No children in lovely, beautiful England, the bright star of the West,
stand so much in need of help as do our poor canal and gipsy children,
who are living outside our factory, educational, and sanitary laws, and,
with some bright exceptions, religious influences.
Short Excursions and Rambles in the Bypaths of Gipsydom.
SOME time ago a gipsy named Shaw was found in a Northamptonshire
churchyard at midnight, asleep between the gravestones, with his fiddle
by his side. When awakened by a wandering policeman crying out, “Now
then, move on,” gipsy Shaw grunted and growled out, “Who’s there? What
do you want, Mr. Devil? Wake these others up; they’ve been here longer
than me, and when they goes I’ll go, and not till then, Mr. Devil; and so
make yourself scarce.” The policeman saw, and in fact knew, that Shaw
was a queer kind of customer, and he therefore let him snore and sleep
among dead men’s bones till morning. On the following morning Mr.
Policeman met gipsy Shaw with his fiddle (_Boshomengro_) under his arm,
when he called out, “Halloo, Shaw, you’ve left your companions behind you
after all.” “Yes,” said gipsy Shaw; “when I opened my eyes it was
daylight, and the sun was shining in my face, and I thought over fresh
considerations.”
At the present time the gipsies and other travellers in this country are
among the dead men’s bones of backwood gipsy writers and their
present-day sins and wrong-doings, with Mr. John Bull standing by, saying
in effect to the lost gipsies and their children, “Snore on, sleep on;
stick to your fiddles and the devil; care not a straw for either parsons
or priests.”
If John Bull cares not, will not and won’t do for the children of
travellers the same as he is doing for other children within his
dominions, and what his Continental neighbours are doing for theirs, it
is time the gipsies themselves “thought over fresh considerations,” and
walked out into open day, and demanded the blessings of English civilized
life in a way that will readily secure an attentive ear to the cries and
wails of their children.
Thank God, a few writers of tales and stories of a healthy, interesting,
elevating, and heavenly kind are coming to the rescue of the poor gipsy,
canal, and other travelling children. May their name be Legion and their
motto be Fairelie Thornton’s lines in the _Sunday School Chronicle_—
“Direct the words I say,
Oh, let them reach the heart;
Let there be wingèd words alway,
And light and life impart.”
On my way to Edinburgh in October, 1880, to read a paper before the
Social Science Congress, upon the condition of our gipsies and their
children, I took occasion to call at Leicester races on my way, and
paddled ankle deep in mud and quagmire to try to ascertain how many gipsy
and other travelling children there were upon the course living in tents
and vans. At a rough calculation there would be fully four hundred
children and two hundred men and women huddling together in eighty of
these wretched temporary abodes. Not a score of the children, except a
few snatches in the winter, were receiving any education other than such
as is obtained upon a racecourse and its associations, giving and taking
lessons in the initiatory stage of a gambler’s life. The following cases
will give some idea of the state of morality amongst the wandering
classes. Phillips, a gipsy from Maidstone, had in his van one woman and
eleven children; Green, a gipsy from Bristol, had in his van two men, two
women, and eleven children; Brinklow, a gipsy, had in his van two women
and seven children; Lee, a gipsy from London, had in his tent two young
men, one woman, and seven children; making a total of forty-seven men,
women, and children of all ages and sizes, huddling together in these
four tents and vans, not two of whom could read or write a sentence.
Mrs. Brinklow said her eldest girl attended a Bible-class at Bristol in
the winter, which led me to think that the gipsy girl could read, but on
inquiry I found she could not tell a letter. Those who are spellbound by
gipsy fascination and admire the “witching eyes” of picturesque human
degradation and depravity, will consider this in the nineteenth century a
state of civilization preparing us for the millennium, when the lion
shall lie down with the lamb, and all tears be wiped away.
Last autumn I visited the gipsies at Cherry Island, near London, and
found about thirty tents, in which there were between one and two hundred
gipsy children growing up worse than Zulus. For one minute let us get
inside one of the gipsy tents in which these children are born, and in
which they live and die. It is about seven feet wide, sixteen feet long,
and where the round top is highest, is about four feet and a half in
height. It is covered with pieces of old canvas or sacking to keep out
the cold and rain, and the entrance is closed with a kind of curtain; the
fire by which they cook their meals is placed in a tin bucket pierced
with holes. Some of the smoke from the burning sticks goes out of an
opening in the top of the tent that serves as a chimney, while the rest
of it fills the place and helps to keep their faces and hands a proper
gipsy colour. The bed is a little straw laid on the damp ground, covered
with a sack or sheet, as the case may be; an old soap-box or tea-chest
serves both as cupboard and table. Here they live, father and mother,
brothers and sisters, huddled up together. They live like pigs, and die
like dogs. Washing is but little known amongst them; and of such
luxuries as knives and forks, chairs and tables, plates and cups, they
are very independent. They take their meals, and do what work they do,
squatting on the ground; and the knives and forks they use are of the
kind that Adam used, and sensitive when dipped in hot water. Lying,
begging, and pretended fortune-telling have as much to do with their
living as chair-mending, tinkering, and hawking. The heaviest work falls
to the lot of the women, who may often be seen with a child upon their
backs, another in their arms, and a heavily-laden basket by their side.
The men lounge about the lanes and hedges with their dogs, whilst the
children grow up in such ignorance and sin as to deserve the name of
_ditch-dwelling heathens_.
[Picture: Gipsy quarters, Plaistow marshes]
The winter drives many of the gipsies to encamp in the marshes, or in the
disused brickfields near London. Anything more dismal and wretched than
this life it is hard to think of. All the poetry of gipsying is clean
gone then, and nothing is left but filth, poverty, vice, and misery. In
Hackney Marshes and elsewhere about London you may find scores of these
tents, often so rotten that a stiff wind would blow them away. Creeping
into one of them, almost on all fours, you find half-naked gipsy children
squatting upon the ground, busy at skewer-cutting, for which they get
from tenpence to one shilling for fourteen pounds’ weight. Or else the
family is at work in the more elaborate processes of making clothes-pegs.
One chops sticks the right length; another trims them into shape and
flings them into a pan of hot water; a child picks out the floating
pieces and bites off the bark; and then a bigger lad fastens the two
together with a strip of tin, and the clothes-peg is ready. So the
dreary day goes by until the lurcher dog springs up, the unfailing
attendant of the gipsy man, and the women of the family return with the
scraps they have picked up in questionable ways at back doors, and with
the proceeds of their sales. At night all lie down where they have
worked, and sleep as they are, with but a rag between them and the bleak
night of pitiless rain and snow. Here the gipsy children are born and
brought up. Here they live and here they die, almost as far away from
the track of any day-school or Sunday-school as if they were African
savages.
The poor wandering outcast gipsy child can say with Phineas Fletcher in
the “Fuller Worthies”—
“See, Lord, see, I am dead;
Tomb’d in myself, myself my grave:
A drudge, so born, so bred,
Myself, even to myself, a slave.”
* * * * *
“Ask’st Thou no beauty but to cleanse and clothe me?
If, then, Thou lik’st, put forth Thy hand and take me.”
Two years ago I attended a village feast in the neighbourhood of Bedford,
and found, as usual, a large gathering of gipsies and others of a similar
class plying their avocation among the “knock’em downs,” “three shies a
penny,” &c. On arriving at the place I found “a gipsy row upon the
carpet,” and on going up to one of the gipsies to ask him what it was all
about, a gipsy some fifty yards off, more like a madman than anything
else, began to bawl out all sorts of hard things, and in doing so other
gipsies began to cluster round us, and to all appearance I seemed to be
in a fair way for being in the midst of a “Welsh fight.” So I said to
the gipsy who was standing by me, “I’ll go to see what he wants.” “If
you do,” the gipsy replied, “he will knock you down.” I said, “Then I
will go to be knocked down,” and away I went, and while I was going along
the mad gipsy was literally foaming with rage, and uttering oaths and
curses on my head not quite as thick as hailstones. On arriving before
his majesty I began to smile at him, and said as I put out my hand to
him, “Will you shake hands?” At this he drew back a little, and said,
“What do you mean?” I said, “Lend me your hand.” He again said, with
more emphasis than before, “What do you mean?” Ultimately he put out his
hand into mine, and the result was nothing would please him and the other
gipsies but that we must drink some ginger-beer together. And while this
was going on a gipsy from Barking Road, London, whom I had seen before,
whispered in his ear who I was, and that I was trying to get their
children educated. So nothing would serve them but to explain in a
public-house bar how the education of the gipsy children was to be
brought about, which plan seemed to please them amazingly; and at the end
of my tale they again closed in upon me, but this time to thank and bless
me. The foremost in doing so was the mad gipsy whom I faced in the
storm, saying, as he shook hands with both hands in a rough fashion, “I
do love you, that I do, for taking so much trouble over our children.”
After similar greetings from the others we parted. Only one out of the
large number of gipsies there could read and write, and he had taken to
gipsying from the boarding-school at the age of seventeen, and, sad to
say, neither his wife nor one of their eight children could tell a
letter; and he further said that he was sure there was not one gipsy in a
hundred who could read a sentence. To the gipsies I would say with a
writer in _Hand and Heart_, Ah!
“Mistaken mortals, did you know
Where joy, heart’s ease, and comforts grow!”
[Picture: An English gipsy king—“krális”—lying in wait in his palace,
králisko-kair]
In May, 1880, I visited one of the largest towns in the midland counties,
with the object of ascertaining the probable number of shows, vans, and
other movable abodes there were in and round the outskirts of the town,
and found close about thirty. These, together with others in various
parts of the country, would in all probability bring the number to nearly
forty-five. No doubt other counties would furnish similar results. In
showing the number of those who live in these vans I will quote the
following seven cases as a specimen. The numbers were given to me by a
man and his wife, who own and live in one of the vans about the size of a
carrier’s dray, following the profession of “knock-’em-down.” B—, man,
wife, and eleven children of all ages and sizes; S—, man, wife, and four
children; J—, man, wife, and five children; P—, man, wife, and seven
children; B—, man, wife, and four children; E—, man, wife, and seven
children; N—, man, wife, and five children. By these figures it will be
seen that there are forty-three children and fourteen men and women, with
four-fifths at least of English blood in their veins, living in these
seven vans. Few of these persons can read or write. I should think
scarcely half a dozen could write their own names. In the case of the
man B—, two children could just put three letters together, and two could
just write their own names, and this was the extent of their education.
Some of the “popgun” owners I have known personally for some years. One
of the sons worked for me, and would by this time have been earning his
£1 per week; but instead of this the whole family of twelve have taken to
this libertine kind of wandering existence, with a prospect that does not
look very encouraging, and many others are doing the same thing. These
cases are given to show what is going on all over the country. In some
instances the parents would send their children to school, but they say
they cannot afford to pay for a week’s schooling when the children can
only attend a day or two. It seems hardly fair to make those who of all
others should have their education encouraged to pay three times as much
as town residents, which is the case when the children attend three
different schools in one week. These ramblers are on the increase, and
it is high time they were taken in hand. James, a man well known, and
who travels with a “ginger-bread stall,” said, when I told him my object
and what the results would be, as he filled my hand full of his best
“Grantham ginger-bread,” “God bless you, man, for it, and I wish with all
my heart it would come to pass to morrow. Will it be three months
first?” I told him that I thought it would be a much longer time than
that, at which he shook his head, and said it was a “bad job.”
The gipsies of England have nothing in the past to thank us for, except
the policeman’s cudgel and the “wheel of fortune” in the big “stone jug.”
No one has taken them by the hand to lift and lead them out from among
the dead men’s bones and demoralizing scenes in the midst of which they
have been content with hellish delight to revel. Thank God, a few
kind-hearted friends are beginning to notice them in their degraded
condition, and to write to me on the subject. One of the leading woollen
manufacturers of Scotland wrote to me in 1881 as follows:
“DEAR SIR,—
“I can testify to the horrible social state of the van population at
described in your occasional communications to the _Times_. This
class of people overflow in Scotland, and for some years I have had
occasion to observe their habits and habitations. But hitherto no
persons in authority seem to take any interest in the matter, though
it is one of grave social importance. We have visits of people who
live in vans, who bring to the town such entertainments as shooting
galleries, hobby horses, and any kind of trumpery exhibitions. These
concerns are made up of families who pig together in their vans in a
state which defies decency or sanitary rules. Whole families house
in these small boxes upon wheels, usually in size about eight or nine
feet by five feet. One lady recently tried to converse with some
children of this class, and found they were ignorant of everything
that was good. A gentleman interviewed one of the male heads of one
family or group. He said his wife had had seventeen children, all
born in the van in different counties of England. Within a few yards
of my own door a van just lately stood for a night, in which slept
one woman and five men or lads. The man—if he were the father—said
they dealt in horses, and belonged to Hull, and they travelled the
country living in their van, which was about eight feet by five feet.
What I complain of is that, while local residents are made subject to
various rules, educational and social, police, and sanitary order,
these people should escape all kinds of supervision, and be literally
a law unto themselves. I can well understand the strong reasons you
have for calling public attention to such an evil.”
The Rev. John L. Gardiner, vicar of Sevenoaks, wrote me in 1880 stating
the guardians in his place were thinking of moving the authorities to
take some steps for ameliorating their condition. In 1880 I received the
following letter from a right worthy, good, and true working man living
in Derby:
“DEAR SIR,—
“I doubt not but that you will feel surprised at receiving a letter
from me, an entire stranger to you; but I feel certain that the
subject which I wish to bring before you will be a sufficient apology
for my intrusion on your valuable time. I have very recently seen in
the public journals allusions to another appeal from you on behalf of
our poor gipsy and van children, whom you are striving to reclaim
from a life of utter ignorance, and I wish you a hearty Godspeed in
your noble endeavours. I doubt not, if it could be ascertained,
there are thousands of these poor children in our land of boasted
Christianity growing up in ignorance and crime, and enduring the
greatest amount of misery that we could imagine. I have no doubt but
that a large percentage of our worst criminals emanate from this
class of poor children. When I think of these poor outcasts, and
think that they are my brothers and sisters, made by the same Divine
hand and bearing His own image, and for whom Christ died that they
should be raised up to Him, I feel my heart burn within me, and I
often pray to God that He would raise up some one able to plead their
cause.”
Early in 1880 a lady at Sherborne, Dorset, wrote me as follows:
“I have always taken a deep interest in them. I have again and again
wished that I could help to make them more intelligent and useful,
for they are not a stupid race. About two months since a poor young
woman of this class called at my house with a beautiful infant almost
naked. I relieved her, and inquired the whereabouts of their
encampments, which was about one and a half miles distant from my
home. I went over to see them, and I assure you my heart yearned to
do something to help to sweeten the atmosphere of their moral life.
There were youths and maidens, children, old women and old men; but
alas! I was powerless to do anything for them.”
A clergyman of high standing, near Salisbury, wrote me in 1880 to say
that a committee of the Salisbury Diocesan Synod had commissioned him to
collect information bearing on the neglected condition of the population
accustomed for the greater part of the year to live in caravans and
attend fairs in the diocese. “I could,” continued the worthy clergyman,
“bring before you many proofs of the wretchedly ignorant and degraded
condition of the class I am speaking of, which have come under my own
personal notice; but I know I am writing to one better informed on the
subject than any one.” Later on the Canon wrote me stating that the
clerk of the market in Salisbury had told him that the stray population
imported into the town as traders, showmen, &c., for an autumn fair
amounted to about five hundred, and the fair was by no means a large one.
Last year a clergyman at Tavistock wrote me as follows:
“DEAR SIR,—
“Your letter in yesterday’s _Western Morning News_ respecting the
education of the canal boat children reminds me of the question of
the education of gipsy children, in which subject I believe you take
a very active interest. I occasionally visit the gipsy tents and
vans when they come into this neighbourhood, and find that a great
many of these people admit that they cannot read, and others say they
can read a little; but I fear that the great majority of the gipsy
population are quite unable to read, and have very hazy ideas on the
great principles of religion.
“It seems quite a reproach to the English nation to allow these
wandering people to continue in its midst without some efforts
towards Christianizing them. Although the subject is no doubt a
difficult one, it would not seem impracticable to get these gipsy
children to attend school at certain centres for portions of the
year. I don’t know what has been done in the matter, but I wish you
every success in your efforts for attaining this object, as well as
for obtaining the efficient carrying out of the Canal Boats Act.”
In 1881 a leading and active county magistrate of Danbury, Essex, wrote
me as follows:
“DEAR SIR,—
“I observe that you say in your recent letter to the Secretary of the
Lord’s Day Observance Society, that the ‘extension of the principle
of the _Canal Boats Act_ to all _gipsy tents_, _vans_, and other
movable or _temporary dwellings_, should be brought about by all
means.’ I should he extremely pleased to aid in this work, for we
reside near Danbury Common, where all the worst features of the
vagrant life may be certainly seen. Numbers of little ones are daily
passing before us untaught, and suffering in health through exposure
to cold and wet, versed in arts of deception and quite inaccessible
to influence. During the severe weather lately we had several
ruffianly fellows on the common who defied interference with the most
lawless proceedings. They went about in gangs breaking up gates and
fences, and committing thefts and depredations all around the common.
Any ordinary police force is quite inadequate to check or control
them when a few reckless men chance to come together. They carried
away and broke up two pates from a farm of mine on the other side of
the common, and several occupiers on that side suffered severely from
their violence. But all this is really of little importance compared
with the question of _the children’s_ condition of ignorance and
general ill-being. I am sure that those who dwelt _under tents_ must
have perished or laid the foundation of fatal disease during the late
severe weather. It is clearly against public policy that parents
should be allowed thus to trifle with the health of their children;
and of course the same objection applies to their want of education.
There are gradations of well (or ill) being among these poor
wandering folks, as you no doubt are well aware. Some are in
comfortable vans, and earn an honest livelihood by some
handicraft—tinkering, basket-making; but those who possess scarcely
anything but the tent that covers them are in a miserable plight in
deep snow or in wet weather, and young children are placed in peril.
I will not weary you by enlarging on this topic, which must,
moreover, be sadly familiar to you. I desired to assure you, as I
now do, that I will do anything in my power to extend the legislation
which you have already had the happiness of effecting to those poor
outcasts who may doubtless through England be reckoned by thousands.”
Early in the present year a Scotch Presbyterian clergyman at Aberfeldy
wrote me to say that he had been deeply impressed for some time by the
necessity there was for the State to take in hand the gipsy and similar
travellers, and had last year got the Presbyterians of Breadalbane to
petition Parliament to take some action in the way of improving the
condition of the gipsies.
J. T. Pierce, Esq., J.P., county magistrate of Essex, writes me again
under date October 2, 1882:
“Can you oblige me by forwarding a copy of the Bill amending your
Act, 40 and 41 Vict. c. 60? I am desirous of bringing the question
of _registration of vans_, &c., before my fellow magistrates at our
next quarter sessions. The children who dwell in small vans and
_under tents_ cannot receive education under the present state of
things, and it is seldom any of them are got into industrial schools.
Possibly the magistrates of different counties might help forward the
extension of your scheme in favour of these poor children. There is
a common here on which we get a large number of them every year, and
I have had a fair opportunity of seeing how urgent is the need of
legislation, unless the children are to remain in their present state
of ignorance and dirt. No thoughtful man can desire this, and you
have already done so much in this direction that every one who thinks
about it must wish to strengthen your hands for further work.”
The foregoing independent statements, given by persons I have never seen,
extracted out of shoals of letters I have received, will faintly show
what is going on all over the country among our English heathens and hell
trainers; while sensual, backwood, romantic gipsy novelists have been
drawing a film over our eyes.
I have received a number of suggestions as to how the gipsy problem
should be solved. A Scotch Presbyterian minister suggests that the
children should be sent to an industrial reformatory; in fact, he would
obliterate them with an iron hand from the face of the earth. He goes on
to say that the recent School Act is useless for them in Scotland. They
can and do with ease evade all its requirements.
One kind-hearted lady, who writes to me from Brentwood, thinks that
separate schools should be built for the gipsy and other travelling
children. Neither of these suggestions are practicable and workable: the
former is too severe for English liberty, and the latter too wild and
scattered; and it would also be too costly, and in the end it would prove
a failure.
On October 25, 1882, I sent Mr. Mundella copies of my Social Science
Congress papers, with the hope of eliciting something from him as to what
steps the Government proposed taking in the matter, and the following is
his reply:
“PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE,
WHITEHALL,
_October_ 26, 1882.
“DEAR SIR,
“I am much obliged to you for the copies of the papers read by you in
the Health Department of the Social Science Congress on the Canal
Boats Act and on the gipsy children, and I will give the same my
careful attention. I shall be very thankful if anything can be done
to remedy the evils affecting the neglected children referred to in
your papers, and to whose interest you have given such long and
faithful service.
“I am, dear sir,
Yours faithfully,
A. J. MUNDELLA.
“_George Smith_, _Esq._”
I have thought since I took up the canal crusade in 1872, as my letters
will show, and I cannot for the life of me do otherwise than think so
now, that the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill I am humbly promoting could
be made to include all movable habitations and temporary dwellings. The
counsel to the Education Department, Mr. Ilbert, thought otherwise, and
of course I have had to submit to the “ruling of the chair.” He thought
that a separate Act would better meet the case of the gipsy and other
travelling children. I am not now alone in my idea of including all
movable dwellings in my Canal Amending Bill; for since I mooted the
subject in my letters to the press and in other ways, friends have come
round to see that there is something in the suggestion worthy of notice.
Canal-boat cabins and vans are boxes in which are stived up human beings
of all ages and sizes, without either regard for health, morals, sense or
decency, packed closer than the poor unfortunate creatures in the black
hole of Calcutta were. These moving homes are drawn, in many instances,
by animals with only one step between them and the blood- or foxhound’s
teeth. The only difference is, one home is moving through the country
upon our magnificent, black, streaky canals, of the enormous width of
about twenty feet, and an average of three feet deep. For the size of
boats and boat cabins and other particulars I must refer my readers to my
works, “Our Canal Population,” and “Canal Adventures by Moonlight,” and
for the full particulars of gipsy tents, vans, &c., to my “Gipsy Life.”
The last Essex Michaelmas Quarter Sessions, with Sir H. Selwin Ibbetson,
Bart., M.P., in the chair, was supported by between forty and fifty
leading county magistrates. The following is taken from the _Chelmsford
Chronicle_, October 20, 1882:
“THE CANAL ACT AMENDMENT BILL.—Mr. Pierce suggested that this Bill
should be referred to the Parliamentary Committee, with a view to
their considering whether clauses should not be recommended to
Parliament to be added for dealing with gipsy and travelling show-man
life as well as canal life. Mr. Pierce spoke of the miserable
squalor and unwholesome condition in which the gipsies and travelling
showmen lived, and said he thought it was necessary that their
children, who are absolutely uneducated, and who number about 30,000,
should be looked after. Seconded by Mr. G. A. Lowndes. This motion
was carried.”
In a leading article upon the subject the _Chronicle_ stated:
“An excellent suggestion was made to the court by Mr. Pierce. It was
that they should refer the Canal Boats Act Amending Bill to the
Parliamentary Committee, with a view to their recommending to
Parliament the addition of clauses bringing nomadic life—like that of
the gipsy and showman fraternity—within the scope of the measure. Of
gipsy life we have some experience in Essex, and we know that it
stands in sad need of regulation. Mr. Pierce stated, _inter alia_,
and on the authority of Mr. George Smith, of Coalville, that there
are about 30,000 children belonging to gipsies and travelling
showpeople, most of whom are being brought up wholly without
education. It is no less a duty to society than to the children
themselves that this state of things should be put an end to, for we
cannot hope to banish the ruder kinds of crime, such as the vagrant
classes are commonly guilty of, without first banishing ignorance.
In this view we hope that other public bodies will follow the
example, and that the promoters of the Bill about to be brought
forward will be induced to extend it so as to embrace the gipsy and
kindled classes.”
In July, 1880, Mr. Joseph Cowen very kindly put a question to Mr. Dodson,
the President of the Local Government Board, relating to the education of
gipsy and other travelling children, and the sanitary arrangements of
their homes, and Mr. Dodson replied, “There is considerable difficulty in
dealing with gipsy tents and vans, but the matter has been brought under
the notice of the Board, who will endeavour to deal with it when a
suitable opportunity presents itself for that purpose.”
The Government had their hands pretty full last year—Ireland and the
Irish at the beginning, Ireland and the Irish in the middle, and Ireland
and the Irish at the end—nearly altogether Irish, which no one grudges to
make our Brothers and Sisters on the Emerald Isle contented, prosperous,
and happy. God grant that her noble sons and daughters may go ahead, and
her “Moonlighters” be swallowed up in the greater light that rules the
day. This being so, I kept myself pretty well occupied in piloting,
altering, and manœuvring my Canal Amending Bill through its initiatory
stages, and had no time to deal with the gipsy problem other than to try
“at every turn and twist” to find a niche, nook, or a peg in the Bill
upon which to hang the gipsy question, which to me did not, and does not
even now, seem at all a difficult thing to do. The more I go into the
details of the canal and gipsy question the simpler they become. All
that is required, as in the case of the brickyard children, is to take
hold of them and to begin to deal with them in a business fashion, as
other questions are dealt with.
The subject is studded with prickles, but immediately it is grasped the
prickles become harmless. In the distance they look like drawn
glistening daggers, which, as you approach nearer to them, are no more
dreadful than rushes in the meadow. Unearth the Guy Fawkes gipsy
monster, and we shall soon find out a way to deal with gipsy vagabonds
and to reclaim their children. Standing by whimpering, sobbing, and
sorrowing over the children will not pull them out of the gutter; nor
will covering them with backwood gipsy nonsense and trash make them
white. The gipsies and their children are dark and down, and to whiten
and raise them the law and the gospel must come in: first, the law,
schoolmaster, and sanitary officer; and second, the Christian minister
and the gospel.
In bygone days, under the reign of Elizabeth and the Georges, the
hangman’s hemp and the whipper’s thong were used as a cure for the gipsy
social evil, but with worse than no results. Recently, in Hungary,
measures of another kind were adopted to compel the gipsies to make
themselves scarce. Innumerable complaints had at times reached the chief
of the police from the townsfolk of Szegedin, in Lower Hungary, with
whose portable chattels and goods the gipsies persisted in making free.
The police official was sorely perplexed how to deal with the wandering
ragamuffins. The gipsies in Hungary, as well as in other parts of the
world, have masses of hair—our present race of English gipsies cannot
boast of the raven black hair as formerly—so the chief of the police
conceived the idea of barbering their pates of all their locks. The
gipsies were taken into custody and the town barbers were summoned to
clear the heads of the swarthy gipsies of their present adornments. The
orders were obeyed to the letter, regardless of either sex or age. In a
few minutes the whole tribe with pates as smooth as an ostrich’s egg were
conveyed to the town gates in a state of indescribable discomfiture. I
“guess,” as Jonathan says, they will not for a long time visit Szegedin
again. There is a wide difference between the Hungarian authorities and
the Nottingham town authorities. Not being able to attend the recent
Nottingham goose fair, I wrote to the town clerk and the chief constable
for a few particulars, relating to the condition of the vast numbers of
poor neglected gipsy and other travelling children who attended the
borough fair. The town clerk deigned not to descend from his high
pinnacle to order a reply to my letter. The chief constable, after some
days had passed over, said he would send me some facts, which, though I
reminded him of his promise more than once, are not yet to hand. Gipsy
children may live and gipsy children may die, but these officials, I
suppose, think that they shall go on for ever, and in the end, as a
writer in _The Christian Age_ says, they will
“Rest where soft shadows lie and grasses wave;”
at least they hope so. Full particulars of the hardships and cruelties
practised upon the gipsies for their wrongdoing will be found in my
“Gipsy Life.”
Knowing full well as I do that nothing but salutary measures of the kind
I propose, and have proposed for many long years, will meet the case, I
had again the audacity to put the question to the Government, through Mr.
Burt, with the object of eliciting from them the steps—if any—they
proposed taking this Session for dealing with the gipsy problem.
“WELTON, DAVENTRY,
_November_ 16, 1882.
“MY DEAR MR. BURT,
“I shall be glad if you will put the enclosed questions to the
Government for me relating to the gipsy children. With kind regards,
“Very sincerely yours,
GEORGE SMITH, _of Coalville_.”
The questions and answers are taken from the _Times_, _Morning Post_,
_Standard_, _Daily Chronicle_, and the leading papers throughout the
country.
“TEMPORARY ABODES.
“Mr. Burt—To ask the President of the Local Government Board if the
Government intend taking any steps early next session for bringing
temporary abodes such as shows, tents, vans, and places of the kind,
under the influence of the sanitary officers.”
Mr. Dodson, the President, said he would “consider whether the law as it
stood was in need of amendment in this respect; but he could not, on this
any more than on any other subject, now give any undertaking as to the
introduction of a Bill next session.”
“GIPSY CHILDREN.
“Mr. Burt—To ask the Vice-President of the Committee of Council on
Education if the Government intend taking any steps early next
session for bringing about the education of gipsy and other
travelling children living in vans, carts, shows, and other temporary
dwellings.”
Mr. Mundella said: “It is exceedingly difficult to devise any effectual
scheme for the education of the nomadic population referred to in the
question of my hon. friend, and up to the present we have received no
suggestion for dealing with the subject which appears to be practical.
The matter, however, is ‘under consideration,’ and we propose during the
recess to confer with the Local Government Board respecting it.”
Mr. Burt wrote to me as follows:
“HOUSE OF COMMONS,
_November_ 22, 1882.
“MY DEAR MR. SMITH,
“You will see from the _Times_ to-day the answers given by Mr. Dodson
and Mr. Mundella. They are not so encouraging as one would like,
though it may do good to call attention to the subject.
“Very truly yours,
THOMAS BURT.”
Parliament having been opened February 15, 1883, I began to make a move
towards getting my Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill before the House of
Commons for the third time—last year it was introduced to the House of
Lords by Earl Stanhope—and lost no time in seeing my friends Mr. Burt and
others upon the subject, some of whose names are upon the back of the
Bill. The names upon the Bill are as follows: Mr. Burt, Mr. S. Morley,
Mr. John Corbett, Mr. Pell, and Mr. Broadhurst. Feeling anxious, and
seeing no difficulty in the matter, I wrote to Mr. Burt on March 3, 1883,
about introducing a clause in the Bill to include gipsy and other
travelling children—my plans for improving the condition of the canal
children and gipsy children being identically the same in _every
__particular_ so far as the provisions of the Act are concerned—and he
replied as under:
“HOUSE OF COMMONS,
_March_ 8, 1883.
“DEAR MR. SMITH,
“If you want a new clause or any alteration in the Bill, kindly write
it out on a copy of the Bill and forward it to me.
“I have seen Sir Charles Dilke, and he advises me to talk the matter
over with Mr. Hibbert. I shall do so as soon as I can see Mr.
Hibbert.
“I go to Newcastle to-morrow, returning on Monday night or Tuesday.
“I am not hopeful that the Government will do anything in the present
state of business.
“Yours truly,
THOMAS BURT.”
I added the following clause to the Bill, and at the same time I gave
under the Bill more power to the Education Department than I had done in
the previous Bills.
The new clause affecting gipsy children runs thus:
“11. The expressions ‘Canal Boats,’ ‘Canal Boat,’ and ‘Boat,’ in the
principal Act and this Act, and also in the regulations of the Local
Government Board and Education Department, shall include all
travelling and temporary dwellings not rated for the relief of the
poor.”
I forwarded copies of the Amended Bill to Sir Charles Dilke, the new
President of the Local Government Board, and also to Mr. Mundella, the
Vice President of the Committee of Council on Education, and here are
their replies. A few days previously I had written to Sir Charles Dilke
and Mr. Mundella, urging them to take up the Bill; in fact, I have for
years been pressing the Government to take up the Bill, as one that will
do much good and bring them much credit. Of course I cannot expect them
to do impossibilities. I know their hands are full; at the same time the
period has come when the sixty thousand canal and gipsy children must be
educated and cared for by “hook or by crook,” as being of primary
importance for the country’s welfare to the thousand and one things that
are now before Parliament.
“LOCAL GOVERNMENT BOARD, WHITEHALL,
_March_ 14, 1883.
“DEAR SIR,
“I have to thank you for the copy of the Bill you have sent to Sir
Charles Dilke. In consequence of Mr. Ashton Dilke’s death he will
not be present in the House of Commons this week.
“Yours truly,
A. E. C. BODLEY.
“_George Smith_, _Esq._”
* * * * *
“PRIVY COUNCIL OFFICE,
_March_ 14, 1883.
“SIR,
“Mr. Mundella desires me to thank you for sending him a copy of your
Canal Boats Act Amendment Bill enclosed in your letter of the 12th
inst.
“Yours faithfully,
H. T. BRYANT.
“_George Smith_, _Esq._”
My days of hard work, and scores of letters written in relation to the
questions put to Mr. Dodson and Mr. Mundella, have brought forth the
usual molehill of “under consideration.” The political fields of moral
and social progress are full of crotchets and molehills. Would to God
that either John Bull with his horns or John Straw with his spade would
level them to the ground.
At any rate those mountainous molehills, six inches high, which are
checking the van of social progress, laden as it is—aye, heaped up—with
blessings for the thirty thousand poor little gipsy children who are
starving to death in our midst, in the mud, rotten straw, filth, and rags
of a soul-perishing and body-killing nature, amidst which the poor gipsy
child has to live.
The greatest difficulties I know of are the dung heaps scattered about by
sensational trash backwood gipsy writers. I can almost imagine our
imported and other Demetriuses and damsels calling out on the steps of
St. Stephen’s, Westminster, “Sirs, ye know that by this craft we have our
wealth.” “Paul hath persuaded and turned away much people.” “Our craft
is in danger to be set at nought.” “Let us hang the devil.”
The registration official overcomes “difficulties” when he registers a
gipsy hawker’s van in order that he may extract £4 from him; and the
policeman overcomes “difficulties” when he brings to bay before a bench
of magistrates a gipsy child for stealing a turnip, or a gipsy poacher
for making too free with a partridge. There are seas of “difficulties”
to be waded through, it would seem, before the gipsy children are to be
led to the school doors, and the sanitary inspectors to their
suffocating, immoral, and unhealthy homes. It is un-English, wicked, and
unjust to deliver the gipsy and other travelling children over to the
policeman, without ever having taught them to know right from wrong in
day and Sunday schools. A terrible day of reckoning and vengeance awaits
us for our wrongdoings towards our present-day English gipsy children,
think about it as lightly as we may.
The sanitary inspector steps into lodging-houses to prevent overcrowding.
The factory inspector steps, without an invitation, into the workshop to
prohibit the overworking of children. The Board of Trade officer will
not allow overcrowding of ships, although they may be classed as A1 at
Lloyd’s. Overcrowding in barracks and workhouses is not allowed, and the
School Board officer steps into a labourer’s household—the head of which,
with a large family surrounding him, only earns about 12s. per week—under
pain of a fine and the “squire’s” displeasure, and orders the young
urchins off “neck and crop” to school; while canal and gipsy children are
left out in the cold.
Two years ago I invited twelve gipsy children, who were living in two
vans and attending our feast, to tea on our hearthstone. Although three
of the parents could read and write, and ten of the children were of
school age, not one of the poor little things could tell a letter. All
the van-dwellers were in the lowest depths of degradation, filth, and
misery. They were surrounded with sunshine, and yet it never entered
their wretched dwelling; at any rate they never opened their door with
glad hearts and thankful song to receive its cheering rays.
The chimes and music of church bells seemed to have no other effect upon
their lives than the bringing forth of the cries of misery, wails of
anguish, and groans of despair. The beautiful robes with which nature
was clothed made their ragged, wretched torn garments look as if they had
been pulled to pieces, torn and stuck together by demons who had thrown
off all moral restraint, and were following the downward tendencies of
human nature to their hearts’ content. Three of the parents once had a
comfortable settled home, but alas! alas! it seems to be all over, and a
blacker future for the children awaits them, if the Government do not
take the poor things by the hand and lead them a step forwards and
upwards.
At the close of 1882 I visited, on a Sunday afternoon, a camp of gipsies
upon Turnham Green. There were five vans and tents, and fourteen men and
women and seventeen children squatting round their fires upon the wet and
slushy grass. As I neared them, five of the gipsy children, half naked,
came running towards me. One little curly-headed fellow, named Boswell,
shouted out, “If you please, guv’-nor, have you come to teach us to read,
the same as a kind lady did last summer? We wish you would. Have you
brought us any picture books? Please read a bit to us.” After a few
minutes chat with them, I emptied my bag of cards, and with a sorrowful
heart left the gipsy children in their ignorance to speed their wishes
into the air, so it appears. With a writer in the _Sunday Magazine_, I
say with a deep, deep-drawn sigh—
“Oh the wandering waifs and strays,
In hiding day and night,
And lacking verdant shelter,
On their lives a blight;
Aye, creeping far and farther
From the eyes of men;
If they find a lodging,
’Tis in some horrid den!”
A little later on I went to Daventry and found a man—a tradesman—in the
market-place, exhibiting a deformed pony rather than follow his own
trade. Both man and wife could read and write—in fact, the woman had
once been a Sunday-school teacher—but not one of their five children
could read a sentence.
Only the other day, our good vicar’s respected wife, Mrs. Darnell, in
company with her niece, Miss Stansfeld, took shelter in a cottage, rather
than face two most repulsive-looking men and one woman with seven
children, who were tramping the country in a most wretched and forlorn
condition. Their only home consisted in an old handcart full of rags,
upon which were perched, on a most bitterly cold and wet day, three poor
gipsy children; and the other four children were trudging by the side of
the hand-cart scarcely able to get one foot before the other. Their
shoeless footprints seemed to cry out loud for help. Many gipsies camp
upon Cannock Chase from time to time, and such is their character that
people passing that way in dark hours generally take the precaution to be
armed with pistols, and to have dogs by their sides.
Think about it lightly as we may, the evils of gipsying are on the
increase in this country. Fortune-telling and deceit are taking fast
hold upon the “silly girls and young chaps.” Very recently the _Daily
News_ reported a case in Dorsetshire where two gipsy women induced a
dairyman’s wife to part with her sovereigns for a sheep’s heart studded
with pins in mystic patterns outside, and crammed inside with bright
farthings. The heart was to be hung in the chimney till Easter, when it
was to be taken out and all the farthings to be turned into sovereigns.
The woman’s husband broke the “spell” by pulling the heart out of the
chimney before Easter. The _Graphic_, in the spring of 1882, reports a
case of a “white witch” at Plymouth, who declared that the whole crew of
a smack were under a “spell”—and the crew believed it—which “spell” only
the gipsy witch could remove, and of course for money only. The _British
Workman_ for October, 1882, shows a little of some of the evils of
fortune-telling. At the Bradford county police-court recently, Delia
Young, a gipsy, was charged with fortune-telling. For some weeks the
prisoner, with a number of other gipsies, had been staying at a village
named Wyke, and hundreds of persons of all ages and both sexes had
visited her. Her fees ranged from ls. to 5s., the latter sum being
charged when a “planet was ruled.” It was stated that her earnings must
have averaged several guineas a day for many months. For the defence it
was contended that the prisoner and her family had told fortunes at
Blackpool during the season for twenty years. She was fined £5 and
costs, with the alternative of two months’ imprisonment. The money was
paid.
I have visited more than once the gipsies upon Plaistow marshes in
company with Mr. —, and also with my son, and found about thirty families
squatting about in their vans and tents, up to their knees in mud, and in
a most heartrending condition. Farmers house their pigs in a much better
condition than we found the poor lost gipsies tented and housed. Gipsy
children came round us by the score. There would be not fewer than
between a hundred and a hundred and fifty poor little creatures, growing
up without ever visiting either the school or the church, although there
were a magnificent school and church within a stone’s throw. The
sanitary inspector, school board officer, and Christian ministers were
unknown to those wretched, lost gipsy children. They are fully
acquainted with the policeman and his doings. In one or two of the vans
smallpox and fever appeared to me to be at work. Round the outskirts of
London there will be nearly 3,000 gipsies tenting and squatting about.
They generally find the lowest and swampy spots.
My scores of visits to various parts of the country during many years are
not recorded here, but the same sorrowful tale is everywhere manifest.
It does seem that letters of blood and words of fire will be needed to
arouse the hearts and consciences of my countrymen, and compel them to
observe the dark side of human life which lies close to our eyes and
noses; and to draw the veil of ignorance away which is preventing the sun
of civilization carrying out its mission among our own outcasts.
“The darkness falls, the wind is high,
Dense black clouds till the western sky,
The storm will soon begin.
The thunders roar, the lightnings flash,
I hear the great round rain drops dash;
Are all the children in?”
_The Christian Freeman_, 1877 _and_ 1878.
I answer, “No! no!” and with a tear-fetching pang I again say, “No!” The
canal and gipsy children are still outside the door, and our legislators
do not care to open it, owing to the “difficulties” which prevent the
latch from being lifted up. The nail is in the way, and the door is
locked—
“Nobody kind words pouring
In that gipsy heart’s sad ear,
But all of us ignoring
What lies at our door so near.”
_The Christian Freeman_.
Rambles among the Scotch Gipsies at Yetholm.
THE 18th of December, 1882, was a bitterly _shil_ (cold) _divvus_ (day),
partly frozen _ghie_ (snow) lay several inches on the _chik_ (ground).
The _dúvel_ (sky) was gloomy and overcast as if threatening this
_doŏvelesto-chairos_ (world) of ours with a fresh outburst of _vénlo_
(wintry) vengeance. Not a _patrin_ (leaf) was to be seen upon the _rook_
(tree). The _bával_ (wind) seemed at times to engage in a chorus of
_shoolo_ (whistling) and howling, and other discordant _gúdli_ (noises).
The few linnets, sparrows, bullfinches to be seen hopping about the
_drom_ (road) in quest of _kóben_ (food), were almost starved to
_méripen_ (death); _shil_ (cold) and _bok_ (hunger) had made them tame
and _posh_ (half) _moólo_ (dead).
In a few minutes I stood at our door with my old grey coat over my arm,
wondering whether I should in my state of health face my cold journey to
Scotland. After a little reflection, quickened by “the path of duty is
the path of safety,” which seemed to be more beautiful than ever, I
started with my bag in hand to tramp my way to the railway station. I
did not feel on the way in a humour for singing, with cap in hand, and in
joyous strains, “Oh! this will be joyful,” but could have said with
Wesley,
“If in this darksome wild I stray,
Be Thou my Light, be Thou my Way.”
In the train I duly seated myself, and we sped on till I arrived at
Leicester, the seat of stockings and leather.
Leicester is a pleasant town, but, as in the case of other towns, there
are a few—only a few, thank God!—fools in it whose light from farthing
candles will become less as her wise men, good and true, increase. After
my landing upon the platform I made my way to the house of my
sister-in-law, and there rested my bones for the night. During my
restless night, with the full blaze of a lamp shining in my face, some of
the following aphorisms were entered in my notebook:—
The books of infidels, sceptics, socialists, and atheists may be compared
to handfuls of sulphur cast into the fire of public opinion. They give a
bluish flash for a moment, reflecting deathly and ghastly hues upon those
who stand near; which sometimes cause children, and those of weak minds,
narrow vision, and short sight to put their hands into the fire to see
where the deathly colours come from.
Righteous kings and queens, doing God-like acts to elevate and beautify
their subjects, may be compared to heavenly gardeners, whose business in
life is to beautify human nature and society with an increasing number of
moral tints and splendour, reflected by the heavenly throne, and to
transmit the colouring rays to the human flowers growing up under their
charge; thus making this beautiful earth more like Paradise every year.
The righteous deeds of a good king or queen, when they emanate from a
heart filled with heavenly desires to render earthly subjects contented
and happy, are seeds that the spirit of evil cannot kill. They will live
and thrive to the end of time, and then they will be transplanted to
heaven to bloom through eternity.
When a Christian is said to have taken to doubting God’s goodness,
lovingkindness, and fatherly care, he may be said to have drawn down the
blinds of his soul and dimmed his vision of the beauty, power, and love
of Jehovah, the creator and upholder of all things in heaven, earth, and
sea.
Those who through fraud, craft, and deceit obtain the crown of laurels
won by others will find that, instead of the soft, beautiful leaves, it
will turn into a hard crown of thorns, that will prick sharp and deep
enough to touch the quick of the soul, ruffle the thoughts, disturb the
mind, and trouble the conscience.
As bees in gathering honey from flowers often transmit many new and
lovely colours to plants and flowers, so in like manner good children in
passing into the world among all kinds of families, especially among the
young, change and beautify by kind words, soft answers, and example the
characters of those they are brought in contact with.
The words used in faith by good Christian fathers and mothers in blessing
their children are jewels, pearls, and other precious stones, which will
be strung together by angelic hands with golden threads, and worked into
patterns that are to adorn the children as they walk over the plains of
Paradise. They are the immortal flowers of earth, with a life within
them that will transform them into the everlasting flowers of heaven,
that will be strewn by little loved ones upon the path of saints as they
walk the streets of the New Jerusalem.
It is not always the largest flowers which make the prettiest bouquet, or
adorn a drawing-room to the best advantage. The little bird’s-eye, that
grows among the thistles in the hedge-bottom, is prettier and more modest
than the large sunflower; so in like manner it is not always the big,
shining, dashing, flashing Christian, with few real good deeds, that is
the most beautiful and lovely in God’s sight. The little Sunday-school
scholar, with Jesus shining out of his actions, in a garret is the most
beautiful and lovely to look upon, and illumines a modest quiet corner
with the greatest effect.
Bees gather honey from the most unassuming flowers, which are oftentimes
hid among thorns; so in like manner the sweetness of heaven is to be
gathered from good and lovely children, brought up by Christian parents,
living modestly and quietly in our back streets among the roughest and
lowest of the low, more prickly than thorns, and more poisonous than
poison.
Those short-sighted beings engaged in trying to get virtue out of a
gin-palace will find it harder work than extracting honey out of a
putrifying dead dog.
Double-faced Christians, engaged in trying to draw forth goodness out of
sin, wherewith to quench the qualms of conscience, will find that they
are engaged in a more difficult task than that of drawing pure spring
water from a cesspool.
Words are leaves, prayers bloom, and deeds fruit. If the tree has grown
up under religious influence the kernel contains seeds of immortality,
but if reared under the influence of sin the kernel will be a rotten core
and worse than useless.
To love and to sing is to live, and to hate and to swear is to die.
Bad deeds, though often written and rewritten, soil the hands of the
scribe, corrupt his heart, taint the olfactory senses of the
reader—although they may be as angels—with an unpleasant odour, offend
their eyes, and become in the end illegible blotches, smudges, and
smears.
Good deeds, performed with a good object, eat themselves clearly and
legibly into the pages of history, which time turns into gold, and leave
a pleasant impression upon the writers and readers—although they may be
devils—that time and men’s hands cannot efface.
Those who write flashy, misleading lies of various hues, whether about
gipsy, saint, or angel, will find that they are earning red-hot coppers,
which “puffs” will not prevent burning the author’s fingers and
scratching his conscience.
Worldly-minded human beings engaged in trying to weave a cloak of
righteousness out of their own evil deeds wherewith to hide their
deformities, ugliness, and consumption, may be compared to a poor old
deformed woman trying to weave a golden cloak out of rotten straw to hide
the wretchedness and misery of Seven Dials.
Those engaged in reclaiming children from sin and ignorance are making
themselves a silver ladder upon which to climb to golden fame.
When our ways are clouded by mysteries and doubts, we may take it for
granted that we have got off the road, and are wandering among marshes
and swamps from which fogs and poisonous vapours arise.
Satan often ties firebrands to the tails of hypocritical professing
Christians, and uses them as Samson did his foxes.
* * * * *
At 6.30 on Tuesday morning I stepped out of doors with my travelling
paraphernalia upon some six-inches deep of newly fallen snow. My only
light was the flickering gas, which was miserable indeed. Underneath the
snowy carpet the roads felt, and in fact were, like a sheet of glass. If
the new soles upon my shoes had been beeswaxed and polished I could not
have slipped and slurred about more. Sometimes my bags were in the snow,
and at other times I was trying the resisting force of the lamp-posts.
Some of the workmen as they passed me rolled about as if they were
“tight,” and I daresay they thought me to be a brother chip. After
three-quarters of an hour’s exercise for patience, temper, and legs, I
arrived “safe and sound in wind and limb” in a third-class compartment,
and without any hot-water bottles to cheer my onward course.
At Trent Station I spent five minutes with Mr. Taylor, the fine,
good-looking station-master, in talking over the caste, kind, and
character of the gipsies in India, in which country Mr. Taylor was a
station-master for some time. At Settle I pulled up for a cup of coffee
and a sandwich. The little refreshment-room, about ten feet square, was
quite a delightfully warm, cosy nook. The glasses and decanters of
variegated colours were sparkling, the fire was bright and cheerful, and
the waitress brimmed over with smiles, grace, and good-nature. I was
nearly frozen, and to jump from the freezing train to the warm sunny
“bar” at one bound was enough almost to make me wish that a coal truck
would get across the line to cause a delay for half-an-hour. It was not
to be, and the cruel porter bawled out, “Take your seats, gentlemen!” and
we were off to the snowy region of the North, where all things are not
forgot and sheep looked like rabbits. In puffing along we passed through
the snow-drifts, which two days previously had held bound by the icy hand
of winter eleven trains and their freights of “live and dead stock” for
twenty-four hours, bringing forth from the sympathetic wife of the
station-master hot tea, cakes, and coffee for the travellers.
In passing over the Settle and Carlisle railway I experienced a very
queer kind of sensation. I was in the carriage alone. For many miles
nothing was to be seen but snow and telegraph posts. The fences were
covered, the sheep and cattle were housed, and, owing to the barren
nature of the soil, there were no trees to be seen peering their heads
upwards. A gloom, without a break or gleam of sunshine, spread over the
face of the heavens. The snow-covered hills and valleys looked like so
many white clouds, and appeared to be undulating as we passed through
them. Not a sound was to be heard except the puffing and punting of the
engine as we steamed away, and it appeared as if we were miles high
between two worlds, travelling I knew not whither. To make myself
believe that I was still in the land of the living and not among “the
dreary regions of the dead,” I paced my compartment pretty freely,
filling up my time by singing—
“One there is above all others,” &c.,
and counting the telegraph posts as we glided along. Among other things,
as I walked to and fro in my solitary compartment, I jotted down some of
the following thoughts and aphorisms:—
Faith is the quicksilver of heaven placed in the hearts of God’s
children. When it is low or weak, rains and storms are brewing,
difficulties are ahead; and when it is high and strong, then peace and
joy may be expected. Unsteady Christians will do well to change their
quarters.
Every glass of intoxicating drink given by parents to their children may
have pleasure swimming upon the surface, but at the bottom there will be
dregs of groans, and cries that will be hurled back by the children with
vengeance and retorts upon the names and tombs of their parents as they
lie smouldering in their coffins.
The benevolent actions of earth become at death the flowers of heaven.
The heavenly influences of God’s children in life become at death the
fragrance of eternity.
As the light-giving rays of the sun appear as darkness to mortals with
weak eyes and contracted vision, so in like manner do the searching and
light-giving rays of God’s Word appear as darkness to those whose mind
and mental powers have become weakened through looking into the lovely
system of heaven with narrow, preconceived ideas and notions.
Tears are the dewdrops of sorrow; if of heavenly sorrow, they will be the
means, as they drop to the earth, of watering seeds that will produce a
crop of heavenly joy.
In every cup of sorrow given to us by God to drink there are mixed up in
the ingredients fine precious seeds of a higher life, greater joy, and
abiding peace to bloom everlastingly in heaven.
Those who dabble in sin stain their hands with indelible ink, which
nothing but grace can remove.
Prayer is a pump-handle, and faith the rods and bucket that lift the
clear spring of heavenly truth into our earthly vessels to refresh us on
the way to Zion.
Hot-tempered and fiery-tempered Christians often expose the nakedness of
their souls.
Those people who think that they can go to heaven by indulging in worldly
pleasure and sin are travelling in a balloon of their own manufacture,
which may carry them high up in the opinion of worldlings, but in reality
they are soaring into the freezing atmosphere of God’s wrath, to come
down with a terrible crash.
A man with a large heart, broad sympathy, but under the influence of a
short temper, often burns his fingers; while the man with a narrow soul
and an envious disposition has a fire within that will blister his tongue
and singe the hair off his head.
Sacred poems and hymns are the million silver steps leading to the
heavenly city from every quarter of the globe; and the tunes set to them
are the lovely seraphs from the angel-land taking us by the hand to lead
us onward and upward to the golden doors studded with diamonds and other
precious stones, which are opened to all who have been sanctified and
made ready for the indescribable kingdom within.
Death is the postman from the unknown land—except to those who have seen
it by the eye of faith—knocking at our door.
* * * * *
Once or twice we passed several men with shovels in their hands and
dressed in garbs that only required a very slight stretch of imagination
to make us believe that they were in the Arctic regions searching for the
bodies of Sir John Franklin and his noble crew. Suddenly we dropped upon
Carlisle, and for a few minutes we pulled ourselves together. As there
were no sandwiches to be got, I dined off a penny bun and a sour orange,
the rind of which, owing to my benumbed fingers, sorely tried my
patience, and in retaliation I set to it with my teeth in a most savage
manner, and cast the remnants to the wind to perish in the mud.
We duly arrived at St. Boswell’s Station. I felt nearly “done up,” and
at this place I slipped, rolled, and tumbled into an hotel for a warm
rest and a feed. When it was dark I turned out again and made my way by
train to Kelso, the place of fame, and noted for its public spirit. As I
drew near to the town I could have said with Alfred Miles, in _Young
England_, 1880—
“Louder blew the winds and fiercer,
The night was drawing nigh.”
From the station to the town was a most miserable half-hour’s journey.
The snow was in heaps, and travellers had to clutch the arms of friends
or foes to enable them to “steer a steady course.” The snow whistled and
squeaked under the pressure of the soles of my feet; for by this time I
did not seem to have any other soul. Sometimes I seemed to take one step
forward to two backward, till at last a ’busman picked me up and set me
down within a hundred yards of the Temperance Hotel door—Mr.
Slight’s—which was the nearest he could get me to without risk to life
and limb, owing to the great depth of snow. I felt faint, and the full
force of what Marianne Farningham says in the _Christian World_—
“O God, the way is very long,
And the storms are rough and wild.”
Men working in snow, in the blackness of night, beneath the dull,
flickering lamps, and with a heavy, foggy atmosphere overhead, present a
most curious and interesting spectacle, such as might call forth from
nervous, sensitive minds a thousand ghostly wild conjectures about
gipsies, witches, &c.
During the evening “mine host” invited me, with some three commercial
travellers, to a little family party he was having, numbering altogether
some six gentlemen and eight young ladies.
Of the gentlemen I will say nothing except that they were very
gentlemanly; but of the young ladies I will say that they were of the
usual agreeable mixture. One was charming, another sweet, another was
lively, another was delightful, another was pretty, another was pleasant,
another was full of grace, and so on. Of course, each had her own
peculiar special graces, figure, and colour of hair. Singing, playing,
lively and interesting conversation whiled the evening hours away.
Notwithstanding these enchanting proceedings, I did not feel happy. I
tried hard to put a smile upon my face, but imagined I was not
successful, for the company often had to try to “liven me up.” The
trials and hardships of the day, and my work on the morrow, weighted me
heavily with anxiety and sorrow.
I retired to my chamber pensive, sad, and cold. My bed was like ice, and
all the clothes, rugs, &c., I had would not make me warm. The night was
shiveringly cold, and my heart ached for the poor gipsies out in the
snow. I dozed, winked, and blinked. I got out of bed again and again;
and, to while away the long hours of the night, I jotted some of the
following aphorisms down, by the side of the dying embers of a _little_
fire:—
Sunday-schools are God’s flower-beds, upon which He sends more gleams of
sunshine and spring showers than upon the rest of the world. Some
Sunday-school children are the little roses, pinks, mignonette, &c.
There are other Sunday-school children very modest and very good, but
with little show; these are the thyme, ladslove, &c. The naughty
children are the sour and poisonous weeds.
When a Christian leaves the prospect hill for the marshes and swamps of
despondency and gloom, he will soon discover—or ought to do—that he is in
the neighbourhood of hellish fogs and mists, which will lead him into
worse than the Roman’s “shepherd’s race,” maze, or labyrinth, and from
thence to gloomy thoughts and hazy notions of God and His works.
Infidels are the rats of society, puddling and muddling the rippling
streams of pure truth that run through our land.
Cold places of worship, with a shivering minister as doorkeeper, are the
places to turn warm Christians into freezing saints.
A drunken Christian minister is a toppled-over guide-post with the bottom
rotted off, owing to its having being set in too much water.
Hope is the second—love the first—greatest moral force in the world.
When a man is down in the gutter it lifts him up; when he is in darkness
it puts light in his face and fire in his eyes. It enters the breast of
a child; it fills the heart, and is seen in every action of man; it is in
the soul of kings, governs empires, and rules destinies; and it lifts
human beings, populating all worlds, from earth and hell to heaven. Oh!
bliss-inspiring hope!
Hope is the father of ambition and the earthly companion of the soul;
they join together till they come to the edge of the river, whence the
soul takes its flight into eternity, and hope becomes the life of the
fame left behind, and ends with fame’s death.
Despair is the wastrel daughter of ambition forsaken by her father, and
her mother, hope and pride. She drags all who touch her to poverty,
ruin, degradation, misery, and death. When she creeps do you run.
Elevating natural parental love buds in time and blooms through eternity.
It turns a mud cottage or gipsy wigwam into a palace, a desert into a
garden, a waste into an earthly paradise. It causes the birds and
variegated songsters to chirp and sing round your dwelling, the trees to
laugh, the stones to shout, the cat to purr upon the hearth, and the
children to kiss and fondle upon your knees. It sends whole families
where love dwells off to bed in good humour, and causes the cock to crow
early in the morning at your door, telling you that a DIVINER LOVE is
about to enter your family circle with a fragrance excelling that of the
rose, and its effects more lovely to behold than that of the lily.
The soil of earth is the brain of nature.
Children with good hearts and lovable dispositions, under the fostering
care of a good, kind, Christian mother, will become God’s pretty little
singing birds, to beautify and enliven His heavenly garden; while
naughty, disobedient, bad children will become worse than rotten eggs,
not even fit for manure.
As bells are placed upon the necks of leading wether sheep to give out a
sound of danger and guidance, so in like manner is the word of God placed
upon the necks of His ministers, to give out words of consolation,
counsel, reproof, and warning, and woe be to those who give out an
uncertain sound.
Gipsies, vagrants, tramps, and vagabonds are the corns and bunions of
society.
Every kind, benevolent act of a Christian, full of love to God and man,
is a cask of heavenly oil poured upon the troubled waters of life, and
those who go down deep into human misery will find, by looking upward, as
the oil of paradise swims upon the waves of woe, the beautiful light of
heaven reflected upon their every movement to raise fallen humanity.
The love of God in the heart of man produces a smoothness upon the
surface of his face and body that eases his way to heaven through the
chilling billows of selfishness, deceit, and fraud.
A cruel retort from an ungrateful son opens a parent’s eyes to his sins
and follies more than the advice of one hundred friends.
To mount the highest hill of God’s favour upon the alternate steps of
prayer and good works, with faith as a handrail, is to see the
indescribable beauties of heaven and the unsurpassed splendour of earth
as no other mortal can; and by climbing higher still we can see more and
more, till we find ourselves lost in love and wonder.
The transparent dewdrops of heaven to be seen, by the light of the bright
morning sun, resting and twinkling into rainbow colours upon the flowers
and blades of grass on the green, mossy carpet, are the lively, sweet,
innocent little children whom God sends to cheer and beautify our path
for awhile before He calls them to heaven by the absorbing rays of Divine
love.
To a good man dark moments are the harbingers of bright days, and to a
bad man light moments of excitement are the precursors of long, dark days
of sorrow.
Love is the greatest moral force in the world. With the birth of a child
it has a beginning, and it is the right hand companion of the soul; and
with the death of the body it is transferred with its redeemed chief to
paradise, to be the singing, joyful companion of the soul through endless
ages and never-ending delights and pleasures.
Divine love is the celestial life of heaven dwelling in man’s breast,
purifying his heart, enlivening his soul, transforming his affection to
such an extent that he can sing in the midst of a burning, sandy,
waterless, parching desert, “Oh! that will be joyful.” It transforms the
black demon face of a gipsy, or a child of hell, into the lovable,
smiling face of a child of God. Its possessor can jump ditches, bound
over fences, and scale battlements as easily as if they were level green,
mossy carpets. It makes life happy, and opens heaven to our view.
* * * * *
After I had passed through this ordeal, I tried pacing the room with no
better results. Notwithstanding these things, I felt as the Rev. Richard
Wilton felt when he penned the following lines for _Hand and Heart_,
June, 1880:
“Sufferings are gifts, accept for my sake,
And from earth’s sighs heaven’s music shall wake.”
Morning dawned and found me with wakeful eyes ready to receive it. After
breakfast I began to prepare for my journey through deep snow which had
fallen evenly upon the ground to the height of the stone walls. I found
that the postman with his cart had begun to prepare for the journey, and
he calculated that if all were straight it would take him five hours to
“do the eight miles.” “Mine host” would not consent to this arrangement,
and the next best thing was to hire a horse and trap. So through the
deep snow we started. I had not got very far before my muffler was
frozen and icicles hung round my beard like little diamonds. A few carts
and waggons had been pulled over the snow in places by the farmers, and
had left a few tracks. Notwithstanding these our old hunter was not long
before he began to “puff and blow.” My gigman said, “I don’t know
whether we shall be able to get through to Yetholm, but we will go as far
as we can. We can but turn back if we can get no further.”
Our steed did not require pulling up to stop him. Of his own instinct he
stopped pretty frequently. I said to the man, “Our horse seems to be
short of ‘puff.’” “Yes,” said the gigman; “his wind is touched a little,
but nothing to hurt. He will be all right if we can once pull through.”
Sometimes we went into the ditches. How deep they were before the snow
fell I don’t know. I should think some of them were pretty deep. Thanks
to the Almighty, the bottom of our gig would not let us topple over.
Many times I began to wonder where we should find a resting-place for the
night. I said to my gigman as we went ploughing through the snow in one
of the ditches, “In case we get stuck fast, what shall we do next?”
“Well,” said the gigman, “we shall have to leave the trap behind and
return to Kelso as best we can. We shall both have to get upon the
horse’s back, and if he will not carry us we must take turn and turn
about. It won’t do to stop on the road to perish.” I began to “pump” my
gigman in order to know whether I was in the hands of one who understood
his business. I wanted my fears settling upon this point.
I said, “How long have you been a coachman?” “Between twenty and thirty
years,” he said. “And have you ever had a ‘spill’ or been stuck fast?”
“I have only had one ‘pitch in’ and never a ‘spill.’” This news gave me
confidence in my man, and on we kept ploughing away. A strong contrast
presented itself to our view close to a cottage just off the roadside.
There was a fine dark woman with a bright scarlet hood and cloak on her
big body, doing something upon one of the hedges. It struck me that she
was bird-liming, for the London markets, the poor linnets that choose to
be caged rather than to perish.
The sights along the road were most lively, and I shall never forget it
as long as the breath is in my body. The excitement “on the road,” the
bubbling sympathy within my breast for the poor perishing rabbits, hares,
partridges, and crows upon our path, the dangers of the way, and the
magnificent grandeur of the scenery, were of such a nature as to cause me
to forget the biting cold at work benumbing my nose, fingers, and toes.
The Scotch firs in the dales and vales along our path and on the
hillsides never appeared more grand and beautiful. They were
artistically touched by the hand of God. The pure white lovely prismatic
children of the clouds and cold boundless space had descended softly from
heaven, as if loth to leave their pure abode for a resting-place in the
mud; but before doing so they appeared anxious to adorn the trees of
nature with the beauties of ethereal space, and in such a manner as to
cause one’s heart to glow with gratitude towards God, the Giver of all
good. The boughs were bent downwards, heavily laden with the angelic
snowflakes; the whole trees presenting a spiral sight, leading your eyes
and mind upwards toward heaven. At the extreme tips of the branches the
snow had formed a kind of white clapperless bells. As I passed under the
heavily-laden trees I felt that I should like to have helped them to bear
their burden, and also to keep the prismatic children of the clouds and
infinitude from settling into their dirty resting-places. Nature seemed
to speak through the beautiful snow-adorned trees, and wintry-capped
hills and covered valleys with a warm loving tenderness that I had never
experienced before.
Upon the fences the snow had come softly and stealthily down, apparently
as if in gentle wavelets, which presented the appearance of fold upon
fold, overhanging waves upon waves in beautiful round and soft designs;
and as I beheld it I felt for a few minutes that it would be a real
pleasure, with joy and gladness running through my bones, and smiles
forcing themselves upon my face, to roll, plunge, tumble, and fluster
under its overhanging laps and waved folds, which seemed to speak
invitingly, and with open arms, to those who cast a sympathetic glance at
them. Never in this world did snow appear more to be like the downs of
heaven than upon this occasion, notwithstanding the _biting_ cold day.
On this journey the live things seemed to be dying, while the dead things
seemed to be living.
We had now been on the road ploughing away over two hours among the snow,
and still we were not at the end of our journey. We had had many escapes
of a spill, with the consolation that we should not have been hurt,
except in case the iron heels of our beast had come sharply in contact
with our almost frost-bitten noses. As we topped the hills and neared
Yetholm it was manifest that the rude hand of storm and tempest had been
busily at work among the trees at some not very remote period. Hundreds
had been uprooted, some of which were left to tell the tale. Not a
public-house was to be seen on the way. There was a kind of cabin a
little off the roadside, on which was stuck a piece of board, showing
that tea, tobacco, coffee, and snuff were sold there. Among the hills in
the distance Yetholm was observed. The thought that had run freely
through my mind, that I might not reach Yetholm, had now vanished.
The veritable gipsy town was in sight, and our steed pricked up his ears
and quickened his pace. The blood which had imperceptibly been freezing
in my veins seemed to glow again. The use of my hands and feet seemed to
be coming round, and into a public-house I stumbled at half past one to
get a cup of tea, “a cheer up,” and thorough warming. After which I set
out with my bag in one hand loaded with Testaments, supplied to me by a
friend and the Christian Knowledge Society; picture cards, supplied to me
by the Religious Tract Society; and _Our Boys and Girls_, supplied to me
by the Wesleyan Sunday-School Union; while in the other hand I carried a
quantity of oranges and tobacco, purchased from Mr. Laidlaw’s, a
tradesman in the place. With this “stock-in-trade” for the big and
little gipsies at Kirk Yetholm I started my tramp.
The nestling and nuzzling of the gipsy hypocrites beneath the walls of
the church at Kirk Yetholm, when they first landed in this country and
for centuries onward, is only in accord with their first appearance in
many parts of England. There can be no doubt that when the gipsies came
from the Continent they came as hypocritical, religious, popish pilgrims,
and succeeded well for a time in inveigling themselves into the good
graces and pockets of the well-to-do English men and women, so that many
of them were able to dress in scarlet and gold till they were found out,
as I have shown elsewhere.
Kirk Yetholm, the gipsy town, is about half a mile from Town Yetholm.
[Picture: Gipsy Winter quarters, Yetholm]
By the time I had arrived at the gipsy quarters, owing to my loads, the
deep snow, and the slippery nature of the roads in some places, I was
ready for a rest.
At the entrance to the village I met a number of little half-starved,
dirty, ragged gipsy children, who, to say the least, would require a deal
of “straightening up” before they were ready for angelic robes. One
little fellow with fine lips, but a mouth almost extending from ear to
ear, accosted me in such a manner as to satisfy me that I was, without
doubt, in the land of gipsydom. With the exception of the fine old
church and one or two houses, the whole presented a miserable appearance.
The gipsy dwellings were one story high, and of a dirty dingy white.
Leydon’s opinion of the Yetholm gipsies in his day was not very high, for
he says—
“On Yeta’s banks the vagrant gipsies place
Their turf-built cots. A sunburnt swarthy race,
From Nubian realms their tawny line they bring,
And their brown chieftain vaunts the name of king.
With loitering steps from town to town they pass,
Their lazy dames rock’d on the panier’d ass,
From pilfer’d roots or nauseous carrion fed,
By hedgerows green they strew their leafy bed;
While scarce the cloak of tawdry red conceals
The fine-turned limbs which every breeze reveals.
Their bright black eyes through silken lashes shine,
Around their necks their raven tresses twine;
But chilling damps and dews of night impair
Its soft sleek gloss and tan the bosom bare.
Adroit the lines of palmistry to trace,
Her horded silver store they charm away,
A pleasing debt for promised wealth to pay.”
Slater says in his Directory for 1882 that “Town Yetholm and Kirk Yetholm
are both very humble in appearance, especially the latter, which is
chiefly inhabited by gipsies, a race formerly remarkable for their
disorderly lives and dangerous characters, and at this day distinguished
by peculiarity of habits from the general body of the community.”
Dr. Baird says in his “Memoir of the Rev. John Baird,” written some
twenty years ago, “A colony of gipsies which had long been settled at
Kirk Yetholm had given rather an unenviable notoriety to the village, and
rendered its name familiar to thousands in Scotland. The great majority
of this wandering race were little better than heathens though born in a
Christian land, and were notorious for poaching, thieving, and
blackguardism.”
Most of the gipsy dwellings belong to a friend, the Marquis of Tweeddale,
and he has of late years taken steps to improve their appearance. At the
present time I am told the gipsy dwellings, so far as the outsides are
concerned, show a great improvement. Sad to relate, the gipsy tenants
have not improved one jot. Landlords may make gipsies’ and labourers’
houses—and it is right they should—healthy and habitable, but estate
agents cannot purify the moral iniquity that dwells within. The
schoolmaster, law, and the gospel are the agents for this reforming work.
I was told by Mr. Laidlaw that a gipsy named Mathew Blythe was the most
respectable gipsy in Yetholm, and would give me any information; so to
Mathew I made my way. I knocked at his door and was met with a
shout—“Come in.” I did not stand knocking twice after this invitation,
and went through the dingy, greasy passage—or “entrance hall”—to another
door, which I opened, and there found a round-faced, grey-haired,
good-looking, cobbling gipsy at work upon his “last.” The room seemed to
serve for kitchen, scullery, parlour, dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom,
closet, and workshop. For a minute or two he eyed me over from head to
foot before asking me to sit down on a rickety old chair that stood by my
side. I told him that I was come to look up the gipsies at Yetholm. I
was met with a gruff reply, “There are no gipsies at Yetholm; they are
all gone away, and I don’t know where they are gone to.” I said, “I am
sorry for that, as I had brought some books, oranges, tobacco, pictures,
and coppers for them.” And after a few words in Romany the old man
turned up his face with a smile and said, “Well, to speak the truth, I am
a gipsy, but my old woman is not. Sit you down.” I sat down and began
my tale, and told him who I was and all about the object of my visit. At
this the old man opened his eyes wider and wider and said, “Lord, bless
you, me and my brother, who lives at Town Yetholm, were only talking
about you yesterday, and saying how glad we should be to see you. Let’s
shake hands.” He took hold of my hand and gave it a good grip and a
squeeze, one that I shall not soon forget. I said, “I suppose you wanted
to see me in order to give me a ‘good tanning,’ or else to make the place
warm for me; for I have been told by a backwood gipsy writer at — that
the gipsies in Scotland would make it hot for me if they once got hold of
me; and this is one, among the many other reasons, why I am here to-day.”
“Those,” said Mr. Blythe, “who told you that tale told you a lie. I
don’t know any gipsy who would hurt your little finger. You have said
some hard things about us, but they are true, or nearly so. Why should
not our children be educated like other people’s children? Why should
gipsy children not be allowed to sit on the same bench with the rest?
They are the same flesh and blood, and God looks upon them the same as He
does upon other children. In church and in school no one will come near
to us, and what is the result? Why, there is not a gipsy in all the
place—and there are between one and two hundred—except myself who goes to
church on Sundays. The gipsies in Yetholm are worse off to-day than they
ever were. Some are in receipt of parish relief.” This upsets the
romantic tales of the gipsy writers who maintain that gipsies never
receive parish relief. “A few of the children can read and write, but
that is all. I learned to read and write a many years, thank God, and I
also learnt to make and mend shoes.” I said, “What do the gipsies do and
where do they wander, as they grow up?” “They,” said Mr. Blythe,
“generally goes to town, or travels the country, and nobody knows where
they end their days.” Mr. Blythe was some distant—“ninety-second
cousin”—relation to the notorious dare-devil gipsy, Will Faa, who claimed
to be a sort of a gipsy king, and on this account I wanted to have a few
words about the gipsy kings of Scotland. “Well,” said Mr. Blythe, “you
know better than I can tell you that there are no such beings as gipsy
kings and queens. It is all bosh and nonsense, conjured up to get money
on the cheap. The woman they call the gipsy queen does not live at
Yetholm now, she has gone to live at Kelso. I could not tell you
whereabouts she lives, but in some of the back streets.”
Mr. Blythe began to relate some of the gipsy tales; and how many kings’
lives the gipsies had saved, and a number of other things relating to
gipsy life, into which I had not time to enter, as I wanted to be on the
road again with my gigman before it was dark. The old man’s crippled
foot prevented him making some visits with me to the other gipsies in the
village, or, as he said, “I should have been only too glad to have done
so. The poor things want somebody looking after them, I can assure you.”
I emptied nearly the whole of the contents of my bags of books, pictures,
tobacco, oranges, and a few coppers upon the gipsy cobbler’s bench, among
the awls, nails, waxed-ends, &c., for him to distribute, as a _man_,
among the gipsy children and old women in the village; and as a _man_,
and with gipsy greetings and good wishes, trusting to Mr. Blythe’s
honour, I left them, and they have, with God’s blessing, no doubt been
distributed. After a few words of cheer and consolation and several
shakes of the hands, which somehow brought out my weakness in tears, I
bade Mr. Blythe, the grey-haired, open-faced gipsy, “good-bye,” maybe
never to meet again on this side of Jordan. I felt as I stepped out of
the door that I could have said with a blind writer in the _Church of
England Magazine_—
“Though dark and dreary be my way,
Thy light can turn my night to day.”
“Pensive I tread my sad and lonely road,
Pain, gloom, and sorrow marked me for their prey.”
I took a stroll through the place to eye the gipsy dwellings over, and by
the time I had got to the bridge homeward, a number of poor half-starved
gipsy children had gathered round me. I had not gone far before I met
some bigger gipsies “working _home_” for the night. I thought I would
have five minutes’ chat in the snow with a little old gipsy woman named
Sanderson, who had accosted me in the usual gipsy fashion, viz., a curtsy
and “Your honour, sir.” I pulled up and deposited my bags in the snow.
At this the old woman began to smile; she no doubt thought that she had
succeeded in her first step to draw something from me. She was not long
in perceiving that I was not a Scotchman, and took pains to tell me her
name, and that she was an English gipsy from the neighbourhood of
Newcastle. It occurred to me that I would just for once try the old
woman’s volubility of thanks, and accordingly I dipped into my bag for an
orange; this brought the old woman almost upon her knees with a “Thank
yer honour;” each “thanks” was accompanied by low curtsies. I next
pulled out a picture card; this she put to her breast and said, “Lord
bless yer honour.” I gave her another card, for which she responded with
upturned eyes, “May the Lord bless you, my dear good gentleman.” I next
gave her some coppers; she again turned up her eyes toward heaven and
said with a smile, “May you never want a friend in the world.” I next
gave her some tobacco, to which she responded, “May the dear Lord thank
you a thousand times.” I ran through all the varieties I had, without
exhausting her stock of thanks. I began to think that I must “give it
up.” I believe Nisbets, Sunday School Union, Hodder and Stoughton,
Partridge, Religious Tract Society, Christian Knowledge Society, and all
the wide world-known first class publishing houses in Paternoster Row—and
over London there are many of them—would not produce variety of picture
books enough to exhaust the different kind of thanks the old gipsy woman
had in store; at any rate she would have a curtsy for the last and one to
spare for the next gift. I had a Testament in my bag, and as a last
present I thought I would give it to her. The old woman took it out of
my hand as a hungry starving child takes a piece of bread, with more
eagerness than she had shown over either the money or the tobacco, and
clasped it to her breast and called out with tears in her eyes in an
attitude of prayer, “May the dear Lord Jesus bless you, my dear good
gentleman, so long as you shall live, and may you never want a friend.”
Tears and curtsies came again pretty freely, I shook hands with the old
gipsy, and we parted. The rimy moisture on my spectacles, and the
hastiness of my movements prevented me testing the old gipsy woman’s
tears, to see whether they were genuine or not. I rather think they
were; at any rate it is more pleasant to human nature to have smiles than
frowns, even if they come from the devil.
I jumped into the trap, put on a warm muffler, and jolted and jogged for
some two hours to my lodgings, passing some gipsy poachers on the way,
and watching the growing moon in the heavens facing me, which seemed to
speak words of consolation showing unmistakably that all was not darkness
in the temporary Arctic cold regions in the world of gipsydom.
In Kelso I found out that one of the _princes_ of gipsydom had been in
jail nearly a score of times; in fact, one of the magistrates told me
that he himself had sent one of the gipsy vagabonds to jail something
like half a dozen times during the last two years. As a rule, when his
“_highness_” was not in jail, he was employed scraping the streets,
scavenging, or getting a penny in other ways. In the train I was told
that one of the _queens_ of gipsydom indulged in language which would not
be a sufficient passport to heaven, and was at the present time to
outside observers a poor, miserable old woman, with one foot in the
grave, a standing lie to the advantages, blessings, and beauties of an
uncivilized, demoralizing, wandering vagabond’s life.
[Picture: Esther Faa Blythe—a Scotch gipsy queen]
A portrait of one of the self-crowned Scottish gipsy queens, Esther Faa
Blythe, is here given. The old woman is eighty-five years of age, and
has an eye to business. She is sharp, and can adapt herself to all
circumstances. With the saints she becomes heavenly, and so on, almost
through the whole of the lights, shades, and phases of social life.
There are numbers of “gipsy kings” and “queens” in the country—aye,
almost in every county; at any rate those who are simple enough to
believe in them say so. One gipsy queen not long ago used to dress in
dashing, gaudy silks, and sit in “a chair of state” in her van, and the
Londoners paid their threepennies to see her from time to time. She now
lives a “retired life,” upon her gains, at Maidenhead.
The best gipsy queen I know of is the good Christian woman, Mrs.
Simpson—formerly a Lee—at Notting Hill, who has become a devoted, good
Christian woman, and tries to do all the good she can as she passes up
and down the world. Her Bible contains her “state records,” which are
the guide of her life. For twenty years she did a “roaring trade” by
telling fortunes to simpletons and big babies out of the
Bible—upside-down at times—of which she could not tell a letter. Since
she has been a _gipsy Christian queen_ she has learnt to read some parts
of the blessed book. My plan, if followed out thoroughly in all its
details, will make all our gipsies “kings” and “queens.” It is
surprising that there are people in the world silly enough even at this
late day to believe in such beings as the “gipsy kings” and “queens” of
backwood romance.
To come back to Yetholm. The aches, pains, and wild visions of the night
carried me almost over the wide, wide world, and had it not been for the
power of Divine love and the rays of heavenly light I cannot tell where I
might have got to ere this.
“The rougher the way, the shorter the stay,”
said Wesley. I paid my bill, and started homeward, and at St. Boswell’s
station I made the acquaintance of Thomas Webster, Esq., and his two
sweet, interesting little sons, Masters Thomas Scott Cliff and Harold
Colin, of Oxenden Towers, Dunse. In the train we sat together, and
chatted and whiled away time almost imperceptibly for several hours as we
journeyed southward. At Hillfield we separated. He and his sons
travelled westward, and I kept speeding along southward and homeward, I
think a wiser man; certainly I know more of the gipsies in Scotland and
at Yetholm than I ever knew before. I find, among other things, that
there are a number of gipsies living among the rocks on the northern
coasts of Scotland, more like wild animals than human beings, and as
shaggy as winter-coated goats.
My visit to Yetholm brought out the fact more vividly to my mind than
ever, that private flickering and fluttering missionary enterprise, apart
from compulsory education, sanitation, and proper Government supervision,
is powerless, and unable to reclaim our gipsies and their children from
heathendom and its black midnight surroundings; and this I have stated
all along in my letters, Congress papers, articles in the _Graphic_ and
_Wesleyan Methodist Magazine_, and in my “Gipsy Life,” &c. The case of
the poor brickyard girls and boys and canal children proves this in an
unmistakable manner beyond all doubt; at any rate, to those who have
their eyes and ears open, and hearts and hands ready to help forward the
country’s welfare. {329}
Some fifty years ago the Rev. John Baird, a godly minister at Yetholm,
and a few warm hearted friends, commenced in right good earnest to reform
the gipsies at Yetholm. A committee was formed, several hundreds of
pounds were collected, steps taken to get the gipsy children to school,
and for some years they issued encouraging reports concerning the
gipsies. Plenty of proofs were forthcoming to show that the gipsy
children could be made meet for heaven by the application of the laws of
education, sanitation, and the gospel; they were, as a rule, as well
conducted in school and church as other labouring-class children. In
course of time the missionary zeal of the committee began to flag, and
Mr. Baird handed them over to the magistrates, and he goes on to say:
“Take the more respectable individual, and let him follow the occupation
of the gipsy, and in a few years he will in all probability be as bad as
any of them. It is almost folly and ignorance to say that a wandering
gipsy may be a respectable character. The thing seems to be possible
and, theoretically, not improbable; but practically the wandering gipsy
is almost without exception a disreputable person. His wandering life
leads to innumerable evils. In kindness to themselves, therefore, their
occupation, were it even a useful one to society, should be put down; but
it is not only useless, but positively injurious to themselves and
others. Their life is one of petty crime; their death involved in all
the gloom of ignorance and despair.”
What are the results to-day of the years of toil and the hundreds of
pounds which have been spent upon the gipsy children at Yetholm? Only
one gipsy is to be found going to church on Sundays. And whose fault is
it? Certainly not the gipsy children’s, nor yet that of Mr. Baird and
his friends, but that of the State and the country. Mr. Baird gave proof
that education had made some gipsy children into useful servants and good
citizens; and why not more? Would to God that our noble Queen, our
statesmen, and our philanthropists would listen to the gipsy children’s
cry which has been going upward to heaven from our doors during the last
three hundred and sixty-eight years, and is still unheard and unheeded by
the Christians of England. Their tears, instead of softening our hearts,
have turned them into icicles, sneers, and frozen sympathies, and the
devilish, sensual gipsy novelists have transformed the bright lively
looks of the girls into wicked designs and immoral purposes. Every
retarding act and backward movement of those who would keep the poor
gipsy children in ignorance will be a thorn in their pillow at the close
of life, as the crest of the eternal wave appears in view with savage,
bewildering reality. It is a serious thing to drag women and children
downhill, and it is one that will not be banished by the artistic touches
of dark, sensual, misleading gipsy romance, however finely drawn and
dexterously spun.
The Yetholm gipsies, living, roosting, and nestling in their degrading,
demoralizing, and squalid manner, have, during the last three centuries,
from beneath the shadow of the sacred parish church and within the sound
of its heavenly chimes, sent forth into England, Scotland, and the world
over two thousand dark missionaries, trained in all the crimes of sin and
wrong-doing, to spread misery and moral and eternal death on every hand,
without our ever putting out our hands as a nation to arrest or sweeten
the stream of iniquity which has been floating by our doors for so long.
Good Lord, wake us all up from our sleep of moral death into which we are
falling, bound hand and foot by selfish interests—money, greed, sensual
pleasures, and fascinating delights.
Gipsying in this country comes up before us in various forms, enough to
send a cold, thrilling shudder through one’s nature. A friend whom I
know well, in Leicester, told me only the other day that one of her
distant relations at Greetham, in Rutlandshire, had SOLD, some year or so
ago, his dark-eyed and dark-haired pretty girl of about twelve summers to
a gang of gipsies for TWO SHILLINGS AND SIXPENCE AND A GALLON OF BEER,
and the poor lost creature is now tramping and travelling the country, no
one knows where. This poor girl’s mother is living in comfortable
service in Leicester. One can hardly imagine a husband and wife, father
and mother, so utterly lost to all natural feeling as to sell their child
for half a crown; but so it is, and no doubt she is making money for the
gipsy scoundrels and inhuman brutes. My heart often bleeds for the
little lost gipsy girl, concerning whom slap-dash gipsy song-writers can
call forth thrills of momentary pleasurable excitement from sensual gipsy
admirers as they pass round the “loving cup.”
I often wonder what kind of song it is the poor child’s inhuman mother
sings to while away the pleasurable duties of her station and the silent
hours of the night; and while her offspring lies like a dog crouched on a
heap of straw, half starved, dressed in rags, filth, and vermin, in some
tent at the bottom of some dark lane by the side of a wood, listening
with wide-open eyes to the screeching of game and weazels, the howling of
the wind, and the beating of the hail and rain against her thin midnight
shelter from stormy blasts.
While in Scotland a friend told me that recently he was in a
hairdresser’s shop, and while he was undergoing shampooing and a scenting
process, a poor, half-frozen, half-naked, Scotch gipsy girl, with
dishevelled hair, came, with a small tin can in her hand, begging with
tears in her eyes for some hot water. My friend was struck with the poor
gipsy girl’s sorrowful, soul-mourning condition and request, and he asked
her what she wanted the hot water for. “Please, my good gentleman,” said
the girl, tremblingly, “my mother’s hair is frozen to the ground, and I
want a little hot water to loosen it with. Mother can’t get up till it
is loosened, and there is no one else in the tent to fetch the water and
to get her up but me, sir.” What a tale of sorrow did the poor child
relate. How sadly true is this of the gipsies and show people, and other
travelling children all over our highly favoured and heavenly exalted
country to-day. Our gipsies, by their own wrong-doings, lying, thieving,
poaching, cheating, fortune-telling, idleness, profanity,
sabbath-breaking, and other deadly sins, have bound themselves to the
ground under our eyes, and we have stood by with our hands in our
pockets, winking, blinking, and chuckling at their heartrending
condition. Some thirty thousand gipsy children have, for the last three
hundred and fifty years, received from door to door cuffs, kicks, crumbs,
crusts, smiles, curses, and flattery, but have never, except in a
flickering way, had extended to them the hand of practical help and
sympathy. They have lived on our commons, in our lanes, by the side of
our woods, in our dark, black alleys, in our prisons and workhouses. The
little seedlings of hope that God has planted in the breasts of the poor
gipsy children, we have, instead of encouraging them, trampled upon, and
the little tender buds and blades as they peeped forth we have trodden
down.
The children are lying and dying in the mud, with none to deliver. As a
result of our negligence and indifference to the wants of the poor gipsy
child, we shall some day have a crop of thistles, hard, sharp, and
strong, difficult to handle and more difficult to uproot, think about it
lightly as we may. The cries of the gipsy children have filled the
earth, and reached heaven for help; but we have barred the school doors
against them, and locked in their faces the gates through which they
should have been led to health, prosperity, civilization, Christianity,
and heaven. Gipsy women’s wails and gipsy children’s cries are going
upward and upward; and to-day the gipsy, show, and canal children are at
our doors dressed in rags and dirt, with matted hair, and tears in their
eyes, beseeching us to take them into our embraces and soul-saving
institutions, to lead them heavenward and to God, and still we refuse to
listen to their entreaties. Shall we refuse to do so any longer? God
grant that there may be a speedy breaking of bars, bolts, and locks that
have bound our gipsies, show people, and their children to their debasing
customs, and that our noble Queen, Senators, and Lawgivers may open the
doors of the blessed institutions with which our seagirt isle is covered
to our gipsies and their children without one moment’s delay, before our
candlestick is removed and glory departed.
The Englishmen of our England of to-day have it within their power to
show to the world how to improve the condition of the gipsy and canal
children as no other nation has ever had before, without trampling under
foot liberty and civil rights. Shall we with folded hands stand by with
the blood of the canal and gipsy children hanging upon our garments, with
awful effect, while the lambs of Christ’s flock are groping their way to
misery, ruin, and woe? Shall we put out our hand to save the children?
It is for my countrymen to answer “Yes” or “No.”
I asked my friend John Harris, the Cornish poet, to kindly help on the
cause of the gipsy children, and right gladly he did it; and here is his
touching poem. May it sink deep into our hearts!