CHAPTER XII

THE GYPSY OF THE TOWN

IN the sunny forenoon I was walking in one of the airy suburbs of Nottingham, and, passing by the entrance to some livery stables, I noticed on a sign-board in prominent yellow letters on a black ground the surname of Boss. This it was that brought me to a standstill in front of the large doors in a high wall. “A Romany name,” I said to myself. “I ought to find a Gypsy here;” and, pushing open one of the doors, I saw before me an office with masses of brown wallflower abloom beneath a wide-open window.

“Come in,” said a mellow voice, in response to my knock at the little door in the porch, and, entering, I was confronted by a handsome man of fifty, evidently the master of the establishment, neatly dressed, well groomed, and unmistakably Romany.

“Mr. Boss?”

“That’s so.”

“_Romanitshel tu shan_?” (You are a Gypsy?)

“_Âvali_, _baw_. _Av ta besh tălê_” (Yes, mate. Come and sit down.) The words were accompanied by a low, musical laugh that was pleasant to hear. He then conducted me to a garden seat where we sat and talked in the May sunshine. Generally my companion would use the inflected dialect of the old-time Gypsies, but at intervals he dropped into the _pogado tshib_, the “broken language,” as spoken by the average English Gypsy of to-day. For which lapses he apologized: “I wonder what my old dad would say to hear me _roker_in like a _posh-rat_?” (talking like a half-breed). “One of the old roots was my daddy, who could talk for hours in nothing but ‘double-words’” (_i.e._ inflected Romany). “There were the ‘double-words’ and the other way—the broken language. Some of us young upstarts never picked up all the ‘double-words’ our parents used, and now the poor old language is fast going to pieces. What with these Gypsy novels and their bits of Romany talk—my girl reads them to me—why, everybody is getting to know it. I once heard a gentleman say that our language was a made-up gibberish. But he was wrong. It’s a real language, and an old one at that. But, as I was saying, it’s getting blown very much nowadays. Why, down in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex there are whole villages where you can hear Romany talked on all sides of you. The little shopkeepers know it. The publicans can _roker_ (talk Gypsy) a bit. The stable-boys throw it at one another. And you can’t stir in the lanes without meeting a kiddie with the eyes and hair of a Gypsy—blest if you can.”

Noticing my flow of the _kawlo tshib_ (black language, _i.e._ Romany), Boss tapped me familiarly on the knee: “I can’t reckon you up at all, _rashai_ (parson). How have you picked it all up? Have you been sweet on a Gypsy girl, or have you _romer_’d _yek_?” (married one).

Then with all a Gypsy’s restlessness, he sprang up and led me to his villa residence over the way, where, apologizing for the absence of his wife, he introduced me to his daughter, a tall girl of twenty or more, gentle, refined-looking, with fathomless Gypsy eyes and an olive tint in her cheeks.

“I’m going to take the _rashai_ for a drive,” said he. “We’ll be back for tea.”

In the tastefully ordered drawing-room I chatted with Miss Boss, whose Romany rippled melodiously. A piece of classical music stood open on the piano, and several recent novels lay scattered about. On her father’s return within a few moments, I caught the sound of a horse pawing impatiently outside, and presently I was seated with Jack Boss in a smart yellow gig behind a slim “blood” animal. As we drove through the town my companion pointed to a carriage-horse in passing: “_Wafodu grai sî dova_” (a trashy horse is that), and when I translated his words he chuckled merrily. “To think that you know _that_, and you don’t look a bit like a Gypsy. Not a drop of the blood in you, I should think. You puzzle me, you really do. Perhaps you’ve got it from books. I’ve heard of such works, but have never seen them. I suppose you priests can find it all in Latin somewhere? Now, to look at me you’d never think—would you?—that I’d been born in a little tent” (he bent his fingers in semblance of curved rods) “and had travelled on the roads. But that’s years ago, yet I like to think of those days. If they were rough times, we had plenty of fun. Don’t I remember going with my old dad to visit the Grays and Herons, Lovells and Stanleys, in their tents—real Gypsies if you like. You don’t often _dik_ a _tatsheno Romanitshel konaw_” (see a true Gypsy nowadays). “It gave me a deal of pleasure the other day to meet Ike Heron in his low-crowned topper and Newmarket coat. One of the old standards is Ike. Perhaps you know him?”

* * * * *

By this time we were speeding between green hedgerows in the open country, and when at last we pulled up at a wayside hostelry, nothing would do but I must drink my Gypsy’s health. Then the horse’s head was turned for home. Romany topics being still to the fore, and having recently heard of the passing of George Smith of Coalville, I asked my companion if he had ever met the parent of the first “Moveable Dwellings’ Bill.”

“I can’t say that I ever crossed his path, and I don’t know that I particularly wanted to. His letters in the papers used to _rile my people terribly_. We weren’t quite so bad as he painted us. It was plain enough that he knew nothing of the real Romanies, nothing whatever. Why, his “gipsies” were nothing but the very poorest hedge-crawlers, with never a drop of our blood in their bodies. The man meant all right, very likely, but as for his methods—well, the less said about them the better.”

As we parted after tea at his garden gate, I wished my Gypsy _kushto bok_ (good luck).

“A good thing _that_, Mr. Hall, and may we both have more of it.”

I retain very pleasant memories of that afternoon spent in the genial company of Mr. Jack Boss, whom I have since met several times at horse-fairs in different parts of the country.

* * * * *

It has fallen to my lot to know a number of Gypsies who have made their homes in our cities, and who, though moving in respectable circles, still retain the old secret tongue of the roads, as well as a marked spirit of detachment from most of the ideas of the people among whom they live. Pride of race remains. No matter how high he may climb, the pure Gypsy is proud of his birth and secretly despises all who are not of his blood. When talking of breezy commons, green woodsides, rabbits, pheasants, and the like, I have seen the eyes of a house-dwelling Gypsy grow wistful as he sighed at the visions and memories arising within him.

The sedentary Gypsies are now largely in the preponderance. Not that the tendency to settle is entirely a thing of our times. Fifty years ago, the Gypsy colony hard by my childhood’s home told of a movement not then by any means new. Twenty years earlier, did not Ambrose (Jasper) Smith say to Lavengro?—“There is no living for the poor people, the _chokengris_ (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are becoming either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon.”

Many years prior to this complaint, the wholesale enclosing of the commons, the harassing attentions of the press-gang, the flooding of our roads by Irish vagrants, the barbaric administration of “justice,” and the pressure of the times generally, had caused many a Gypsy to adopt a sedentary life. Numbers of old-fashioned Romany families, finding life no longer tolerable in England, were allured to the colonies by glowing accounts received from migrated friends of the freedom and manifold opportunities for making a living across the sea. All along since those times it may be said that no year has passed without witnessing the settlement of many Gypsies.

Some of my happiest “finds” in the way of house-dwelling Gypsies were several aged members of the great Boswell clan, living in the town of Derby, and to them I owe many reminiscences of Gypsy life in bygone days. It was from Lincolnshire _Romanitshel_s of the same clan-name that I had first learned of the Derby colony whose Gypsy denizens were so entertaining that if ever I found myself within a few miles of their Midland town I could in no way resist going to see them. It must have been many years since first they settled there, and yet they would talk of Lincolnshire as though they had quitted its highways and byways but yesterday. Moreover, these Boswells were related to some of Borrow’s originals, a fact which in my eyes lent no small glamour to these folk.

One cool spring evening I stood in a cramped yard in Derby, and, tapping at a cottage door, I heard a tremulous voice inviting me to enter. Within that little room my aged friend, Coralina Boswell, was warming her thin hands at a few glowing coals in the grate. A flickering candle on the chimney-piece cast a fitful yellow gleam on the old lady seated on the hearthrug not far from a truckle bed. Wrapped about her shawl-wise was a portion of a scarlet blanket throwing up her features, swarthy and deeply seamed, into strong relief. She begged me to take the only chair, which I drew up to the fire.

“I am glad to see you, my son. I’m a lonely old woman. My _tshăvê_ (children) are all far away.” Here she picked up a black pipe which she had laid down on my entering, and went on chatting about her family, mentioning a daughter named Froniga.

“That sounds like Veronica.”

“Yes, we name’t her after the one that wiped the dear Lord’s face wiv a _diklo_” (handkerchief).

This set her thoughts a-wandering, and she went on to tell how last night she saw strange things.

“I was in a _wesh_ (wood), thick and green, and I went on and on, and I felt wild beasts rubbing agen me, but they never hurted me, ’cos my blessed Saviour was a-sitting wiv His angels among the clouds just above the roundy tops o’ the big trees. It was beautiful to see Him there. And sometimes, as I sits here, I sees Him come into this room, as real as when you came in yourself.

“What made you come so far to see the likes o’ me? It’s wery kind o’ you. I’s travelled all through your country, and a nice part it is. I remembers the green fields all lying in the sun by the riverside.” (Clearly she was thinking of the Trentside haunts of her clan.)

“Now, my son, will you _tshiv_ some _kosht_ on the _yog_ (put some wood on the fire) and light that _vâva mumeli_ (other candle) on the chimbly-shelf?”

On the walls of the room were several black-framed funeral cards, in the midst of which was a blurred enlargement of a Romany _vâdo_ (cart), and, seeing my eyes wandering towards this picture, Coralina broke out again—

“Ah, that’s my _rom_’s (husband) wagon there, as we’s travelled in many a year, and there he is on the steps a-looking at me so loving-like. I _roker_s (talk) to him sometimes, forgetting he’s been gone this many a year.

“Mine’s a lonely life, and what would become of me I don’t know, if I hadn’t some kind delations living in this _gav_” (town).

As I stepped out into the narrow yard, a bright moon silvered the battered door and the little crisscross window of Old Coralina’s abode, and, walking along a crooked street, I thought of the strange life of the woman I had just left, an existence in which dreams and visions passed for realities.

[Picture: A Mother in Egypt. Photo. Fred Shaw]

In the same town lived another aged Gypsy, Eldi Boswell, whose days were chiefly spent on a couch-bed smoking and dreaming. Too decrepit to leave her cottage, she loved to bask in the glow of the fire, and I recall no more picturesque Gypsy figure than Old Eldi, with her furrowed face and her long, dark ringlets straggling out from beneath a once gorgeous _diklo_. It was easy to see that she had been a beauty in her time, and in confidential moments she would say that in her young days she had often been taken for her cousin, Sanspirela Heron (the lovely wife of Ambrose Smith), whose forename was (in _Lavengro_) changed by Borrow to Pakomovna. Certainly one could not help being struck by Old Eldi’s large eyes. Much has been written about the peculiarity of the Gypsy eye, Borrow and Leland in particular having enlarged upon this topic. Not of a soft, steady hue like that of a pool in the moorland peat, it is a changeful eye of glittering black endowed with a strange penetrative quality.

Born about the year 1820 at Susworth, a hamlet on the Lincolnshire bank of the Trent, Eldi remembered not only the names, but a host of tales in which bygone Gypsies played a part.

My father, a schoolmate of Thomas Miller at Gainsborough on the Trent, used to speak of the riverside Gypsies whom Miller presents in his writings: _e.g._ in _Gideon Giles the Roper_ he gives pictures of the Boswells, who were probably some of Old Eldi’s folk.

For instance, if I had been reading in Borrow’s _Gypsy Word-Book_ about that famous old rascal, Ryley Boswell, I would say to Eldi—

“Did you ever know Old Ryley?”

“Sartinly, I minds him well enough. ‘Gentleman’ Ryley, they used to call him. He was a tinker, like the rest of our _mushaw_ (men), but he wouldn’t carry his creel (grinding-outfit) on his back like other people. He must have it on a little cart, and a pony to draw it.”

“Is it true that he had more than one wife living with him at the same time?”

“Well, yes, he had three wives. There was Yoki Shuri. You’s heard tell of her, sure-ly—a wery clever woman she was at getting money. Then there was Lucy Boswell, Old Tyso’s gell, a nicer woman never breathed, but Ryley was rough with her and made her sleep in a little tent with his dogs Musho and Ponto. Nobody blamed her when she left him and went to ’Merikay with her six children. Then there was Charlotte Hammond as went away and took on with Zacky Lee. A lot of those Lees round London sprang from them. In his best days Ryley had heaps of money and travelled all over the country. He had a fine black mare, Bess Beldam, and he rode on her a-hunting with the gentry up in Yorkshire. He was partic’lar fond o’ that country, was Ryley. I minds how fine he looked on his splendid mare as had silver shoes, and him in a coat with golden guineas for buttons. I’s heard of him riding slap-dash through a camp, springing over the tents and scutching the _nongê tshavê_ (naked children) with his _tshupni_ (whip): ‘I’ll let ’em know who I am—Ryley Boswell, King of the Gypsies.’ But at last his luck left him, and he took hisself off to London with his Yoki Shuri. Even to her as stuck to him through all, he was unkind. One day he tied her to a cart-wheel and leathered her, ’cos she told him of his ill-doings. At London, they lived in the Potteries, but he never did no good in the big city. One day, as he was skinning a rabbit, he scratched his hand and got blood-poisoning, and died in a little house underneath the railway arches. They buried him in Brompton Churchyard.”

Thus she would spin on at great length about Ryley Boswell.

Another time she would talk about the Herons. She was old enough to remember Niabai and Crowy (the parents of my aged friend, Ike Heron), as well as “handsome” William, “lame” Robert, Miller, Lusha, and other members of the same family. According to her account, these fellows were a tall, dark, big-boned, rough set.

Asked if she had ever known any Gypsy called Reynolds, Eldi replied—

“To be sure, there was Reynolds Heron as married my Aunt Peggy.”

Then I understood how Ambrose Smith (_alias_ Reynolds) came in his last years to adopt for his own travelling surname the Christian name of his wife Sanspirela’s father, Reynolds Heron, concerning whom it is recorded that he used to fast on the five Fridays next after the season of Lent, in memory of the five wounds of the Saviour.

I used to like to hear Eldi talk of the days when artists, squires, and their ladies would pay visits to the camp. “There was my husband’s Aunt ‘Norna’—her proper name was Lucretia Boswell—she was a beautiful woman, and Mr. Oakley painted a picture of her wearing an orange shawl about her shoulders. She never married, and always travelled with her sister Deloraifi, who never married neither. Ay, when I was a barefooted gell with the wind a-blowing my hair about, the painting-gentlemen would get me to sit for my picture; and squires would stop us in the lanes and try to pick up our words.”

Rascalities of which modern Gypsydom knows nothing would creep into Eldi’s memory-pictures. I mean the wayside robberies, the bloody fights, the sheep and horse stealing of the rough old days of her girlhood. She would get so rapt away in the past that she would speak of people dead and gone as though they were living still, and, awaking to the present, would remark with a deep-drawn sigh—“But, there, I’s seen none of ’em for a wery long time.”

Under the heading of “A Modern Enchantress,” the following note, describing my Gypsy friend, was communicated by an Irish clergyman to _The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society_ of the year 1890:—

“A short time since, a clergyman stopping at my house told me that some time ago, when he was assisting in the work of All Saints’ Parish, Derby, he had residing in the parish a Gypsy family named Boswell. One of the family was sick, and he found the greatest difficulty in getting into the house; and when he did get in, the sick man told him that the sooner he cleared out of the house the better—if he came to talk about religion. In fact, it was only by most judicious management, and by promises not to speak about religion till the sick man spoke of it first, that he was able to establish a footing in the house. But after a little time he got on quite friendly terms with the family. He then discovered that when any of the family were sick an old aunt came into the room and seemed to perform a kind of incantation over them. His description of her performance was very like what we read about Eastern Dervishes. She gradually worked herself up into a species of frenzy, flinging her arms about and muttering a kind of incantation or prayer, until her voice ascended into a wild scream and descended again into a whisper as the frenzy passed away, and she was left lying exhausted and apparently in fainting condition on the floor. When she arrived at this state she was immediately carried out of the sick-room by her relatives.”

A grey morning with a lowering sky and splashes of rain had given place in the early forenoon to a brilliant day, and sunbeams lit up the Humber’s wharves and shipping as I stepped from the steam ferry upon the Corporation Pier at Hull. Often before had I visited this busy seaport on Gypsy errands, and the cause of my present visit was to seek out the whereabouts of the descendants of Ryley Boswell, renowned in Gypsy history. From Borrow’s _Romany Word-Book_ I had gathered that Ryley hailed from Yorkshire, and Eldi Boswell of Derby, and the London relatives of Yoki Shuri had informed me that Hull was a likely place to locate some of Ryley’s offspring. A few inquiries brought me the information that a Gypsy and his wife kept a little grocery store in a back street, which I had no difficulty in finding, though, reconnoitring outside the shop, I saw in its exterior nothing suggestive of the Romany. Going inside, I rapped with my foot on the floor, and a middle-aged woman, only distantly resembling a Gypsy, responded to my summons. Pointing to a barrel of ruddy Canadians, I made request in Romany for two apples, and immediately a change came over her face. The sound of the Gypsy language produced a beaming smile where solemnity had sat. After making a further purchase, I was invited into the living-room, where I had no sooner sat down than the woman’s husband, looking still less like a Gypsy, entered, but on my giving him a _sâ shan_ (how do?) he laughed outright, and we had some fun. It tickled me not a little to hear the pair discussing my physiognomy.

“Why, he’s got Newty’s _nok_ (nose), that he has now.” And the wife asked me if I had brought news of a fortune left to them by their Uncle Newty in Australia.

“Newty—well, I _have_ heard of him. Wasn’t he _bitshado pawdel_ (transported) to Hobart Town for horse-stealing? But for whom do you take me?”

“One of Newty’s sons, for sure. And here’s your father’s photograph” (handing me a daguerreotype in velvet-lined case). “Now look at yourself in the glass. Why, you’re the wery spit of Uncle Newton.”

So I found myself taken for a grandson of Old Ryley and Yoki Shuri, and my shopkeeping friends were themselves actual grandchildren of those Gypsies of renown. Here was a lucky find, and since I was out upon a genealogical errand, I availed myself of the present opportunity to scoop in a goodly store of facts for my increasing collection of Romany pedigrees.

A few years after this visit to Hull, a correspondent in Australia imparted to me a number of facts relating to transported Gypsies. Here are a few of his personal recollections of Newton Boswell (or Boss), whom he had known as a travelling knife-grinder at Launceston in Tasmania.

“Newton, familiarly known as ‘Newty,’ seemed a nice quiet fellow, tall and spare, with the remains of good looks. Polite and well-spoken, he was not particularly Gypsy-looking, except for his walk and build—not particularly dark. At the same time he _did_ look like a Gypsy. His eyes were of a mild brown. He wore a big felt hat and a coloured handkerchief. He told me that he had been popular with ladies, that one lady who had a large house (in New South Wales, I think), and with whom he worked as a servant or driver, took a particular fancy to him, but he left that situation because he wanted to be on the move. He said he did not like remaining long in one place. Newton confirmed Borrow’s description of Ryley, in regard to his wearing gold coins as buttons on his clothes, and other details. When I read him parts of Borrow’s books, he was astonished to find in print many facts familiar to himself. He once brought round his fiddle for me to hear him play, which he did in the energetic, spirited style peculiar to the race. He told me that he had travelled all over Australia.

“Once, many years ago, there came up to Newton’s grinding-barrow in Sydney a handsome, dark, beautifully dressed, young lady who, looking him fixedly in the eyes, said—

“‘There’s a Romany look about you.’

“‘I beg your pardon, madam?’

“‘There’s a Romany look about you.’

“‘Why, madam, do I look any different from anybody else?’

“‘Well, you are wearing a yellow handkerchief round your neck.’

“‘Can’t anybody wear a coloured handkerchief, madam?’

“‘Yes, they can, but they don’t.’

“‘Well, madam, I _am_ a Gypsy—a pure-bred one too—my name is Boswell.’

“‘And so am I a Gypsy—my name is Lovell.’

“She gave Newton a sovereign and invited him to call at her house. He subsequently learned that she had married some well-to-do man (a non-Gypsy) in England, who had brought her out to Australia, and that on his returning suddenly from a trip to the Old Country, he shot her in a passion of jealousy, and then shot himself.”

Some weeks later I was again exploring Hull for Gypsies. To me few things are more agreeable than to hear Romany spoken unexpectedly. Walking along a city street, if suddenly amid the din of the traffic I hear a Gypsy greeting, I experience a very pleasant emotion.

In passing along the Anlaby Road, I heard from behind me, “_Sâ shan_, _rashaia_?” (How do, parson?) and, looking round, I saw Mireli Heron’s son, a jovial, harum-scarum fellow who has found a permanent home in Hull. I remember him as a travelling Gypsy, and his garb was then characteristic and becoming, but he had now adopted a coat, collar, and tie of the prevailing fashion. The Gypsy of the town, I find, has no desire to attract attention to himself; hence he becomes subdued in appearance, more’s the pity. Having settled, he becomes “respectable,” drab-coloured, unpicturesque.

At my request young Heron walked across with me to the Spring Bank, and on the way thither he pulled up at a photographers shop window, and, pointing to a picture, asked—

“What would you call that in _Romanes_?” (Gypsy).

“Why, a _kuskti-dik_in _rakli_ (a good-looking girl), to be sure.”

“_Keka_, _keka_ (no, no), I don’t mean that. What’s our word for ‘picture’?”

“_Dikamengri_.”

“_Keka_, that’s the word for a looking-glass.”

“Well, what would _you_ say?”

“_Stor-dui_-graph” (_Four_(4)-_two_(2)-graph, hence photograph).

The Romany tongue is plastic, and a Gypsy will playfully coin new words in this fashion. As a Gypsy once said, “There’s always a way of saying a thing in _Romanes_, if you can find it out.” Certain it is, if a Gypsy has no old word for a thing, he will not be long in coining a new one.

Entering the Spring Bank Cemetery together, my companion pointed out the grave of Yoki Shuri, the faithful consort of Ryley Boswell (or Boss), and upon the neat stone I read this inscription, “In memory of Shorensey Boss, who died Jan. 18, 1868, aged 65 years.” From a bush planted on the grave I plucked a sweet white rose.

Further, I learned from my companion that Old Ryley’s son Isaac, commonly called “Haggi,” had died in Hull only a few years previously. Like his brother Newton, he too had visited Australia, and, returning to this country, had settled in Hull, and was daily seen in the streets with a grinding-barrow. A girl whom Haggi brought with him from Australia told me (this was a few years later) that when as a child she was naughty, Haggi would frighten her by saying, “If you’re not good, Old Ryley will get you, and he’ll _maw tut_” (kill you).

One summer, when holidaying with my family at the breezy Yorkshire coast-town of Bridlington, I heard that there were Romanies living in a house at a little inland town, and, cycling over the hills, I spent a pleasant hour in the home of a Gypsy, who in a sweet voice sang the following ballad:—

“There were seven Gypsies all in a row, And they sang blithe and bonny, O! They sang until at last they came Unto the yellow castle’s hall, O!

The yellow castle’s lady, she came out, And gave to them some siller, O! She gave to them a far better thing, ’Twas the gold ring from her finger, O!

At ten o’clock o’ night her lord came home, Enquiring for his lady, O! The waiting-maid gave this reply, She’s gone with the roving Gypsies, O!

Come saddle me my milk-white steed, Come saddle for me my pony, O! That I may go by the green-wood side, Until I find my lady, O!

So all through the dark o’ night he rode, Until the next day’s dawning, O! He rode along the green-wood side, And there he found his lady, O!

Last night you laid on a good feather bed, Beside your own married lord, O! To-night in the cold open fields you lie, Along with the roving Gypsies, O!

What made you leave your home and your lands? What made you leave your money, O! What made you leave your own married lord, To go with the roving Gypsies, O!

What cares I for my home and my lands, What cares I for my money, O! What cares I for my own married lord, I’ll go with the roving Gypsies, O!”

On leaving, I placed a silver coin in the singer’s tawny palm, whereupon she sprang from her stool by the fire and gave me a resounding kiss on the cheek.