A GYPSY SEPULCHRE—BURIAL LORE—THE PASSING OF JONATHAN
IN Tetford churchyard, not far from my Rectory on the Lincolnshire Wolds,
lies the grave of two celebrated Gypsies, Tyso Boswell and Edward, or “No
Name,” Hearn (Heron), who were killed by lightning on 5th August 1831.
The incident seems to have made a profound impression upon our Gypsies,
and to this day it is everywhere remembered among the Anglo-Romany clans.
A large company of the Boswells and Hearns (Herons) appear to have halted
at Tetford on their way to Horncastle August Fair, at that time a
horse-mart of great importance. Overtaken by a thunderstorm, Tyso and No
Name were sheltering in a barn, whither they had gone for some straw,
when a stroke of lightning descended fatally upon them.
An aged Gypsy, Lucy Brown (born in the year 1807), once informed me that
she remembered the incident quite clearly. Said she, “We were camping
atop of Tetford Hill, just above Ruckland Valley, when the lightning
struck the poor fellows. We were on our way to Horncastle Fair. I mind
it all, _rashai_, as if it had happened only yesterday.”
In Westarus Boswell’s autobiography, recorded (in his own words) by Smart
and Crofton in their work _The Dialect of the English Gypsies_, are some
references to this event—
“I was born at Dover. My father (Tyso) was a soldier, and I was born
in the army. My father, when I was born, was in charge of the great
gun (Queen Anne’s pocket-piece). After a while he came home, and
left the army. He came down into Yorkshire, and there he stayed for
many years, and all our family were brought up in that county, and
there we all stayed after he was killed in Lincolnshire. He died
when I was a lad. The lightning struck him and another, both
together. They were cousins. Our people put them both in one grave.
There I left them, poor fellows. I was much grieved at it. He
(Tyso) always dressed well. When he was buried, I took a wife, and
went all over the country. . . . His cousin’s name was called No
Name, because he was not christened till he was an old man, and then
they called him Edward.”
A curious story attaches to “No Name” Hearn. His parents took him to
church to be christened, and when the parson said, “Name this child,” the
Gypsy mother answered, “It’s Jehovah, sir.” “I cannot give your child
that name,” protested the clergyman. Whereupon the Gypsies stalked out
of the church muttering, “He shall be called ‘No Name,’” and by this
fore-name he was known all through his life, although in his old age, as
Westarus Boswell has told us, he was baptized in the name of Edward.
As might be expected, the funeral of Tyso and Edward was attended by many
Gypsies from far and near, and for some years afterwards the grave was
visited annually by relatives, who are said to have poured libations of
ale upon it. A grandson of Tyso relates that he once found a hole “as
big as a fire bucket” in the side of the grave. This he stuffed with
hay, and to my own knowledge the hole is still there, the brickwork of
the vault having fallen inward. Aged folk at Tetford tell how a witch
formerly lived in a cottage near the churchyard. One of her cats
kittened down the hole in the vault, and passers-by would shudder to see
the kittens bolt like rabbits into the Gypsies’ grave.
* * * * *
If the Gypsies possess any religion at all, it may be summed up in one
sentence—reverence for the dead. In bygone ages the Gypsies buried their
dead in wild lonely spots, and though for many years the wanderers have
been granted Christian burial, yet now and then an aged _Romanitshel_ on
his deathbed will express a desire to be laid to rest in the open and not
in the churchyard. Moses Boswell, a Derbyshire Gypsy, requested that he
might be buried “under the fireplace,” _i.e._ on the site of an
encampment of his people. When dying, Isaac Heron said, “Bury me under a
hedge,” a reminiscence of the earlier mode of sepulture. In his
_Lavengro_, Borrow describes the burial of old Mrs. Herne: “The body was
placed not in a coffin but on a bier, and carried not to the churchyard
but to a deep dingle close by; and there it was buried beneath a rock,
dressed just as I have told (in a red cloak and big bonnet of black
beaver); and this was done at the bidding of Leonora, who had heard her
_bebee_ (aunt) say that she wished to be buried, not in gorgeous fashion,
but like a Roman woman of the old blood.”
On the information of some East-Anglian Gypsies, my friend, Mr. T. W.
Thompson, a good tsiganologue, writes: “It must have been somewhere about
1830 when Borrow’s friend, Ambrose Smith (Jasper Petulengro), found one
of the Hernes burying his wife in a ditch near Gorleston, took the body
away and gave it a Christian burial to prevent further trouble befalling
the old man.”
In an entertaining volume entitled, _Caravanning and Camping Out_, Mr. J.
Harris Stone describes a wayside Gypsy burial—
“Some twenty years ago a Gypsy died in an encampment near Lulworth Cove
in Dorset, and a friend of mine, who had become great friends with the
tribe because he used to go and sing comic songs to them and perform
simple conjuring tricks, was asked to the funeral. He told me that the
coffin was black, and the burial took place at the cross-roads—not
exactly in the centre of the roadway where the highways crossed, but on
the patch of roadside waste at the angle of one of the roads. Water was
sprinkled on the coffin and earth thrown on, in the course of the ritual
in Romany, but no parson was present.”
Near the grass-grown sand-dunes of an East Lincolnshire parish is a
camping-place frequented by Gypsies for many years past. In turning up
the soil thereabouts not long ago, some labourers came upon a human
skeleton, probably that of a Gypsy who had been buried there.
I give these instances because it has been strongly asserted that
Christian burial only has been the Gypsies’ usage for the last two
hundred years.
Sometimes a careful watch is kept over the body between death and burial.
A Welsh correspondent who had an opportunity of observing this practice,
writes: “I found my Romany friends seated around a fire, and close by in
a van lay the dead wife of one of the company, awaiting burial on the
morrow. Gypsies about here do not go to bed from the time of a death
till after the funeral. They sit in company around the fire, and now and
again fall back and doze, but at least three must keep awake. If only
two were awake, one might drop off to sleep and that would leave only
one. Fear of the ghost is given as the reason why they sit in company by
the fire.”
As a rule, the corpse is attired in the best clothes worn during life.
Sometimes the garments are turned inside out, a practice in Bulgarian
mourning. When Zachariah Smith was buried in Yorkshire four years ago
the following articles were enclosed in his coffin: a suit of clothes,
besides the one he was wearing, watch and chain, a muffler, four pocket
handkerchiefs, a hammer, a candle, and twopence.
On the day after the funeral, old-fashioned Gypsies destroy the
possessions of the dead, money excepted. All consumable belongings are
burnt, while the crockery, iron utensils, and other articles are broken
and dropped into a river, or buried, if no water is near. Jewellery is
often disposed of in a similar manner. The horse of the deceased is
either shot, or sold to the knackers to be destroyed. Fear of the ghost
is the explanation of these ceremonies. So long as the possessions of
the dead person remain intact, the ghost is believed to hover about them.
In order, therefore, to dispel the ghost of the dead, his belongings are
destroyed.
Another observance, expressing in a striking manner the grief of the
bereaved, is seen in their abstention for many years, or for ever, from
the favourite food, beverage, or pastime of the loved one whom they have
lost. One day Richard Petulengro called at my door and was offered
refreshment in the kitchen—“Not any ale, thank you. My brother died a
bit ago, and he was wery fond of it. I don’t touch it now.”
It is recorded of Old Isaac Joule that he would often spend whole nights
watching by his Gypsy wife’s tomb in Yatton churchyard. Her headstone,
which may still be seen, bears the lines—
“Here lies Merily Joule
A beauty bright:
That left Isaac Joule
Her heart’s delight
1827.”
Sometimes unusual articles are laid on graves. Upon his boy’s grave,
Bohemia Boswell deposited a little teapot from which the boy used to
drink. Rodney Smith placed a breast-pin upon his mother’s grave in
Norton churchyard.
Gypsies shrink from uttering the names of the dead. Fear of invoking the
ghost underlies this ancient tabu. One of the Herons had a child named
Chasey, who died, and now he never utters that name. He even invented a
nickname for a friend bearing the name of Chasey, in order to avoid
pronouncing the name of his own dead child.
One day, during conversation with Frampton Boswell, Groome asked—
“How did you get your name, Frampton; was it your father’s?”
“I can’t tell you that, but wait a minute.” And going to his mother’s
caravan, he returned with a framed photograph of a gravestone.
“That was my poor father’s name, but I’ve never spoken it since the day
he died.”
“He don’t want her to walk,” said my old friend, Frank Elliot, in
explanation of a Gypsy’s reluctance to mention his dead sister’s name. A
Gypsy boy was baptized Vyner Smith, but when his Uncle Vyner died, the
boy was renamed Robert, because the name Vyner was too painful a reminder
of the departed relation.
A death-omen among Gypsies is the cry of the “death-hawk” heard over a
camp by night. A Gypsy once told me how two crows and two yellow pigeons
flew to and fro over him in a town street in the early morning. By these
signs he knew that his wife had died in the hospital, and so it proved.
* * * * *
Let me close this chapter with the passing of my old friend Jonathan
Boswell. Not long ago tidings reached me that he had died in his
travelling cart, in which I have spent some happy hours with him on the
road. The last time I saw Jonathan alive he was seated by his fire on a
little lonely common, and near him stood the old cart looking so very
ramshackle that a gust of wind might almost have wrecked it. Among the
tufted bog-rushes, the lambs were gambolling a few yards away. As I sat
with him, my old friend talked of bygone jaunts we had taken together,
and his grandson, who was present, recalled the day he once spent at our
Rectory. With slow and feeble steps Jonathan walked with me to the edge
of the common and waved his cap in farewell. I never saw him again. I
like to think of the old man as, looking back, I saw him holding out his
hand to fondle a lamb whose confidence he had won while camping on the
common.
[Picture: A London Gypsy. Photo. Fred Shaw]
About a month after receiving the news of the death of my old pal, I came
upon his grandson, who told me that the _vâdo_ (cart) had been
_hotsherdo_ (burnt). The fragments which remained after the fire were
duly buried, and the faithful nag had been sent away to the hunt-kennels.
Thus, with the ancient ceremonies of his race, my old friend had been
laid to rest.
TO THE ENGLISH GIPSIES. {246}
“You soon will pass away;
Laid one by one below the village steeple
You face the East from which your fathers sprang,
Or sleep in moorland turf, beyond the clang
Of towns and fairs; your tribes have joined the people
Whom no true Romany will call by name,
The folk departed like the camp-fire flame
Of withered yesterday.”