CHAPTER XXI

THE GYPSY OF THE HILLS—IN THE HEART OF WALES—A WESTMORLAND HORSE-FAIR

I

_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 same station, it was only to find a tornado howling over the land and heavy rain falling. That wild night I’m not likely to forget in a hurry. . . .

At last, after an hour’s wait in a snug hostelry, I set off along the Holyhead Road, having a certain encampment in my mind’s eye. At the “Goat” Inn, where the by-road turns off for Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch, I made inquiry for the said camp, but the landlord only shook his head. One of his daughters, however, hearing my question, said she knew where it was, and coming with me to the door indicated the whereabouts of the caravans of my quest. By now the rain had ceased, and, in a few moments, round a bend in the highway, the outline of a Gypsy tent, with a caravan and a tilt-cart standing near it, caught my eye against a row of twisted oaks in a wayside field. On entering the camp there were hearty greetings from Gilderoy Gray and Oli Purum, his travelling pal. The ruddy glow in the fire-bucket made the tent’s interior an inviting spot for tea, and there was plenty of fun that evening. Outside: the dark night with a roaring wind in the oak trees. Within: a wood-fire lit up the red blankets stretched over the curved tent-rods, and upon a well-made couch of straw (covered with rugs) we reclined. Oli was in fine form for tale-telling, and his pipe often went out. Gilderoy, too, had heaps of things to tell. Was ever a lover of the road better stocked with anecdotes than he?

In the tilt-cart I made my bed, and slept as soundly as a dormouse.

_May_ 13.—At 5 a.m. the sun was shining gloriously upon the mountains. Wash and breakfast in the open air. In the forenoon we three took the hilly road leading to Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch. A light breeze from off the mountains carried the smell of spring everywhere. The birds were all a-twitter in the leafing woods. Blue speedwells, white stars of stitchwort, bee-haunted gorse bloom—all turned to salute the sovereign sun glowing down upon the land. Gilderoy, ever a good walker, was soon pegging on ahead; then at a stile in a hedge he would wait until Oli and I came up. Just below the village of Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch, we stood on the _puri porj_ (old bridge) and watched the trout leap in the vandyke-brown pools of the river Alwen. On to the “Hand” tavern, my ideal village inn. George Borrow saw the interiors of many such houses during his tramps through “Wild Wales.” Nor are we likely to forget the kindness we received at the home of a certain great Scholar-Gypsy and Gypsy-Scholar, perched upon a high point commanding a magnificent landscape.

[Picture: Oli Purum. Photo. Fred Shaw]

About tea-time a jolly face appeared at our tent door, announcing the arrival of Gil’roy’s brother Jim, and, just as dusk was enfolding the scene, a merry boy came bounding into the camp. This was Deborah Purum’s Willy, who told us that Bala Fair was to take place on the morrow. Lively indeed was our camp this evening, for had not our company increased by two? Resolving to set off in good time toward Bala in the morning, we slipped into our beds about midnight, and soon forgot to listen to the owls hooting mournfully in the woods.

[Picture: A Gypsy Harpist. Photo. W. Ferguson]

_May_ 14.—A white mist on the mountains foretold a fine day, and by 6.30 we were breakfasting on trout and bacon done over a wood fire. Then harnessing the mare to the tilt-cart, we all climbed aboard, and away we rattled towards Bala. The wayside woods were empurpled with hyacinths, and on the hedge-banks little bushes of bilberry hung out their crimson flowers. Oli Purum, who is half a Welsh Gypsy, could tell us the very names of the families who had camped round the black patches on the roadsides. Springing off the cart, he would examine the heaps of willow-peelings with a critical eye. “_Âwa_, (yes) I thought so. It’s some of the Klisons (Locks) that’s been _hatsh_in _akai_ (stopping here).” A splendid trotter, our mare made light work of pulling the tilt-cart over those seventeen miles down the vale to Bala. Of course we were all wondering as to the Gypsies we might see at the fair. What a crowd of farm-folk we found filling the streets on our arrival. Just in front of the “White Lion” hostelry, I saw a potter-woman standing before a spread of crockery of all shapes and sizes on the side of the road, and, curiously enough, I had once met her son, Orlando Fox, at Bristol.

Little did we dream, however, of the surprise awaiting us here in Bala. Elbowing our way through the dense crowd, it was Gilderoy who was the first to exclaim, “_Dik odoi_” (Look there), and turning our gaze that way, there, sure enough, was a very dark old Gypsy with grizzled locks and glittering black eyes. His garments were weathered by long wear amid the mountains, and in him I recognized the patriarchal Matthew (a descendant of Abraham Wood) whom I had met some years before.

The Woods preserve many stories of Abraham, their earliest known progenitor, who flourished about the beginning of the eighteenth century. Entering Wales from Somerset, he brought with him a violin, and is supposed to have been the first to play upon one in the Principality. According to tradition, “He always rode on a blood-horse, would not sleep in the open but in barns, wore a three-cocked hat with gold lace, a red silk coat, a waistcoat embroidered with green leaves, had half-crowns for buttons on his coat, sported white breeches gaily decked with ribbons, pumps with silver buckles and spurs, a gold watch and chain, and two gold rings.” Many of Abraham’s descendants are excellent players on the harp, and all, without exception, speak pure, deep, inflected Romany, akin to the beautiful musical dialect spoken by the Gypsies of Eastern Europe. Angling all summer, fiddling or harping all winter, such is the life of the Gypsy Woods of Wales.

It was with joy that we rambled with Matty along the shore of Bala Llyn, a glittering mirror in the sunshine broken only by rings made by rising fish. The windless day of summerlike quality induced our little party to loiter by the lake, and when at length we turned to come away, there on the road stood a Romany lass with her little brother, as merry a pair as ever wore Gypsy togs. To me it was very delightful to hear their fluent Welsh Romany.

There was no difficulty in persuading Matty to accompany us to our camp at Maerdy. He seemed only too glad to escape into the sweet open country after the close atmosphere of the town streets. And how the mare did travel after her feed and rest! On and on up the mountain road we went, startling the horned sheep on the unfenced roadsides. Now and then Matty would point out the spots where his old folks used to camp. Well away from the town, we took a bite of bread and cheese at a tiny white inn backed by a strip of pine forest, from whose shadows darted a grey sheep-dog almost wolf-like in its leanness of figure and sharpness of nose. What a penetrating bark it had too!

A few more miles of rough road, with here a lone farm and there a cottage with lumps of white spar on its window-ledges, brought us once again to the “Cymro,” Maerdy, where we encountered a funny horse-breaker, reminding one of Borrow’s gossipy ostlers. Oli Purum’s tricks here “took the cake,” and to the delight of his audience he kept up a constant stream of them.

To-night we felt that fate had been extraordinarily kind to us, as by the fire we sat listening to Matty’s weird tales and to Oli’s rendering of “The Shepherd of Snowdon” and other Welsh airs on his violin. A rare stock of tales has Matty—stories replete with enchanted castles, green dragons, witches, ghosts, and the hero is nearly always a clever Gypsy named Jack. Matty is Oli’s cousin, and it is charming to see how happy they are together.

To me this is a holiday indeed. The utter absence of conventionality, and the diversions of the Gypsy life, are as balm to one’s nerves.

_May_ 15.—To-day is another blue and golden foretaste of summer. Along the banks of the Alwen, dodging in and out among huge boulders, climbing fences, scrambling through the masses of flowering gorse and broom, Gilderoy, Matty, and I made our way to Bettws-Gwerfil-Goch. In the old inn, a cool retreat after the broiling sunshine in the wooded valley, we sat awhile. Years ago I saw Matty and his sons dance on the blue-stone floor of this room, just after the New Year had come in—a time when all Welsh folk are merry with fiddle and song.

[Picture: A Happy Pair. Photo. W. Ferguson]

On getting back to our camp in the early evening, all hands set to work, some gathering sticks, others fetching water, and soon the supper was spread inside the roomy tent. Tales and talk till the late-rising moon glinted through the holes nibbled by field-mice in the tent blankets. Then to dreamland.

[Picture: A Chat by the Gate. Photo. W. Ferguson]

_May_ 16.—This morning I find thin ice on a pail of water standing in the open. How bracing to complete your toilet in the cool air from the mountains. See with what tenderness the sunlight colours the rocks up there by the hillside farmstead. For the first time since coming into Wales I hear the cuckoo calling in the woods. High up on the slope I see a black horse dragging a hurdle with thorn boughs weighted by stones—a primitive harrow. I’ll have a scamper down the road through the keen air of morn, before the sun has drunk up all the dew.

After breakfast I go a-fishing. Home in the afternoon to find some of the Gypsy Locks coming down the Holyhead Road with their carts and ponies; a delightful party, and much _rokerben_ (conversation) followed.

A little later Gilderoy and I drive in the tilt-cart to Corwen to fetch Fred o’ the Bawro Gav. This means more fun for us round the evening fire. When depressed in days to come, I want to remember that flow of Gypsy mirth away there under the shadow of Cader Dinmael, while the oak-groves outside our tent whispered in the rising wind of night.

_May_ 17.—Farewell, tent and caravan and tilt-cart. Farewell, old pals beside your smoking fires. Farewell, sweet Wales and your beautiful mountains. To-day I return to civilization.

Oli Purum drove me to Corwen station, and by night I am at home again on the Wolds of Lincolnshire.

II

_September_ 27.—We are at Sedbergh, a little grey town at the foot of the Yorkshire Fells. Stone walls, narrow streets, old inns—all have their outlines softened by the mellow shadows, half-golden, half-brown, stealing over the place this afternoon. Looking out from a tavern window I experience a thrill. There in the street stand two vehicles, a _vâdo_ and a tilt-cart, with sleek horses between their shafts. That tilt-cart I should know anywhere, for under its weathered hood I have dreamt happy dreams.

* * * * *

“I say, pals, we must be stirring. Come along,” exclaims Gilderoy Gray, rising from his corner on the smooth-worn settle. We follow our leader into the street, and, boarding those vehicles, we are not long in getting clear of Sedbergh town. Bound for Brough Hill Horse-Fair, our party of six never had a gayer prospect. Here we are on the road again—Gil’roy, Merry Jim, Fred o’ the Bawro Gav, Oli Purum, his son Willy, and the Gypsy’s Parson. . . .

But even the brightest of September days must wane, and soon to right and left of us dark ridges lift themselves against the fading light. Our first stage is a short one. Nightfall sees us pull up at Cautley Crag, where we seek a stopping-place in the small croft adjoining the lonely white inn on the roadside. However, the gate proves too narrow to admit our carts, so we draw upon the wayside turf, under the shelter of a stone wall. Nimble as ever, Oli erects the red blanket tent in the croft, and Willy busies himself in building a good fire. When an abundance of brown bracken has been laid down in the tent (no fresh straw is to be had), the customary rugs are spread and we sit down to supper. Pipes and chatter make the evening hours fly. There is so much Gypsy news to talk over. At last, having placed a warning lantern, like a pendant star, on one of the carts, we tumble into our beds and quickly fall asleep.

_September_ 28.—A keen, clear autumn morn making you feel how good it is to be alive. After pottering about the camp, Gilderoy and I wander along the bank of the roaring Rawthey, while Jim and Fred, lured by the shine and glamour of the sunlit mountains, set off across the dewy moor for a closer look at the “Spout,” as the waterfall up the dingle is described on the map. Down by the plank-bridge I stand and look at the fells all a-shimmer in the sun. Far up beyond the region of stone walls, built (says our Oli) in the days when labourers received a wage of a penny a day, one’s eye follows the forms of mountain ponies, horned sheep, and a couple of shepherds roaming with their dogs. Nearer, on the river-bank, are small companies of geese preening their feathers in the sunshine. I hear from our landlord that prowling hill-foxes sometimes snap up a goose on the moor. . . .

Breakfast over, we were busy packing when some of the Whartons (Oli’s relations) passed by in their light accommodation carts _en route_ for Brough Fair, so Oli and Willy must needs rush out to gather the latest news of the road. This meant a trifling delay in our getting off, for Gypsies are loquacious. However, by 9.30 we were once more “on travel,” feeling blithe as larks. Rumble-rumble went the wheels on the road, and all was going as merry as a marriage bell until a single magpie flitted across our track. Observing the bird of ill-omen, I quoted the old-time ditty—

“One for sorrow, two for mirth, Three for a wedding, four for a birth.”

“That’s only an old woman’s tale,” quoth the Gypsy, flicking the horse’s glossy back with the ends of the reins. Yet, a mile or so farther on, Oli was the first to discover that the horse had cast a shoe. Handing over the reins, the lithe Gypsy went off at a trot, and not long after he came up flaunting the lost shoe, just as the smith at Court Common was ready, tools in hand, to put it on.

[Picture: ’Neath Cautley Crag. Photo. Fred Shaw]

Under the lee of a wood of bronzed beeches we made a stick fire to warm the stew-pot, while the smith replaced the shoe amid an interested group of yokels who had popped up from goodness knows where.

The wonderfully transparent atmosphere of this region appears to possess magnifying powers, for even the poultry on the distant knolls assume the forms of huge birds, and as for the gaunt lady who sat “taking the air” on a lonesome bench half a mile away, she would have passed right enough for the wife of Goliath, if that celebrity ever possessed a missis.

In a locality like this, romance and poetry meet one at every turn. A commonplace duck-pond in a grassy hollow does not, perhaps, suggest the glamorous things of life; yet the small tarn lying before us in the sunshine is the subject of a curious local legend. Here, says tradition, you are treading upon fairy ground, for in this dimple in front of the beech wood you have a _bottomless pool_!

[Picture: A Bottomless Pool. Photo. Fred Shaw]

As for yon grey house amid the trees on the common’s upper edge, well, the man for whom it was built lived in it but a day and died, and over the doorway somebody has inscribed the text, “Occupy till I come.”

Soon after quitting the common, Wild Boar Fell begins to mark the skyline on our right, and now all around us lies a realm of strewn rocks—

“Crags, knolls, and mounds, confusedly hurled, The fragments of an earlier world.”

A stiff push up the inclines brought us at last to the high point from whence the road dipped into the long straggling town of Kirkby-Stephen. Verily the place seemed to have dropped asleep in the September sun. With as little delay as possible we held on our way until, by 5 p.m., we had made Warcop and had pitched behind the farmhouse where we had stayed on previous happy occasions.

With all hands to work, the tent was put up in record time, and as the ruddy sundown tinged the tree boles near our camp, we gathered round the fire for the evening meal. Thus closed a superb summerlike day.

_September_ 29.—Somewhere about 7 a.m. a whiff of tobacco smoke comes curling pleasantly round the edge of our bunk in the tilt-cart, and I become aware that my bedmate, Fred o’ the Bawro Gav, is dressing. “There’s a heavy dew this morning,” says he, turning back the coverings at the entrance of the cart; and in a little while I am up and washing outside, and perceive for myself that the cobwebs on the hedge are delicately jewelled with drops of dew. “Look at the calves,” says Fred, “pretty fellows, aren’t they?” My companion has quite a farmer’s eye for things, and as a weather-prophet he rarely makes a mistake. Overhead low clouds are rolling, or rather masses of dove-coloured mist, with patches of blue sky showing between, and already the mountains rising to the north are richly bathed in sunshine.

During the forenoon Gilderoy, Fred, and I stretch our legs in a stroll upon the sunlit “Hill,” where the Gypsies are encamped in considerable numbers for the morrow’s great horse-fair. Many familiar faces greet us on every hand. Now it is Pat Lee who springs out from a group and nearly twists off Fred’s hand, so vigorous is the shaking it receives, and now I am honoured by an invitation to test the weight of Femi Coleman’s new baby. From the doorway of a gorgeous _vâdo_ Sophia Lovell thrusts out her black poll and inquires after our Oli. In this manner, with many variations, we make our way between the camps, and our ramble proves enjoyable in every way.

[Picture: A Wandering Minstrel. Photo. Fred Shaw]

Going back to the wagons at Warcop, we drop into an inn, and by a bit of luck it happens that a “character” is present in the person of “Fiddling” Billy Williams, the wandering minstrel, who at our request takes his brown violin from a bag on his back and plays some lively airs, and Oli and Willy Purum, who have turned up, dance cleverly to a tune or two on the smooth-worn, blue-stone floor. But Old Billy—I cannot take my eyes off him. Look at his weathered coat (a gift from Lord Lonsdale) which in the course of years has lost its nap and shows here and there patches of a ruddy lower layer; surely the nondescript garment suits the grizzled old wanderer to perfection. Watching him closely, I observe that he has a very passable acquaintance with the Gypsy tongue, so, edging towards him, I drop a deep sentence into his ear. How he starts! “You know something,” says he. Then he goes on to tell me that as a boy he travelled with no less renowned a personage than John Roberts, the Welsh Gypsy harpist. Here’s a find. Who ever expected to meet a pupil of Old Janik’s in a remote Westmorland inn? Billy says that Roberts taught him how to “scrape music off these things,” twanging the fiddle-strings with a forefinger, and smiling sweetly as he does it. For myself, I count this meeting with Fiddling Billy one of the “events” of our trip.

In the evening we again rambled on the “Hill” to see a memorable sight—hundreds of Gypsy fires with rings of dark figures squatting around the blazing logs. A feast for the eyes of a lover of the nomads was this array of firelit faces set against a background of caravans, stone walls, and mountains.

_September_ 30.—A fine morning with a cool wind blowing from the east. As we sat at breakfast, a clatter of hoofs on the road announced belated arrivals for the fair. Early in the forenoon we found ourselves in the thick of the crowd, which, to me, seemed as big as ever on Brough Hill. Once upon a time this fair used to last a whole week, much more indeed for the Gypsy element, but nowadays the last day of September and the first day of October are the only recognized dates. Droves of fell ponies took up a large space on the fair-ground. A few heavy horses and a sprinkling of “bloods” met the eye at times. For one thing we could see our Gypsy friends busy upon their “native heath,” for where is a Gypsy at home if it is not at a horse-fair?

As evening approached, an ugly bank of inky-black cloud came over the mountains, and the wind in rude gusts began to wail, Valkyrie-like, in the tree-tops, and to shake our wagons in a way that reminded one of a night at sea. Thus the day which had opened so gaily ended in real “Brough weather.”

An authority on that local phenomenon known as the “Helm” wind writes: “The field of its operation extends from near Brough for a distance of perhaps thirty miles down the Eden Valley towards Carlisle, and is sharply restricted to the belt lying between the Pennines and the river; never, on the one hand, being encountered on the actual summit of the range, and never, on the other, crossing the water. Bitterly cold, it rushes like a tornado down the slope, and works havoc in the valley below. If the “Helm” happens to blow during the fair, the proprietors of scores of refreshment tents may usually bid farewell to all the canvas they possess.”

[Picture: Brough Hill Horse Fair. Photo. Valentine]

The Gypsies, to whom I have ever mentioned the “Helm” wind at Brough, invariably shrug their shoulders, as if it were an old friend, and not a very welcome one at that.

_October_ 1.—We were all afoot in good time this morning, six o’clock or thereabouts, and right glad we were to see the sun breaking through the mists over Brough Fox Tower. Taking a halter apiece, Fred and I went to fetch the horses. Breakfast; then we packed, and away we went. “Good-bye, old camping-place,” we said, as the wagons reached the Musgrave ramper, for very pleasant had been our sojourn by the spreading trees beyond the old farmhouse. On the way to Kirkby-Stephen, many light carts rattled past, going south, and, after the stiff pull out of the town, it was good to be once more on the open road with the keen mountain air blowing on our faces from over wide leagues of rocks and heather.

By early evening we had reached Cautley, where, as before, we drew on to the strip of wayside turf, and in quick time a couple of plump fowls were roasting in the black pot over a wood fire. To watch Oli prepare and cook those fowls was an object-lesson to be remembered. Bravo, Oli, our Romany chef!

Realizing that this was our last evening in the wilds, we were in no hurry to get between the blankets. So we stretched out the tales, and meandered leisurely through the fields of reminiscence, while the cloud of tobacco smoke grew denser around us, and the stars o’ night shone more and more brightly over Cautley’s black crag.

_October_ 2.—Up at seven to find the sky almost free from clouds and holding out the promise of a brilliant wind-up. After breakfast we set off for Lancaster, near whose castle we parted; and now, over fireside pipes, my notebook and its jottings possess the power to make every sight and sound of the journey live again.