We have few gipsies in our neighborhood. In spite of our tempting green
lanes, our woody dells, and heathy commons, the rogues don’t take to us.
I am afraid we are too civilized—too cautious; our sheepfolds are too
closely watched; our barn-yards are too well guarded; our geese and
ducks too fastly penned; our chickens too securely locked up; our little
pigs too safe in their sty; our game too scarce; our laundresses too
careful. In short, we are too little primitive; we have a snug brood of
vagabonds and poachers of our own, to say nothing of their regular
followers, constables and justices of the peace. We have stocks in the
village, and a tread-mill in the next town, and therefore we go
gipsy-less—a misfortune of which every landscape painter and every lover
of that living landscape, the country, can appreciate the extent. There
is nothing under the sun that harmonizes so well with nature, especially
in her woodland recesses, as that picturesque people, who are, so to
say, the wild genus—the pheasants and roebucks of the human race.
Sometimes, indeed, we used to see a gipsy procession passing along the
common, like an Eastern caravan, men, women, children, donkeys, and
dogs; and sometimes a patch of bare earth, strewed with ashes and
surrounded by scathed turf, on the broad green margin of some
cross-road, would give token of a gipsy hall; but a regular gipsy
encampment has always been so rare an event, that I was equally
surprised and delighted to meet with one in the course of my walks last
autumn. * * * They had pitched their little tent under one of the oak
trees, perhaps from a certain dim sense of natural beauty, which those
who live with nature in the fields are seldom totally without; perhaps
because the neighborhood of the coppices and of the deserted hall was
favorable to the acquisition of game, and of the little fuel which their
hardy habits required. The party consisted only of four—an old crone in
a tattered red cloak and black bonnet, who was stooping over a kettle,
of which the contents were probably as savory as that of Meg Merrilies’,
renowned in story; a pretty black-eyed girl at work under the trees; a
sun-burned urchin of eight or nine, collecting sticks and dead leaves to
feed their out-of-door fire; and a slender lad, two or three years
older, who lay basking in the sun, with a couple of shabby dogs of the
sort called mongrel, in all the joy of idleness, while a grave, patient
donkey stood grazing hard by. It was a pretty picture, with its soft
autumnal sky, its rich woodiness, its verdure, the light smoke curling
from the fire, and the group disposed around it so harmless, poor
outcasts! and so happy—a beautiful picture! The old gipsy was a
celebrated fortune-teller, and the post having been so long vacant, she
could not have
brought her talents to a better market. The whole village rang with the
predictions of this modern Cassandra—unlike her Trojan predecessor,
inasmuch as her prophecies were never of ill. I myself could not help
admiring the real cleverness and genuine gipsy tact with which she
adapted her foretellings to the age, the habits, and the known desires
and circumstances of her clients.
To our little pet Lizzy, for instance, a damsel of seven, she predicted
a fairing; to Ben Kirby, a youth of thirteen, head batter of the boys, a
new cricket-ball; to his sister Lucy, a girl some three years his
senior, and just promoted to that ensign of womanhood—a cap—she promised
a pink top-knot; while for Miss Sophia Matthews, our old-maidish
schoolmistress, who would be heartily glad to be a girl again, she
foresaw one handsome husband, and for the smart widow Simmons, two.
These were the least of her triumphs. George Davis, the dashing young
farmer of the Hill-house, a gay sportsman, who scoffed at
fortune-tellers and matrimony, consulted her as to whose grayhound would
win the courser’s cup at the beacon meeting, to which she replied that
she did not know to whom the dog would belong, but that the winner of
the cup would be a white grayhound, with one blue ear and a spot on its
side, being an exact description of Mr. George Davis’ favorite Helen,
who followed her master’s step like his shadow, and was standing behind
him at this very instant. This prediction gained our gipsy half-a-crown;
and Master Welles, the thriving, thrifty yeoman of the lea, she managed
to win sixpence from his hard, honest, frugal hand, by a prophecy that
his old blood mare, called Blackfoot, should bring forth twins. And Ned,
the blacksmith, who was known to court the tall nurse-maid at the
mill—she got a shilling from Ned, simply by assuring him that his wife
should have the longest coffin that ever was made at our wheelwright’s
shop: a most tempting prediction! ingeniously combining the prospect of
winning and of surviving the lady of his heart—a promise equally adapted
to the hot and cold fits of that ague called love—lightening the fetters
of wedlock—uniting in a breath the bridegroom and the widower. Ned was
the best pleased of all her customers, and enforced his suit with such
vigor, that he and the fair giantess were asked in church the next
Sunday, and married at the fortnight’s end.