As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my friend Sir Roger, we
saw at a little distance from us a troop of gipsies. Upon the first
discovery of them, my friend was in some doubt whether he should not
exert[139] the Justice of the Peace upon such a band of lawless vagrants;
but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary counsellor on these
occasions, and fearing that his poultry might fare the worse for it, he
let the thought drop: but at the same time gave me a particular account
of the mischiefs they do in the country, in stealing people's goods and
spoiling their servants. "If a stray piece of linen hangs upon an hedge,"
says Sir Roger, "they are sure to have it; if the hog loses his way in
the fields, it is ten to one but he becomes their prey; our geese cannot
live in peace for them; if a man prosecutes them with severity, his
hen-roost is sure to pay for it: they generally straggle into these parts
about this time of the year; and set the heads of our servant-maids so
agog for husbands, that we do not expect to have any business done as it
should be whilst they are in the country. I have an honest dairy-maid
who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never
fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her
pains. Your friend the butler has been fool enough to be seduced by them;
and though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon every time his
fortune is told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old
gipsy for above half an hour once in a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the
things they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those
that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young
jades among them: the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes."
[Illustration: Told him, That he had a Widow in his Line of Life]
Sir Roger observing that I listened with great attention to his account
of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me, that if I would they
should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the Knight's
proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra[140]
of the crew, after having examined my lines very diligently, told me,
that I loved a pretty maid in a corner[141], that I was a good woman's
man, with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate.
My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two
or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and
diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of
them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him, that he
had a widow in his line of life: upon which the Knight cried, "Go, go,
you are an idle baggage"; and at the same time smiled upon me. The gipsy
finding he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a further
inquiry into his hand, that his true-love was constant, and that she
should dream of him to-night: my old friend cried "pish," and bid her go
on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long;
and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought: the Knight still
repeated she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. "Ah, master," says
the gipsy, "that roguish leer of yours makes a pretty woman's heart ache;
you ha'n't that simper about the mouth for nothing--" The uncouth
gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an
oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the Knight left
the money with her that he had crossed her hand with, and got up again on
his horse.
As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me, that he knew several sensible
people who believed these gipsies now and then foretold very strange
things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary.
In the height of his good-humour, meeting a common beggar upon the road
who was no conjurer, as he went to relieve him he found his pocket was
picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are
very dexterous.
I might here entertain my reader with historical remarks on this idle
profligate people, who infest all the countries of Europe, and live in
the midst of governments in a kind of commonwealth by themselves. But
instead of entering into observations of this nature, I shall fill the
remaining part of my paper with a story which is still fresh in Holland,
and was printed in one of our monthly accounts about twenty years ago.
"As the _trekschuyt_, or hackney-boat, which carries passengers from
Leyden to Amsterdam, was putting off, a boy running along the side of the
canal desired to be taken in; which the master of the boat refused,
because the lad had not quite money enough to pay the usual fare. An
eminent merchant being pleased with the looks of the boy, and secretly
touched with compassion towards him, paid the money for him, and ordered
him to be taken on board. Upon talking with him afterwards, he found that
he could speak readily in three or four languages, and learned upon
further examination that he had been stolen away when he was a child by a
gipsy, and had rambled ever since with a gang of those strollers[142] up
and down several parts of Europe. It happened that the merchant, whose
heart seems to have inclined towards the boy by a secret kind of
instinct, had himself lost a child some years before. The parents, after
a long search for him, gave him for drowned in one of the canals with
which that country abounds; and the mother was so afflicted at the loss
of a fine boy, who was her only son, that she died for grief of it. Upon
laying together all particulars, and examining the several moles and
marks by which the mother used to describe the child when he was first
missing, the boy proved to be the son of the merchant whose heart had so
unaccountably melted at the sight of him. The lad was very well pleased
to find a father who was so rich, and likely to leave him a good estate;
the father on the other hand was not a little delighted to see a son
return to him, whom he had given for lost, with such a strength of
constitution, sharpness of understanding, and skill in languages." Here
the printed story leaves off; but if I may give credit to reports, our
linguist having received such extraordinary rudiments towards a good
education, was afterwards trained up in everything that becomes a
gentleman; wearing off by little and little all the vicious habits and
practices that he had been used to in the course of his peregrinations:
nay, it is said, that he has since been employed in foreign courts upon
national business, with great reputation to himself and honour to those
who sent him, and that he has visited several countries as a public
minister, in which he formerly wandered as a gipsy.