The Gypsy's Parson: his experiences and adventures

ARE you seeking a recipe for youth? Go a-Gypsying. Forth to the winding road under the open sky, the Gypsies are calling you. Scorning our hurrying mode of life, these folk are...

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...

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...

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-f...

“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 fiel...

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...

_May_ 12.—Just as I stepped out of the train at Corwen, thick vapours, blotting out the mountains, made up their minds to let down rain. Five years before, on landing at the sam...

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 ski...

AT one time I had a great liking for long jaunts in search of fossils—cross-country rambles extending over two or three days. Thus I came to know many a deserted quarry and unfr...

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 spri...

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 o...

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...

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 alo...

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 f...

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...

THICKLY sprinkled with Gypsy names are the “Transportation Lists” (1787–1867) reposing on the shelves of the Public Record Office in London; yet as your eye scans those lists of...

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 f...

IN Tetford churchyard, not far from my Rectory on the Lincolnshire Wolds, lies the grave of two celebrated Gypsies, Tyso Boswell and Edward, or “No Name,” Hearn (Heron), who wer...

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...

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 garmen...

THE Gypsies are an imaginative folk, delighting, like children, in romances and romancing; and if one may judge from the array of folk-tales {256} already collected from them, t...

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 s...