Part 3 (2/2)

”In blindness, Jasper?”

”There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever.”

Like Bamfylde Moore Carew, though for a different reason, it was to the gipsy life that Borrow turned after his unsuccessful literary work in London. Disappointed and despondent, he fled the scenes that had witnessed his failures. It is easy to imagine how great must have been his sense of freedom when he cast off the shackles of city life, and breathed again the air of the hills and pine-woods of rural England.

With the poet whose bones rest in the midst of the little town of his birth, he felt and all his life maintained, that

”'Tis liberty alone that gives the flower Of fleeting life its l.u.s.tre and perfume, And we are weeds without it. All constraint, Except what wisdom lays on evil men, Is evil; hurts the faculties, impedes Their progress in the road of science; blinds The eyesight of discovery, and begets In those that suffer it, a sordid mind b.e.s.t.i.a.l, a meagre intellect, unfit To be the tenant of man's n.o.ble form.”

The gipsies of the first quarter of the present century possessed the distinctive characteristics of their type in a far more marked degree than their descendants of to-day. There were few amongst them who had not a fair knowledge of the old Romany tongue, though they were utterly ignorant of its source. Questioned as to where their ancestors came from, they would tell you Egypt; and ”business of Egypt” was their name for the mysteries of fortune-telling, and the other questionable proceedings they engaged in. Several of their families were fairly well-to-do in the eyes of their tribe, though the fact was carefully concealed from inquisitive gorgios. Often a gipsy _gry-engro_, or horse-dealer, would have a score or more horses on his hands at a time, while, not infrequently, his sales on a fair-day would amount to 50 or 60. The women of his camp would be gaudily and expensively dressed, and bedecked in heavy gold jewelry: he, himself, would often spend five or six pounds on a suit of clothes, and half a guinea on a silk handkerchief for his neck. Few of the women ever thought of marrying out of the Romany tribe, and their virtue and constancy were an example to all cla.s.ses of society.

This last-mentioned fact is the more striking in view of the intense admiration often felt for the handsome _chis_ by men who were not of the gipsy race. Commenting upon it not long ago, {77} an _Athenaeum_ reviewer said: ”Between some Englishmen and gipsy women there is an extraordinary attraction-an attraction, we may say in pa.s.sing, which did not exist between Borrow and the gipsy women with whom he was brought into contact.

Supposing Borrow to have been physically drawn to any woman, she would have been of the Scandinavian type; she would have been what he used to call a Brynhild. It was tall blondes he really admired. Hence, notwithstanding his love of the economies of gipsy life, his gipsy women are all mere scenic characters, they clothe and beautify the scene: they are not dramatic characters. When he comes to delineate a heroine, Isopel Bernes, she is physically the very opposite of the Romany _chi_-a Scandinavian Brynhild, in short.”

Mr. Watts has remarked on Borrow's neglect to portray the higher traits in the gipsy woman's character. Mrs. Herne and her grandchild Leonora, who are instanced as the two great successes of his Romany group, are both steeped in wickedness, and by omitting to draw a picture of the women's loftier side, he is said to have failed to demonstrate their great claim for distinction. There is a good deal of truth in this accusation; and yet it cannot be admitted wholly justifiable. In ”The Romany Rye” we have a whole chapter devoted to the emphasising of the chast.i.ty of the Romany girls, and their self-sacrificing devotion to their husbands. Ursula marries a lazy, good-for-nothing _chal_, and then expressess her willingness to steal and swindle in order to keep him in comfort. The method is not commendable, but the object that prompts it is highly praiseworthy-from a Romany point of view.

But to-day the old race of genuine Romanies is fast dying out, and soon we shall have wholly lost the traces of a people who for many centuries have const.i.tuted a familiar feature of English country life. One of the last surviving _chals_ of an old East Anglian gipsy family, in reply to a remark of the writer said, not long ago, ”Yes, it is quite true that the old race of gipsies is dying out; there are very few of the real old Romanies to be met with at the present day. 'Mumpers' there are in plenty; folks who sell baskets and peddle clothes-pegs; but they are not of the true gipsy breed. At one time a gipsy never married out of his or her own tribe; but that day has gone, and there has been reared a mixed race with little of the true blood in them. Marrying into the 'mumping'

and house-dwelling families has brought this about, and soon there will be no true Romanies left. Here and there you may meet a few, such as the Grays, Lees, and Coopers, and one or two of the Pinfolds; but they, too, are going the way of the rest. Yes, as you say, it is a pity, for after all the Romanies are a strange people, and, bad as they may have been, they were not without their good points. They knew a good horse when they saw one, and they let people see how a man, if he chooses, can s.h.i.+ft for himself, without being beholden to any one. Anyhow, they have given clever men something to puzzle their brains about, and their language is not, as some would have it, a mere thieves 'patter,' but is a good, if not a better one, than that which the clever men speak themselves.”

”Yes,” went on my Romany friend, ”this old language seems to interest a good many of the clever men. I have known some of them come to our tents and vans and write down the words and their meaning as we told them. I did not mind their doing it; but some of my people did not like it, and told them lies, and put them off with all sorts of queer stories. They were afraid the men should put the words into their books, and then it might be awkward for the gipsies when they wished to have a little talk amongst themselves on matters that were n.o.body's business but their own.

Very few of the gipsies can read, so they did not learn the language in that way; most of us who know anything of it picked it up from our fathers and mothers when we were young. My father used to teach me certain sayings about horses that were very useful when we were dealing at the fairs. Now, however, some people who are not gipsies know more about these things than we do ourselves.”

_Printed by_ BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.

_London and Edinburgh_

Footnotes:

{41} ”The Zincali; or, An Account of the Gipsies of Spain,” issued in two volumes in 1841.

{45} This is the name that was given to a small inlet during Borrows residence at Oulton. To-day it is sometimes called Burrough's Ham.

{77} _Athenaeum_, March 28, 1896.

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