CHARACTERS OF THE COURT—READING BORROW
A FEW miles outside my native city, there stands on the bank of the Roman
Fossdyke a lonely house known as “Drinsey Nook,” formerly a tavern with
bowling greens, swings, and skittle alleys, a resort of wagonette and
boating parties out for a frolic in the sunshine. Often on bygone summer
eves have I loitered about the old inn gleaming white amid its guardian
trees, but best of all I loved to see the beechen boughs drop their fiery
leaves upon its mossy roof in the fading of the year.
To-day, as of yore, the brown-sailed barges, laden with grain or scented
fir-planks, glide lazily past the place, and a motor-boat will at times
go racing by, to the alarm of the waterhens which had almost come to look
on the sleepy canal as their own.
Does it ever dream of its gay past, I wonder—this old forgotten house
fronting upon the rush-fringed waterway?
One golden October morning, my father, who had a passion for boating on
our local waters, hired a small sailing craft, and, the breezes aiding
us, we were wafted along the Fossdyke as far as the said riparian house
of call. Hour after hour we wandered in the beech woods stretching
behind the inn, resting now on some protruding snag or fallen bole to
watch the squirrels at play, and again pushing our way breast-high
through sheets of changing bracken to the hazel thickets where the nuts
hung in clusters well within reach of our hooked sticks.
Linked with this ramble in the time of the falling leaves is an
impression I have never forgotten. “Look,” said my father, pointing to a
decayed stump of a post almost buried amid dank moss, “this is all that
remains of Tom Otter’s gibbet-tree.” I shuddered as he told how in other
days he had heard the chains clanking in the wind, and he went on to
relate that _his_ father was among the crowd of citizens who, starting
from Lincoln Castle one March morning in the year 1806, followed the
murderer’s corpse until it was hanged in irons on a post thirty feet high
on Saxilby Moor. For several days after the event, the vicinity of the
gibbet resembled a country fair with drinking booths, ballad singers,
Gypsy fiddlers, and fortune-tellers.
The impressions of childhood are enduring; and just as the smell of the
wallflowers after an April shower will revive for you, dear fellow, the
vision of a garden walk under a lichened wall, and the dainty step of
your lady love by your side, so for me the wild scent of withering
bracken in the red autumn glades prompts my fancy to envisage anew the
gruesome scene as depicted by my father on that October day long gone by.
Nor is this all.
To mention the name of Tom Otter is to call up for me more than one
swarthy inhabitant of Gypsy Court who lived to make old bones and sit by
the fire telling tales and smoking black tobacco. I have but to close my
eyes to behold a procession of these “characters” straggling out of the
dark court, their faces and figures lingering for a moment in memory’s
beam of light, then passing again into the shadows. And what strange
stories are wrapped up in the names and lives of some of these folk;
quaint comedy, grim tragedy, riotous passion, tales of love, laughter,
and tears.
There was old Tom, nicknamed “Tom o’ the Gibbet,” whose patronymic was
_Petulengro_, which is Gypsy for Smith.
Each of the great Romany clans, be it known, duplicates its surname, one
form being used before the _gawjê_ (non-Gypsies, aliens); the other form,
of cryptic import, is for the brotherhood of the blood.
Old Tom Petulengro, further known as “Sneezing Tommy,” owing to his
liking for snuff, carried on a thriving trade in wooden meat-skewers and
pegs, and in his backyard you might see him with infinite patience
cutting up willow rods or splitting blocks of close-grained elder-wood;
and for years I never used to hear in church the familiar words of the
Psalmist, “Our bones lie strewn before the pit, like as when one heweth
wood upon the earth,” without seeing that narrow yard with its shining
axe lying midst a litter of chips and splinters. Elder-wood is still in
request for meat-skewers, and to this day not a few country butchers
prefer to use the Gypsy-made article. Old Tom used to say, with a
twinkle in his eye, that he _found_ nearly all his raw material on his
journeys up and down the countryside. For, as you could not fail to
observe, it was a habit with some of the dwellers in Gypsy Court to
absent themselves periodically with their light carts and tents. Halcyon
days were those for the court Gypsies.
Let it be remembered that the County Council legend, “No camping
allowed,” had not yet begun to hit you in the eye from among the bramble
brakes on bits of wayside waste. The rural constable of that time had
not the conveniences his successor enjoys in the bicycle and the village
telephone. There were farmers who still retained a soft place in their
hearts for the Gypsy, and many a country squire viewed the nomads of the
grassy lanes with a kindly eye. If a carriage-horse grew restive in
passing a roadside fire at twilight, up from the hedge-bottom sprang an
obliging fellow who led the animal safely along and thereby won a cheery
word from the squire or his lady. Even Velveteens would hob-nob with the
jovial campers on the lord’s waste, and, quaffing a dram from their black
bottle, would toss a rabbit into the lap of a Romany mother and go on his
way. Here and there of course were tiresome believers in the hoary
policy of harassment and oppression—
“Pack, and be out of this forthwith,
D’you know you have no business here?
‘No, we hain’t got,’ said Samuel Smith,
‘No business to be anywhere.’
So wearily they went away,
Yet soon were camped in t’other lane,
And soon they laughed as wild and gay,
And soon the kettle boiled again.”
[Picture: The Camp in the Lane. Photo: Fred Shaw]
Reverting to Tom Petulengro’s sobriquet, I confess it provoked my
curiosity not a little. Tom _o’ the Gibbet_—what could the strange “tag”
mean? Time passed, even a few years, and one day its origin came to
light during a talk with Ashena Brown, Tom’s married sister, an elderly
Gypsy with a furrowed countenance and deep-set eyes which flashed with
fire as she grew excited in her talk. I can see her bowed figure and
long jetty curls, as in fancy I again stoop to enter the low-ceiled abode
in the smoky court where I listened to her chatter to the persistent
accompaniment of a donkey’s thump, thump, in an adjoining apartment.
“Wonderful fond o’ the County o’ Nottingham was my people,” said the old
lady. “They know’d every stick and stone along the Trentside, and i’ the
Shirewood (Sherwood), and many’s the time we’ve stopped at Five Lane Ends
nigh Drinsey Nook. Why, my poor dear mammy (Lord rest her soul) was once
fired at by a foot-pad as she were coming outen the public upo’ the bank
there. The man’s pistol had nobbut powder in it, for he only meant to
_trash_ (frighten) her into handing up her _lova_ (money), but she had
none about her, for her last _shukora_ (sixpence) had gone in _levina_
(ale). And after that, my mammy allus wore a big _diklo_ (kerchief)
round her head for to hide her cheek as were badly blued by the rascal’s
powder.
“Ay, and I minds how my daddy used to make teeny horseshoes, knife
handles, and netting needles, outen the bits o’ wood he _tshin_’d (cut)
off the gibbet post, and wery good oak it was. Mebbe you’s heard o’ Tom
Otter’s post nigh to the woods? Ah, but p’raps you’s never been tell’d
that our Tom was born’d under it? The night my mammy were took bad, our
tents was a’most blown to bits. The wind banged the old irons agen the
post all night long, as I’ve heard her say. And when they wanted to name
the boy, they couldn’t think of no other name but Tom, for sure as they
tried to get away from it, the name kept coming back again—Tom, Tom,
Tom—till it sort o’ dinned itself into their heads. So at last my daddy
says, ‘Let’s call him Tom and done with it,’ and i’ time, folks got
a-calling him Tom o’ the Gibbet, and it stuck to him, it did. There,
now, I must give that here _maila_ (donkey) a bite o’ summut.”
But I have not done with Tom Otter.
Here is a story even more “creepy” than the last. Ashena is again the
speaker. “I’ them days I’d some delations as did funny things that folks
wouldn’t never think o’ doing nowadays. I’d an uncle as used to talk to
the _Beng_ (Devil). If anything went wrong wi’ a hoss, he’d say,
‘_Beng_, do this, and _Beng_, do that,’ like we talks to the _Duvel_
(God) when we says ’ur prayers. But he weren’t eddicated, you see, he
didn’t know no better. And whenever uncle and aunt used to pass by Tom
Otter’s gibbet, they’d stop and look up at the poor man hanging there,
and they allus _wuser_’d (threw) him a bit o’ _hawben_ (food). They
couldn’t let theirselves go by wi’out doing that.
“And there was a baker from Harby, and whenever he passed by the place he
would put a bread loaf on to the pointed end of a long rod and shove it
into that part o’ the irons where poor Tom’s head was, and sure enough
the bread allus went. The baker got hisself into trouble for doing that,
as I’ve heard our old people say.”
Commenting on a parallel instance, occurring about the year 1779, in
which some women were wont to throw up to a gibbeted man a bunch of
tallow candles for him to eat, the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in his _Book of
Folk-Lore_, writes: “Obviously the idea was still prevalent that life
continued to exist in the body after execution.”
In the procession of “characters” issuing from the dark court, I see two
familiar figures, the parents of my Gypsy schoolmate, who would surely
have arrested even a stranger’s gaze.
Partly from age, and partly from the habit of his calling, Plato Smith
the tinman stooped somewhat, yet his legs, which were long in comparison
with his body, carried him over the ground fast enough. A nearer view of
the old man’s countenance revealed certain scars concerning which tales
were told to his credit as a fighter. True, he had on one occasion been
worsted by an adversary, for the bridge of his nose diverged somewhat
from the straight line, a record of a telling blow. Always alert, Plato
looked the picture of spryness when soap and water had removed all traces
of the workshop, and he had donned a green cutaway coat, a bright yellow
neckcloth, and a felt “hat of antique shape,” high in the crown and broad
of brim, which was pulled well over his eyes whenever he went out. It
was whispered that none knew better than he how to whistle a horse out of
a field, but in this art I fancy he had grown rusty of late years. To be
sure, his long record as a poacher had brought him occasional lodgments
in the local house of detention, yet so ingrained was this Gypsy habit
that he could hardly refrain from chalking his gun-barrel and sallying
forth on moonlit nights.
A riverside incident associated with Sibby’s father is as fresh in my
memory as if it happened but yesterday. A stream neither broad nor deep
is our homely Witham, crawling onward through fenny flats to the North
Sea. It was here that I learned on summer days to pull an oar in an old
black coble, and to glide steel-shod over the ice in the Christmas
holidays. Along a certain reach of the river, I was initiated by an
elder brother into the mysteries of angling on those tranquil evenings
when the bold perch showed their heads above water, like the fishes that
listened to St. Anthony’s sermon. Now it fell upon a day that my brother
and I were crossing the river by ferry-boat, a few miles outside the
city, our companions being Plato Smith and an ecclesiastic from the
minster-close—four happy anglers were we. At one end of the
flat-bottomed ferry-boat stood the parson fingering his rod and whistling
a lively tune, when, in midstream, there was a sudden hitch in the chain,
flinging the perspiring ferryman upon his face, and at the same time
precipitating our friend from the minster-close headlong into the river.
Never have I seen a wild duck, or a white-pate coot, disappear more
cleanly from sight than did our brother of “the cloth” into the liquid
element. Thanks mainly to Gypsy Plato’s resourcefulness, he was
extricated pretty quickly, and we left him in the care of an innkeeper,
in whose parlour at dusk we met him in borrowed raiment, looking more
than usually pallid of countenance beneath the broad eaves of our kindly
host’s old-fashioned Sunday “topper” padded to fit with a vivid red
handkerchief.
A personality even more striking was Plato’s consort, Abigail, as you saw
her sunning herself under the parapet of the Witham bridge hard by the
“Three Magpies” Inn, her black eyes blinking as a gust from the river
flapped the loose ends of her gay kerchiefs which she wore three or four
deep, meeting on her bosom in old-time style. Hooked like a falcon’s
beak, her nose drooped over her pursed lips towards a prominent chin,
giving her a witchlike mien. Quadrupled strings of corals encircled her
wizened neck, and a black velvet bodice bedecked with silver buttons, a
skirt of bold check pattern, and a poke-bonnet formed her customary
walking attire. Often, on her homeward way after her daily round with
the basket, have I met her puffing a small black pipe as she shuffled
along our lane. By _didakais_ (half-breeds) she was certainly feared,
and they maintained it was bad luck to meet her first thing of a morning,
and were known to turn back on seeing her in the street. “Her eyes make
you feel that queer” was a common saying, and it follows that she ranked
high as a fortune-teller. Seldom a fair passed but you met her in the
noisy throng, chaffing the _gawjê_ (gentiles), or surrounded by a group
of village Johnnies and Mollies eager to have their palms read. What a
picture she made as she stooped to tighten the girths of her shaggy
donkey at whose head stood the wild, dusky Sibby with a spring wind
whisking her black locks about her cheeks, out on the open road beyond
the town, for maid and mother were devoted companions on many a foray
into the villages dotted over Lincoln Heath.
Another conspicuous character of the court was a quaint little hunchback,
a pedlar by trade, whose sad deformity and resentful temper caused him to
become the butt of every street gamin’s joke. He would often be seen in
company with Sammy Noble, a wooden-legged vendor of firewood. The pair,
I regret to say, called too frequently at taverns, and more than once I
have seen them assisted home by kindly policemen, or “peelers,” as they
were then called, who if resurrected to-day in their long black coats and
chimney-pot hats, would surely be taken for nothing short of cathedral
dignitaries.
The hero of the Gypsy colony was a tall athletic fellow, “Soldier”
’Plisti (or Supplistia) Boswell, who also bore the nickname of “Jumping
Jack,” of whom I give a reminiscence or two here.
One day a country squire was driving a pony chaise along a lane, and,
rounding a corner, he came upon a ring of Gypsies roasting hedgehogs.
Imagine his astonishment to see a slender lad spring up, and, running a
few yards, take a flying leap clear over the pony’s back, a feat so
pleasing to the squire that he called the boy to his side and, presenting
him with a bright crown-piece, offered—so the tale runs—“to keep him like
a gentleman for life.” In return for which kindness, the Gypsy was
expected to disown his people, a condition which was not jumped at by
Jack.
’Plisti’s home in Gypsy Court was one day the scene of a singular
incident. A fox closely pursued by the hounds dashed through the open
door of the living-room, where before the fire lay the Gypsy asleep and
snoring. Reynard in his haste managed to sweep the sleeper’s face with
his brush; and mighty was the yell that burst from ’Plisti’s throat on
being thus disturbed, causing the fox to seek refuge in a hovel hard by,
where the dogs fell upon him. A brother of mine who was in the court at
the time obtained possession of the brush, and the trophy was given a
conspicuous place in our home.
In those days it was no unusual course for the Gypsy lads to enlist in
the Militia, and ’Plisti looked every inch a soldier as he marched
homeward from the morning’s drill on the common. In play he would level
his musket at you, and laugh like a merry boy, if you caught his spirit
and made believe that you were wounded. If he was proud of his scarlet
jacket, his characteristic Gypsy vanity led him to glory in shirts of
dyes so resplendent that in comparison the vaunted multi-coloured coat of
Joseph would indeed have been thrown into the shade.
The Gypsy spell cast upon me in childhood was now reinforced by my
discovery of the autobiographical writings of George Borrow. It was in
my teens that I devoured _Lavengro_ in its original three-volume form.
By taper-light in an attic bedroom at home, or in some hollow on the
common where the battered race-cards whitened the base of the gorse
bushes—our old common is the annual scene of the Lincolnshire Handicap—I
thrilled over the boy Borrow’s encounter with the Gypsies in the green
lane at Norman Cross. I followed him through the crowded horse-fair at
Norwich, and into the smoky tents pitched upon Mousehold Heath. But the
episode which impressed me most of all was the fight with the Flaming
Tinman. The _dramatis personæ_ of that narrative would pursue me even
into my dreams. _The Romany Rye_, with its vivid picture of Horncastle
Fair, was pleasant enough reading, though not nearly so fascinating as
_Lavengro_. Little did I think that the coming days were to bring some
of Borrows originals within my ken.
[Picture: A daughter of “Jasper Petulengro”]
How far Borrow’s Gypsies are portraits of individuals, and to what extent
we are able to identify them, are questions which have often been asked.
Don Jorge would probably have denied the charge of individual
portraiture, yet there is no doubt that he had definite prototypes in his
mind’s eye when penning his narratives. Just as in _Guy Mannering_, Sir
Walter Scott portrayed an actual Jean Gordon under the name of Meg
Merrilies, so we know that Borrow has given us his old friend Ambrose
Smith under the now famous cognomen of “Jasper Petulengro,” a fact made
plain by Dr. Knapp in his monumental work {28} familiar to all Gypsy
students. Shortly before his death at Dunbar in October, 1878, Ambrose
Smith and his wife Sanspirela (a Heron before marriage), together with
their family, had been noticed and befriended by Queen Victoria. To wit:
the following entry in _More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the
Highlands_.
“_August_ 26_th_, 1878.—At half-past three started with Beatrice,
Leopold, and the Duchess in the landau, and four, the Duke, Lady Ely,
General Ponsonby, and Mr. Yorke, going in the second carriage, and
Lord Haddington riding all the way. We drove through the west part
of Dunbar, which was very full, and we were literally pelted with
small nosegays, till the carriage was full of them; then for some
distance past the village of Belheven, Knockendale Hill, where were
stationed in their best attire the queen of the gipsies, an oldish
woman [Sanspirela] with a yellow handkerchief on her head, and a
youngish, very dark, and truly gipsy-like woman in velvet and a red
shawl, and another woman. The queen is a thorough gipsy, with a
scarlet cloak and a yellow handkerchief around her head. Men in red
hunting-coats, all very dark, and all standing on a platform here,
bowed and waved their handkerchiefs.”
In the seventh chapter of _The Romany Rye_, Borrow tells how he one day
got his dinner “entirely off the body of a squirrel which had been shot
the day before by a chal of the name of Piramus, who, besides being a
good shot, was celebrated for his skill in playing on the fiddle.”
Nieces of Piramus Gray, whom I know, have testified to their uncle’s
excellence as a marksman, and on the authority of Sinfai, a daughter of
Piramus, I have been told that Ambrose Smith’s praise of her father’s
fiddling was well founded.
“About a week ago my people and myself” (the speaker is Ambrose,
_i.e._ Jasper Petulengro) “were encamped on a green by a plantation
in the neighbourhood of a great house. In the evening we were making
merry, the girls dancing, while Piramus was playing on the fiddle a
tune of his own composing, to which he had given his own name,
Piramus of Rome, and which is much celebrated amongst our people, and
from which I have been told one of the grand gorgio composers who
once heard it has taken several hints.”
The gifted fiddler was at that time only a slim fellow of twenty-eight
summers. Long years afterwards, when Piramus was a very old man and I a
youth of twenty, I remember seeing him in our Lincolnshire town of Louth,
where he was still tapping with his tinker’s hammer and fondling his
violin in his cottage at the River Head. A story which the old man never
tired of telling was that of his brother Jack’s heroism.
Upon a day, many years ago, the children of Piramus were boating on a
river, and, their craft capsizing, all were flung into the stream. Jack,
who happened to be on the bank, leaped in and saved all but two, the
oldest and the youngest, who were drowned. In his day Piramus had
excelled as a fighter, and certainly the knotty fists of the aged tinman
looked as if they had done service in the bruising line.
Two visitors who loved to cheer the last days of Piramus were his
daughter Sinfai and her husband, Isaac Heron, who have themselves now
passed away. Whenever I think of the tall figure of Old Isaac, I recall
one evening in the summer of 1876, when a camp of the Herons lay just
outside of Lincoln. What appeared to be a Gypsy trial was in progress,
and I remember the inward thrill on beholding those Herons in a ring,
chattering like a flock of daws. Inside the circle stands a young man,
bare-headed, stripped of coat and vest, and gesticulating wildly. Now he
flings his arms about, and now he thrusts his fingers through his shaggy
black hair. On his brow the sweat stands in beads. I can hear the name
“Wilhelmina,” as it comes in a piercing shriek from his lips. The old
men and women are muttering together as calmly they look on. In that
throng were Isaac and Sinfai, along with some of the older Yorkshire
Herons, Golias, Khulai, and others.
In after years I came to know very intimately many members of the clan
Heron, and among them a niece of that weird old hag, Mrs. Herne (to use
Borrow’s spelling of the name), who sent the poisoned cake to Lavengro in
Mumper’s Dingle.
Having had a romantic interest in the Gypsies aroused in me thus early, I
naturally looked forward to the days when I should leave home and meet
the people of the _kawlo rat_ (black blood) in other parts of the
country.