CHAPTER XVIII

A GYPSY SEPULCHRE—BURIAL LORE—THE PASSING OF JONATHAN

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 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. We were 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 work _The 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.”

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 of the 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 aged _Romanitshel_ on 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 encampment of his people. When dying, Isaac Heron said, “Bury me under a hedge,” a reminiscence of the earlier mode of sepulture. In his _Lavengro_, 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 her _bebee_ (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 turned inside 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’s tomb in Yatton churchyard. Her headstone, which may still be seen, bears the lines—

“Here lies Merily Joule A beauty bright: That left Isaac Joule Her heart’s delight 1827.”

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 reluctance to 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 hand to fondle a lamb whose confidence he had won while camping on the common.

[Picture: 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 the _vâdo_ (cart) had been _hotsherdo_ (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 steeple You face the East from which your fathers sprang, Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people Whom no true Romany will call by name, The folk departed like the camp-fire flame Of withered yesterday.”