A NIGHT WITH THE GYPSIES—THE SWEEP OF LYNN—LONDON GYPSIES—ON EPSOM DOWNS
“IT ain’t fit to turn a dog out o’ doors, that it ain’t, so you’d better
make up your mind to stop all night.”
Saying this, Gypsy Ladin closed the porch door, but not without
difficulty, for a gale was battering upon the wayside bungalow. Half an
hour ago, as I hurried along the willow-fringed “ramper” on my way to see
this old Romany pal, black rain-clouds, bulging low over the fenland
wapentake, had foretold an approaching storm; and now with the descent of
the May night the tempest had burst in full fury upon the land.
Torrential rain, swift swelling rushes of wind, and brilliant flashes of
lightning made me glad to be housed with my friend in his fire-lit room.
Hidden by a dense hedge from the highway, this Gypsy abode stood back
amid a cluster of apple trees, and a daylight view of the place would
have revealed to you an entirely nondescript habitation, with here a
home-made porch, and there a creeper-grown extension sheltering a green
caravan in which Ladin and his wife Juli have travelled many a mile over
the smooth causeways of the far-reaching flats.
Let me picture for you the tiny apartment where we now sat happily
blowing clouds of tobacco smoke. Over the wide fireplace, which occupied
one side of the room, rose a high mantelpiece surrounded by coloured
prints of Derby winners, divided one from another by glistening
horse-bits and brass-bound whips. Opposite the fireplace a small
casement looked out upon a bulb-garden aglow by day with hyacinths,
tulips, and narcissi—a common sight in the Fens. The side walls were
adorned with portraits of Gypsy relatives deceased and living, and the
brazen ornaments on parts of a van-horse’s harness gleamed in the rays of
the pendant lamp. Before the fire sat my friend and his wife, a tall,
striking woman of the old-fashioned Draper clan, and along with us were
two youthful sons of the house, Rinki and Zegul, smart, quick-eyed
fellows, who occupied a home-made bench opposite my seat of honour in the
chimney corner. At our feet lay a dark lurcher, a type of dog whose
peculiar qualities are well appreciated by Gypsies.
I have already spoken of my friend as “Gypsy” Ladin, but his ruddy
complexion and grey eyes are scarcely suggestive of the pure Romany.
About the good “black blood” of his wife, however, there can be no manner
of doubt. Probably my friend would agree with the roving _gawjo_, who,
having married a pure Gypsy, declared that the mingling of gentile and
Romany crafts was a desirable blending of qualities. Did not Lazzy
Smith, renowned in Gypsydom, once say—
“Ain’t it in the Bible that God’s people should multiply and be as
one? It ain’t no sort o’ use at all a-goin’ agen the dear blessed
Lord’s words. Why, a cross is good, even if it be only in wheat,
ain’t it, now?”
Belonging to East Anglia, Ladin’s forelders have mingled a good deal with
the Herons who formerly travelled the counties bordering upon the North
Sea. Himself akin to the Chilcots and Smiths, Ladin has inherited not a
few traditions of these families.
“Do you remember Yoki Shuri Smith?” I asked.
“You mean Old Ryley’s wife? Ay, I mind her well, but Ryley I don’t
remember. Shuri”—Ladin shivered as he uttered the name—“was looked upon
as a _tshovihawni_ (witch) by our folks. We allus thought it unlucky to
meet her on the road of a morning. I’ve known my folks turn back,
saying, ‘It ain’t no use going out to-day.’”
After a discussion of Shuri’s “powers,” I ventured upon a tale of my own
experience of a witch who lived in a parish of which I was formerly
curate-in-charge.
About a fortnight after my arrival at the Rectory, our aged gardener took
me into his confidence.
“Excuse me askin’ if you’ve seen Old Betty what lives agin the well at
the bottom of the lane? You must mind you don’t never get across wi’
that woman, or she’ll sartinly mek things awk’ard for you.”
The man’s meaning was that Betty had “peculiar powers.” A widow of sixty
or more, she attended no place of worship, and rarely covered her grey
head with anything more than a shawl. Besides her allowance from the
parish, she managed to make a little money by selling ointments for
wounds and sores, and many a cure has been wrought by means of her
home-made compounds. My first meeting with her was on the Feast of St.
Thomas, called in those parts “Mumping Day.” At my door stood Old Betty
asking for a bit of silver, and a few yards behind her came several other
widows. Hesitatingly I stood just over the threshold, when suddenly,
before I could step aside, a lot of soft snow slid from the house-roof
with a splash upon my bare head, while Old Betty and her companions
laughed loud and long. The village gossips duly spread it abroad that
Betty had, by her “peculiar powers,” brought down the snow upon the
parson’s head. Anyway, I resolved for the future to be more prompt in
the exercise of that unfailing charm against Betty’s witchcraft—a silver
shilling.
* * * * *
“Did you ever see my Aunt Sarah at Blackpool?” said Juli.
“Yes, I once had tea in her tent on the South Shore. Did she and her
_rom_ (husband), Edward, ever travel on this side of England?”
“Sartinly, they did. Ned’s daddy, Tyso, lies buried in your country.
Poor old man, many’s the time I’ve heard the tale about him and the
shepherd boy.”
“What was that?”
* * * * *
“Well, Tyso was once _hatsh_in (camping) on a Norfolk common and got
a-talking with a boy tending sheep. Says the boy to Tyso—
“‘I can tell you where there’s a buried box full o’ money.’
“‘Show me the place,’ says Tyso.
“The boy took him to a little low, green hill, and then they fetches a
spade and digs into it. Sure enough they bared the lid of an old iron
chest with a ring on top, and both of ’em tugged hard at the ring, but
the box wouldn’t budge an inch. Just then Tyso swore, and the ring
slipped outen their hands, and down went the box and they never see’d it
no more.”
* * * * *
“One time the Herrens (Herons) used to come about here a good deal.
There was handsome William, a wery notified man he were. Then there was
Old Niabai and Crowy. Their son Isaac had a boy born at Lynn close by
here—that was Îza. You’ll know him sure-ly. I’ve often met Ike’s
half-brother Manful in Lynn. I can see him now, a little doubled-up old
man. I ’spects you’s heard tell of Manful’s diamond? One day in a
public, he catch’d sight of something shining among the sand—they sanded
the slab floors in them days—and, whatever the thing was, it shone like a
bit of cut-glass, and at first he thought it wasn’t worth stooping for,
but when the taproom was empty he picked it up, and _dawdi_! if it wasn’t
a diamond as big as a cobnut. So away he takes it to a pawnbroker’s
shop, and the head man told him it were worth hundreds of pounds. My
dear old dad once saw it with his own eyes.”
* * * * *
While the black trees shuddered outside in the tempest, Ladin next told a
story I shall never forget.
* * * * *
“When my uncle, Alfred Herren, and his wife Becky was a-travelling in
Shropshire, they draw’d their wagon one night into a by-lane—so they
thought—just outside the village, but daylight show’d ’em it were a
gentleman’s drive leading up to a red mansion among the trees. Did my
uncle pull out when he found he’d made a mistake? No, for a wery good
reason he stopped where he was. His missis had been took ill in the
night, and a little gell were born. The doctor gave no hopes at all for
the wife, and just when things looked blackest, a groom on horseback came
up from the mansion, and, slamming on the wagon-side with his whipstock,
shouted—
“‘Clear out of here, you rascally Gypsies, afore my master sees you.’
“Uncle Alfred put his head outen the door, and said—
“‘Stop it, my man. There’s a woman a-dying in here. I’d take it kind of
you to go to the big house yonder and ask the good lady to come and pray
by a dying Gypsy.’
“Off goes the groom with the message, and soon the squire’s lady come
along carrying a basket of good things, and did all she could for Becky,
but the poor thing died. After that the parson came to christen the
baby.
“‘What name?’ he asks.
“‘Flower o’ May,’ says my uncle. The wagon stood under a may-tree, and
the flowers were dropping on the grass like snow. Now, the squire and
his lady come along. Says he—
“‘The Almighty has never given us the blessing of a child, so we would
like to adopt this little girl of yours and bring her up as our own.
Here’ (holding up a bag) ‘are one hundred sovereigns. Take them, my good
man, and let us have the baby.’
“‘Nay,’ says my uncle, ‘you may keep your bag of gold. I can’t never
part wi’ my little gell.’
“Years went by, and at last my uncle fell ill and died. Then my own
parents took care of the little gell, and they changed her name to Rodi,
for they couldn’t abide to hear the name Flower o’ May no more; it
reminded ’em too sadly of them as had gone.”
* * * * *
On arising from my couch next morning, it was a pleasure to find that the
air was moderately quiet, and patches of blue were showing between the
rolling clouds. Breakfast over, my friends showed me round their garden
gay with flowering bulbs. Gypsy-like, they had numerous pets—a pair of
long-eared owls, a jackdaw, a goldfinch, some dainty bantams, and two or
three pheasants in a wired poultry-run. Now the Gypsies came as far as
the highway to see me off. Tender leaves and twigs strewed the road, as
I mounted my bicycle, and after pedalling through several villages, the
roofs of King’s Lynn began to appear ahead. A turn in the road at last
brought me to a bridge spanning the broad river Ouse discoloured by
flood-water. In a yard of the tavern just across the river, the chimneys
of several Gypsy vans were to be seen. I therefore dismounted to make
inquiries. Sunning himself on a bench outside the inn, sat a tall Gypsy
man emptying a mug of Norfolk ale.
“_Sâ shan_, _baw_?” (How do, mate?) said I, sitting down beside him. He
turned out to be one of the Kilthorpes, and his pals in the yard were
Coopers from London.
* * * * *
An hour or two later, as I was loitering at a street corner in Lynn, I
observed not far away a two-wheeled hooded cart drawn by a tired horse.
From under a dark archway they emerged, and, coming into the light, I
noticed an old woman under the hood smoking a pipe, and just then, from
behind the cart stepped a sweep, who disappeared into a coal-yard,
carrying a sack in his hand. Following him, I heard him say—
“Half a hundred-weight, missis.” A burly woman, having weighed out the
coal, poured it into the sack—a bottomless receptacle—and the black lumps
were scattered about the floor.
“_Muk man peser_” (Let me pay), said I, from behind the sweep. Whereupon
the grimy old fellow looked round with an amazed stare.
“_Pariko tuti_, _rai_” (Thank you, sir), he stammered out, and, producing
a piece of string, he tied the sack bottom securely, and the two of us
picked up the littered coal.
“Where are you living?” I asked.
“_Pawdel_ the _pâni_” (Across the water) “in West Lynn. We’ve been away
for three months, and we’re going round to our house now. Come across
to-night. Anybody will tell you where Old Stivven lives.”
When the yellow street-lamps were twinkling in the dusk, I groped my way
down a long dark passage, and at the foot of a flight of slippery wet
steps, found a black coble moored. For ten minutes or so I waited till a
man in a jersey appeared and rowed me across the broad, rolling Ouse. At
the “White Swan” inn I made inquiry for my sweep, and was given an
address, and discovered a sweep, but, alas, he wasn’t my man at all, and
I began to think Old Stephen had tricked me. But now I was given another
address, where I found my man and his wife in their living-room, amid a
spread of blankets and bedding airing in front of a bright fire. For a
while we talked, and then at the sweep’s suggestion we moved across to
the “White Swan.”
Stephen had formerly travelled with Barney Mace, an uncle of Jem, the
world-famed pugilist, who had a boxing booth which he took to country
fairs up and down the land, and in order to _tâder_ the _gawjê_ (draw the
gentiles), Stephen and Poley (Barney’s son) would engage in a few rounds
just outside the booth.
The sweep had known Old Ōseri Gray, commonly called “Sore-eyed Horsery,”
who died some years ago at King’s Lynn. He was a renowned Gypsy fiddler.
If he heard a band play a tune, he would go home and reproduce the air on
his violin, putting in such variations, grace-notes, shakes, and runs,
that none of his fellows could compare with him.
* * * * *
Among the sweep’s reminiscences was a curious story about an eccentric
Gypsy who had a fancy for carrying his coffin in his travelling van. The
man had a daughter, a grown woman, who went about with him, his wife
having died some years before. One afternoon while she was away with her
basket in the village, her father took out the coffin and was busy
repainting it when a thunderstorm descended. The Gypsy took shelter in
his _vâdo_, which was drawn up near an elm tree on a bit of a common.
Picture the grief and dismay of his daughter on returning to find her
father a corpse, for a flash of lightning had struck the tree and the van
and killed the old Romany. On the day of the Gypsy’s funeral, the vicar
of the parish had the flag flying half-mast high on the church tower,
which everybody said was a kindly feeling to show for one who was only a
wandering Gypsy.
On asking my sweep about the house-dwelling Gypsies of Lynn, he directed
me to the abode of the aged widow of Louis Boss (son of the famous Ryley
Boswell or Boss), and a charming reception she gave me in her spotless
cottage in a retired court. The sweep had told me of this old lady’s
liking for snuff, and a visit to a _tuvalo budika_ (tobacco shop) enabled
me to give her a little pleasure. By the fireside she refilled her shiny
metal box, and, having offered me a trial of the pungent dust, herself
took deep, loving pinches, with the air of a connoisseur. Indeed, the
snuff cemented our friendship forthwith. Here I am reminded of a story
telling how Dr. Manning (of the Religious Tract Society) once employed
snuff in a very different fashion. When visiting Granada in Spain, he
was beset by a begging crew of swarthy men, women, and children, and as
he stood in the middle of the clamouring horde, he took out his
snuff-box. Immediately all the Gypsies wanted a pinch. He obliged them,
so long as the snuff lasted, taking care to keep a tight hold of his
silver box. Soon the Gypsies were all sneezing and laughing
immoderately, and amid the commotion the good doctor managed to make his
escape.
The road from King’s Lynn to East Dereham led me through villages astir
with Whitsuntide festivities. At one point I turned down a by-lane, and,
resting at the foot of a tree within view of Borrow’s birthplace at
Dumpling Green, I observed a party of donkey-folk trudging along with
their animals towards Dereham. Local mumpers were these people, a
draggle-tailed lot, and I could not help reflecting upon the difference
between the poor wanderers who now pass for Gypsies and the Petulengros
and Herons of Borrow’s time.
In the church of East Dereham, one’s fancy pictured the boy Borrow in the
corner of a pew fixing his eyes upon the dignified rector and parish
clerk “from whose lips would roll many a portentous word descriptive of
the wondrous works of the Most High.”
It was like living in _Lavengro_ to wander about the alleys and lanes of
old Norwich and through the ling and fern on breezy Mousehold above the
town. Up there amid the camping sites and the fighting-pits, it was not
without sadness that I read on a notice-board—“No Gypsy, squatter, or
vagrant shall frequent, or resort to, or remain upon the Heath.” O
shades of Jasper Petulengro and Tawno Chikno, changed indeed are the
times since the days when ye loved and fought and trafficked within the
precincts of beautiful old Norwich!
Concerning my trip by boat from Yarmouth to London, which was entirely
lacking in Gypsy interest, nothing need be said here.
London is in parts strongly tinctured with Gypsy blood. Let anyone walk
along the streets which have been built upon the sites of the old
metropolitan Gypsyries, and he will surely see dark faces and black eyes
telling how the Gypsies still cling to these localities. All around
Latimer Road Station, which stands upon the Potteries, Gypsies are to be
found living in narrow courts and dingy lanes.
On my way to Epsom on the eve of the Derby, I passed a few happy moments
with my aged pal, Robert Petulengro, in whose back room at Notting Hill I
have often been regaled with racy stories and touching reminiscences of
old-time Romany life. There is something suggestive of the cleric in
Bob’s demeanour, and a stranger would never suspect that my
placid-looking friend had led a wild, roving life. It is when he loses
himself in a tale that his mild ministerial air gives place to a vivacity
characteristically Gypsy.
To the Gypsyry on the Potteries came nomads named Heron and Leatherlund
in the year 1854. (Some of their descendants still reside at the backs
of the mews in Notting Hill.) They were the survivors of a sad disaster
which in the previous year had befallen a party of hop-pickers at Hadlow
in Kent. Through the kindness of a Gypsy woman who was “saved from the
flood,” I am able to reprint a portion of an old tract giving the Rev. R.
Shindler’s version of “The Medway Disaster.”
“In Kent you may still be told of a sad catastrophe which befel a
party of hop-pickers, in the year 1853, as they were returning to
their temporary habitations after a day’s work. The scene of the
alarming event was in the parish of Hadlow, near Tunbridge, Kent. It
is well known that thousands of poor people flock down into Kent for
the hopping. Some of these are Gypsies; some may be described as
house-cart people, who travel from place to place for the greater
part of the year, selling their wares—brushes and brooms, tin-ware,
earthen-ware, and such-like; but by far the larger part emerge from
the lanes and alleys and courts of London. To the last especially,
but to the others also, the hopping proves, when the weather is fine
and the hops good, a pleasant recreation as well as a profitable
employment. A number of people of Gypsy character and habits were
employed by a farmer who resided in the parish of Tudely, and who had
hop gardens also in Hadlow parish. It is a good rule among the
hop-farmers, that when their gardens are any considerable distance
from the homes of the natives or the encampments of the strangers,
the pickers should be conveyed in wagons to and from the gardens. In
this case, the river Medway had to be crossed in going to and from
the gardens, and the only means of crossing was a wooden bridge of
considerable span, and high above the current. The bridge was
considered dangerous, especially for spirited horses, who were
alarmed at the noise made by their own feet. The bridge was rendered
even more dangerous by reason of the rather frail open wooden rails
which flanked it right and left.
“On the morning of the day on which the catastrophe occurred, several
parties passed over the bridge in safety, and in the evening parties
of natives, or ‘home-dwellers,’ had returned without any mishap; but
as a party of Gypsies and suchlike were being conveyed back, the
horses suddenly took fright, ran the wagon against the side of the
bridge, which gave way, and wagon, horses, and people were
precipitated into the strong current below, and no less than thirty
were drowned. I was then pastor in a neighbouring parish, and had
taken a deep interest in the religious condition of the hoppers,
preaching in fields and stackyards and elsewhere near their
encampments, and distributing tracts and New Testaments. The sad
event mentioned above stirred my heart a great deal, and I felt
impelled to write a short tract. The thirty hop-pickers were buried
in Hadlow churchyard in a common grave, the spot being marked by a
monument recording the names of those who perished in the waters of
the Medway.”
There are in Battersea numerous “yards” under railway arches, where
living-vans of “travellers” used to be seen all the year round. Very
much diluted is the Gypsy blood to be found nowadays in these “yards.”
It is these degenerates, mostly Londoners bred and born, who at times
give so much trouble to the local authorities in Surrey.
Upon Hampstead Heath, and at Wormwood Scrubbs, a sprinkling of Gypsy
faces may be seen among the show-folk on a Bank Holiday, and at Edmonton,
Mitcham, and near Southend-on-Sea, I have met Gypsies all the year round.
If the Yorkshireman goes to see the St. Leger because he has an
instinctive love of horse-flesh, the Cockney resorts to Epsom Downs on
the Derby Day to smell the scent of green turf and to take part in the
most stupendous picnic in the world.
Not merely to see a crowd of nearly a million human beings, but to sample
Epsom’s Gypsies, was the object of my visit to the Downs one
unforgettable June day. London’s unyielding pavements mean for me, after
a day or two of them, an unpleasant foot-soreness, hence it was a relief
to step forth upon the springy sward outside the Downs Station. Like
children let loose from school, my fellow-travellers from town laughed
and joked, whistled and sang, as briskly they moved towards the course.
It was among the gorse bushes on the sunlit hilltop that I caught my
first glimpse of the Gypsies, and to one acquainted with the swart
_Romanitshel_s of East Anglia and the Northern Counties, the folk of the
ramshackle carts and tiny tents were distinctly disappointing. Ruddy,
fair-haired, and poorly-clad, were many of them; what a falling off from
the horde of dark Gypsies assembled at some of our North-Country fairs!
While I was chatting with a metropolitan policeman, up came a tall Gypsy
girl vending what purported to be tiny squares of cedar wood, though the
specimen I purchased for threepence smelled a good deal more like the
innermost layer of the red bark abounding in the strips of pine forest
around Tunbridge Wells. When I inquired of the damsel as to what Gypsies
were present on the Downs, she replied, with a low laugh, “You’s never
got to go far in these parts for to catch an Ayre. My dad’s an Ayre, but
my _dai_ (mother) was a Stevens. Over there” (pointing to a town of
Gypsy caravans and a country fair combined opposite the Grand Stand)
“you’ll find some of the Matthews, Penfolds, and maybe a few of the
Bucklands.”
[Picture: On the Racecourse. Photo. Valentine]
Crossing the course, I made my way to the part of the Downs indicated by
Cinderella Ayre, and though I rubbed shoulders with a good many sunburnt
travellers in corduroys, and show-women in gowns of red and green, the
first real Gypsy it was my good fortune to meet was Davy Lee, the ancient
vagabond who “planted” the _duker_in-_mokto_ (fortune-telling box) upon
George Smith of Coalville. Although nearly blind, Davy managed to dodge
in and out of the crowd, and, taking me up to his wagon, found time to
chat about his father, the renowned Zacky Lee.
“My daddy was stopping one night in a field, and before going to bed, he
looked out and there was his white donkey—leastways so he fancied. It
was roaming about, and he set off to catch and tether it, so as he
shouldn’t lose it. But do whatever he would, he could never get up to
the animal. The nearer he tried to come at it, the furder off it allus
was, till at last he know’d that what he’d been chasing all night was not
his donkey at all, but the Devil.”
Lounging on the grass, I noticed that the great event of the afternoon
had arrived. Sleek, lean horses cantered along the course and passed out
of sight. Amid a confused hubbub of voices, several moments went by.
Now the glasses were levelled, and a profound silence settled on the
crowd. All eyes were turned upon a little knot of horses appearing round
Tattenham Corner. Then the sound of many voices swelled into a roar and
died down again when the numbers went up.
Prominent at these races in days gone by was Matthias Cooper, a Gypsy to
whom the late King Edward, when Prince of Wales, would toss a golden
sovereign. A well-known figure was Matty, attired in white hat, yellow
waistcoat, black cut-away coat, and white trousers. Hovering about this
old Gypsy was an air of the Courts and the Wilderness, for had he not
mingled with royalty nearly all his life, this old “Windsor Froggie”? It
was from him that Charles G. Leland obtained most of the materials that
went to make his work entitled _The English Gipsies and their Language_.
Matty is now no more, but his sons, Anselo and Wacker, still attend the
Epsom races year by year.
The great carnival was at last subsiding when I found myself in the tent
of Anselo Cooper and his wife, with whom I took tea. I am not likely to
forget my ride from the course to Epsom Town. As the Coopers were not
leaving till the end of the week, they begged a lift for me from some
friends of theirs who were going to the town. Our “carriage,” a
two-wheeled affair, was drawn by a gaunt, long-legged horse, and along
with some strange dark Gypsies I sat upon a pile of smoky tent-covers.
We sped along the Down-land in a fashion which rocked us terribly. The
very policemen laughed as we went by, but we reached the town in safety.