CHAPTER VI

I MAKE A NEW ACQUAINTANCE

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 along it members of the Boswell clan, making their way from Edinburgh to London; the dark Herons, after spending the summer months in the Northern Counties, came by this route to their winter quarters at Nottingham; a lawless horde of Lovells also knew this road well. Sometimes these Gypsies would turn aside from the dusty highway for a brief rest in the green lanes across an adjacent river, but they rarely tarried longer than a day. With one of these Gypsies I became intimately acquainted, and this is how our friendship began.

One May morning I had been strolling along the aforesaid road, and, turning towards the river where it is spanned by an old mill-bridge, I loitered there in expectation of the arrival of a pack of otter-hounds, visitors from another county; for complaints had long been accumulating to the effect that _Lutra_ had been making depredations among the fish, game, and poultry all along the reaches of the river. Adjoining the bridge was a watermill where often might be heard the humming of the great wheel and the roar of foam-flecked water. Mellowed by time’s gentle touch, the irregular outlines of the building seemed verily as if arranged to be imaged on canvas; timbers and weathered stones were everywhere mottled with rosettes of orange and grey lichen, and when the sunbeams warmed the tints and tones of the old mill into rich masses of colour you experienced a thrill which made you wish to repeat it.

A little way off, our river was crossed by a shallow ford rarely used by vehicular traffic, which mostly passed by the bridge. Once a year, however, the miller closed the bridge in order to preserve a right-of-way through his yard, and on this occasion toll was taken of every cart, while a free way was allowed by the ford. But the astute fellow usually arranged that the closing of the bridge should coincide with a market day at the nearest town, and he would choose a time when the river was swollen by flood-water beyond its ordinary dimensions, thus rendering the ford a dangerous crossing.

After waiting awhile, a murmur of deep voices broke upon my ear, as with a rush and a splash about a score of bonny, rough-coated dogs burst into view round a bend in the stream. It was not in my plans to follow the dogs, so when the pack and its excited companions had gone by, I proceeded leisurely along a lane leading towards the green uplands looking down upon the valley.

A little way up the lane I came upon two dark-featured lads, and, going up to one of them who was tacking strips of straw-plait upon the top of a three-legged table, I said—

“You seem very busy this morning.”

“We must do something for a living.”

“You’re certainly a good hand at your business. How long are you stopping here?”

“That’s more nor I know.” (This with a shrewd look at me from top to toe.) “Ax grandfather, up yonder wi’ the hosses.”

Higher up the lane, and almost hidden by outlying tangles of bramble and wild-rose, sat a man of sixty or more, puffing tobacco smoke from his black clay, and near him on the wayside three horses ripped the tender grasses.

Looking up at me with a start, the man said—

“Well, you fairly took me by surprise, sir. For a wonder I never heard you a-coming. I must be getting deaf.”

“_Romanitshel_?” (Gypsy) I queried.

“_Âvali_, _mi tshavo_” (Yes, my son), he replied; “you’s been among our people, that’s plain, or you wouldn’t talk like you do. Mebbe you’s heard tell o’ Jonathan Boswell—that’s me. But I must be off now with these here hosses to the smithy. We’s _besh_in _akai_ (stopping here) for a day or two. Our wagon’s in the _kitshima_ (tavern) yard just past the mill.”

“Well, Jonathan, I want you to bring one of those Gypsy-tables the boys are making to my place this afternoon; don’t fail to come. I shall _dik avrî_ for _tîro mui_ about _trin ora_” (look out for your face about three o’clock).

“Right, I’ll be there, _raia_.”

In due course the Gypsy presented himself at my door in company with his two grandsons, and among them they carried three tables. I had only asked for one, but Jonathan was such a “find” that I gladly purchased all the articles and bade the little party follow me into the garden. The two grandsons displayed a remarkable knowledge of trees, which they were able to identify not merely by their foliage, but by the character of their bark. Wild birds they knew by note and flight as well as by plumage. There is so much a Gypsy boy knows about nature.

How meagre, by contrast, is the information possessed by the average County Council schoolboy; which reminds me that I was once giving an object-lesson to a class of fifth-standard children attending our village school. We were seated on a river bank whose insect life and botanical treasures I had been pointing out to an interested group of listeners. As nothing had been said about the scaly denizens of the stream, I concluded my talk by putting a question to the entire class.

“Hands up, those who can tell me the names of any fish to be found in this river.”

Quickly a dozen pink palms were uplifted, and I could see that several lips were bursting with information. Imagine my surprise when I was informed—“red-herring, sprats, and mackerel.”

On the following evening I went across the fields to see my friends by the watermill. The amber light of sunset was falling upon green hedge and rippling river. From a thorn bush a nightingale jug-jugged deliciously. There was poetry in the air. Nor was it dispelled by the discovery that my friends had drawn their “house on wheels” into the grassy lane leading down to the ford.

Seated on a mound of sand, Jonathan was chatting with a stranger who had the looks of an Irishman. I joined them, but no sooner had I dropped a word or two of Romany than the stranger arose, saying, “I don’t understand your talk, so I’d better be going.” He then left us, and, seeing he had gone away, old Fazenti, Jonathan’s wife, stepped down from the living-wagon, and our discourse became considerably enlivened by her presence.

Speaking of _duker_in (fortune-telling), she said, “It’ll go on while the world lasts,” which was Fazzy’s way of saying that the credulous will be in the world after the poor have left it. “It’s the hawking-basket that gi’s us our chance, don’t you _dik_ (see)? I takes care never to be without my licence, and the _muskro_ (policeman) would have to get up wery early to catch old Fazzy asleep. Did I ever have any _mulo-mas_? {61} Many’s the time I’ve had a bit. In spring, when lambs are about, that’s the time for _mulo-mas_.

“A good country for hedgehogs is this, but we don’t eat ’em in the spring. The back end of the year is the best time for ’em; there’s a bit of flesh on ’em then. When you find one, if he’s rolled up in a ball, you rub his back with a stick right down his spine, and he’ll open out fast enough. Then you hit him hard on the nose, and he’s as dead as a door nail. The old way of cooking him was to cover him with clay and bake him in the fire. When he was cooked you tapped the clay ball, and the prickles and skin came away with the clay. Nowadays we burn down the bristles, then shave ’em off, draw and clean him and roast him on a spit before a hot fire. He’s wery good with _puvengri_s (potatoes), sage, and onions. _Bouri_s (snails) are good to eat in winter. You get them in a hard frost from behind old stumps of trees. You put salt on ’em and they make fine broth. Wery strengthening is _bouri-zimen_” (snail broth).

[Picture: A rest by the way. Photo. Fred Shaw]

While we were conversing, Jonathan’s grandsons passed by with a lurcher.

“A useful dog, that, I should think,” said I.

“_Kushto yek sî dova_ for _shushiaw_ and _kanengrê_” (A good one is that for rabbits and hares), replied the old man. “I minds well the day I bought him off a man with a pot-cart as was stopping along with us. We’d got leave from a farmer to draw into a lane running between some clover fields, and we were just sitting down to a cup o’ tea when a keeper comes along and says—

“‘I’m afraid some of you fellows have been up to mischief, because there’s a hare in a snare along this hedge.’

“‘Then it’s somebody else’s snare, not ours,’ I says, ‘for we’s only just got here, and yon farmer as give us leave to stop will tell you the same if you ask him.’

“‘Well, see here,’ says the keeper, ‘there’s a rabbit for your pot. Keep a sharp look out, and mind you let me know if anybody comes to fetch that hare. There’s my cottage up yonder.’

“Then he went away, and would you believe it, a bit after the moon got up we see a man coming across the field and straight to that snare he went, and as he was taking the hare out of it, there was a tap on his shoulder from the keeper. Now, who do you think the man was that got catched so nicely? _It was the willage policeman_. And that night I bought that here _jukel_ (dog), I did, and me and the dog had a fine time among the _shushiaw_ (rabbits) after the keeper and the policeman had gone away. About a week after, the _muskro_ (policeman) had to appear in court, and a wery poor figure he cut afore the _pukinger_ (magistrate). You see, he was catched proper, and couldn’t get out of it no-how. The pot-cart man and me had to go up as witnesses.”

“You’ll know this countryside well, I expect. Do you ever spend the night in Dark Lane, as I believe they call it?”

“One time we used to stop there a lot, _rai_, but they won’t let us now. How’smiver, we _hatsh odoi_ (encamp there) for a _râti_ (night) at odd times, spite of everybody.”

This remark was accompanied by a half-smothered chuckle from Jonathan, who, while filling his pipe from my tobacco pouch, seemed to be ruminating upon a reminiscence which presently came out.

The said lane lies pleasantly between a neighbouring village and the river, and about the month of May the grass down there begins to be sweet, but woe to the Gypsies whom the constable finds encamped thereabouts.

Jonathan went on to tell how he and his party once passed a night very happily there when the may-buds were bursting. And this is how it was done.

In a wayside tavern the Gypsy had heard it whispered that the County Police had gone to the town for the annual inspection, which involved a temporary absence of the constables from their respective localities. But, to make quite sure of this, on arriving at the village of F—, Jonathan sought out a certain cottage and thus addressed himself to a constable’s wife—

“Is the sergeant at home?”

“No, my man. What do you want him for?”

“A pony of mine has gone astray, and I want him to let me know if he hears anything about it. Perhaps he’ll be at home to-night?”

“He won’t, I’m afraid.”

“Thank you, ma’am.”

Thus Jonathan camped down Dark Lane with impunity.

One morning shortly after my meeting with Jonathan, a Gypsy mother called at my Rectory. She led her black-eyed, five-year-old boy by the hand. Brown as a berry, the handsome little fellow would have served admirably for an artist’s model, and his mother had many pleasing touches of Gypsy colour about her attire. From beneath a bright red _diklo_ (kerchief) which she wore, a few black curls straggled out on to her forehead, and a gay bodice showed under her green shawl. The woman said that she had heard so much of me from her father—Jonathan Boswell—that she had come on purpose to see me. I invited her into the kitchen, and over bread and cheese and ale we chatted.

“Ain’t we all delated, _raia_, come to think of it? There’s a Man above as made us all.”

Quickly I made friends with the little boy, and at my request his mother afforded our household no small delight by leaving her son with us for the day. The tiny lad was entirely unaccustomed to house ways, and his behaviour was a study. On seeing a Christmas card with the Christ-child lying in the manger guarded by a white-winged angel, he exclaimed, “I know what that is” (pointing to the heavenly visitant); “we often sees ’em flying over the fields. _It’s a seagull_.”

With great readiness he joined in the games of my children, such as shuttlecock and battledore, skipping, and the like. Sitting at a table for a meal was evidently a novel experience for the little chap, and it was amusing to see him slip off his chair and squat on the hearthrug, putting his plate on his knee as though a Gypsy boy ought not to do exactly as the _gawjê_, and he used his fingers freely in lieu of fork and spoon. After the meal we sat round the fire, and talked of his life on the road.

“I found a hen’s nest in the hedge-bottom, this morning, I did.”

“Any eggs in?” I asked.

“Yes; three.”

“Did you take them?”

“No, I left ’em—_till there was more_.”

Then I told him fairy tales of green woods, ghosts, and goblins, and he became excited, springing once or twice from his chair, as if he would like to have danced about the room.

“Oh, I knows a lot about _mulo_s” (ghosts), said the little Gypsy. “There’s different sorts—milk-white ’uns and coal-black ’uns. When we’re abed at nights, they come screaming round our wagon and flapping at the windows. My daddy gets his gun and shoots, then we hears ’em no more for a bit. But they are soon back agen, and I’m that frit when I hears ’em, I can’t sleep. When mammy’s going out with her basket of a morning, and daddy’s gone somewhere to see about a hoss, I daren’t go far into the big wood agen our stopping-place, ’cos of the black pig what lives there. Daddy has seen it, and nobody can’t kill it, for you can bang a stick right through it without hurting it. Mammy allus says, ‘Don’t you never go into that wood, else the black pig’ll get you.’”

We showed him picture books, and, pointing to an ass and a foal, he said, “My daddy’s got a little donkey just like that, three months old, and when it’s bigger I shall ride on it, like that man’s doing in the pictur’.”

We rambled in the Rectory garden, and he quickly found a hedgehog in its nest. All the senses of this little fellow were extremely alert.

In the early evening his mother returned for him, and their meeting was a pretty sight. Placing her hawking-basket on the ground, she picked up her laddie in her arms and kissed him. Slowly the pair walked away, casting more than one backward glance at the house.

A few days later, news reached me of a Gypsy arrival in a green lane about a mile from my Rectory. I therefore hastened across the fields, and, long before sighting the party, whiffs of wood-smoke, which the breeze brought my way, told that they were already encamped. On reaching the spot, Farmer W—’s best bullock pasture, I spied Jonathan’s cart along with other vehicles drawn up with their backs towards a high hedge. There were fires on the grass, and from family groups merry voices rang out on the air. In the lane a troop of children were hovering around a little black donkey, a pretty young foal, which allowed them to fondle it to their hearts’ content. What a picture it was which greeted me—tree-boles, tilt-carts, and hedgerows lit up by the fading sunlight, and the blue smoke of the fires wafted about the undulating field dipping down to the river. Quickly I dropped into a corner by one of the fires, and the mirth was just at its height when up rode Farmer W— on his chestnut cob.

[Picture: A Wayside Idyl. Photo. Fred Shaw]

“Where’s that scamp of a Boswell?” he shouted angrily.

Jonathan stepped forward, hanging his head somewhat.

“What does all this mean?” asked the farmer. “I thought it was only for yourself that you begged leave to stop here. Who the divil’s all this gang?”

“I really couldn’t help it,” said Jonathan. “They stuck to me, and would come in. They’re all delations of mine, don’t you see, sir?”

A look from the Gypsy made me step forward and plead for the party, which I did with success.

[Picture: Children of the Open Air. Photo. Fred Shaw]

About the middle of June I was again in Old Boswell’s company. Under a hedge pink with wild-roses, we sat smoking and waiting for the fair to begin on Stow Green, a South Lincolnshire common. Already horses were assembling and dealers were beginning to arrive in all sorts of conveyances. Hot sunshine blazed down upon the common, whose only building was a wretched-looking lockup, around which lounged several representatives of the county constabulary. Wandering in and about the motley throng, I caught a whisper going the round that a fight was to take place before the end of the day. It had been explained to me that this fight was not the result of any quarrel arising at the fair. It had been arranged long beforehand. Whenever a difference arose between two families, champions were told off to fight the matter out at Stow Green Fair.

Somewhere about the middle of the afternoon, as the business began to slacken, a number of people were seen to move to one corner of the common. Evidently something was afoot. I wandered across and found a crowd consisting mainly of Gypsies, and in order to get a better view, I climbed upon a trestle table outside a booth. In the middle of a ring of people stood two of the dark Grays, stripped to the waist, and, at a signal given by an elderly man, the combatants put up their “maulers” and the fight began. It was by no means a one-sided contest, the men being well matched with regard to weight and strength. Blow followed blow in quick succession, and at the first drawing of blood the Gypsy onlookers became excited, and the entire crowd began to surge to and fro. Of course, the police hurried up, but soon perceived that it was useless to interfere.

“Let ’em have it out,” cried many voices. After a breathing space, the fighters again closed in, and, parting a little, one of them stepped back a pace or two and, springing towards his opponent, dealt him a heavy blow which determined the battle, and all was over. At this juncture, the table on which I and others stood suddenly gave way, and we were precipitated to the grass, but no harm was done, beyond a few bruises and the shattering of sundry jugs and glasses.

An echo of a fighting song haunts me as I recall this Gypsy contest on Stow Green—

“Whack it on the grinders, thump it on the jaw, Smack it on the tater-trap a dozen times or more. Slap it on the snuff-box, make the claret fly, Thump it on the jaw again, never say die.”

After the fair was over I sat under a hedge and took tea with Jonathan and Fazenti.

A hare’s back adorned my plate.

“Why, mother, I didn’t know that this was in season.”

“My _dinelo_ (simpleton), don’t you _jin_ (know) _it’s always in season with the likes of us_?”