and dress. He smiles admiringly at us, and seems really to want us to
know that he takes an interest in us and our mode of life.
5. The ubiquitous boarding-school girl of gentle seventeen. It may not
be etiquette, she knows, to stare or look at passers-by, but for this
once only she _will_ have a glance. Lamps shimmering crimson through
the big windows, and nicely draped curtains! how _can_ she help it? We
are glad she does not try to; her sweet young face refreshes us as do
flowers in June, and we forget all about the severe-looking female, who
turned away her eyes from beholding vanity.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Milestones and Finger-Posts.
England is the land of finger-posts and disreputable milestones. It is
the land of lanes, and that is the reason finger-posts are so much
needed.
In Scotland they keep up a decent set of milestones, but they do not
affect finger-posts. If you want to know the road, climb a hill and
look; or ask. In the wildest parts of the Highlands, about Dalwhinnie
for instance, you have snow-posts. These look quite out of place in
summer, but in winter you must steer straight from one to the other,
else, as there is no vestige of a fence, you may tumble over the
adjoining precipice.
Like the faces we meet on the roads, we have also types of milestones
and finger-posts. Of the former we have--
1. The squat milestone, of stone (page 69).
2. The parallelogram milestone, of stone (page 115).
3. The triangular milestone, also of stone, with reading on two sides
(page 124).
4. The round-headed, dilapidated milestone, that tells you nothing
(page 141).
5. The wedge-shaped milestone, stone with an iron slab let in (page
159).
6. The reticent milestone, which, instead of names, only gives you
letters (page 169).
7. The mushroom milestone, of iron. Forgive the Irish bull. This
milestone grows at Nottingham (page 178). So also does--
8. The respectable iron milestone (page 208).
9. The aesthetic milestone, of iron, and found only in the border-land
(page 219).
Of finger-posts I shall mention three types:--
1. The solid and respectable.
2. The limp and uncertain.
3. The aesthetic.
But what have we here? A milestone? Nay, but a murder-stone.
I stop the caravan and get down to look and to read the inscription, the
gist of which is as follows:
"This stone was erected to mark the spot where Eliza Shepherd, aetat
17, was cruelly murdered in 1817."
I gaze around me. It is a lovely day, with large white cumulus clouds
rolling lazily over a brilliant blue sky. It is a lonely but a lovely
place, a fairy-like ferny hollow, close to the edge of a dark wood.
Yes, it is a lovely place now in the sunlight, but I cannot help
thinking of that terrible night when poor young Eliza, returning from
the shoemaker's shop, met that tramp who with his knife did the ugly
deed. It is satisfactory to learn that he swung for it on the
gallows-tree.
But here is a notice-board worth looking at. It is a warning to
dog-owners. It reads thus:--
"Notis
Trespassers will be prosecuted
dowgs will be shote."
On a weird-looking tree behind it hangs a dead cur by the tail.
Here is a Highland post-office, simply a little red-painted dog-kennel
on the top of a pole, standing all alone in the middle of a bleak
moorland.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Tramps.
We meet these everywhere, but more especially on the great highway
between Scotland and the South.
While cruising on the coast of Africa, in open boats, wherever we found
cocoa-nut trees growing, there we found inhabitants; and so on the roads
of England, wherever you find telegraph poles, you will find tramps.
They are of both sexes, and of all sorts and sizes; and, remember, I am
not alluding to itinerant gipsies, or even to tinkers, but to the vast
army of homeless nomads, who wander from place to place during all the
sweet summer weather, and seem to like it.
Sometimes they sell trinkets, such as paper and pins, combs, or trashy
jewellery, sometimes they get a day's work here and there, but mostly
they "cadge," and their characters can be summed up in two words--"liars
and vagabonds." There are honest men on the march among them, however,
tradesmen out of work, and flitting south or north in the hopes of
bettering their condition. But these latter seldom beg, and if they do,
they talk intelligible English.
If a man comes to the back door of your caravan and addresses you thus:
"Chuck us a dollop o' stale tommy, guv'nor, will yer?" you may put him
down as a professional tramp. But if you really are an honest tramp,
reader--that is, a ragged pedestrian, a pedestrian _minus_ purple and
fine linen--then I readily admit that there is something to be said in
favour of your peculiar kind of life after all.
To loll about on sunshiny days, to recline upon green mossy banks and
dreamily chew the stalks of tender grasses, to saunter on and on and
never know nor care what or where you are coming to, to gaze upon and
enjoy the beautiful scenery, to listen to song of wild bird and drowsy
hum of bee,--all this is pleasant enough, it must be confessed.
Then you can drink of the running stream, unless, as often happens,
fortune throws the price of a pint of cold fourpenny in your way. And
you have plenty of fresh air. "Too much," do you say? Yes, because it
makes you hungry; but then, there are plenty of turnip fields. Besides,
if you call at a cottage, and put on a pitiful face, you will nearly
always find some one to "chuck you a dollop o' stale tommy."
Do you long for society? There is plenty on the road, plenty of people
in the same boat.
And you are your own master; you are as free as the wind that bloweth
where it listeth, unless indeed a policeman attempts to check your
liberty. But he may not be able to prefer a charge against you; and if
he ever goes so far as to lock you up on suspicion, it is only a
temporary change in your _modus vivendi_; you are well-housed and fed
for a week or two, then--out and away again.
When night comes on, and the evening star glints out of the himmel-blue,
you can generally manage to creep into a shed or shieling of some sort;
and if not, you have only to fall back upon the cosy hayrick.
Oh! I believe there are worse lives than yours; and if I were not a
gipsy, I am not sure I would not turn a tramp myself.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Man with the Iron Mask.
We came across him frequently away up in the north of England, and a
mysterious-looking individual he is, nearly always old, say on the shady
side of sixty.
There he sits now on a little three-legged stool by the wayside. In
front of him is a kind of anvil, in his hand a hammer. To his right is
a heap of stones mingled with gravel; from this he fills a mounted
sieve, and rakes the stones therefrom with his hammer as he wants them.
The iron mask is to protect his face and eyes, and a curious spectacle
he looks. He has probably been sitting there since morning, but as soon
as the shades of evening fall, he will take up his stool and his hammer
and wend his way homewards to his little cottage in the glen, and it is
to be hoped his "old 'ooman" will have something nice ready for his
supper.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Scotch Collie Dog.
Where will you find a dog with a more honest and open countenance than
Collie, or one more energetic and willing, or more devoted to his
master's interest? Says Bobbie Burns in his "Twa Dogs:"
"The other was a ploughman's collie.
* * * * *
He was a gash [wise] and faithfu' tyke,
As ever lap a sheugh [ditch] or dyke.
His honest sonsy bawan't [white-striped] face,
Ay gat him friends in ilka place;
His breast was white, his towsie back
Weel clad wi' coat o' glossy black,
His gawcie tail, wi' upward curl,
Hung o'er his hurdils wi' a swirl."
You find the collie everywhere all over broad Scotland. The only place
where I do not like to see him is on chain.
Yonder he is even now trotting merrily on in front of that farmer's gig,
sometimes barking with half-hysterical joy, sometimes jumping up and
kissing the old mare's soft brown nose, by way of encouraging her.
Yonder again, standing on the top of a stone fence herding cows, and
suspiciously eyeing every stranger who passes. He is giving us a line
of his mind even now. He says we are only gipsy-folk, and no doubt want
to steal a cow and take her away in the caravan.
There runs a collie assisting a sheep-drover. There trots another at
the heels of a flock of cattle.
Another is out in the field up there watching the people making hay,
while still another is lying on his master's coat, while that master is
at work. His master is only a ditcher. What does that matter? He is a
king to Collie.
At Aberuthven was a retriever-collie who--his master, at whose farm I
lay, told me--went every day down the long loaning to fetch the letters
when the postman blew his horn. This dog's name is Fred, and it was
Fred's own father who taught him this, and "_in two lessons_" Fred's
father always went for the letters, and never failed except once to
bring them. On this particular occasion, he was seen to disappear
behind a bush with a letter in his mouth, and presently to come forth
without it. No trace of it was to be found. But a week after another
letter was received asking the farmer why he had not acknowledged the
bride's cake. So the murder was out, for the dog's honesty had not been
proof against a bit of cake, and he had swallowed it, envelope and all.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Gipsies' Dogs.
These are, as a rule, a mongrel lot, but very faithful, and contented
with their roving life. They are as follows:--
1. The bulldog, used for guard and for fighting, with "a bit o' money
on him" sometimes.
2. The retriever, a useful and determined guard dog and child's
companion.
3. The big mongrel mastiff. The fatter and the uglier he is the
better, and the greater the sensation he will create in country
villages.
4. The whippet: a handy dog in many ways; and to him gipsies are
indebted for many a good stew of hare or rabbit.
5. Lastly, the terribly fat, immensely big black Russian retriever.
His tail is always cut off to make him resemble a bear, and give an air
of greater _eclat_ to the caravan that owns him.
A Midnight Attack on the "Wanderer."
We were lying in a lonely meadow, in a rough country away up on the
borders of Yorkshire, and did not consider ourselves by any means in a
very safe place. The Wanderer was pretty close to the roadside; and
there were no houses about except a questionable-looking inn, that stood
on the borders of a gloomy wood. The people here might or might not be
villainous. At all events, it was not on their account we were uneasy.
But a gang of the worst class of gipsies was to pass that night from a
neighbouring fair, and there was a probability that they might attack
the carriage.
Foley before lying down barricaded the back door with the large
Rippingille stove, and I myself had seen to the chambers of my revolver,
all six of them.
I had one lookout before lying down. It was a still and sultry summer's
night, with clouds all over the stars, so that it was almost dark. In
ten minutes more I was sound asleep.
It must have been long past midnight when I awoke with a start.
Hurricane Bob was growling low and ominously; I could distinctly hear
footsteps, and thought I could distinguish voices confabbing in whispers
near the van.
It was almost pitch dark now, and from the closeness of the night it was
evident a thunderstorm would burst over us.
Silencing the dog, I quickly got on my clothes, just as the caravan
began to shake and quiver, as if some one were breaking open the
after-door.
My mind was made up at once. I determined to carry the war into the
enemy's quarters, so, seizing my sword, I quietly opened the front door,
and slid down to the ground off the _coupe_.
I got in beneath the caravan and crept aft. There they were, whoever
they were; I could just perceive two pairs of legs close to the caravan,
and these legs were arrayed in what seemed to me to be white duck
trousers. "Now," said I to myself, "the shin is a most vulnerable part;
I'll have a hack at these extremities with the back of the sword."
And so I did.
I hit out with all my might.
The effect was magical.
There was a load roar of pain, and away galloped the midnight marauders,
in a wild and startled stampede.
And who were they after all? Why, only a couple of young steers, who
had been chewing a bath towel--one at one end, the other at the other--
that Foley had left hanging under the van.
Such then are some of the humours of an amateur gipsy's life.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN.
SUNNY MEMORIES OF THE BORDER-LAND.
"Pipe of Northumbria, sound;
War pipe of Alnwicke,
Wake the wild hills around;
Percy at Paynim war.
Fenwicke stand foremost;
Scots in array from far
Swell wide their war-host.
"Come clad in your steel jack,
Your war gear in order,
And down hew or drive back
The Scots o'er the border."
Old Ballad.
"I tell you what it is, my boy," said a well-known London editor to me
one day, shortly before I started on my long tour in the Wanderer,--"I
tell you what it is, you'll _never_ do it."
He was standing a little way off my caravan as he spoke, so as to be
able to take her all in, optically, and his head was cocked a-trifle to
one side, consideringly. "Never do what?"
"Never reach Scotland."
"Why?"
"Why? First, because a two-ton caravan is too much for even two such
horses as you have, considering the hills you will have to encounter;
and, secondly," he added with a sly smile, "because Scotchman never
`gang back.'"
I seized that little world-wise editor just above the elbow. He looked
beseechingly up at me.
"Let go?" he cried; "your fingers are made of iron fencing; my arm
isn't."
"Can you for one moment imagine," I said, "what the condition of this
England of yours would be were all the Scotchmen to be suddenly taken
out of it; suddenly to disappear from great cities like Manchester and
Liverpool, from posts of highest duty in London itself, from the Navy,
from the Army, from the Volunteers? Is the bare idea not calculated to
induce a more dreadful nightmare than even a lobster salad?"
"I think," said the editor, quietly, as I released him, "we might manage
to meet the difficulty."
But despite the dark forebodings of my neighbours and the insinuations
of this editor, here I am in bonnie Scotland.
"My foot in on my native heath,
And my name is--"
Well, the reader knows what my name is.
I have pleasant recollections of my last day or two's drive in
Northumberland north, just before entering my native land.
Say from the Blue Bell Hotel at Belford. What a stir there was in that
pretty little town, to be sure! We were well out of it, because I got
the Wanderer brought to anchor in an immensely large stackyard. There
was the sound of the circus's brass band coming from a field some
distance off, the occasional whoop-la! of the merry-go-rounds and
patent-swing folks, and the bang-banging of rifles at the itinerant
shooting galleries; but that was all there was to disturb us.
I couldn't help thinking that I never saw brawnier, wirier men than
those young farmers who met Earl P--at his political meeting.
I remember being somewhat annoyed at having to start in a procession of
gipsy vans, but glad when we got up the hill, and when Pea-blossom and
Corn-flower gave them all the slip.
Then the splendid country we passed through; the blue sea away on our
right; away to the left the everlasting hills! The long low shores of
the Holy Isle flanked by its square-towered castle. It is high water
while we pass, and Lindisfarne is wholly an island.
"Stay, coachman, stay; let us think; let us dream; let us imagine
ourselves back in the days of long, long ago. Yonder island, my Jehu
John, which is now so peacefully slumbering 'neath the midday sun, half
shrouded in the blue mist of distance, its lordly castle only a shape,
its priory now hidden from our view--
"`The castle with its battled walls,
The ancient monastery's halls,
Yon solemn, huge, and dark-red pile,
Placed on the margin of the isle.'
"--Have a history, my gentle Jehu, far more worthy of being listened to
than any romance that has ever been conceived or penned.
"Aidan the Christian lived and laboured yonder; from his home in that
lone, surf-beaten island scintillated, as from a star, the primitive
rays of our religion of love."
Jehu John (speaks): "Excuse me, sir, but that is all a kind o' Greek to
me."
"Knowest thou not, my gentle John, that more than a thousand years ago
that monastery was built there, that--
"`In Saxon strength that abbey frowned
With massive arches broad and round,
That rose alternate row and row
On pond'rous columns short and low,
Built ere the art was known,
By pointed aisle and shafted stalk
The arcades of an alleyed walk
To emulate in stone.
On those deep walls the heathen Dane
Had poured his impious rage in vain.'
"Hast never heard of Saint Cuthbert?"
"No, sir; can't say as ever I has."
"John! John! John! But that wondrous, that `mutable and unreasonable
saint' dwelt yonder, nor after death did he rest, John, but was seen by
many in divers places and at divers times in this kingdom of Britain the
Great! Have you never heard the legend that he sailed down the Tweed in
a huge stone coffin?"
"Ha! ha! I can't quite swallow that, sir."
"That his figure may even until this day be seen, that--
"`On a rock by Lindisfarne
Saint Cuthbert sits and toils to frame
The sea-born beads that bear his name.
Such tales had Whitby's fishers told,
And said they might his shape behold,
And hear his anvil sound:
A deadened clang--a huge dim form
Seen but, and heard, when gathering storm
And night were closing round.'"
"It makes me a kind of eerie, sir, to hear you talk like that."
"I can't help it, John; the poetry of the Great Wizard of the North
seems still to hang around these shores. I hear it in the leaves that
whisper to the winds, in the wild scream of the sea-birds, and in the
surf that comes murmuring across that stretch of sand, or goes hissing
round the weed-clad rocks.
"But, John, you've heard of Grace Darling?"
"Ah! there I do feel at home."
"Then you know the story. At the Longstone Lighthouse out yonder she
lived. You see the castle of Bamburgh, with its square tower, there.
We noticed it all day yesterday while coming to Belford; first we took
it for a lighthouse, then for a church, but finally a bright stream of
sunshine fell on it from behind a cloud--on it, and on _it_ alone, and
suddenly we knew it. Well, in the churchyard there the lassie sleeps."
"Indeed, sir!"
"Shall we drop a tear to her memory, my gentle Jehu?"
"Don't think I could screw one out, sir."
"Then drive on, John."
I remember stopping at a queer old-fashioned Northumbrian inn for the
midday halt. We just drew up at the other side of the road. It was a
very lonely place. The inn, with its byres and stables, was perched on
the top of a rocky hill, and men and horses had to climb like cats to
get up to the doors.
By the way, my horses do climb in a wonderful way. Whenever any one now
says to me, "There is a terrible hill a few miles on," "Can a cat get
up?" I inquire.
"Oh, yes, sir; a cat could go up," is the answer.
"Then," say I, "my horses will do it."
At this inn was a very, very old man, and a very, very old woman, and
their son Brad. Brad was waiter, ostler, everything, tall, slow, and
canny-looking.
Brad, like most of the people hereabout, spoke as though he had
swallowed a raw potato, and it had stuck in his throat.
Even the North Northumbrian girls talk as if they suffered from chronic
tonsillitis, or their tongues were too broad at the base.
When the dinner had been discussed, the dishes washed, and I had had a
rest, the horses staggered down the hill and were put in.
I said to Brad, "How much, my friend?"
"Whhateveh yew plhease, sirr; you'gh a ghentleman," replied Brad, trying
apparently to swallow his tongue. I gave him two shillings.
No sooner had it been put in his trousers pocket than the coin started
off on a voyage of discovery down his leg, and soon popped out on to the
road. Brad evidently had sprung a leak somewhere, and for a time the
money kept dropping from him. Whenever he moved he "layed" a coin, so
to speak, and the last I saw of Brad he was leaning lazily against a
fence counting his money.
I remember that near the borders we climbed a long, long hill, and were
so happy when we got to the top of it--the horses panting and foaming,
and we all tired and thirsty.
The view of the long stretch of blue hills behind as was very beautiful.
Here on the hilltop was an inn, with its gable and a row of stables
facing the road, and here on a bit of grass we drew up, and determined
to take the horses out for the midday halt. But we reckoned without our
host. The place was called the Cat Inn.
The landlady was in the kitchen, making a huge pie.
No, we could have no stabling. Their own horses would be home in half
an hour.
She followed me out.
"Half an hour's rest," I said, "out of the sun will do my poor nags some
good."
"I tell ye, ye canna have it," she snapped.
"Then we can have a bucket or two of water, I suppose?"
"Never a drop. We've barely enough for ourselves."
I offered to pay for it. I talked almost angrily.
"Never a drop. You're no so ceevil."
Talking of Northumbrian inns, I remember once having a good laugh.
A buxom young lassie, as fresh as a mountain-daisy, had served me,
during a halt, with some ginger-ale.
After drinking and putting the glass down on the table, I was drying my
long moustache with my handkerchief, and looking at the lassie
thoughtfully--I trust not admiringly.
"Ah, sir," she said, nodding her head and smiling, "ye need na be wiping
your mouth; you're no goin' to get a kiss from _me_."
But near Tweedmouth, in the fields of oats and wheat, we came upon whole
gangs of girls cutting down thistles. Each was armed with a kind of
reaping-hook at the end of a pole. Very picturesque they looked at a
distance in their short dresses of green, grey, pink, or blue. But the
remarkable thing about them was this. They all wore bonnets with an
immense flap behind, and in front a wonderful contrivance called "an
ugly"--a sunshade which quite protected even their noses. And this was
not all, for they had the whole of the jaws, chin, and cheeks tied up
with immense handkerchiefs, just as the jaws of the dead are sometimes
bound up.
I could not make it out. Riding on with my tricycle some distance ahead
of the Wanderer, I came upon a gang of them--twenty-one in all--having a
noontide rest, sitting and reclining on the flowery sward.
I could not help stopping to look at them. From the little I could see
of their faces some were really pretty. But all these "thistle lassies"
had their "uglies" on and their jaws tied up.
I stopped and looked, and I could no more help making the following
remark than a lark can help singing.
"By everything that's mysterious," I said, "why have you got your jaws
tied up? You're not dead, and you can't all have the toothache."
I shall never forget as long as I live the chorus of laughing, the
shrieks of laughter, that greeted this innocent little speech of mine.
They _did_ laugh, to be sure, and laughed and laughed, and punched each
other with open palms, and laughed again, and some had to lie down and
roll and laugh. Oh! you just start a Northumbrian lassie laughing, and
she will keep it up for a time, I can tell you.
But at last a young thing of maybe sweet seventeen let the handkerchief
down-drop from her face, detached herself from the squad, and came
towards me.
She put one little hand on the tricycle wheel, and looked into my face
with a pair of eyes as blue and liquid as the sea out yonder.
"We tie our chins up," she said, "to keep the sun off."
"Oh-h-h!" I said; "and to save your beauty."
She nodded, and I rode on.
But in speaking of my adventure with the thistle lassies to a man in
Berwick--"Yes," he said, "and those girls on a Sunday come out dressed
like ladies in silks and satins."