CHAPTER XIV

A NIGHT WITH THE GYPSIES—THE SWEEP OF LYNN—LONDON GYPSIES—ON EPSOM DOWNS

“IT ain’t fit to turn a dog out o’ doors, that it ain’t, so you’d better make up your mind to stop all night.”

Saying this, Gypsy Ladin closed the porch door, but not without difficulty, for a gale was battering upon the wayside bungalow. Half an hour ago, as I hurried along the willow-fringed “ramper” on my way to see this old Romany pal, black rain-clouds, bulging low over the fenland wapentake, had foretold an approaching storm; and now with the descent of the May night the tempest had burst in full fury upon the land. Torrential rain, swift swelling rushes of wind, and brilliant flashes of lightning made me glad to be housed with my friend in his fire-lit room.

Hidden by a dense hedge from the highway, this Gypsy abode stood back amid a cluster of apple trees, and a daylight view of the place would have revealed to you an entirely nondescript habitation, with here a home-made porch, and there a creeper-grown extension sheltering a green caravan in which Ladin and his wife Juli have travelled many a mile over the smooth causeways of the far-reaching flats.

Let me picture for you the tiny apartment where we now sat happily blowing clouds of tobacco smoke. Over the wide fireplace, which occupied one side of the room, rose a high mantelpiece surrounded by coloured prints of Derby winners, divided one from another by glistening horse-bits and brass-bound whips. Opposite the fireplace a small casement looked out upon a bulb-garden aglow by day with hyacinths, tulips, and narcissi—a common sight in the Fens. The side walls were adorned with portraits of Gypsy relatives deceased and living, and the brazen ornaments on parts of a van-horse’s harness gleamed in the rays of the pendant lamp. Before the fire sat my friend and his wife, a tall, striking woman of the old-fashioned Draper clan, and along with us were two youthful sons of the house, Rinki and Zegul, smart, quick-eyed fellows, who occupied a home-made bench opposite my seat of honour in the chimney corner. At our feet lay a dark lurcher, a type of dog whose peculiar qualities are well appreciated by Gypsies.

I have already spoken of my friend as “Gypsy” Ladin, but his ruddy complexion and grey eyes are scarcely suggestive of the pure Romany. About the good “black blood” of his wife, however, there can be no manner of doubt. Probably my friend would agree with the roving _gawjo_, who, having married a pure Gypsy, declared that the mingling of gentile and Romany crafts was a desirable blending of qualities. Did not Lazzy Smith, renowned in Gypsydom, once say—

“Ain’t it in the Bible that God’s people should multiply and be as one? It ain’t no sort o’ use at all a-goin’ agen the dear blessed Lord’s words. Why, a cross is good, even if it be only in wheat, ain’t it, now?”

Belonging to East Anglia, Ladin’s forelders have mingled a good deal with the Herons who formerly travelled the counties bordering upon the North Sea. Himself akin to the Chilcots and Smiths, Ladin has inherited not a few traditions of these families.

“Do you remember Yoki Shuri Smith?” I asked.

“You mean Old Ryley’s wife? Ay, I mind her well, but Ryley I don’t remember. Shuri”—Ladin shivered as he uttered the name—“was looked upon as a _tshovihawni_ (witch) by our folks. We allus thought it unlucky to meet her on the road of a morning. I’ve known my folks turn back, saying, ‘It ain’t no use going out to-day.’”

After a discussion of Shuri’s “powers,” I ventured upon a tale of my own experience of a witch who lived in a parish of which I was formerly curate-in-charge.

About a fortnight after my arrival at the Rectory, our aged gardener took me into his confidence.

“Excuse me askin’ if you’ve seen Old Betty what lives agin the well at the bottom of the lane? You must mind you don’t never get across wi’ that woman, or she’ll sartinly mek things awk’ard for you.”

The man’s meaning was that Betty had “peculiar powers.” A widow of sixty or more, she attended no place of worship, and rarely covered her grey head with anything more than a shawl. Besides her allowance from the parish, she managed to make a little money by selling ointments for wounds and sores, and many a cure has been wrought by means of her home-made compounds. My first meeting with her was on the Feast of St. Thomas, called in those parts “Mumping Day.” At my door stood Old Betty asking for a bit of silver, and a few yards behind her came several other widows. Hesitatingly I stood just over the threshold, when suddenly, before I could step aside, a lot of soft snow slid from the house-roof with a splash upon my bare head, while Old Betty and her companions laughed loud and long. The village gossips duly spread it abroad that Betty had, by her “peculiar powers,” brought down the snow upon the parson’s head. Anyway, I resolved for the future to be more prompt in the exercise of that unfailing charm against Betty’s witchcraft—a silver shilling.

* * * * *

“Did you ever see my Aunt Sarah at Blackpool?” said Juli.

“Yes, I once had tea in her tent on the South Shore. Did she and her _rom_ (husband), Edward, ever travel on this side of England?”

“Sartinly, they did. Ned’s daddy, Tyso, lies buried in your country. Poor old man, many’s the time I’ve heard the tale about him and the shepherd boy.”

“What was that?”

* * * * *

“Well, Tyso was once _hatsh_in (camping) on a Norfolk common and got a-talking with a boy tending sheep. Says the boy to Tyso—

“‘I can tell you where there’s a buried box full o’ money.’

“‘Show me the place,’ says Tyso.

“The boy took him to a little low, green hill, and then they fetches a spade and digs into it. Sure enough they bared the lid of an old iron chest with a ring on top, and both of ’em tugged hard at the ring, but the box wouldn’t budge an inch. Just then Tyso swore, and the ring slipped outen their hands, and down went the box and they never see’d it no more.”

* * * * *

“One time the Herrens (Herons) used to come about here a good deal. There was handsome William, a wery notified man he were. Then there was Old Niabai and Crowy. Their son Isaac had a boy born at Lynn close by here—that was Îza. You’ll know him sure-ly. I’ve often met Ike’s half-brother Manful in Lynn. I can see him now, a little doubled-up old man. I ’spects you’s heard tell of Manful’s diamond? One day in a public, he catch’d sight of something shining among the sand—they sanded the slab floors in them days—and, whatever the thing was, it shone like a bit of cut-glass, and at first he thought it wasn’t worth stooping for, but when the taproom was empty he picked it up, and _dawdi_! if it wasn’t a diamond as big as a cobnut. So away he takes it to a pawnbroker’s shop, and the head man told him it were worth hundreds of pounds. My dear old dad once saw it with his own eyes.”

* * * * *

While the black trees shuddered outside in the tempest, Ladin next told a story I shall never forget.

* * * * *

“When my uncle, Alfred Herren, and his wife Becky was a-travelling in Shropshire, they draw’d their wagon one night into a by-lane—so they thought—just outside the village, but daylight show’d ’em it were a gentleman’s drive leading up to a red mansion among the trees. Did my uncle pull out when he found he’d made a mistake? No, for a wery good reason he stopped where he was. His missis had been took ill in the night, and a little gell were born. The doctor gave no hopes at all for the wife, and just when things looked blackest, a groom on horseback came up from the mansion, and, slamming on the wagon-side with his whipstock, shouted—

“‘Clear out of here, you rascally Gypsies, afore my master sees you.’

“Uncle Alfred put his head outen the door, and said—

“‘Stop it, my man. There’s a woman a-dying in here. I’d take it kind of you to go to the big house yonder and ask the good lady to come and pray by a dying Gypsy.’

“Off goes the groom with the message, and soon the squire’s lady come along carrying a basket of good things, and did all she could for Becky, but the poor thing died. After that the parson came to christen the baby.

“‘What name?’ he asks.

“‘Flower o’ May,’ says my uncle. The wagon stood under a may-tree, and the flowers were dropping on the grass like snow. Now, the squire and his lady come along. Says he—

“‘The Almighty has never given us the blessing of a child, so we would like to adopt this little girl of yours and bring her up as our own. Here’ (holding up a bag) ‘are one hundred sovereigns. Take them, my good man, and let us have the baby.’

“‘Nay,’ says my uncle, ‘you may keep your bag of gold. I can’t never part wi’ my little gell.’

“Years went by, and at last my uncle fell ill and died. Then my own parents took care of the little gell, and they changed her name to Rodi, for they couldn’t abide to hear the name Flower o’ May no more; it reminded ’em too sadly of them as had gone.”

* * * * *

On arising from my couch next morning, it was a pleasure to find that the air was moderately quiet, and patches of blue were showing between the rolling clouds. Breakfast over, my friends showed me round their garden gay with flowering bulbs. Gypsy-like, they had numerous pets—a pair of long-eared owls, a jackdaw, a goldfinch, some dainty bantams, and two or three pheasants in a wired poultry-run. Now the Gypsies came as far as the highway to see me off. Tender leaves and twigs strewed the road, as I mounted my bicycle, and after pedalling through several villages, the roofs of King’s Lynn began to appear ahead. A turn in the road at last brought me to a bridge spanning the broad river Ouse discoloured by flood-water. In a yard of the tavern just across the river, the chimneys of several Gypsy vans were to be seen. I therefore dismounted to make inquiries. Sunning himself on a bench outside the inn, sat a tall Gypsy man emptying a mug of Norfolk ale.

“_Sâ shan_, _baw_?” (How do, mate?) said I, sitting down beside him. He turned out to be one of the Kilthorpes, and his pals in the yard were Coopers from London.

* * * * *

An hour or two later, as I was loitering at a street corner in Lynn, I observed not far away a two-wheeled hooded cart drawn by a tired horse. From under a dark archway they emerged, and, coming into the light, I noticed an old woman under the hood smoking a pipe, and just then, from behind the cart stepped a sweep, who disappeared into a coal-yard, carrying a sack in his hand. Following him, I heard him say—

“Half a hundred-weight, missis.” A burly woman, having weighed out the coal, poured it into the sack—a bottomless receptacle—and the black lumps were scattered about the floor.

“_Muk man peser_” (Let me pay), said I, from behind the sweep. Whereupon the grimy old fellow looked round with an amazed stare.

“_Pariko tuti_, _rai_” (Thank you, sir), he stammered out, and, producing a piece of string, he tied the sack bottom securely, and the two of us picked up the littered coal.

“Where are you living?” I asked.

“_Pawdel_ the _pâni_” (Across the water) “in West Lynn. We’ve been away for three months, and we’re going round to our house now. Come across to-night. Anybody will tell you where Old Stivven lives.”

When the yellow street-lamps were twinkling in the dusk, I groped my way down a long dark passage, and at the foot of a flight of slippery wet steps, found a black coble moored. For ten minutes or so I waited till a man in a jersey appeared and rowed me across the broad, rolling Ouse. At the “White Swan” inn I made inquiry for my sweep, and was given an address, and discovered a sweep, but, alas, he wasn’t my man at all, and I began to think Old Stephen had tricked me. But now I was given another address, where I found my man and his wife in their living-room, amid a spread of blankets and bedding airing in front of a bright fire. For a while we talked, and then at the sweep’s suggestion we moved across to the “White Swan.”

Stephen had formerly travelled with Barney Mace, an uncle of Jem, the world-famed pugilist, who had a boxing booth which he took to country fairs up and down the land, and in order to _tâder_ the _gawjê_ (draw the gentiles), Stephen and Poley (Barney’s son) would engage in a few rounds just outside the booth.

The sweep had known Old Ōseri Gray, commonly called “Sore-eyed Horsery,” who died some years ago at King’s Lynn. He was a renowned Gypsy fiddler. If he heard a band play a tune, he would go home and reproduce the air on his violin, putting in such variations, grace-notes, shakes, and runs, that none of his fellows could compare with him.

* * * * *

Among the sweep’s reminiscences was a curious story about an eccentric Gypsy who had a fancy for carrying his coffin in his travelling van. The man had a daughter, a grown woman, who went about with him, his wife having died some years before. One afternoon while she was away with her basket in the village, her father took out the coffin and was busy repainting it when a thunderstorm descended. The Gypsy took shelter in his _vâdo_, which was drawn up near an elm tree on a bit of a common. Picture the grief and dismay of his daughter on returning to find her father a corpse, for a flash of lightning had struck the tree and the van and killed the old Romany. On the day of the Gypsy’s funeral, the vicar of the parish had the flag flying half-mast high on the church tower, which everybody said was a kindly feeling to show for one who was only a wandering Gypsy.

On asking my sweep about the house-dwelling Gypsies of Lynn, he directed me to the abode of the aged widow of Louis Boss (son of the famous Ryley Boswell or Boss), and a charming reception she gave me in her spotless cottage in a retired court. The sweep had told me of this old lady’s liking for snuff, and a visit to a _tuvalo budika_ (tobacco shop) enabled me to give her a little pleasure. By the fireside she refilled her shiny metal box, and, having offered me a trial of the pungent dust, herself took deep, loving pinches, with the air of a connoisseur. Indeed, the snuff cemented our friendship forthwith. Here I am reminded of a story telling how Dr. Manning (of the Religious Tract Society) once employed snuff in a very different fashion. When visiting Granada in Spain, he was beset by a begging crew of swarthy men, women, and children, and as he stood in the middle of the clamouring horde, he took out his snuff-box. Immediately all the Gypsies wanted a pinch. He obliged them, so long as the snuff lasted, taking care to keep a tight hold of his silver box. Soon the Gypsies were all sneezing and laughing immoderately, and amid the commotion the good doctor managed to make his escape.

The road from King’s Lynn to East Dereham led me through villages astir with Whitsuntide festivities. At one point I turned down a by-lane, and, resting at the foot of a tree within view of Borrow’s birthplace at Dumpling Green, I observed a party of donkey-folk trudging along with their animals towards Dereham. Local mumpers were these people, a draggle-tailed lot, and I could not help reflecting upon the difference between the poor wanderers who now pass for Gypsies and the Petulengros and Herons of Borrow’s time.

In the church of East Dereham, one’s fancy pictured the boy Borrow in the corner of a pew fixing his eyes upon the dignified rector and parish clerk “from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of the wondrous works of the Most High.”

It was like living in _Lavengro_ to wander about the alleys and lanes of old Norwich and through the ling and fern on breezy Mousehold above the town. Up there amid the camping sites and the fighting-pits, it was not without sadness that I read on a notice-board—“No Gypsy, squatter, or vagrant shall frequent, or resort to, or remain upon the Heath.” O shades of Jasper Petulengro and Tawno Chikno, changed indeed are the times since the days when ye loved and fought and trafficked within the precincts of beautiful old Norwich!

Concerning my trip by boat from Yarmouth to London, which was entirely lacking in Gypsy interest, nothing need be said here.

London is in parts strongly tinctured with Gypsy blood. Let anyone walk along the streets which have been built upon the sites of the old metropolitan Gypsyries, and he will surely see dark faces and black eyes telling how the Gypsies still cling to these localities. All around Latimer Road Station, which stands upon the Potteries, Gypsies are to be found living in narrow courts and dingy lanes.

On my way to Epsom on the eve of the Derby, I passed a few happy moments with my aged pal, Robert Petulengro, in whose back room at Notting Hill I have often been regaled with racy stories and touching reminiscences of old-time Romany life. There is something suggestive of the cleric in Bob’s demeanour, and a stranger would never suspect that my placid-looking friend had led a wild, roving life. It is when he loses himself in a tale that his mild ministerial air gives place to a vivacity characteristically Gypsy.

To the Gypsyry on the Potteries came nomads named Heron and Leatherlund in the year 1854. (Some of their descendants still reside at the backs of the mews in Notting Hill.) They were the survivors of a sad disaster which in the previous year had befallen a party of hop-pickers at Hadlow in Kent. Through the kindness of a Gypsy woman who was “saved from the flood,” I am able to reprint a portion of an old tract giving the Rev. R. Shindler’s version of “The Medway Disaster.”

“In Kent you may still be told of a sad catastrophe which befel a party of hop-pickers, in the year 1853, as they were returning to their temporary habitations after a day’s work. The scene of the alarming event was in the parish of Hadlow, near Tunbridge, Kent. It is well known that thousands of poor people flock down into Kent for the hopping. Some of these are Gypsies; some may be described as house-cart people, who travel from place to place for the greater part of the year, selling their wares—brushes and brooms, tin-ware, earthen-ware, and such-like; but by far the larger part emerge from the lanes and alleys and courts of London. To the last especially, but to the others also, the hopping proves, when the weather is fine and the hops good, a pleasant recreation as well as a profitable employment. A number of people of Gypsy character and habits were employed by a farmer who resided in the parish of Tudely, and who had hop gardens also in Hadlow parish. It is a good rule among the hop-farmers, that when their gardens are any considerable distance from the homes of the natives or the encampments of the strangers, the pickers should be conveyed in wagons to and from the gardens. In this case, the river Medway had to be crossed in going to and from the gardens, and the only means of crossing was a wooden bridge of considerable span, and high above the current. The bridge was considered dangerous, especially for spirited horses, who were alarmed at the noise made by their own feet. The bridge was rendered even more dangerous by reason of the rather frail open wooden rails which flanked it right and left.

“On the morning of the day on which the catastrophe occurred, several parties passed over the bridge in safety, and in the evening parties of natives, or ‘home-dwellers,’ had returned without any mishap; but as a party of Gypsies and suchlike were being conveyed back, the horses suddenly took fright, ran the wagon against the side of the bridge, which gave way, and wagon, horses, and people were precipitated into the strong current below, and no less than thirty were drowned. I was then pastor in a neighbouring parish, and had taken a deep interest in the religious condition of the hoppers, preaching in fields and stackyards and elsewhere near their encampments, and distributing tracts and New Testaments. The sad event mentioned above stirred my heart a great deal, and I felt impelled to write a short tract. The thirty hop-pickers were buried in Hadlow churchyard in a common grave, the spot being marked by a monument recording the names of those who perished in the waters of the Medway.”

There are in Battersea numerous “yards” under railway arches, where living-vans of “travellers” used to be seen all the year round. Very much diluted is the Gypsy blood to be found nowadays in these “yards.” It is these degenerates, mostly Londoners bred and born, who at times give so much trouble to the local authorities in Surrey.

Upon Hampstead Heath, and at Wormwood Scrubbs, a sprinkling of Gypsy faces may be seen among the show-folk on a Bank Holiday, and at Edmonton, Mitcham, and near Southend-on-Sea, I have met Gypsies all the year round.

If the Yorkshireman goes to see the St. Leger because he has an instinctive love of horse-flesh, the Cockney resorts to Epsom Downs on the Derby Day to smell the scent of green turf and to take part in the most stupendous picnic in the world.

Not merely to see a crowd of nearly a million human beings, but to sample Epsom’s Gypsies, was the object of my visit to the Downs one unforgettable June day. London’s unyielding pavements mean for me, after a day or two of them, an unpleasant foot-soreness, hence it was a relief to step forth upon the springy sward outside the Downs Station. Like children let loose from school, my fellow-travellers from town laughed and joked, whistled and sang, as briskly they moved towards the course.

It was among the gorse bushes on the sunlit hilltop that I caught my first glimpse of the Gypsies, and to one acquainted with the swart _Romanitshel_s of East Anglia and the Northern Counties, the folk of the ramshackle carts and tiny tents were distinctly disappointing. Ruddy, fair-haired, and poorly-clad, were many of them; what a falling off from the horde of dark Gypsies assembled at some of our North-Country fairs!

While I was chatting with a metropolitan policeman, up came a tall Gypsy girl vending what purported to be tiny squares of cedar wood, though the specimen I purchased for threepence smelled a good deal more like the innermost layer of the red bark abounding in the strips of pine forest around Tunbridge Wells. When I inquired of the damsel as to what Gypsies were present on the Downs, she replied, with a low laugh, “You’s never got to go far in these parts for to catch an Ayre. My dad’s an Ayre, but my _dai_ (mother) was a Stevens. Over there” (pointing to a town of Gypsy caravans and a country fair combined opposite the Grand Stand) “you’ll find some of the Matthews, Penfolds, and maybe a few of the Bucklands.”

[Picture: On the Racecourse. Photo. Valentine]

Crossing the course, I made my way to the part of the Downs indicated by Cinderella Ayre, and though I rubbed shoulders with a good many sunburnt travellers in corduroys, and show-women in gowns of red and green, the first real Gypsy it was my good fortune to meet was Davy Lee, the ancient vagabond who “planted” the _duker_in-_mokto_ (fortune-telling box) upon George Smith of Coalville. Although nearly blind, Davy managed to dodge in and out of the crowd, and, taking me up to his wagon, found time to chat about his father, the renowned Zacky Lee.

“My daddy was stopping one night in a field, and before going to bed, he looked out and there was his white donkey—leastways so he fancied. It was roaming about, and he set off to catch and tether it, so as he shouldn’t lose it. But do whatever he would, he could never get up to the animal. The nearer he tried to come at it, the furder off it allus was, till at last he know’d that what he’d been chasing all night was not his donkey at all, but the Devil.”

Lounging on the grass, I noticed that the great event of the afternoon had arrived. Sleek, lean horses cantered along the course and passed out of sight. Amid a confused hubbub of voices, several moments went by. Now the glasses were levelled, and a profound silence settled on the crowd. All eyes were turned upon a little knot of horses appearing round Tattenham Corner. Then the sound of many voices swelled into a roar and died down again when the numbers went up.

Prominent at these races in days gone by was Matthias Cooper, a Gypsy to whom the late King Edward, when Prince of Wales, would toss a golden sovereign. A well-known figure was Matty, attired in white hat, yellow waistcoat, black cut-away coat, and white trousers. Hovering about this old Gypsy was an air of the Courts and the Wilderness, for had he not mingled with royalty nearly all his life, this old “Windsor Froggie”? It was from him that Charles G. Leland obtained most of the materials that went to make his work entitled _The English Gipsies and their Language_. Matty is now no more, but his sons, Anselo and Wacker, still attend the Epsom races year by year.

The great carnival was at last subsiding when I found myself in the tent of Anselo Cooper and his wife, with whom I took tea. I am not likely to forget my ride from the course to Epsom Town. As the Coopers were not leaving till the end of the week, they begged a lift for me from some friends of theirs who were going to the town. Our “carriage,” a two-wheeled affair, was drawn by a gaunt, long-legged horse, and along with some strange dark Gypsies I sat upon a pile of smoky tent-covers. We sped along the Down-land in a fashion which rocked us terribly. The very policemen laughed as we went by, but we reached the town in safety.