNCHAUSEN
THE Gypsies are an imaginative folk, delighting, like children, in
romances and romancing; and if one may judge from the array of folk-tales
{256} already collected from them, these wanderers appear to possess the
gift of story-telling in generous measure. To this day, in Eastern
Europe, the Gypsies still pursue their ancient rôle of tale-telling,
mystifying their hearers with stories which perhaps they brought out of
India many centuries ago. Here, in the West, no one can mingle
intimately with members of the Gypsy clan of Wood, amid the mountains of
Wales, without feeling the charm of the wonderful tales handed down to
them from their forelders.
Sometimes I have seen the beginning of a folktale in a fragment of
narrative reeled off by a Gypsy on the spur of the moment.
A London Gypsy had been fiddling for my delectation, and, when he ceased,
I asked him quite casually why, being a Gypsy, his hair was fair?
Without a moment’s reflection he replied, “I’ll tell you why my hair is
fair. One winter night I slept with my head outside the tent, and of
course my hair froze to the ground. When I woke in the morning I shouted
for help, and my daddy poured boiling water on my hair to get it loose.
That’s why my _bal_ is _pawni_” (my hair is fair).
An impromptu “lying tale” intended to amuse.
Groome, in his _Gypsy-Folk Tales_ (Introduction, p. lxxxi.), notices the
same sort of thing in a fanciful outburst on the part of a Gypsy girl.
“She had been to a pic-nic in a four-in-hand, with ‘a lot o’ real tiptop
gentry’; and ‘_reia_’ (sir), she said to me afterwards, ‘I’ll tell you
the comicalist thing that ever was. We’d pulled up to put the brake on,
and there was a _puro hotchiwitchi_ (old hedgehog) come and looked at us
through the hedge, looked at me hard. I could see he’d his eye on me.
And home he’d go, that old hedgehog, to his wife, and “Missus,” he’d say,
“what d’ye think? I seen a little Gypsy gal just now in a coach and four
hosses,” and “_Dâbla_” she’d say, “_sawkûmi_ ’as _vâdê kenaw_” (Bless us,
every one has carriages now).’”
Years ago I used to hear our English Gypsies speak of a certain Happy
Boz’ll, a Gypsy given to romancing about his own affairs. He was always
the hero of his own stories, and to this day, among our Gypsies, a Happy
Boz’ll tale is a synonym for a “crammer.”
It was once my good fortune at Lincoln Fair to come upon a van-dwelling
horse-dealer, close upon his eightieth year, whose early days were spent
in the company of Happy Boz’ll, and from him I obtained the tales given
below:—
Old Happy had a donkey, and one day it was lost. Up and down the green
lanes the Gypsy searched for the missing animal and found it not. At
last, as he was wandering under some trees, he heard a familiar noise
overhead. The sound came from the top of a big ash tree, and sure
enough, when Happy looked up, there was the old donkey among the topmost
boughs.
“What are you doing there?” shouted Happy.
“I’m gathering a bundle of sticks for your fire.”
And saying this, the donkey climbed down with a bunch of nice ash sticks.
[Picture: Black as a Boz’ll. Photo. Fred Shaw]
At one time Happy, who was a tinker and grinder by trade, possessed a
grinding-barrow made out of a whole block of silver, and whenever he was
thirsty he had only to chop off a lump of silver and go to the nearest
inn to get as much ale as he could carry. In course of time his barrow
grew smaller, and there came a day when Happy had no barrow at all. He
had swallowed it.
* * * * *
One day Happy’s wife, Becky, said to him—
“Go and get a bucket of drinking water.” Away he went to the spring,
and, having filled the bucket, he paused to take a drink from it, and
going on again he stumbled and spilt the water. When he got home he
appeared before his wife with an empty bucket in his hand.
“Why haven’t you brought the water?” asked Becky.
“Well, my blessed, I filled the bucket right enough, but on the way back
the water started a-laughing at me, and I couldn’t carry it no furder.
Ay, the water laughed itself out of the bucket, it did—every little drop
of it. There, now I’ve told you.”
* * * * *
Another time Happy was crossing a field, and seeing a sack filled with
something he went up and examined it, and there, if it wasn’t full of
eggs. He picked up the sack and carried it away on his back, and never
cracked one of them.
* * * * *
Happy was once walking beside a hedge, cracking nuts. He had pockets and
pockets full of them, and he happened to fling a nutshell over the hedge,
and it hit a wery fine hare and killed it. Wasn’t that strange now?
* * * * *
Happy never owned a wagon. He and his wife travelled all their lives
with a pack-donkey and a tent. One night their tent took fire, and in a
little while they had nothing left in the world save the donkey and its
blinkers. The next morning, as they crept out from under the hedge,
Happy said to his wife, “We shall have to beg wery hard to-day.” By the
evening they had done so well that they had provided themselves with an
entirely new outfit. Under the hedge stood the finest tent you ever saw.
Inside it were new blankets, new bedding, new everything.
“Well, my Becky, how do you like it?”
“We haven’t done so badly after all, my Happy. We’ve got a better tent
and a better supper than we had last night.”
“And I’m thinking, my Becky,” said Happy, laughing softly, “that it’s
wonderful like getting married again.”
* * * * *
Happy was once going along a road over the Peak o’ Derby. He hadn’t gone
far before he saw a cart full of the very best china, delicate stuff all
coloured and gilded, and between the shafts stood a fine horse with
silver-plated harness. There they were on the wayside grass and nobody
with them. Happy lit his pipe and waited a bit to see if their owner
came along. But nobody came. So he led the horse and cart to an inn
just round the bend of the road, and asked the landlord if he knew who
was the owner, but he didn’t know. On and on went Happy, up hill and
down dale, inquiring everywhere for the owner of the horse and pot-cart,
but nowhere could he light on the gentleman, though he nearly broke his
heart with anxiety in trying his best to find him.
* * * * *
Happy one day took his dog a-hunting. Two hares started up, but the dog
couldn’t run after both of them at once. Just then, however, the dog ran
against a scythe-blade and cut itself in two. One half of the dog ran
after one hare and caught it. The other half of the dog ran after the
second hare and caught it. The hares were brought to Happy’s feet. Then
the two halves of the dog came together again. And the dog died. Happy
took off the skin and patched his knee-breeches with it. Just a year
afterwards, to the very day, his breeches burst open and barked at him.
CHAPTER XXI
THE GYPSY OF THE HILLS—IN THE HEART OF WALES—A WESTMORLAND HORSE-FAIR
I
_May_ 12.—Just as I stepped out of the train at Corwen, thick vapours,
blotting out the mountains, made up their minds to let down rain. Five
years before, on landing at the same station, it was only to find a
tornado howling over the land and heavy rain falling. That wild night
I’m not likely to forget in a hurry. . . .
At last, after an hour’s wait in a snug hostelry, I set off along the
Holyhead Road, having a certain encampment in my mind’s eye. At the
“Goat” Inn, where the by-road turns off for Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch, I made
inquiry for the said camp, but the landlord only shook his head. One of
his daughters, however, hearing my question, said she knew where it was,
and coming with me to the door indicated the whereabouts of the caravans
of my quest. By now the rain had ceased, and, in a few moments, round a
bend in the highway, the outline of a Gypsy tent, with a caravan and a
tilt-cart standing near it, caught my eye against a row of twisted oaks
in a wayside field. On entering the camp there were hearty greetings
from Gilderoy Gray and Oli Purum, his travelling pal. The ruddy glow in
the fire-bucket made the tent’s interior an inviting spot for tea, and
there was plenty of fun that evening. Outside: the dark night with a
roaring wind in the oak trees. Within: a wood-fire lit up the red
blankets stretched over the curved tent-rods, and upon a well-made couch
of straw (covered with rugs) we reclined. Oli was in fine form for
tale-telling, and his pipe often went out. Gilderoy, too, had heaps of
things to tell. Was ever a lover of the road better stocked with
anecdotes than he?
In the tilt-cart I made my bed, and slept as soundly as a dormouse.
_May_ 13.—At 5 a.m. the sun was shining gloriously upon the mountains.
Wash and breakfast in the open air. In the forenoon we three took the
hilly road leading to Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch. A light breeze from off the
mountains carried the smell of spring everywhere. The birds were all
a-twitter in the leafing woods. Blue speedwells, white stars of
stitchwort, bee-haunted gorse bloom—all turned to salute the sovereign
sun glowing down upon the land. Gilderoy, ever a good walker, was soon
pegging on ahead; then at a stile in a hedge he would wait until Oli and
I came up. Just below the village of Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch, we stood on
the _puri porj_ (old bridge) and watched the trout leap in the
vandyke-brown pools of the river Alwen. On to the “Hand” tavern, my
ideal village inn. George Borrow saw the interiors of many such houses
during his tramps through “Wild Wales.” Nor are we likely to forget the
kindness we received at the home of a certain great Scholar-Gypsy and
Gypsy-Scholar, perched upon a high point commanding a magnificent
landscape.
[Picture: Oli Purum. Photo. Fred Shaw]
About tea-time a jolly face appeared at our tent door, announcing the
arrival of Gil’roy’s brother Jim, and, just as dusk was enfolding the
scene, a merry boy came bounding into the camp. This was Deborah Purum’s
Willy, who told us that Bala Fair was to take place on the morrow.
Lively indeed was our camp this evening, for had not our company
increased by two? Resolving to set off in good time toward Bala in the
morning, we slipped into our beds about midnight, and soon forgot to
listen to the owls hooting mournfully in the woods.
[Picture: A Gypsy Harpist. Photo. W. Ferguson]
_May_ 14.—A white mist on the mountains foretold a fine day, and by 6.30
we were breakfasting on trout and bacon done over a wood fire. Then
harnessing the mare to the tilt-cart, we all climbed aboard, and away we
rattled towards Bala. The wayside woods were empurpled with hyacinths,
and on the hedge-banks little bushes of bilberry hung out their crimson
flowers. Oli Purum, who is half a Welsh Gypsy, could tell us the very
names of the families who had camped round the black patches on the
roadsides. Springing off the cart, he would examine the heaps of
willow-peelings with a critical eye. “_Âwa_, (yes) I thought so. It’s
some of the Klisons (Locks) that’s been _hatsh_in _akai_ (stopping
here).” A splendid trotter, our mare made light work of pulling the
tilt-cart over those seventeen miles down the vale to Bala. Of course we
were all wondering as to the Gypsies we might see at the fair. What a
crowd of farm-folk we found filling the streets on our arrival. Just in
front of the “White Lion” hostelry, I saw a potter-woman standing before
a spread of crockery of all shapes and sizes on the side of the road,
and, curiously enough, I had once met her son, Orlando Fox, at Bristol.
Little did we dream, however, of the surprise awaiting us here in Bala.
Elbowing our way through the dense crowd, it was Gilderoy who was the
first to exclaim, “_Dik odoi_” (Look there), and turning our gaze that
way, there, sure enough, was a very dark old Gypsy with grizzled locks
and glittering black eyes. His garments were weathered by long wear amid
the mountains, and in him I recognized the patriarchal Matthew (a
descendant of Abraham Wood) whom I had met some years before.
The Woods preserve many stories of Abraham, their earliest known
progenitor, who flourished about the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Entering Wales from Somerset, he brought with him a violin, and is
supposed to have been the first to play upon one in the Principality.
According to tradition, “He always rode on a blood-horse, would not sleep
in the open but in barns, wore a three-cocked hat with gold lace, a red
silk coat, a waistcoat embroidered with green leaves, had half-crowns for
buttons on his coat, sported white breeches gaily decked with ribbons,
pumps with silver buckles and spurs, a gold watch and chain, and two gold
rings.” Many of Abraham’s descendants are excellent players on the harp,
and all, without exception, speak pure, deep, inflected Romany, akin to
the beautiful musical dialect spoken by the Gypsies of Eastern Europe.
Angling all summer, fiddling or harping all winter, such is the life of
the Gypsy Woods of Wales.
It was with joy that we rambled with Matty along the shore of Bala Llyn,
a glittering mirror in the sunshine broken only by rings made by rising
fish. The windless day of summerlike quality induced our little party to
loiter by the lake, and when at length we turned to come away, there on
the road stood a Romany lass with her little brother, as merry a pair as
ever wore Gypsy togs. To me it was very delightful to hear their fluent
Welsh Romany.
There was no difficulty in persuading Matty to accompany us to our camp
at Maerdy. He seemed only too glad to escape into the sweet open country
after the close atmosphere of the town streets. And how the mare did
travel after her feed and rest! On and on up the mountain road we went,
startling the horned sheep on the unfenced roadsides. Now and then Matty
would point out the spots where his old folks used to camp. Well away
from the town, we took a bite of bread and cheese at a tiny white inn
backed by a strip of pine forest, from whose shadows darted a grey
sheep-dog almost wolf-like in its leanness of figure and sharpness of
nose. What a penetrating bark it had too!
A few more miles of rough road, with here a lone farm and there a cottage
with lumps of white spar on its window-ledges, brought us once again to
the “Cymro,” Maerdy, where we encountered a funny horse-breaker,
reminding one of Borrow’s gossipy ostlers. Oli Purum’s tricks here “took
the cake,” and to the delight of his audience he kept up a constant
stream of them.
To-night we felt that fate had been extraordinarily kind to us, as by the
fire we sat listening to Matty’s weird tales and to Oli’s rendering of
“The Shepherd of Snowdon” and other Welsh airs on his violin. A rare
stock of tales has Matty—stories replete with enchanted castles, green
dragons, witches, ghosts, and the hero is nearly always a clever Gypsy
named Jack. Matty is Oli’s cousin, and it is charming to see how happy
they are together.
To me this is a holiday indeed. The utter absence of conventionality,
and the diversions of the Gypsy life, are as balm to one’s nerves.
_May_ 15.—To-day is another blue and golden foretaste of summer. Along
the banks of the Alwen, dodging in and out among huge boulders, climbing
fences, scrambling through the masses of flowering gorse and broom,
Gilderoy, Matty, and I made our way to Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch. In the old
inn, a cool retreat after the broiling sunshine in the wooded valley, we
sat awhile. Years ago I saw Matty and his sons dance on the blue-stone
floor of this room, just after the New Year had come in—a time when all
Welsh folk are merry with fiddle and song.
[Picture: A Happy Pair. Photo. W. Ferguson]
On getting back to our camp in the early evening, all hands set to work,
some gathering sticks, others fetching water, and soon the supper was
spread inside the roomy tent. Tales and talk till the late-rising moon
glinted through the holes nibbled by field-mice in the tent blankets.
Then to dreamland.
[Picture: A Chat by the Gate. Photo. W. Ferguson]
_May_ 16.—This morning I find thin ice on a pail of water standing in the
open. How bracing to complete your toilet in the cool air from the
mountains. See with what tenderness the sunlight colours the rocks up
there by the hillside farmstead. For the first time since coming into
Wales I hear the cuckoo calling in the woods. High up on the slope I see
a black horse dragging a hurdle with thorn boughs weighted by stones—a
primitive harrow. I’ll have a scamper down the road through the keen air
of morn, before the sun has drunk up all the dew.
After breakfast I go a-fishing. Home in the afternoon to find some of
the Gypsy Locks coming down the Holyhead Road with their carts and
ponies; a delightful party, and much _rokerben_ (conversation) followed.
A little later Gilderoy and I drive in the tilt-cart to Corwen to fetch
Fred o’ the Bawro Gav. This means more fun for us round the evening
fire. When depressed in days to come, I want to remember that flow of
Gypsy mirth away there under the shadow of Cader Dinmael, while the
oak-groves outside our tent whispered in the rising wind of night.
_May_ 17.—Farewell, tent and caravan and tilt-cart. Farewell, old pals
beside your smoking fires. Farewell, sweet Wales and your beautiful
mountains. To-day I return to civilization.
Oli Purum drove me to Corwen station, and by night I am at home again on
the Wolds of Lincolnshire.
II
_September_ 27.—We are at Sedbergh, a little grey town at the foot of the
Yorkshire Fells. Stone walls, narrow streets, old inns—all have their
outlines softened by the mellow shadows, half-golden, half-brown,
stealing over the place this afternoon. Looking out from a tavern window
I experience a thrill. There in the street stand two vehicles, a _vâdo_
and a tilt-cart, with sleek horses between their shafts. That tilt-cart
I should know anywhere, for under its weathered hood I have dreamt happy
dreams.
* * * * *
“I say, pals, we must be stirring. Come along,” exclaims Gilderoy Gray,
rising from his corner on the smooth-worn settle. We follow our leader
into the street, and, boarding those vehicles, we are not long in getting
clear of Sedbergh town. Bound for Brough Hill Horse-Fair, our party of
six never had a gayer prospect. Here we are on the road again—Gil’roy,
Merry Jim, Fred o’ the Bawro Gav, Oli Purum, his son Willy, and the
Gypsy’s Parson. . . .
But even the brightest of September days must wane, and soon to right and
left of us dark ridges lift themselves against the fading light. Our
first stage is a short one. Nightfall sees us pull up at Cautley Crag,
where we seek a stopping-place in the small croft adjoining the lonely
white inn on the roadside. However, the gate proves too narrow to admit
our carts, so we draw upon the wayside turf, under the shelter of a stone
wall. Nimble as ever, Oli erects the red blanket tent in the croft, and
Willy busies himself in building a good fire. When an abundance of brown
bracken has been laid down in the tent (no fresh straw is to be had), the
customary rugs are spread and we sit down to supper. Pipes and chatter
make the evening hours fly. There is so much Gypsy news to talk over.
At last, having placed a warning lantern, like a pendant star, on one of
the carts, we tumble into our beds and quickly fall asleep.
_September_ 28.—A keen, clear autumn morn making you feel how good it is
to be alive. After pottering about the camp, Gilderoy and I wander along
the bank of the roaring Rawthey, while Jim and Fred, lured by the shine
and glamour of the sunlit mountains, set off across the dewy moor for a
closer look at the “Spout,” as the waterfall up the dingle is described
on the map. Down by the plank-bridge I stand and look at the fells all
a-shimmer in the sun. Far up beyond the region of stone walls, built
(says our Oli) in the days when labourers received a wage of a penny a
day, one’s eye follows the forms of mountain ponies, horned sheep, and a
couple of shepherds roaming with their dogs. Nearer, on the river-bank,
are small companies of geese preening their feathers in the sunshine. I
hear from our landlord that prowling hill-foxes sometimes snap up a goose
on the moor. . . .
Breakfast over, we were busy packing when some of the Whartons (Oli’s
relations) passed by in their light accommodation carts _en route_ for
Brough Fair, so Oli and Willy must needs rush out to gather the latest
news of the road. This meant a trifling delay in our getting off, for
Gypsies are loquacious. However, by 9.30 we were once more “on travel,”
feeling blithe as larks. Rumble-rumble went the wheels on the road, and
all was going as merry as a marriage bell until a single magpie flitted
across our track. Observing the bird of ill-omen, I quoted the old-time
ditty—
“One for sorrow, two for mirth,
Three for a wedding, four for a birth.”
“That’s only an old woman’s tale,” quoth the Gypsy, flicking the horse’s
glossy back with the ends of the reins. Yet, a mile or so farther on,
Oli was the first to discover that the horse had cast a shoe. Handing
over the reins, the lithe Gypsy went off at a trot, and not long after he
came up flaunting the lost shoe, just as the smith at Court Common was
ready, tools in hand, to put it on.
[Picture: ’Neath Cautley Crag. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Under the lee of a wood of bronzed beeches we made a stick fire to warm
the stew-pot, while the smith replaced the shoe amid an interested group
of yokels who had popped up from goodness knows where.
The wonderfully transparent atmosphere of this region appears to possess
magnifying powers, for even the poultry on the distant knolls assume the
forms of huge birds, and as for the gaunt lady who sat “taking the air”
on a lonesome bench half a mile away, she would have passed right enough
for the wife of Goliath, if that celebrity ever possessed a missis.
In a locality like this, romance and poetry meet one at every turn. A
commonplace duck-pond in a grassy hollow does not, perhaps, suggest the
glamorous things of life; yet the small tarn lying before us in the
sunshine is the subject of a curious local legend. Here, says tradition,
you are treading upon fairy ground, for in this dimple in front of the
beech wood you have a _bottomless pool_!
[Picture: A Bottomless Pool. Photo. Fred Shaw]
As for yon grey house amid the trees on the common’s upper edge, well,
the man for whom it was built lived in it but a day and died, and over
the doorway somebody has inscribed the text, “Occupy till I come.”
Soon after quitting the common, Wild Boar Fell begins to mark the skyline
on our right, and now all around us lies a realm of strewn rocks—
“Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled,
The fragments of an earlier world.”
A stiff push up the inclines brought us at last to the high point from
whence the road dipped into the long straggling town of Kirkby-Stephen.
Verily the place seemed to have dropped asleep in the September sun.
With as little delay as possible we held on our way until, by 5 p.m., we
had made Warcop and had pitched behind the farmhouse where we had stayed
on previous happy occasions.
With all hands to work, the tent was put up in record time, and as the
ruddy sundown tinged the tree boles near our camp, we gathered round the
fire for the evening meal. Thus closed a superb summerlike day.
_September_ 29.—Somewhere about 7 a.m. a whiff of tobacco smoke comes
curling pleasantly round the edge of our bunk in the tilt-cart, and I
become aware that my bedmate, Fred o’ the Bawro Gav, is dressing.
“There’s a heavy dew this morning,” says he, turning back the coverings
at the entrance of the cart; and in a little while I am up and washing
outside, and perceive for myself that the cobwebs on the hedge are
delicately jewelled with drops of dew. “Look at the calves,” says Fred,
“pretty fellows, aren’t they?” My companion has quite a farmer’s eye for
things, and as a weather-prophet he rarely makes a mistake. Overhead low
clouds are rolling, or rather masses of dove-coloured mist, with patches
of blue sky showing between, and already the mountains rising to the
north are richly bathed in sunshine.
During the forenoon Gilderoy, Fred, and I stretch our legs in a stroll
upon the sunlit “Hill,” where the Gypsies are encamped in considerable
numbers for the morrow’s great horse-fair. Many familiar faces greet us
on every hand. Now it is Pat Lee who springs out from a group and nearly
twists off Fred’s hand, so vigorous is the shaking it receives, and now I
am honoured by an invitation to test the weight of Femi Coleman’s new
baby. From the doorway of a gorgeous _vâdo_ Sophia Lovell thrusts out
her black poll and inquires after our Oli. In this manner, with many
variations, we make our way between the camps, and our ramble proves
enjoyable in every way.
[Picture: A Wandering Minstrel. Photo. Fred Shaw]
Going back to the wagons at Warcop, we drop into an inn, and by a bit of
luck it happens that a “character” is present in the person of “Fiddling”
Billy Williams, the wandering minstrel, who at our request takes his
brown violin from a bag on his back and plays some lively airs, and Oli
and Willy Purum, who have turned up, dance cleverly to a tune or two on
the smooth-worn, blue-stone floor. But Old Billy—I cannot take my eyes
off him. Look at his weathered coat (a gift from Lord Lonsdale) which in
the course of years has lost its nap and shows here and there patches of
a ruddy lower layer; surely the nondescript garment suits the grizzled
old wanderer to perfection. Watching him closely, I observe that he has
a very passable acquaintance with the Gypsy tongue, so, edging towards
him, I drop a deep sentence into his ear. How he starts! “You know
something,” says he. Then he goes on to tell me that as a boy he
travelled with no less renowned a personage than John Roberts, the Welsh
Gypsy harpist. Here’s a find. Who ever expected to meet a pupil of Old
Janik’s in a remote Westmorland inn? Billy says that Roberts taught him
how to “scrape music off these things,” twanging the fiddle-strings with
a forefinger, and smiling sweetly as he does it. For myself, I count
this meeting with Fiddling Billy one of the “events” of our trip.
In the evening we again rambled on the “Hill” to see a memorable
sight—hundreds of Gypsy fires with rings of dark figures squatting around
the blazing logs. A feast for the eyes of a lover of the nomads was this
array of firelit faces set against a background of caravans, stone walls,
and mountains.
_September_ 30.—A fine morning with a cool wind blowing from the east.
As we sat at breakfast, a clatter of hoofs on the road announced belated
arrivals for the fair. Early in the forenoon we found ourselves in the
thick of the crowd, which, to me, seemed as big as ever on Brough Hill.
Once upon a time this fair used to last a whole week, much more indeed
for the Gypsy element, but nowadays the last day of September and the
first day of October are the only recognized dates. Droves of fell
ponies took up a large space on the fair-ground. A few heavy horses and
a sprinkling of “bloods” met the eye at times. For one thing we could
see our Gypsy friends busy upon their “native heath,” for where is a
Gypsy at home if it is not at a horse-fair?
As evening approached, an ugly bank of inky-black cloud came over the
mountains, and the wind in rude gusts began to wail, Valkyrie-like, in
the tree-tops, and to shake our wagons in a way that reminded one of a
night at sea. Thus the day which had opened so gaily ended in real
“Brough weather.”
An authority on that local phenomenon known as the “Helm” wind writes:
“The field of its operation extends from near Brough for a distance of
perhaps thirty miles down the Eden Valley towards Carlisle, and is
sharply restricted to the belt lying between the Pennines and the river;
never, on the one hand, being encountered on the actual summit of the
range, and never, on the other, crossing the water. Bitterly cold, it
rushes like a tornado down the slope, and works havoc in the valley
below. If the “Helm” happens to blow during the fair, the proprietors of
scores of refreshment tents may usually bid farewell to all the canvas
they possess.”
[Picture: Brough Hill Horse Fair. Photo. Valentine]
The Gypsies, to whom I have ever mentioned the “Helm” wind at Brough,
invariably shrug their shoulders, as if it were an old friend, and not a
very welcome one at that.
_October_ 1.—We were all afoot in good time this morning, six o’clock or
thereabouts, and right glad we were to see the sun breaking through the
mists over Brough Fox Tower. Taking a halter apiece, Fred and I went to
fetch the horses. Breakfast; then we packed, and away we went.
“Good-bye, old camping-place,” we said, as the wagons reached the
Musgrave ramper, for very pleasant had been our sojourn by the spreading
trees beyond the old farmhouse. On the way to Kirkby-Stephen, many light
carts rattled past, going south, and, after the stiff pull out of the
town, it was good to be once more on the open road with the keen mountain
air blowing on our faces from over wide leagues of rocks and heather.
By early evening we had reached Cautley, where, as before, we drew on to
the strip of wayside turf, and in quick time a couple of plump fowls were
roasting in the black pot over a wood fire. To watch Oli prepare and
cook those fowls was an object-lesson to be remembered. Bravo, Oli, our
Romany chef!
Realizing that this was our last evening in the wilds, we were in no
hurry to get between the blankets. So we stretched out the tales, and
meandered leisurely through the fields of reminiscence, while the cloud
of tobacco smoke grew denser around us, and the stars o’ night shone more
and more brightly over Cautley’s black crag.
_October_ 2.—Up at seven to find the sky almost free from clouds and
holding out the promise of a brilliant wind-up. After breakfast we set
off for Lancaster, near whose castle we parted; and now, over fireside
pipes, my notebook and its jottings possess the power to make every sight
and sound of the journey live again.
CHAPTER XXII
FURZEMOOR
ARE you seeking a recipe for youth? Go a-Gypsying. Forth to the winding
road under the open sky, the Gypsies are calling you. Scorning our
hurrying mode of life, these folk are content to loiter beneath the green
beeches, or in the shadow of some old inn on the fringe of a windy
common. Like Nature herself, these wildlings of hers overflow with the
play-spirit and therefore remain ever youthful. To rub shoulders with
them, I have found, is to acquire a laughing indifference to dull care
and all its melancholy train. Whoever then would grow light-hearted and
become just a happy child of sun and star and stream, let him respond to
the call of the road: let him go a-Gypsying.
Long ago I observed that during the pleasanter months of the year a few
families of wanderers were generally to be found encamped upon a secluded
waste—which I will call Furzemoor—where, by the courtesy of the owner,
they were allowed to remain as long as they pleased. They resorted
thither, so it seemed to me, to recuperate from the effects of their
winter’s sojourn upon the city ash-patches hemmed in by unsavoury gas-lit
streets.
One April afternoon, following close upon a lengthy stay in London, I
remember how blithely I tramped along the grassy cart-track, which, after
winding between hedgerows full of green sprays, sweet odours and tinkling
bird-notes, emerged upon rugged Furzemoor—one of those few places which
in after years become for you backgrounds of dream-like delight by reason
of the memories associated with them. Is it not to such spots that the
fancy turns when the mood of the commonplace hangs heavily upon you, and
any shred of adventure would be more stirring to the heart than “the
cackle of our burg,” which is too often mistaken for “the murmur of the
world”?
No matter how often I came, the moor had ever the power to stir one’s
imagination anew by its suggestive atmosphere of the remote, the aloof,
the wild; and having paused at the end of the lane to renew old
recollections, I went forward and peered over the edge of a declivity
fringed with bushes of furze in golden flower. Ah! there below the
slope, kissed by the warm sun and fanned by the breath of spring from off
the heath, lay the brown tents, tilt-carts, and smouldering fires of a
Romany camp, looking strangely deserted save for a girlish figure
reclining near one of the fires over which a kettle was slung. Pushing
between the bushes, my blundering feet loosened some large stones which
rolled down the bank with a rattle, causing the girl to look sharply over
her shoulder, and simultaneously from her red lips came a warning
whistle, a shrill penetrating note first ascending then dropping again.
I had heard that whistle of old and knew well its significance. In
response thereto a Gypsy man appeared from behind the tents, his keen
eyes gleaming with recognition. “Hey, _rashai_, we’s been a-talking
about you lately. Only last night I was saying, p’raps our pass’n will
be coming to see us one of these days, and here you are!”
Such was the greeting I got from Gypsy Sam, who now wheeled about and
walked me off to a sandy hollow where his wife Lottie and her bairns sat
by the fire. On catching sight of me, the children—a black-eyed
troop—raised a shout of welcome, and, like little savages, soon began
tugging at my coat tails. After an absence of several months from the
camping-place this was a joyful meeting, and I guessed that my friends
had much news to tell.
[Picture: Gypsy Children. Photo. Illustrations Bureau]
“It’s no use pretending to offer you a chair,” said Lottie, giving my
hand a hearty shake, “for we haven’t got one. If there’s anything I does
detest, it’s chairs. The nasty things make sich draughts about ’ur
legs.” So, squatting on the ground, I awaited the unfolding of the
family budget.
There was a touch of the Orient on every side. Stuck in the wind-rippled
sand under a bold wall of rock were curved tent-rods with brown blankets
pinned round them. Between the golden furze clumps a lean horse and a
shaggy ass ripped the grasses. A greyhound lay asleep under a tilt-cart
upon the shafts of which sundry gay garments were hanging to dry. Upon
this picture my eye rested with pleasure.
Now Gypsy Sam ignites his tobacco by scooping up a red ember with the
bowl of his pipe. His wife does the same, and I follow suit.
“A prettier place is this,” quoth Lottie, “than when you see’d us under
that ugly railway bank at Hull.”
Verily the Gypsies are possessed of an æsthetic sense, and their roving
eyes grow wistful as they take in the beauty of the distant hills and the
sun-gleams lighting up grassy knolls and spindly fir-trees rising from
patches of sand.
“You remember that _pawno grai_ (white horse) of ours?” says Sam. “Well,
we lost him a little while back. A bit of _wafro bok_ (bad luck) that
was for us. We was stopping at a place with nasty bogs around us, and
one stormy night the _grai_ got into one of ’em unbeknown to we, and i’
the morning we found him with no more than his nose sticking out. Of
course he were dead as a stone. Then there was that _kawlo jukel_ (black
dog) what you saw at Hull—brother to this one under the cart—he got
poisoned up yonder by Rotherham. I reckon a keeper done it as had a
spite agen us. I wouldn’t ha’ parted with that dog for a good deal; he’s
got us many a rabbit.”
The steaming splutter of the kettle suggests a meal, which is soon spread
in winsome style. Meanwhile, from another fire hard by, a black pot is
brought, and a savoury stew is followed by tea and slices of buttered
bread with green cresses fresh from the brook. As Lottie lifts the
silver teapot to pour out tea, I cannot help admiring the lovely old
thing, and the Gypsy sees my appreciation.
“Yes,” (holding it up in the sunlight), “it’s a beauty, ain’t it? Did
you ever hear of my Aunt Jōni’s quart silver teapot? Squire Shandres
used to fix greedy eyes on it whenever he come down to the camp, but my
aunt wouldn’t part with it, not likely. You won’t remember Jōni, of
course. A funny old woman she were, to be sure. There was one thing I
minds her a-telling of us. She’d been out with her _kipsi_ (basket) but
it weren’t one of her good days, and by night her basket was nearly as
heavy as when she’d set out. Twopence was all she’d made, as she passed
through three or four willages, tumble-down sort of places, where the
house walls were bent and the thatches of the cottages were sinking into
the rooms underneath ’em. At one of these cottages as stood in an odd
corner, Jōni stopped to knock. Two steps led up to a green door with a
bird-cage hanging outside. She waited a minute, but as nobody came she
gave two more raps and tried the door. It was bolted. After that she
heard sounds inside, a muttering voice came nearer, and slip-slap went
the shoes, as an old woman opened the door. Talk about ugly, she was
that, if you like; and there was hair growing on her lip and chin.
Fixing her black eyes on Jōni, she scowled and scolded, and, pointing a
finger at her, she cursed poor Jōni, and for ten days afterwards my aunt
couldn’t speak proper. Whenever she tried to talk, she could only groan
and bark and moo like the beastses, and it wasn’t till after the tenth
day that she were herself at all.”
From witches it was not a long leap to wise men.
Said Lottie, “Did I ever tell you about the wise man of Northampton?
Well, it was one time as I’d had wery bad luck indeed with my basket. I
couldn’t sell nothing at all in the willages agen that town, but I know’d
a _gozvero mush_ (wise man) as lived there, so I went to see him, and he
give me a rabbit’s head and a cake of bread. ‘Now,’ says he, ‘go you and
call at the places where you’ve took nothing, and you’ll take money at
all of ’em.’
“And what he told me came true, every word of it. I’ll take my sacrium
oath it did. That there _gozvero mush_ (wise man) could tell the names
of folks as had stolen things, and he could _dûker_ (tell fortunes) like
one of us. He could tell folk a lot about theirselves by rubbing his
hand over the bumps on their heads, and he could read the stars like a
book, and find out things by the cards and by the crystal. He was sort
of friendly with our people, and they liked him, but they would never go
near a witch if they knew it.”
It has been truly said, “No one is fond of Gypsies, but is fonder of
Gypsy children.” Grave-eyed pixies, at once bold and reserved, these
quaint little sprites are simply irresistible. When the meal is over, I
stroll off with a party of these romping rascals towards a gorsy hollow
which the sun warms into a gayer gold. Asking the children if they would
like a tale, and what sort? Answer comes, “A _muleno gudlo_” (fairy
tale).
“How long?”
“A mile long, in course.”
Into my tale creeps a ghost, and when I had done, little Reuben says—
“I know something about _mulos_ (ghosts). One time a man was killed by a
bull at the corner of the lane down yonder, and we allus hurries past
that place for fear of _dik_in his _mulo_” (seeing his ghost). “And then
there was two Gypsies as father once know’d. They begged some straw from
a farmer and put it in a little shed for to sleep on. Then they went
into the willage to buy a loaf, and when they got back they found the
straw had gone. A little ways off they see’d a woman running away with
the straw, but ’stid of follering her they went straight to the farmhouse
where they’d got leave to sleep in the shed, and they told the farmer
about the woman, and he says—
“‘Why, that’s my old woman as died ten year ago.’ My word, those Gypsies
soon began to look out for a sleeping-place somewhere else. Yes, we
knows a lot about _mulo_s.”
“What’s that noise?” asked one of the girls, springing up.
“Come away _tshavê_ (children). Come away, sir. Don’t you hear that
nasty little _sap_” (snake)?
From among the mossy stones near at hand came a hissing sound, and there,
sure enough, was a small viper wagging his black-forked tongue at us. We
got up and moved nearer the camp.
“Norfolk’s the place for sarpints,” said one of the boys; “I once see one
with a frog in its mouth. Lor, how the poor thing did squeal. There’s
lots of lizards about here, and they say that a _hotshi_ (hedgehog) will
eat ’em, but if I thought _that_ I’d never touch no more _hotshi_ s’long
as I live.”
I told the children of a little incident which had happened on my way to
Furzemoor, how I had cycled into a family of weasels crossing the road
but didn’t run over any of them, and, dismounting, I banged one of the
little fellows with my hat. He lay still, and I thought he was dead, but
when I turned my head for a moment he was gone like a flash. Lottie, who
had drawn near and was listening, remarked—
“It’s bad luck to meet a wezzel on the _drom_ (road), but if there’s
anything we does like to meet, it’s the Romany _tshiriklo_ (bird),” which
I knew to be the pied wagtail, the foreteller of coming Gypsies.
“When we sees our _tshiriklo_ on the road, and it flies, we knows we are
going to meet Gypsies who’ll be akin to us, but if it only runs away, the
travellers coming will be strangers. One day me and my man was on the
_drom_ and we see a young hare tumbling over and over in front of us.
That’s a sign as means ill, and, sure enough, a few days after we heard
tell of the death of my man’s uncle ’Lijah. Talking about meeting
things, I’ve heard it said that if you meet two carts, one tied behind
t’other, you’ll soon go to prison.”
The strains of a fiddle now proceeded from where Sam sat alone by the
fire, and we joined him. As the sun was going down one of the girls
proposed a dance, and soon a merry whirl of Gypsy elves enlivened the
camp. By the fireside, reminiscences came crowding into Sam’s brain.
“Many’s the time, as you know, we’ve draw’d on to this place, and I takes
good care to be friendly with all the keepers round here. I never
meddles wi’ nothink, you see, so we never gets across wi’ ’em. Ay, but I
minds when I didn’t used to be so pertikler. See that oak wood up
yonder? In my young days me and my old mammy got leave from a keeper to
gather acorns in that wood. Us used to take ’ur sacks and fill ’em with
acorns and sell ’em to a man as we know’d. And mam ’ud warn me not to
meddle with the rabbits, lest we should be forbid to stop on here. One
afternoon mam had half-filled her sack, and when her back was turned, I
tumbled the acorns out, and slipped into the sack three rabbits as I’d
knocked over, and I put the acorns back on the top of ’em. I was a good
big lad then, and, my, wasn’t I frit when I see the keeper coming with
his dog. When he got up to us, he and mam got a-talking, and I see the
dog sniffing round the bag. The keeper, thinking that there was only
acorns in it, shouts to the dog, “Come away there.” But the dog stuck
there, and I was trembling in my boots for fear we should get into
trouble. Howsiver, the keeper kept calling the dog off, and soon they
goes away. Then I nips up the bag and trots off home with it, and when I
told mam about it afterwards she gave me a downright good scolding and
begged me never to do it no more.
“Our old folks allus travelled with pack-donkeys, and they had one donkey
as was a wery knowing animal. I’ll tell you one thing it did. We was
stopping in a lane of a summer’s evening, and our _foki_ (people) was
smoking afore the fire under a hedge with the children playing round, and
everybody was as happy as the Lord in Heaven, but all at once our _maila_
(donkey) comes and pokes its head atween daddy and me, and I taps it on
the nose, playful-like, to send it away, but it comes back, and it was
that restless and fidgety, poking and pulling at us—it wouldn’t be druv
off. My mammy had been watching it from the tent, and she come up and
says—
“‘That _maila_ knows summut, I reckons.’
“‘Ay, it’s a sign sure enough,’ says daddy. And the donkey still kep’ on
poking and pulling at us. Long and by last dad says—
“‘We’d better clear out of here,’ for he thought there was summut queer
about the donkey’s goings on. Well, we pulled up the tent rods and
packed ’ur things, and we’d only just got out of the lane when two
horsemen come along and began inquiring about a little pig as was missing
from a farm. They made us unpack, and they searched through everythink,
but, of course, they couldn’t find nothink agen us, and they goes their
way and we goes ours. And that night, after we had settled down in an
old quarry a bit furder on, my daddy beckoned me and took me to a deep
hollow full o’ dead leaves, and, scrabbling among ’em, he takes out—what
do you think? The nicest little _bawlo_ (porker) you ever see’d, and we
gets it safe home. That donkey _did_ know summut after all. Ay, them
were the old times. Things is wery different now.
“If you come here to-morrow you’ll mebbe walk up with me to the planting
on t’other side of yon beck. The _rai_ as this land belongs to lets me
_tshin_ (cut) all the _wuzen_ (elder) I wants. My old daddy used to say—
“‘You should never lay a chopper to a tree wi’out first axing the
fairies’ leave,’ but folks forgets to do it now.”
The eyes of my friends here began to turn frequently in the direction of
the cart-track. Indeed, when their eyes were not looking that way it
seemed to me that their minds still were. Nor was this expectancy to go
long unsatisfied, for soon there appeared in the sunken lane a black
chimney topping a green-hooded vehicle, a light cart bringing up the
rear. These Gypsies turned out to be a married son of Sam, with his wife
and family. Here was a jolly arrival. With surprising rapidity the
horses were unyoked, and the newcomers were gathered round their parents
on the grass. Off to a well-known spring run the girls to fill the
kettle and a bucket or two, and the boys scamper off towards a spinney to
return with an abundance of dead wood. Then how the fires crackle and
spurt, and in next to no time the steam is puffing from kettle spouts.
Feeling ten years younger for my visit to the Furzemoor Gypsies, I
climbed up the deeply-rutted lane on the way to the distant railway
station, and, as I turned for a last look, brown hands were waving, and
_kushto bok_ (good luck), which is the Gypsy’s “good-bye,” was shouted
after me. On my part I felt a strong tugging at the heart when, at a
bend in the lane, I caught a farewell glimpse of the domed tents,
upcurling blue smoke, and happy Gypsies among the golden gorse.
GLOSSARY
PRONUNCIATION {291}
I. VOWEL-SOUNDS
AS IN
â alms (âms).
a aloe (alô).
aw all (awl).
ê ale (êl).
è air (èr).
e ell (el).
î eel (îl).
i ill (il).
ô old (ôld).
o olive (oliv).
û ooze (ûz).
u book (buk).
ù ulcer (ùlsa).
II. DIPHTHONGS
AS IN
ai aisle (ail).
oi oyster (oista).
ou ounce (ouns).
III. CONSONANTS
The following are pronounced as in English:—
b, d, f, h, k, l, m, n, p, t, v, w.
v and w are, as a rule, easily interchangeable.
AS IN
y yes (yes).
r roam (rôm).
ch loch (Scottish loch).
s ass (as).
sh shin (shin).
tsh chin (tshin).
z zest (zest).
zh pleasure (plezhur).
j (dzh) jest (jest).
g gate (gêt).
ng singer (singa).
ngg finger (fingga).
th thin (thin).
dh then (dhen).
VOCABULARY.
ROMANY. ENGLISH.
Adrê In, into, within.
Akai Here.
Apopli Again.
Aprê On, upon.
Av Come.
Âva, âvali, âwa, âwali Yes, certainly, verily
Avrî Away, out.
Bâ Stone, sovereign (£1).
Baiengri Waistcoat.
Bal Hair.
Balovas Bacon, ham.
Barvelo Rich.
Baw Comrade, mate.
Bawlo Pig.
Bawro Great, large.
Bawro-Gav London.
Beng Devil.
Besh Sit, rest, lie.
Bîbi Aunt.
Biken Sell.
Bita Little.
Bitshado Sent.
Bitshado-pawdel Sent over, transported.
Bok Luck.
Bokro Sheep.
Bokro-mas Mutton.
Bongo Crooked, lame, wrong.
Boshomengro Fiddler.
Bouri Snail.
Bouri-zimen Snail-broth.
Bûdika Shop.
Dâbla Exclamation of surprise.
Dadus Father.
Dai Mother.
Dawdi Exclamation of surprise.
Delaben Gift.
Del-aprê Read.
Didakai Half-breed Gypsy.
Dik See, look.
Dikamengri Picture, looking-glass.
Diklo Kerchief.
Dinelo Fool, simpleton.
Diri Dear.
Divus Day.
Dosta Enough, plenty.
Dova That.
Drom Road.
Dûi Two.
Dûker Tell fortunes.
Dûkeripen Fortune.
Dûvel God.
Fôki People.
Gad Shirt.
Gawjikeno Belonging to gentiles.
Gawjo Alien, gentile, anyone who is not a Gypsy.
Gav Town.
Gèro Man.
Gozvero Cunning.
Grai Horse.
Gudlo Tale, noise.
Guno Bag, sack.
Hatsh Stop, camp.
Hatsh-oprê Arise, get up.
Haw Eat.
Hawben A meal, food.
Hĕro Leg, wheel.
Hokano Lie, trick, swindle.
Hora Penny.
Hotsherdo Burnt.
Hotshiwitshi Hedgehog.
Jaw Go.
Jin Know.
Jiv Live.
Jukel Dog.
Kai Where.
Kanengro Hare.
Kani Hen.
Kawlo Black.
Ke-divus To-day.
Kek, keka No, not, never.
Kel, kèr Do, make.
Kèr House.
Kipsi Basket.
Kisi Much.
Kitshima Tavern, public-house.
Klîsin Lock.
Kokero Self.
Koliko To-morrow.
Kom Love, like.
Kon Who.
Konaw Now.
Kongri Church.
Kopa Blanket.
Kosht Stick, wood.
Kova This, thing.
Krafni Button.
Kuro Cup, glass, mug.
Kushto Good.
Laj Shame.
Latsher Find, pick up.
Lav Word.
Lavengro Word-man, linguist.
Lel Get, take.
Len, lendi Them, their.
Lesti Him, his.
Levina Beer.
Lil Book, paper.
Loli Red.
Lova Money.
Maila Donkey.
Man, mandi I, me.
Mas Meat.
Masengro Butcher.
Maw Don’t.
Maw Kill, slay, murder.
Mî, mîro, m’o My, mine.
Mokado Unclean.
Mokto Box.
Mol Wine.
Mong Beg, pray, request.
Monûshni Woman, wife.
Mûi Mouth, face.
Mûk Let, allow, leave, lend.
Mûleno Ghostly, fairy, supernatural.
Mûlo Dead, ghost.
Mûlo-mas Carrion.
Mûmeli Candle.
Mumpari, mumper Low-class traveller.
Mumpli Nasty.
Mûsh Man.
Mûskro Policeman.
Nasher Lose, waste.
Nongo Naked, bald, bare.
O The.
Odoi There.
Oprê On, up, upon.
Ora Hour, watch.
Pal Brother.
Pâni Water.
Pariko Thank.
Patrin Trail, sign, leaf.
Pawdel Across, over, beyond.
Pawni Fair, white.
Pen Sister.
Pen Say.
Peser Pay.
Petulengro Smith.
Pîro Foot.
Pogado Broken.
Poger Break.
Porj Bridge.
Posh Half.
Praster Run.
Pûker Tell.
Pûkinger Magistrate.
Pûri-dai Grandmother.
Pûro Old.
Pûrum Leek.
Pûtsh Ask.
Pûv Field.
Pûvengri Potato.
Rai, raia Gentleman, sir.
Rakli Girl.
Rashai Priest, parson.
Rat Blood.
Rat, rati Night.
Rawni Lady.
Rinkeno Beautiful.
Rokamiaw Trousers.
Roker Talk, speak.
Rokerben Conversation, speech.
Rom Husband.
Romanes Gypsy-wise, Gypsy language.
Romanitshel Gypsy.
Romano Gypsy.
Romer Marry
Rûp Silver.
Sâ How.
Sal Laugh.
Sap Snake.
Saw All, everything.
Sawkûmi Everybody.
Sawla Morning.
Shan Are.
Shûkora Sixpence.
Shûn Hear.
Shushi Rabbit.
Sî Is.
Sig Quickly, soon, early.
Sô What.
Sos Was.
Stari Star.
Staruben Prison.
Stor Four.
Swêgler Pipe.
Ta And.
Tâder Draw.
Tălê Down.
Tan Tent.
Tâno Young.
Tatsheno True, genuine.
Tatshipen Truth.
Tatsho True.
Te To.
Tem Country, land.
Tîro Your.
Tôv Wash.
Trash Frighten.
Trin Three.
Tshai Lass, daughter, girl.
Tshavo Son.
Tshib Tongue, language.
Tshikli Dirty, foul.
Tshin Cut.
Tshiriklo Bird.
Tshitshi Nothing.
Tshiv Put.
Tshokaw Boots.
Tshor Steal.
Tshordo Stolen.
Tshori Poor.
Tshovihawni Witch.
Tshûmani Something.
Tshûpni Whip.
Tû, tût, tûti You.
Tûv Smoke.
Tûvalo Tobacco.
Vâdo Caravan, cart.
Vâva Another.
Vast Hand.
Vel, wel Come.
Wafodû, wafro Bad.
Wesh, vesh Wood, forest.
Wûser Throw.
Wûzen Elder.
Yek One.
Yog Fire.
Yoi She.
Yôra Egg.
Yov He.
Zimen Broth
MUMPER’S PATTER
Dunnock Steer.
Mush-fakir Umbrella-mender.
GYPSY “FORE” OR CHRISTIAN NAMES.
MASCULINE NAMES.
Airant.
Aniel.
Artelus.
Baius.
Barendon.
Bartholoways.
Bohemia.
Bosko.
Boufi.
Buzi.
Craimia.
Credi.
Dimiti.
Dinki.
Doval.
Dud.
Duraia.
Dusti.
Eros.
Evergreen.
Feli.
Fennix.
Fowk.
Ganation.
Glympton.
Golias.
Gōni.
Gui.
Haini.
Harkles.
Harodain.
Hedji.
Înan.
Îthil.
Îza.
Jaina.
Kaivela.
Kashi.
Khulai.
Ladin.
Lamerok.
Leshi.
Liberty.
Logan.
Loni.
Lumas.
Lusha.
Mairik.
Manabel.
Manfri.
Manful.
Mantis.
Meriful.
Moelus.
Morpus.
Moti.
Motsha.
Motshan.
Motshus.
Muldobrai.
Nelus.
Niabai.
Nipkin.
Nitshel.
Northalion.
Ōbi.
Ōki.
Ŏlbi.
Ŏli.
Orferus.
Ōseri.
Ōthi.
Ōti.
Penderbela.
Persuvius.
Perun.
Pesulia.
Piramus.
Polius.
Potamus.
Rabai.
Raito.
Renda.
Righteous.
Rinki.
Ruslo.
Sairenda.
Santabelphijum.
Santalina.
Santanoa.
Seki.
Seneptune.
Shandres.
Shani.
Shiva.
Silus.
Simpronius.
Solivaino.
Studivares.
Swallow.
Taimi.
Taiso.
Teni.
Thurles.
Tudlin.
Tuti.
Vaina.
Wacka.
Waimore.
Wantelo.
Wingi.
Woodlock.
Yoben.
Zegul.
Zezil.
FEMININE NAMES.
Acorn.
Alamina.
Andelia.
Angelis.
Anis.
Ashena.
Ashila.
Aslog.
Begonia.
Bidi.
Biti.
Bobum.
Boina.
Consuleti.
Daiena.
Darklis.
Delaia.
Delenda.
Deleta.
Deloreni.
Dorenia.
Edingel.
Eldorai.
Elophia.
Elvaira.
Emanaia.
Erosabel.
Everilda.
Ezi.
Fazenti.
Femi.
Fernet.
Fianci.
Fili.
Florentia.
Fluenzi.
Froniga.
Genti.
Glorina.
Graveleni.
Idadê.
Inji.
Jeta.
Jōni.
Kadilia.
Kerlenda.
Kiomi.
Kodi.
Kraisini.
Laini.
Lavaina.
Leanabel.
Lenda.
Leondra.
Levaithen.
Lidi.
Linji.
Liti.
Lurina.
Lusana.
Lwaiden.
Madona.
Maiburi.
Maireni.
Mandra.
Marbeleni.
Melvinia.
Memberensi.
Mezi.
Million.
Mino.
Mireli.
Miselda.
Mitoreni.
Mizereti.
Modiwench.
Morjiana.
Nareli.
Olovina.
Omi.
Oshina.
Paizeni.
Paizi.
Pamela.
Penhela.
Perpagelion.
Piki.
Plenti.
Polovine.
Pomona.
Queenation.
Reni.
Repentance.
Repriona.
Richenda.
Rodi.
Romania.
Saibarini.
Saiera.
Saifi.
Saiforela.
Saiki.
Sanspirela.
Savaina.
Sedinia.
Seluna.
Seni.
Separi.
Shorensi.
Shuri.
Sibela.
Siberensi.
Sibereti.
Sinaminta.
Sinfai.
Spidi.
Stari.
Suti.
Taishan.
Telaitha.
Tiena.
Traienti.
Treci.
Treli.
Trenit.
Vashti.
Wadi.
Waini.
Wasti.
Wenti.
Weson.
Whipni.
Widens.
Wigi.
Wuzi.
Yunakrai.
Zebra.
Zina.
Zuba.
INDEX
Arnold, Matthew, _The Scholar-Gipsy_, 123.
Articles enclosed in coffin, 243.
Aryan languages of India and the Gypsy language, 73–74.
Australia, Gypsies in, 167–168.
* * * * *
Baring-Gould, S., _Book of Folk-Lore_, 22.
Borrow, George, 27, 81, 197, 264; Dumpling Green (Borrow’s birthplace),
197; _Lavengro_, 27, 28, 160, 197, 241; Borrow’s originals, 28–31, 158;
_The Romany Rye_, 28–30, 143, 230, 232; _Romany_ (Gypsy) _Word-Book_,
161, 165, 249; _The Zincali_, 81–83.
Bottomless pool, a, 272.
Brancepeth Castle, 33, 35.
Bread crumbled to ward off evil, 53.
Brewer, Dr., _Dictionary of Fable_, 126.
Burning possessions of the departed, 243, 246.
Byard’s Leap, a witch legend, 140–141.
* * * * *
_Caian_, _The_ (quoted), 73–74.
Calderari, the, 206.
Charm, a Gypsy, 36.
Childbirth tabu, 53.
Coining words, 170.
Creel (portable grinding-machine), 161.
Creenies, 206.
Crinks, 207.
Crofton, H. T., on continental origin of certain Anglo-Romany Christian
names, 54; _The Dialect of the English Gypsies_. See Smart.
Crystal-gazing, 108, 223–225.
* * * * *
Dancing booth, 177.
_Dark Ages_, _The_, by “L.,” 246.
Death-hawk, 245.
Devil and nuts, 111.
_Dialect of the English Gypsies_, _The_, by Dr. Bath Smart and H. T.
Crofton, 76, 239.
Dialects, modern Indian, 73.
Dialogue between two Gypsies, 144–145.
Diamond, Manful Heron’s, 190–191.
_Didakais_ (half-breeds), 25, 77.
Drinking-vessels of aliens avoided, 82.
* * * * *
East Anglian Gypsy family, an, 104–117.
Egyptian origin of the Gypsies, legend of, 74–75.
Ermine Street (High Dyke), a Roman road, 134.
Evil eye, 53, 129.
* * * * *
Fairies, 15, 288.
Fairs—Bala, 265; Brough Hill, 275; Horncastle, 229–237; Leicestershire
Fair, a, 47; Lincoln, 257; Newark-on-Trent, 141–142; Peterborough,
118–133; Seamer, 184–185; Stow Green, 68–70; West Stockwith, 89–98.
Fasting, 111, 163.
Fear of ghost, 243.
Feeding a gibbeted man, 22.
Ferdousi (quoted), 114.
Fight between Gypsies, a, 69–70.
Fighting song, a, 70.
Flaming, Tinman, the, 28.
Fortune-telling, 61, 107–108, 128.
Fossdyke, a Roman canal, 16–17.
Freckles and Gypsies, 102.
* * * * *
Gamekeepers and Gypsies, 19, 63, 139, 286–287.
Gentleman Gypsy, the. See Stables, Dr. Gordon.
Ghosts, 66–67, 108–109, 183, 284.
Gibberish, 78, 153.
Gilliat-Smith, B., on the Gypsy language, 73–74.
Glanvill, Joseph, _The Vanity of Dogmatizing_, 123–125.
Gordon, Jean, prototype of Meg Merrilies, 28.
Great North Road, the, 55, 57, 100, 104, 207.
Groome, F. H., 91, 102, 129; _Gypsy Folk-Tales_, 257; _In Gipsy Tents_,
85; letter (quoted), 126.
Gypsy baptism, a, 52–53.
„ benison, a, 46.
„ bird (pied wagtail), 89, 285.
,, blood, grades of, 77.
„ burial lore, 240–246.
„ carelessness about names, 131.
,, cheerfulness, 34.
Gypsy, Christian or “fore” names, 53–54, 299–302.
„ church-going, 219.
„ cookery, 277.
„ Court, its characters, 18–27, 105, 176.
„ crimes, 254–255.
„ curse, 129.
„ dreams, 109–110, 159.
„ enchantress, a, 164–165.
„ epitaphs, 150, 244.
„ eye, the, 160–161.
„ fetish, 145–146.
„ fiddlers, 10–11, 29–30, 84, 86, 120, 195, 222, 266–267, 274–275.
„ fighters, 3, 30, 69–70.
„ graves, 150, 170, 238, 240.
„ guiding-signs (_patrin_s), 95–96, 142–143.
„ harpist, 85–86, 275.
„ heroism, 30.
„ hospitality, 49–51.
„ incantation over sick person, 164–165.
_Gypsy Jack_, a drama, 103.
,, _Laddie_, the, a ballad, 171.
Gypsy language, the, 73–74, 153.
„ Lore Society (note), 254.
„ love of extraordinary names, 54.
„ love of a fire, 10.
„ marriage, 176.
,, mesmerism, 122–125.
,, migrations, 157.
,, moods, 7.
,, morals, 255.
,, name-changes, 244–245.
,, origins, 72–76.
„ pedigrees, 78–79, 167.
,, pets, 142, 192–193.
,, play-spirit, 91–94, 216.
,, politeness, 3, 79.
„ pride, 76, 156.
,, queens, 71.
,, reverence for the dead, 240.
,, sense of beauty, 281.
„ snuff-taking, 18, 196.
,, soldier, a, 27.
„ song, a, 84–85.
„ surnames, 55–56.
„ tent, construction of, 146.
,, tinkers, 205–212.
„ trial, a, 31.
„ tricks, 121–123, 132, 236.
„ unwillingness to impart names, 54–55.
,, warning whistle, 7, 280.
,, washing rules, 113–114.
Gypsyries—Blackpool, 71–88; Derby, 157–165; Lincoln, 2–4; London, 162,
198–201; Scarborough, 173–179.
* * * * *
Half-breeds, 77, 181.
Hangman’s Ditch, 2.
Hedge-crawlers, 77, 156.
Hedgehog, 26, 45, 49–50, 62, 67, 177–178, 257.
“Helm” wind (at Brough Hill), 276.
_Henry IV_. (Shakespeare), quoted, 207.
High Dyke, or Ermine Street, 134–141.
Hindi, 73.
_Hokano Bawro_, a traditional swindle, 121–122.
Holyhead Road, the, 262, 268.
Horse of deceased Gypsy shot or sold, 243, 246.
Horse-stealing, 132.
Hoyland, _Historical Survey of the Gypsies_, 39.
* * * * *
Irish vagrants, 157.
* * * * *
Jack o’ Lantern, 147.
Jewellery of deceased Gypsy dropped into river, 243.
_Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_, _The_, 164–165.
* * * * *
King Edward the VII. (when Prince of Wales), 203.
Kirk Yetholm, 115.
Knapp, Dr. W. I., _The Life_, _Writings_, _and Correspondence of George
Borrow_, 28.
* * * * *
Legends and folk-tales—
Caspar, one of the Magi, a Gypsy, 75.
Ghost of the Haystack, the, 147–148.
Ghost of the Ford, the, 222.
Happy Boz’ll’s Tales, 257–261.
Nails at the Crucifixion, a legend, 75.
O’Neil’s Horse, 182.
Romanitshels hail from Egypt, a legend, 74–75.
Ruzlam Boz’ll’s Boy and the Fairies, 14–15.
Witch of Byard’s Leap, the, 140–141.
Wry-necked Fiddler, the, and the Devil, 225–227.
Zuba Lovell sells herself to the Devil, 112–113.
Leland, Charles G., 54; _The English Gipsies and their Language_, 203;
his discovery of Shelta (note), 208.
Libation on Gypsy graves, 151, 240.
Lincoln, Upper (described), 1–2.
Lithuanian Gypsies, 75.
Loan-words, 74.
Lying tales, 86–87, 257–261.
* * * * *
Mace, Jem, the pugilist, 195, 233.
M‘Cormick, Provost, his _Tinkler Gypsies_ (quoted), 10.
Macfie, R. A. Scott, lecture (quoted), 254–255; _System of Anglo-Romany
Spelling for English Readers and British Printers_, 291–292.
Magi, the, a Gypsy legend, 75.
Merrilies, Meg, 28.
Meyer, Kuno, on Shelta (note), 207.
Miller, Thomas, _Gideon Giles the Roper_, 161.
_Mokadi_ (unclean), 113–114.
Mousehold Heath, 28, 80–81, 197.
Moveable Dwellings Bill, the, 155.
_Mulo-mas_ (note), 61, 62.
Mumper’s Dingle, 31.
Mumpers and Gypsies contrasted, 77.
* * * * *
Name-changes, 192, 244–245.
Newark ale, 221, 223.
No Man’s Land, 178.
Nomenclature, Gypsy, 299–302.
* * * * *
Oakley (an artist), 163.
Omens, 245, 285–286.
Oppression of Gypsies, 20.
* * * * *
_Pall Mall Budget_, the, 43.
“Peelers,” 26.
Petulengro Jasper (Ambrose Smith), 28, 30, 157, 197, 229, 241.
Public Record Office, the, 247.
_Puvin Graiaw_, the illegal pasturing of horses, 138.
* * * * *
Recipe for youth, a, 278.
Robin Hood’s Bay, Gypsies at, 178, 180–183.
„ „ Hills, 149.
Romany Language, its pronunciation, 291–292.
„ Vocabulary, a, 292–298.
Rudiger, 73.
* * * * *
Sampson, Dr. John, on Shelta (note), 207–208.
Sanskrit, 73–74.
Scott, Sir Walter, 28; _Guy Mannering_, 28; Sheriff of Selkirkshire, 39,
234.
Scythe blades in Horncastle Church, 230–231.
Self-sacrifice of a sweep, 249.
Shelta (tinkers’ talk), its Celtic origin (note), 207–208; short
vocabulary of, 212.
Sims, G. R., _The Romany Rye_ (a drama), 103–104.
Smart, Dr. Bath, and Crofton, H. T., _The Dialect of the English
Gypsies_, 76, 239.
Smith, George, of Coalville (philanthropist), 51, 155–156.
Snail broth, 62.
Snakes, 88, 285.
Spanish Gypsies, 196.
Spirits summoned by the spoken name, 54–55.
Stables, Dr. Gordon, 149–150.
Stone, J. Harris, _Caravanning and Camping Out_, 241.
Stories—
Bishop Trollope’s Story of Dunston Pillar, 137–138.
Bobby Faa and the Shepherd’s Pie, 115–117.
Dunnock (steer), a Tale about, 12–13.
Eliza Gray’s Tale of a Ghost, 108–109.
“Finding” a Horse, 132–133.
Poaching Policeman, a, 63.
The Bough Licence, 232–233.
The Donkey that knew Something, 287–288.
The Gypsy’s Surprise, 37–38.
Tyso Boswell and the Buried Treasure, 190.
* * * * *
Tabu, childbirth, 53.
„ on food and drink of the dead, 39–40, 243.
„ on names of the dead, 244–245.
Tales. See Legends, Lying Tales, Stories, Transportation.
Temple, Sir Richard, on Gypsy Christian names, 54.
Theatre, Harrison’s, 103.
Thompson, T. W., on Gypsy burial, 241.
_Times_, the, 103–104.
Tinkers, 205–212, 249.
Tinkers’ talk. See Shelta.
Tinklers, 10, 207.
Transportation of Gypsies, 247–254.
,, tales, 247–254.
Trollope, Bishop E., 137.
Turning garments of dead inside out, 242–243.
* * * * *
Victoria, Queen, _More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the
Highlands_ (quoted), 29.
* * * * *
Watching the corpse, 242.
„ the grave, 243–244.
Wayside burial, 240–242.
Welsh Gypsies, 262–269.
White, Gilbert, of Selborne, 55.
Wine buried, 114.
Wise man, a, 283.
,, woman, a, 223.
Wishing a wish, 129.
Witches, 188, 240, 282–283.
Wood, Abraham, 265–266.
Footnotes
{28} _The Life_, _Writings_, _and Correspondence of George Borrow_, by
Prof. Wm. I. Knapp. London, 1899.
{53} See list of masculine and feminine names, pp. 299–302.
{61} _Mulo-mas_, the flesh of an animal which has died without the aid
of a butcher. “Isn’t what the _diri Duvel_ (God) kills as good as
anything killed by a _masengro_?” (butcher).
{73} “Gypsies,” by B. Gilliat-Smith (_The Caian_, vol. xvi. No. 3).
{207} “Shelta is a secret language of great antiquity . . . in Irish
MSS. we have mentions and records of it under various names . . . though
now confined to tinkers, its knowledge was once possessed by Irish poets
and scholars, who, probably, were its original framers” (Professor Kuno
Meyer).
“The language of the tinkers is a dialect or jargon exclusively of Celtic
origin, though, like one of their own stolen asses, it is so docked and
disguised as to be scarcely recognizable. . . . A large number of Shelta
words are formed by transposing the principal letters of the Gaelic word.
This species of back-slang is, of course, purely phonetic, differing in
this respect from the more artificial letter-reversing back-slang of
costers and cabmen. . . . It is indeed strange that the existence of a
tongue so ancient and widespread as Shelta should have remained entirely
unsuspected until Mr. Leland, with whom the undivided honour of this
discovery rests, first made it public in the pages of _Macmillan’s
Magazine_” (Dr. John Sampson).
{246} _The Dark Ages and Other Poems_. By L.
{256} _Gypsy Folk-Tales_, by Francis Hindes Groome (London, 1899).
{291} Taken from _A System of Anglo-Romani Spelling for English Readers
and British Printers_, by R. A. Scott Macfie.
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