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.

p. vTO
MY WIFE
MY COMPANION
ON MANY A GYPSY-JAUNT

(Conversation between Domini and Father Beret in The Garden of Allah, quoted here by the kind permission of Mr. Robert Hichens.)

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.

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 p. 2houses 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 p. 3Gypsy 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 p. 4pure 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 p. 5free, 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 p. 6head of a chattering boy or girl, and to the tip of that rod my own pate was no stranger.

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 p. 7of 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?

p. 8One 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 p. 9timber 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 p. 10matter.  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 p. 11food.  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 p. 12start.  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 p. 13with 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.”

p. 14Among 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 p. 15got 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.

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, p. 17we 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 p. 18autumn 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 p. 19as 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.  p. 20Here and there of course were tiresome believers in the hoary policy of harassment and oppression—

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 p. 21man’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 p. 22wouldn’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 p. 23his 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 p. 24holidays.  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 p. 25gay 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 p. 26sad 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 p. 27asleep 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 p. 28green 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.

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 p. 29wit: the following entry in More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands.

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, p. 30I have been told that Ambrose Smith’s praise of her father’s fiddling was well founded.

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.

p. 31Two 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.

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 p. 33decayed 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 p. 34sight 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, p. 35I 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 p. 36curious 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.”

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.

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 p. 37folk, 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.

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 p. 39the 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—

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.

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 p. 42ranges 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 p. 43play 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 p. 44cottagers.  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 p. 45tasted 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 p. 46mystification 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 p. 47one 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 diklos (kerchiefs) with you, rai.”

“No, you won’t,” I replied; “mine’s silk and yours cotton.”

p. 48“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.

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.

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 p. 49began 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, p. 50nor 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 p. 51a 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?

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 p. 53would 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.

p. 54Whence 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 p. 55that 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 p. 56been 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.

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 p. 58the 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.

p. 59A 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 beshin 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 p. 60those 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.  p. 61Imagine 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 dukerin (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]  p. 62Many’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 puvengris (potatoes), sage, and onions.  Bouris (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).

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 p. 63just 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.  p. 64Do 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 p. 65him 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, p. 66“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 mulos” (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 p. 67when 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 p. 68Jonathan’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.

“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.

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.  p. 69Already 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 p. 70police 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—

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?”

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.

p. 72Those 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.”

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 Romanitshels 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 p. 73been 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 p. 74the 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 Romanitshels 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 p. 75the 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 p. 76Lord 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 p. 77genuine), 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 Romanitshels, “the real thing.”

2.  The Didakais, 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.

p. 78“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 p. 79her 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.  p. 80I 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 p. 81by 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.

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 p. 83whimsically 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 rokerin 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 p. 84sea-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 diklos 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—

Translation.

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 p. 86father-in-law, where he would play old airs to a pianoforte accompaniment.

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.

The scene is the kitchen of the village inn, and poultry-lifting is the topic of conversation.  It is Noarus who speaks—

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), p. 88I 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.

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 p. 90rolling 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 p. 91folk 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, p. 92and 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 p. 93and 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?”

p. 94“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.

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 p. 100lingering 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 p. 101I 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 p. 102along 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, p. 103and 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 p. 104you 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—

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 p. 106glowed 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 hatshin?” (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 p. 107drawn 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 dukerin (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 p. 108to 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—

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.

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 p. 112wouldn’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.

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 “tovin-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 p. 114ready 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 p. 115handling 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 rokerin-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 p. 116which 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 p. 117became 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.

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.

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 p. 119by 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 p. 120in 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 p. 121so 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.

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.

Here is something strangely akin to the Romany mesmerism to which allusion is made by “The Scholar-Gipsy,” whose

As is well known, Matthew Arnold’s poem is based upon the following passage in Joseph Glanvill’s Vanity of Dogmatizing:—

One sometimes wonders whether the world would have cared one jot about the revelations which the p. 126Oxford 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.

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 p. 127by 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.

p. 128“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.

On my pretending to ridicule dukerin, she said—

“Look here, now, what’s the difference between a Gypsy telling fortunes at a fair and a parson rokerin (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.

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.  p. 129As 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 p. 130him 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 p. 131away.  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 p. 132(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 Romanitshels (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-tshorin (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.

p. 133“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.

“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 p. 135a 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.

p. 136“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-beshin (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 hatshin (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 p. 137get 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’ yoras (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 p. 138Dunston 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 p. 139across 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.

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.

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 p. 142the 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 patrins (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.

“There now,” said the old man, “I’ve got to do this at every cross-road, for there’s no telling exactly p. 143where 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 p. 144saw 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—

Translation.

“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 p. 146former 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.

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.”

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, p. 147and, 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.

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 p. 149for 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.

p. 150Here 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:—

My late father-in-law, formerly a curate of Selston, remembered how Gypsies paid visits to this grave and p. 151poured 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.

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 p. 153by 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 rokerin 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 p. 154with 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, p. 155I 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 p. 156letters 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.

p. 157The 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 p. 158in bygone days.  It was from Lincolnshire Romanitshels 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.

p. 159“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 p. 160we’s travelled in many a year, and there he is on the steps a-looking at me so loving-like.  I rokers (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.

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 p. 161hue 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 p. 162her 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.  p. 163She 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.”

p. 164Rascalities 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 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 p. 166Romany.  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 p. 167out 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.

Some weeks later I was again exploring Hull for p. 169Gypsies.  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-dikin 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).

p. 170The 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:—

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.

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.

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 p. 173knew 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 p. 174and 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 Romanitshels 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 p. 175filled 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 Romanitshels 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 p. 176kinsfolk 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 p. 177low-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 p. 178for 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.”

p. 179“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 p. 180that 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 p. 181report 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 didakais (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 p. 182pictures 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 p. 183I 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.

p. 184A 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.”

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:—

p. 185“When I was a boy, I was taking puvengris (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.’”

“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.

p. 187Let 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—

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 p. 189no 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.”

p. 190“What was that?”

“Well, Tyso was once hatshin (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 p. 191dawdi! 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.’

p. 192“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, p. 193a 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—p. 194a 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.”

p. 195Stephen 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 p. 196on 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, p. 197and, 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 p. 198blood.  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.”

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 p. 201Londoners 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 Romanitshels 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 p. 202from 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.”

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 dukerin-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 p. 203was 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 p. 204sons, 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.

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!”

p. 206A 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, p. 207crinks, 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 p. 208for 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.”

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?”

“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 Romanitshels 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.”

p. 209The man’s face was a study in innocence.