In a little while, the tavern door opened noisily, admitting a rush of wind. There was a sound of naily boots on the threshold, and Gypsy Frank and his wife entered. In a few moments they were happy enough on the black settle with mugs of good Newark brew in front of them.
Just before the Gypsies had arrived, I had been studying a pocket-map of the locality, and once again I had an old impression confirmed that many out-of-the-way country districts are dotted over with place-names bearing witness to the prevalence of Gypsy encampments in the past. I mean such names as “Gypsy Lane,” “Gypsy Nook,” “Gypsy Dale,” and the like. On the map I had noted a “Gypsy Corner,” “Gypsy Bridge,” and “Gypsy Ford.”
It was about “Gypsy Ford” that I put a question to Old Frank sitting by my side, and he described the shallow crossing at a bend in the river over which before now I had passed by a narrow plank-bridge. According to my Gypsy, one night many years ago a quarrel arose in the Romany tents encamped near the ford, and in the course of a fight between two kinsmen, one of them was slain. Speedily a grave was dug, and, the corpse having been covered up, the Gypsies fled the spot. This affair became widely known, and little wonder that a legend arose about a “something” having been seen in the neighbourhood of the ford.
“You’s mebbe heard,” said Frank, “about Gypsy Jack’s wife, ‘Flash’ Rosabel, who was drownded at the ford on just such a wild night as this.”
“‘Let’s camp in the lane on this side of the water,’ says Jack’s wife.
“‘Keka’ (No), says he, ‘not in thisdrom(road) where themulo(ghost) walks. With a bright moon like this, ourgrai(horse) will see to pull us through the river all right, never fear.’
“Anyway, he whipped up the horse and steered straight into the ford. And then a sad thing happened. There had been a deal o’ rain and the stream was bigger and stronger than Jack had any idea of. Somewheres about the middle of the river, the hoss was swept off its feet, the wagon tumbled over on to its side, and poor old ‘Flash’ Rosabel was carried away and drownded. Jack allus said that thegraimust havedik’d themulo” (the horse must have seen the ghost). “That’s a tale what’s been told by many a traveller’s fire.”
A Romany Fiddler. Photo. Fred Shaw
Just then the publican came in, panting after a tussle with the wind, and, being on good terms with my Gypsy friends, he said, “I’m glad to see you’ve brought your music. Gi’ us a tune, Frank.” Then the Gypsy, taking his fiddle from its baize bag, screwed up the strings, and, having tuned them to his liking, gave us a merry air from memory’s repertoire. At the back of the clear cantabile of the air, you heard the deep roar of the storm. Once Iwent to the window and looked out into the night. Athwart the white moonlit road lay the sharp black shadows of the ash trees rising from the far hedgerow, and, as I watched the swaying, writhing boughs, a lonely horseman sped past, a phantom he seemed more than a living being, and, returning to my nook in the ingle, I heard in fancy all through the Gypsy’s music the haunting clatter of the night-rider’s horse, and wondered what mysterious mission had called him forth on this riotous March evening. Now the fiddler ceased, and his pewter was forthwith replenished. “Good ale, this,” says Frank, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why, yes,” put in the landlady, looking over her spectacles, and glad, if the truth be known, to give her darning a rest; “it’s Newark ale, and no better drink could any man wish for; we’ve sold nothing else for years.”
Said the landlord, who by this time had recovered his breath—
“That was a strange case as I see’d in the paper t’other day about the wise woman getting ‘trapped’ by the constable’s wife as went to have her fortune told. The paper said as how a crystal ball were used, but I’m blest if I knows how anybody can expect to see their future in a thing o’ that sort.”
“Dunno so much about that,” remarked Old Liddy, who had been dreaming over the fire. “A woman as had a crystal once told my dad he would go toprison in a fortnight, and sure enough he did, along wi’ a conjurer who’d been up to his tricks, and dad says to him when they was in jail, ‘A mighty poor conjurer you be, my fine fellow, if you can’t conjure us out of this place.’ I believes thereissummut in crystals.”
And then I was tempted to tell how a clairvoyant’s crystal once did me a good turn. Let me explain that many years ago, when I was a curate on the Wolds, our Rector’s aged wife used to bring me rare wild-flowers to be named, and thus I won a place in the lady’s good books.
Time passed, and the Rector’s wife died. Not long after, I moved away to another sphere of work. Then came the news of the decease of the old Rector himself. One morning, twenty years after quitting that Wold parish, a letter reached me, asking if I had been a curate with Canon A— in such and such years, and further inquiring whether my wife Elizabeth was still alive. Of course I had no difficulty in satisfying the writer of the letter, and his speedy reply brought an agreeable enclosure in the form of a cheque, a little legacy bequeathed to us by a codicil to the will of the old Rector’s wife who loved wild-flowers. But the strangest part of the story is yet to come. During a visit to London, the wife of the present parson of our old parish visited a clairvoyant who by the aid of a crystal declared that in the drawing-room of her home stood a small brasshandled writing-table containing several drawers, in one of which would be found on examination a bundle of papers long neglected. On returning home, the writing-table was duly searched, with the result that the forgotten codicil was disclosed, and in it were mentioned some legacies bequeathed to friends, several of whom had since passed away, but my wife and I happened to be among the survivors. Thus there came to us, as I have said, an agreeable arrival by the morning post, so that if “seeing is believing,” my wife and I ought nevermore to scoff at clairvoyants and their crystals.
“Dawdi!” (expression of surprise) exclaimed Liddy, with something of a gasp in her voice, while Old Frank looked wonder struck.
“Well, that licks all I’ve ever heard,” said the publican, slapping his knee in punctuation of his surprise. “Now let’s have another tune, Frank.”
Whereupon the fiddler broke into a Scottish air with variations, his body swaying to and fro the while. During several staves, the player laid his cheek on the violin in a fashion so comical that at the end of the tune I could not refrain from remarking—
“You reminded me just now, my pal, of Wry-necked Charley theboshomengro” (fiddler). With a good-natured grin he replied—
“So you know that tale about the fiddler?”
And here it is, in my own words.
Charley Lovell, a fiddler of renown, was returning one evening after a tiring day’s fiddling at a village feast. On the way to his tent, which was pitched in a disused quarry, the Gypsy took from his pocket a few coins he had received by way of payment. “Poor luck, I call it, to be paid like this for such hard work.” Thus commiserating himself, he trudged along the sunken lane leading to his tent. Imagine his surprise to find at the tent door a tall gentleman dressed in black broad-cloth. Dark of complexion, black-eyed, and polished in demeanour, the stranger turned to meet the Gypsy.
“Good evening, sir,” said Charley, bowing low, for he had the sense to perceive that a gentleman stood before him. “Pray what can I do for you?”
“A great kindness,” responded the stranger, “for I have heard of your skilful playing upon this wonderful instrument” (tapping Charley’s fiddle with his finger), “and I wish to know if you will come to play at a dance of mine to-morrow night.” The place and hour were named, and the Gypsy promised to be there.
“Open your hands, my man;” and into them the stranger emptied a pocketful of silver coins, and departed, smiling over his shoulder at the perplexed Gypsy. All that night Charley tossed restlessly on his bed of straw. “A fore-handed payment, and generous too. Who can that dark gentleman be?” In the morning the Gypsy betook himself to a neighbouring priest, who, on hearing his story, looked grave.
“You have made a bargain with the Devil.”
“Then tell me how I can get out of it.”
“You must keep your engagement, for, if you don’t, the Devil will fetch you.”
“But what am I to do when I get there?”
“If you do as I say, all will be well. When you are asked to strike up, you must be sure to play nothing but slow, solemn psalm tunes. Mind you do as I say.”
At the appointed hour the trembling fiddler stood on the moonlit sward within the walls of a ruined castle. Awaiting his arrival was the tall dark gentleman surrounded by his guests, an array of lords and ladies in silks and satins. When the signal was given for the fiddler to commence his music, Charley drew his bow over the strings, evoking none but psalm tunes, solemn and slow, as the priest had advised. After a few moments of this sort of music, the Devil marched up to the Gypsy, and, fixing his large black eyes upon him, said—
“Give us something more lively at once.”
“I cannot,” said the Gypsy.
“Then, takethat!”—and the Devil struck Charley a smart blow on the cheek, twisting the poor fellow’s head on one side, and so it ever remained. After that, he was always known as “Wry-necked” Charley.
As the clock was striking the hour of ten, the rural tavern’s closing-time, my Gypsy friends stepped out into the night.
All through the long hours the wind howled in the chimney and rattled the casements, and one traveller at least slept but fitfully in his four-poster draped with curtains of red damask.
In the morning the landlord informed me at breakfast that a tree had been blown down across the road, and, while “rembling” under his overturned straw-stack, a fine fox was found smothered, and, “See here,” he said, “I shall always think of last night whenever I look at this,” holding up a beautiful tawny brush.
The storm-rack was still scudding overhead as I bade adieu to the quaint pair on the footworn doorstep of the “Black Boy” on the ridge way.
LikeLincoln, York, and Chester, the town of Horncastle originated within the boundaries of a Romancastrum, and to this day an old-world atmosphere clings to its narrow, cobbled streets.
Readers who know their Borrow will recall the visit of “The Romany Rye” to Horncastle in the August of 1825, in order to sell a horse which he had purchased by means of a loan from his Gypsy friend Jasper.
Nowhere perhaps are the changes wrought by the passing years more plainly seen than at a horse-fair of ancient standing. Horncastle has inhabitants who remember when the great August Horse-Fair occupied fully a fortnight or three weeks, and was widely recognized as an event of the first rank. Within my own observation, this fair, like others of its kind, has declined with swift strides. In my time, buyers would be present from all parts of the country, as well as from the Continent, and members of our best Gypsy families invariably made a point of attending. In all these respects, however, the once famous fair has dwindled in a very marked manner.
Let me describe a twentieth-century visit to the August horse-mart.
Having approached the town along a bold ridgeway commanding a countryside yellowing to harvest, I arrive to find the place astir with dealers and horses. Though now but a one-day affair, the mart is not without its pleasing aspects to a lover of such scenes. The chief centre of business is known as the Bull Ring, where well-clad dealers from our English towns, horsey-looking men slapping their thighs with malacca canes, rub shoulders with rubicund farmers from Wold and Marsh, grooms and Gypsies. Not for the purpose of buying or selling horses have I come hither, but for no other reason than to meet the Gypsy families who usually turn up at the fair.
Horncastle Horse Fair. Photo. Carlton
Behind the Parish Church of St. Mary, in a pasture pleasantly open to the sun, numerous caravans are drawn up under the hedges. It is here that the better sort of Gypsies congregate. Down Hemingby Lane lies an encampment of poorer travellers, and some of the same sort of people have drawn into the yard of the “New Inn.” In the course of the day I shall visit these three companies of Gypsies.
Meanwhile, passing over the Bain Bridge, I step inside the old Parish Church and, taking out from my pocket a well-thumbed copy ofThe Romany Rye, I turn to the passage where Borrow talks with the sexton about the rusty scythes hanging on the wall. Just then a lady, evidently an American tourist, who has been lookingup Tennyson’s footprints, which abound hereabouts, asks:—
“Can you tell me anything about those strange-looking things on the wall?”
Various theories have been advanced to account for the presence of these old scythe-blades within the sacred building, the popular opinion being that they were used as instruments of war at Winceby Fight on 11th October 1643. So much, indeed, Borrow seems to have gathered from the sexton, but the better-informed authorities of to-day think that they are relics of the rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace in the year 1536.
Quitting the fine old church, I passed out into the fair, and straightway met a Gypsy fingering a telegram. “Will you read it for me, please?” The message was from a popular Baroness who was desirous of borrowing a caravan for a bazaar; and as I pencilled a reply on the back of the telegram, the Gypsy declared that he would sleep in a tent till his “house on wheels” returned to him.
I have always known that Gypsies readily help one another when in trouble. This man, before going off with his telegram, told me a pleasing thing. It appears that an aged Gypsy, whose horse had died suddenly, had no money to buy another with, but a pal of his, going round with a cap among the Gypsy dealers at the fair, had quickly taken ten pounds, which were handed up to the old man who was now able to buy himself an animal.
InThe Romany Rye, Borrow speaks of the inn where he put up as having a yard which opened into the principal street of the town. On entering that yard he was greeted by the ostlers with—“It is no use coming here—all full—no room whatever;” whilst one added in an undertone, “That ’ere a’n’t a bad-looking horse.” In a large upstairs room overlooking a court, the newcomer dined with several people connected with the fair.
The “George” Inn Yard at Horncastle. Photo. Carlton
During former visits to Horncastle I had tried to identify Borrow’s inn, but without result. Happily, on the present occasion, I came upon a local antiquary from whom I gathered that Borrow’s inn was undoubtedly the “George,” now converted into a post office. Strolling down the quondam inn-yard, my friend pointed out the bow-window through which the jockey so neatly pitched his bottle of pink champagne. Also, he told a good tale of the fair in its palmy days—
Ready for the Fair. Photo. Fred Shaw
Public-houses, though very numerous in the town, were yet unable to supply the fair folk with all the drink they required, and any householder could take out what was called a Bough Licence on payment of seven shillings and sixpence. Having decided to take out such a licence, a man and his wife obtained a barrel of beer and displayed the customary green bough over their door. On the eve of the fair the husband said to his wife—
“I’ll see if this beer is good.”
“You won’t without paying for it.”
“Very well, my dear, I’ll have three-pen’orth,” handing over the coins to his wife.
He appeared to enjoy it so much that she said—
“Let me have three-pen’orth,” handing the pence to her husband. Then he had another drink, passing the threepence back again. And the same coppers passed to and fro until the barrel was empty.
It was to Horncastle Fair, years ago, that Jem Mace came with his master, Nat Langham, to whom he had been introduced at Lincoln Fair, where Nat had a sparring troupe which he had brought down from the metropolis. At Horncastle, Jem had a tremendous glove-fight with the local champion, who was the terror of the district. This fellow was bigger and older than Mace, who was then only in his eighteenth year, and for a long time the issue was doubtful, but at last the Horncastle champion was licked to a standstill, and had to give in.
Walking down a crooked by-lane, past a shop where a chatty little tailor sat repairing a scarlet hunting-coat (the South Wolds Kennels lie a few miles outside the town), I found a camp of Gypsies in a field, and near one of the fires on the grass sat Liddy Brown, a crone of seventy years, puffing a black pipe, her curls peeping from beneath a gaydiklo(kerchief). In the course of our talk, she spokeof our hilly country, and recalled the days when her folk had pack-donkeys and camped in the green lanes on the Wolds. A grand-daughter of Fowk Heron, she had some diverting reminiscences of her mother Mizereti, and her aunts Cinderella and Tiena. The last-named was bitten by a mad dog, and thereby came to an untimely end.
Returning to the town, I looked into the “New Inn” yard and found a number of Gypsies stopping there. The women and girls had donned their smartest fair-going raiment. As I viewed these wanderers, it was not easy to realize that they were the lingering remnants of the once powerful tribes of Browns and Winters hailing from the Border country in the days of Sheriff Walter Scott.
Passing through the archway of the inn, I mingle again with the crowd, but no thimblengro, no Irish Murtagh, no Jack Dale meet the eye, though, curiously enough, from the racing stables at Baumber, where the Derby winner of 1875—Prince Batthyany’s Galopin—was born, there are two or three jockeys looking more than usually diminutive among the burly dealers in the street.
Towards the end of the afternoon the fair began to slacken. The few remaining groups of horses seemed to have gone to sleep in the sultry Bull Ring. Already farmers were moving off in their light traps, and dealers were making for the railway station. Going along the riverside path I saw a Gypsy man asleep at the foot of a tree, and, climbinga fence, I found myself in the encampment behind the church. The scene was enlivening. Seated around their fires most of the Gypsies were making ready for the evening meal. Near a little tent the aged Mrs. Petulengro, a veritable “Mother in Egypt,” was lighting her pipe. Her grand-daughter coming out of the tent offers her a stool to sit upon, but the old lady scorns the idea. “I should tumble off a thing like that. I’m better down here,” pointing to a sack spread by the fire beside which two kettles are hissing.
In various parts of the field the Petulengros are gathered together. Here are tall Alfy and Hook-nosed Suki, “Rabbitskin” Bob, and “Ratcatcher” Charley. During supper, I had to listen to a disquisition on lying from Suki. Put into a nutshell, her ideas amount to this: Lying is of two kinds. There is lying for a living, else how could any sort of business be carried on. But business deceptions are not to be mentioned in the same breath with nasty lies which are meant to “hurt a body.”
“Do you remember,rashai, that time we met you by Newark, when Elijah was with us? A jolly old fellow he were. He often got intostaruben(prison) for fighting but never for stealing. He would go through an orchard, like that one there” (pointing to some apple-trees close by), “but do you think he’d ever pick up an apple? Not he, he’d never steal nothink, wouldn’t Elijah. He could stand hard knocks, and would only fight a better man than hisself. He wasthat tough, nothing ever hurt him. He would lay asleep under a wagon with never a shirt on him and take no harm.”
Elijah was one of three brothers—tall, powerful fellows. Sometimes the trio, Elijah, Master, and Swallow, would enter a lonely tavern, and having ordered ale would depart without paying for it. When the publican protested, the Gypsies displayed their brawny arms and huge fists before his face. One day they had performed this favourite trick several times, and were paying an evening call at a village inn, where they sat a long time. Waxing quarrelsome, the brothers first brawled among themselves, and afterwards got at cross-purposes with a farmer in the tap-room. In the course of a tussle with this person, Swallow fell upon him as he lay on the floor, and, as they struggled there, a steel rush-threading needle of large size, used in mending chair bottoms, dropped from the Gypsy’s pocket. Seizing this, Elijah pricked the farmer in the ribs, and then flung the needle at the feet of Swallow, who picked it up. The farmer’s cries attracted the attention of a village constable who was going by.
“Eh, what’s the matter here?” said the constable, stepping into the tap-room.
“These Gypsies are trying to murder me,” said the farmer. “One of ’em’s stuck me with a long knife as he’s got about him.”
The pockets of the Gypsies were searched, andthe steel needle was found upon Swallow. As the constable held it up between his fingers, the farmer cried—“That’s it. That’s what he tried to kill me with.”
The three brothers were arrested and underwent their trial, with the result that Elijah and Master were sent to prison for a year, but poor Swallow, although innocent of the charge made against him, was transported for fourteen years.
By that Gypsy fire the evening meal passed pleasantly enough, and when at a later hour I returned to the town, the darkened houses were framing the cobbled street, and through the open window of a tavern I caught a soft Romany phrase along with the clinking of glasses. And then from under the archway of the inn yard a dwarfish Gypsy, mounted on a lean horse, rode off with a great clatter into the dusk.
InTetford churchyard, not far from my Rectory on the Lincolnshire Wolds, lies the grave of two celebrated Gypsies, Tyso Boswell and Edward, or “No Name,” Hearn (Heron), who were killed by lightning on 5th August 1831. The incident seems to have made a profound impression upon our Gypsies, and to this day it is everywhere remembered among the Anglo-Romany clans. A large company of the Boswells and Hearns (Herons) appear to have halted at Tetford on their way to Horncastle August Fair, at that time a horse-mart of great importance. Overtaken by a thunderstorm, Tyso and No Name were sheltering in a barn, whither they had gone for some straw, when a stroke of lightning descended fatally upon them.
An aged Gypsy, Lucy Brown (born in the year 1807), once informed me that she remembered the incident quite clearly. Said she, “We were camping atop of Tetford Hill, just above Ruckland Valley, when the lightning struck the poor fellows. Wewere on our way to Horncastle Fair. I mind it all,rashai, as if it had happened only yesterday.”
In Westarus Boswell’s autobiography, recorded (in his own words) by Smart and Crofton in their workThe Dialect of the English Gypsies, are some references to this event—
“I was born at Dover. My father (Tyso) was a soldier, and I was born in the army. My father, when I was born, was in charge of the great gun (Queen Anne’s pocket-piece). After a while he came home, and left the army. He came down into Yorkshire, and there he stayed for many years, and all our family were brought up in that county, and there we all stayed after he was killed in Lincolnshire. He died when I was a lad. The lightning struck him and another, both together. They were cousins. Our people put them both in one grave. There I left them, poor fellows. I was much grieved at it. He (Tyso) always dressed well. When he was buried, I took a wife, and went all over the country. . . . His cousin’s name was called No Name, because he was not christened till he was an old man, and then they called him Edward.”
“I was born at Dover. My father (Tyso) was a soldier, and I was born in the army. My father, when I was born, was in charge of the great gun (Queen Anne’s pocket-piece). After a while he came home, and left the army. He came down into Yorkshire, and there he stayed for many years, and all our family were brought up in that county, and there we all stayed after he was killed in Lincolnshire. He died when I was a lad. The lightning struck him and another, both together. They were cousins. Our people put them both in one grave. There I left them, poor fellows. I was much grieved at it. He (Tyso) always dressed well. When he was buried, I took a wife, and went all over the country. . . . His cousin’s name was called No Name, because he was not christened till he was an old man, and then they called him Edward.”
A curious story attaches to “No Name” Hearn. His parents took him to church to be christened, and when the parson said, “Name this child,” the Gypsy mother answered, “It’s Jehovah, sir.” “I cannot give your child that name,” protested the clergyman. Whereupon the Gypsies stalked out ofthe church muttering, “He shall be called ‘No Name,’” and by this fore-name he was known all through his life, although in his old age, as Westarus Boswell has told us, he was baptized in the name of Edward.
As might be expected, the funeral of Tyso and Edward was attended by many Gypsies from far and near, and for some years afterwards the grave was visited annually by relatives, who are said to have poured libations of ale upon it. A grandson of Tyso relates that he once found a hole “as big as a fire bucket” in the side of the grave. This he stuffed with hay, and to my own knowledge the hole is still there, the brickwork of the vault having fallen inward. Aged folk at Tetford tell how a witch formerly lived in a cottage near the churchyard. One of her cats kittened down the hole in the vault, and passers-by would shudder to see the kittens bolt like rabbits into the Gypsies’ grave.
If the Gypsies possess any religion at all, it may be summed up in one sentence—reverence for the dead. In bygone ages the Gypsies buried their dead in wild lonely spots, and though for many years the wanderers have been granted Christian burial, yet now and then an agedRomanitshelon his deathbed will express a desire to be laid to rest in the open and not in the churchyard. Moses Boswell, a Derbyshire Gypsy, requested that he might be buried “under the fireplace,”i.e.on the site of an encampmentof his people. When dying, Isaac Heron said, “Bury me under a hedge,” a reminiscence of the earlier mode of sepulture. In hisLavengro, Borrow describes the burial of old Mrs. Herne: “The body was placed not in a coffin but on a bier, and carried not to the churchyard but to a deep dingle close by; and there it was buried beneath a rock, dressed just as I have told (in a red cloak and big bonnet of black beaver); and this was done at the bidding of Leonora, who had heard herbebee(aunt) say that she wished to be buried, not in gorgeous fashion, but like a Roman woman of the old blood.”
On the information of some East-Anglian Gypsies, my friend, Mr. T. W. Thompson, a good tsiganologue, writes: “It must have been somewhere about 1830 when Borrow’s friend, Ambrose Smith (Jasper Petulengro), found one of the Hernes burying his wife in a ditch near Gorleston, took the body away and gave it a Christian burial to prevent further trouble befalling the old man.”
In an entertaining volume entitled,Caravanning and Camping Out, Mr. J. Harris Stone describes a wayside Gypsy burial—
“Some twenty years ago a Gypsy died in an encampment near Lulworth Cove in Dorset, and a friend of mine, who had become great friends with the tribe because he used to go and sing comic songs to them and perform simple conjuring tricks, was asked to the funeral. He told me that the coffin was black, and the burial took place at the cross-roads—not exactly in the centre of the roadway where the highways crossed, but on the patch of roadside waste at the angle of one of the roads. Water was sprinkled on the coffin and earth thrown on, in the course of the ritual in Romany, but no parson was present.”
Near the grass-grown sand-dunes of an East Lincolnshire parish is a camping-place frequented by Gypsies for many years past. In turning up the soil thereabouts not long ago, some labourers came upon a human skeleton, probably that of a Gypsy who had been buried there.
I give these instances because it has been strongly asserted that Christian burial only has been the Gypsies’ usage for the last two hundred years.
Sometimes a careful watch is kept over the body between death and burial. A Welsh correspondent who had an opportunity of observing this practice, writes: “I found my Romany friends seated around a fire, and close by in a van lay the dead wife of one of the company, awaiting burial on the morrow. Gypsies about here do not go to bed from the time of a death till after the funeral. They sit in company around the fire, and now and again fall back and doze, but at least three must keep awake. If only two were awake, one might drop off to sleep and that would leave only one. Fear of the ghost is given as the reason why they sit in company by the fire.”
As a rule, the corpse is attired in the best clothes worn during life. Sometimes the garments are turnedinside out, a practice in Bulgarian mourning. When Zachariah Smith was buried in Yorkshire four years ago the following articles were enclosed in his coffin: a suit of clothes, besides the one he was wearing, watch and chain, a muffler, four pocket handkerchiefs, a hammer, a candle, and twopence.
On the day after the funeral, old-fashioned Gypsies destroy the possessions of the dead, money excepted. All consumable belongings are burnt, while the crockery, iron utensils, and other articles are broken and dropped into a river, or buried, if no water is near. Jewellery is often disposed of in a similar manner. The horse of the deceased is either shot, or sold to the knackers to be destroyed. Fear of the ghost is the explanation of these ceremonies. So long as the possessions of the dead person remain intact, the ghost is believed to hover about them. In order, therefore, to dispel the ghost of the dead, his belongings are destroyed.
Another observance, expressing in a striking manner the grief of the bereaved, is seen in their abstention for many years, or for ever, from the favourite food, beverage, or pastime of the loved one whom they have lost. One day Richard Petulengro called at my door and was offered refreshment in the kitchen—“Not any ale, thank you. My brother died a bit ago, and he was wery fond of it. I don’t touch it now.”
It is recorded of Old Isaac Joule that he would often spend whole nights watching by his Gypsy wife’stomb in Yatton churchyard. Her headstone, which may still be seen, bears the lines—
“Here lies Merily JouleA beauty bright:That left Isaac JouleHer heart’s delight1827.”
“Here lies Merily JouleA beauty bright:That left Isaac JouleHer heart’s delight1827.”
Sometimes unusual articles are laid on graves. Upon his boy’s grave, Bohemia Boswell deposited a little teapot from which the boy used to drink. Rodney Smith placed a breast-pin upon his mother’s grave in Norton churchyard.
Gypsies shrink from uttering the names of the dead. Fear of invoking the ghost underlies this ancient tabu. One of the Herons had a child named Chasey, who died, and now he never utters that name. He even invented a nickname for a friend bearing the name of Chasey, in order to avoid pronouncing the name of his own dead child.
One day, during conversation with Frampton Boswell, Groome asked—
“How did you get your name, Frampton; was it your father’s?”
“I can’t tell you that, but wait a minute.” And going to his mother’s caravan, he returned with a framed photograph of a gravestone.
“That was my poor father’s name, but I’ve never spoken it since the day he died.”
“He don’t want her to walk,” said my old friend, Frank Elliot, in explanation of a Gypsy’s reluctanceto mention his dead sister’s name. A Gypsy boy was baptized Vyner Smith, but when his Uncle Vyner died, the boy was renamed Robert, because the name Vyner was too painful a reminder of the departed relation.
A death-omen among Gypsies is the cry of the “death-hawk” heard over a camp by night. A Gypsy once told me how two crows and two yellow pigeons flew to and fro over him in a town street in the early morning. By these signs he knew that his wife had died in the hospital, and so it proved.
Let me close this chapter with the passing of my old friend Jonathan Boswell. Not long ago tidings reached me that he had died in his travelling cart, in which I have spent some happy hours with him on the road. The last time I saw Jonathan alive he was seated by his fire on a little lonely common, and near him stood the old cart looking so very ramshackle that a gust of wind might almost have wrecked it. Among the tufted bog-rushes, the lambs were gambolling a few yards away. As I sat with him, my old friend talked of bygone jaunts we had taken together, and his grandson, who was present, recalled the day he once spent at our Rectory. With slow and feeble steps Jonathan walked with me to the edge of the common and waved his cap in farewell. I never saw him again. I like to think of the old man as, looking back, I saw him holding out his handto fondle a lamb whose confidence he had won while camping on the common.
A London Gypsy. Photo. Fred Shaw
About a month after receiving the news of the death of my old pal, I came upon his grandson, who told me that thevâdo(cart) had beenhotsherdo(burnt). The fragments which remained after the fire were duly buried, and the faithful nag had been sent away to the hunt-kennels. Thus, with the ancient ceremonies of his race, my old friend had been laid to rest.
To the English Gipsies.[246]“You soon will pass away;Laid one by one below the village steepleYou face the East from which your fathers sprang,Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clangOf towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the peopleWhom no true Romany will call by name,The folk departed like the camp-fire flameOf withered yesterday.”
To the English Gipsies.[246]
“You soon will pass away;Laid one by one below the village steepleYou face the East from which your fathers sprang,Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clangOf towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the peopleWhom no true Romany will call by name,The folk departed like the camp-fire flameOf withered yesterday.”
Thicklysprinkled with Gypsy names are the “Transportation Lists” (1787–1867) reposing on the shelves of the Public Record Office in London; yet as your eye scans those lists of names, how dull and ordinary they look. It is not until you embark upon the arduous task of tracking individuals in old newspaper files that you realize the charm of unearthing buried romances in which the Gypsies played a part.
If, on the one hand, the wildness and roughness of the times are fully impressed upon your mind, there arises also the unedifying spectacle of British justices vieing with one another in their ardour for dispatching Gypsies across the sea on the most trivial pretexts. In the Transportation Lists both sexes are well represented, and occasionally one obtains thealiasesborne by Gypsies at the time of their arrest. From a study of thesealiases, it becomes possible to trace the origin of some of our modern Gypsy families, for it is quite in keeping with Romany usage for the children of an expatriated father to adopt hisalias.
I have never yet known an elderly Gypsy whosememory lacked a store of what may be called transportation tales, and, listening to their recital, I have sometimes been saddened, if not angered. What can we of the twentieth century think of the “justice” (!) which sent a Romany mother across the sea for stealing a lady’s comb valued at sixpence, or banished for seven years a middle-aged Gypsy man for the crime of appropriating three penny picture-books from a cottage doorway?
Over a few crimson embers on the ground I listened one summer evening to tales from the lips of one of the old Herons, as we sat together under a thorn hedge. For a theft of harness Solli Heron (my informant’s uncle) was sentenced to a lengthy residence in an over-sea colony. The time came when he and a few Gypsy comrades were led out of prison and placed in chains on board the coach which was to convey them to the convict ship. By some means Solli had become possessed of a small file, wherewith, during the journey by coach, he managed to cut through his irons and make his escape into a wood. After an exciting chase through brake and brier, the Gypsy was recaptured and duly shipped across the sea.
The following story shows that sometimes, when two Gypsies were implicated in a crime, one of them would endeavour to screen his companion. From the stables at Claremont House, Esher, during the period of the Princess (afterwards Queen) Victoria’s residence, a horse and a mare were stolenby two Gypsies, an elderly man and a younger one. Early one foggy morning these fellows broke open the stable door and took the animals away. A hue-and-cry was set up, and, within a few days of the theft, the red-breasted “Runners” had made an arrest. In court, the Princess’s coachman declared that he had seen two men near the stable, but the elder Gypsy persistently affirmed that he had done the business entirely alone, and his endeavour to screen his mate proved effectual. The young Gypsy was acquitted, but his companion was transported for life to Van Diemen’s Land.
The same spirit of self-sacrifice is seen in another incident—
A Gypsy tinker and a sweep were arrested for stealing a pony at a time when the penalty for horse-stealing was death. Said the sweep to the tinker—
“Why need two of us be hanged for this job? I’ll swear that you know nothing about it.”
When the two were brought up for trial, the sweep, while readily admitting his own guilt, asserted the tinker’s innocence with such vehemence that the judge and jury believed his tale. The tinker got twelve months in jail, but the sweep was hanged.
In hisRomany Word-Book, Borrow mentions the transportation of Fighting Jack Cooper, “once the terror of all the Light Weights of the English Ring, who knocked West Country Dick to pieces, andkilled Paddy O’Leary, the fighting pot-boy, Jack Randall’s pet.” Jack Cooper and his brother Tom were transported under peculiar circumstances. Tom was the first to be sent away. It appears that the brothers went to a ball where, in the course of the evening, Jack “pinched” a silver snuff-box, and without meaning any harm dropped it into his brother’s pocket. Presently the snuff-box was missed by its owner, and suspicion fell upon the Gypsies. A policeman was called in, and, while conversing with Tom, offered him a pinch of snuff. As the Gypsy removed a handkerchief from his pocket, out flew the snuff-box to his great astonishment, for he was unaware of the trick played by his brother. Speedily the handcuffs were slipped upon Tom’s wrists, and in due course he was brought to trial. Before the judge, Jack swore that Tom was innocent, as indeed he was, but he was nevertheless sentenced to transportation.
However, Jack’s fate was not long delayed. “Infatuated with love for his paramour,” (says Borrow), “he bore the blame of a crime which she had committed, and suffered transportation to save her.” On the expiration of his lengthy term, he preferred to stay in Australia, where he made money by teaching young gentlemen the pugilistic art.
There are more stories of this kind showing that innocent persons were at times sent across the water.
Well-known to the Gypsies of our Midlandcounties is the story of Absalom Boswell’s transportation. One night the Gypsy father and his two sons sat talking in their tent, and, in order to rest his weary feet, the old man removed his shoes and soon fell asleep on the straw. One of the lads donned his father’s footgear, and set off with his brother tolatshera bit ofbokro-mas, which, being interpreted, means that they went to steal “mutton.” Their errand was successful, but morning light brought a policeman to the camp, for the sheep had been missed and suspicion had fallen upon the Gypsies. An early riser, Absalom had put on his shoes and was walking abroad. He and his two sons were arrested. There were no witnesses to the theft, but a footprint had been discovered on a patch of clay in the farmer’s field from which the sheep had been taken, and Absalom’s shoe fitted the footprint exactly. On this shred of circumstantial evidence the old man was transported for seven years, while his sons were lodged in jail for twelve months.
On Mitcham Common I once heard the following story from one of the Dightons. Seated on the wayside was a Gypsy making pegs, with his children playing around him, and, looking up from his work, he was surprised to see a well-dressedgawji(non-Gypsy) woman staring hard at him. She stood there without saying a word, until at last she moved slowly away. Then came a policeman to where the peg-maker sat—
“You must come along with me.”
“What for?”
“You’ll know when we get to the police station.”
A report had been handed in that a young woman had been found half-murdered in a green lane. She said a Gypsy had done it, and described the man to a detail, giving the colour of his hair, particulars of his dress, and the number of his children. “I am an innocent man,” said the Gypsy, “and the Lord’ll make her tell the truth before she dies.” He was transported for seven years. Two years afterwards the lady fell ill, and confessed that the man was innocent. He was liberated, but on the homeward voyage he died.