It has been said that if an architect, a caterer, and a poet were commissioned to construct out of our existing south and east coast resorts a place which, in its appeal to the million, might compare with Blackpool, they would utterly fail, a saying not to be questioned for a moment.

Yet the sight which thrilled me most, as I beheld it years ago, was not the cluster of gilded pleasure-palaces in the town, but the gay Gypsyry squatting on the sand-dunes at the extremity of the South Shore. Living-vans of green and gold with their flapping canvas covers; domed tents whose blankets of red and grey had faded at the touch of sun and wind; boarden porches and outgrowths of a fantastic character, the work of Romany carpenters; unabashed advertisements announcing Gypsy queens patronized by duchesses and lords; bevies of black-eyed, wheedling witches eager to pounce upon the stroller into Gypsydom; and troops of fine children, shock-headed and jolly—all these I beheld in the Gypsyry which is now no more. “Life enjoyed to the last” might well have been its epitaph.Those were the days of Old Sarah Boswell and her nephews Kenza and Oscar; Johnny and Wasti Gray; Elijah Heron and his son Poley; Bendigo and Morjiana Purum; the vivacious Robinsons; Dolferus Petulengro and Noarus TÂno; some of whom, alas, “have joined the people whom no true Romany will call by name.”

On the Look-Out. Photo. T. J. Lewis

Hot June sunshine flooded the sandhills on the afternoon of my entry into the encampment, which, by the way, was made strategetically from the rear. Thus it was that I lighted upon the retired tent of the oldest occupants of the Gypsyry. Unlike the alert and expectant Romany mothers and maids who hovered about this Gypsy town’s front gate, Ned Boswell’s widow sat drowsing at the tent door, overpowered by the midsummer heat. I was about to turn away, intending to revisit the old lady later on, when her son Alma, the lynx-eyed, popped upon me from round the corner, and in a sandy hollow a little way off we were soon deep in conversation.

“Now, rashai,” said Alma, after we had talked awhile, “there’s one thing I would like to ask you. Where do you think us Romanitshels reely origin’d from?”

Here I was confronted by a question which has been asked throughout the ages, and addressed to myself how many times?

Who are the Gypsies, and where did they come from? Bulky tomes have been filled with scholarly speculations upon these questions, and so varied have been the conclusions arrived at that we appear to be no nearer to the solution of the mystery than when about the year 1777 the German Rudiger first made known to the world that the Gypsies spoke an Indian dialect, which discovery is said “to have injured more than it served in the quest after the origin of the Gypsies, because it has prevented scholars from searching for it.” Taking philology for our guide, we may believe that the ancestors of our Gypsies tarried for centuries in North-West India, a region which they quitted with their faces set towards the west not later than about 1000 A.D. To quote the words of an authority [73] on the linguistic side of the problem: “Their language proves that they once inhabited Northern India, but as no Indian writers have left any documents describing this people, their mode of life in India, and the most interesting point of all, why they emigrated, must for ever remain a matter for conjecture. It is, however, surprising what can be proved from our present knowledge of their language, which, it is generally admitted, must rank as an independent eighth among the seven modern Indian languages of the Aryan stock, based on Sanskrit. To begin with, the grammatical peculiarities of the language of the Gypsies resemble those of the modern Aryan languages of India so closely that it is impossible not to believe that they were developed side by side. Comparing Gypsy and Hindi, for example, we find that their declensions are based exactly on the same principle, that neither has a real genitive case, that both decline their adjectives only when used as nouns. Now it is generally held that these modern forms came slowly into existence throughout the eleventh century, when the old synthetical structure of the Sanskrit was broken up and thrown into confusion, but not quite lost, while the modern auxiliary verbs and prepositions were as yet hardly fully established in their stead. Therefore, it is extremely unlikely that the Gypsies left India before the tenth century, when they could have carried away with them, so to speak, the germs of the new construction, absorbed on Indian soil.”

From the words they borrowed from Persia, Armenia, and Greece, we know that the wanderers passed through these countries on their way westward, but, since no Arabic or Coptic words are found in the Gypsy tongue, we infer that they were never in Egypt. The theory of the Egyptian origin of the Romanitshels probably arose from legends which they themselves set afloat.

Two stories were repeated by the Gypsies. They said that they were Egyptian penitents on a seven years’ pilgrimage. The Saracens had attacked them in Egypt, and, having surrendered to their enemies, they became Saracens themselves and denied Christ. Now, as a penance, they were ordered to travel for seven years without sleeping in a bed. A second story was that their exile was a punishment for the sin of having refused hospitality to Joseph and the Virgin Mary when they fled into Egypt with the newborn Christ-child to escape the anger of Herod.

Associated with the Gypsies are other legends which may have been invented by them for similar purposes. An old tradition asserts that Caspar, one of the three Magi, was a Gypsy, and that it was he who (as their ruler) first converted them to the Christian religion. The Lithuanian Gypsies say that stealing has been permitted in their favour by God because the Gypsies, being present at the Crucifixion, stole one of the four nails, and therefore God allows them to steal, and it is not accounted a sin to them.

Needless to say, the foregoing statements were not delivered to Alma Boswell. Of their actual history the Anglo-Romany folk know nothing, but this does not prevent them from holding some curious notions about themselves. So, in response to Alma’s question about the origin of the Gypsies, I replied that great scholars believed his race to have come from India.

“Oh, I think they’re wrong,” said Alma. “Far more likely we came from the land of Bethlehem. Being a rashai (parson), you’ll know the Bible, I suppose, from cover to cover. Well, you’ve heard of the man called Cain. Now, don’t the Old Book say that he went away and married a black-eyed camper-gal, one of our roving folks? I reckons we sprang from them. We was the first people what the dear Lord made, and mebbe we shall be the last on earth. When all the rest is wore out, there’ll still be a few of our folks travelling with tents and wagons.”

Such was Alma’s idea of the origin of the Gypsies.

“But there,” he continued, “you must read my Uncle Westarus’s big book all about our people. There was a doctor and a lawyer, wery kind gentlemen, real bawrÊ raiaw (swells), who used to talk to my uncle for hours on end, and they wrote down every word he said, and then he wrote them a sight of letters, wery long ones, and they are all of ’em in print. So if you reads that book, you’ll larn all as is’ known about us.”

Alma’s Uncle Westarus was certainly a remarkable Gypsy, possessing quite a library, which he carried about with him on his travels. It is on record that at the age of fifty-five his library included several volumes of fiction, history, poetry, and science, a large Bible, a Church of England Prayer Book, Burns’s Justice, as well as English, Greek, and Latin dictionaries.

For the information of those who may not already know it, the volume designated by Alma “my uncle’s book” is a most valuable vade mecum for Gypsy students entitled The Dialect of the English Gypsies, by Dr. Bath Smart and Mr. H. T. Crofton.

There was a strong dash of Gypsy pride in Alma’s remark that the Boswells were the only real Gypsies left. “These others all about us are kek tatsho” (not genuine), he said, with a wave of the hand; “they’re only half-breeds.”

“But,” I queried, “are not the Herons and Lees good Gypsies?” Then, veering from his first statement, he admitted that the families I had named might be allowed a place among the old roots.

Then followed a discussion about grades of Gypsy blood. These were classified by Alma—

1. The Black Romanitshels, “the real thing.”

2. The Didakais, or half-breeds, who pronounce the Romany words dik akai (look here) as did akai.

3. Hedge-crawlers, or mumpers. “There’s a lot of ’em up London way,” said Alma. “We’d scorn to go near the likes of them—a tshikli (dirty) lot, not Gypsies at all.”

In his last remark Alma certainly hit the nail on the head. The distinction between the Gypsy and the mumper cannot be too strongly emphasized. Anyone who has known members of our old Gypsy families, such as the Boswells, Grays, Herons, Lees, Lovells, Smiths, Stanleys, and Woods, will never again make the grave error of confounding the Gypsy with the mumper.

Rising from our hollow in the sand, we walked a little way between the tents, and when Alma took the railway crossing for a ramble in the town, I betook myself to his mother’s tent. Having just aroused from sleep, the old lady was somewhat absent-minded, but she was quickly on the alert at hearing my greeting in Romany.“What gibberish is it you’re talking, my gentleman?”

“You understand it well enough, I’m thinking, mother.”

So blank was her look, so well-feigned her ignorance, that for the nonce it seemed that after all the ancient language of the tents was a delusion and a dream.

Then methought of a plan I had tried before. Having for many years made a study of Gypsy pedigrees, I have often been able to give a temporary shock to a Gypsy’s mind by telling him the names of his great-grandfathers and of his uncles and aunts, paternal and maternal. “How came you to know all this, Mr. Hall?” my Gypsy will ask. “You certainly don’t look an old man.”

It was now my turn to pretend ignorance.

“If it’s not being very inquisitive, Mrs. Boswell, I am wondering what your maiden-name may have been?”

“That I won’t tell you, and nobody in this town knows what it was.”

“Is that really so? Fancy, no one in Blackpool knows your maiden-name.”

“Not a soul.” (This very solemnly.)

“Then what if I can tell you?”

“Well, what was it, my gentleman?” eyeing me curiously.

“You are one of the Drapers—Old Israel’s daughter, if I’m not mistaken” (looking straight into her large eyes as though reading the information at the back of her brain), “and your two sisters were Rodi and Lani.”

If a stone figure had spoken, she could scarcely have looked more amazed, and, quite forgetting herself, she exclaimed—

“Av adrÊ, mi tshavo, and besh talÊ” (Come inside, my son, and sit down).

Mrs. Boswell’s manner was now so amiable, and her voice so soft, that as she handed me cake and tea, I felt as if I had known her all my life. All who have ever met a pure-bred Gypsy will know what Romany politeness is, and how charming a sense of the fitness of things these wanderers possess. As one who has worked hard at Gypsy genealogy, I have myself often been surprised at one thing. A member of the kawlo rat (black blood) will betray no inquisitiveness in regard to his tiresome interlocutor who may be a perfect stranger to him. How many of us, I wonder, would care to be subjected to such an inquisition as we sometimes inflict upon a Gypsy by our interrogations as to his ancestry? Yet the Gypsy apparently takes it all with complacence and good humour.

When taking mine ease behind the scenes in a Gypsy camp, it has often amused me to observe how extremes meet. After all, the tastes of the high and the low are not so very far removed. If the duchess is proud of her blue blood and her ancestral tree, so is the Gypsy of her black blood and lengthy pedigree. I have known “swells” who liked their game so “high” that it almost ran into the fields again, a taste akin to the Gypsy’s liking for mulo-mas. The Gypsy mother’s love for her black cutty joins hands with the after-dinner cigarette in my lady’s boudoir. It goes without saying that politeness is a stamp of both extremes.

In the cool of the evening I wandered inland to a sequestered camp, where Isaac and Sinfai Heron, those aristocrats of their race, sat by their fire in an angle where two hedgerows met.

“We likes a bit o’ quiet, you see,” said the slender, gracious Sinfai, when I asked why they had pitched on a spot so far from Blackpool’s South Shore.

“Get the rai one o’ the rugs to besh oprÊ” (sit upon), said Isaac to his grandson Walter, who trotted off briskly to a large tent, and reappeared with a smartly striped coverlet, which he spread for me beneath the hedge. A second grandson, with a similar alacrity, set off at Sinfai’s bidding to find sticks for the fire. The devotion of these lads to their grandparents seemed to spring from a sense of comradery rather than reverence, and the quaint deference paid in turn by the old people to the boys impressed me not a little—a thing I have often observed in Romany camps.

Old Isaac’s memory carried him back to Mousehold Heath of the long ago, and, listening to his talk, one could see the brown tents and smoking fires amid the ling and fern. Among the Gypsies reclining by those fires were the Smiths, the Maces, the Pinfolds, and the Grays—Sinfai’s folk—and of course some of the old Herons. Niabai, Isaac’s father, would sit mending kettles, for, like many of the Gypsies of those days, he was a tinker by calling, and when on travel would carry his grindstone on his back. Sometimes of an evening, “Mister Burrow” would walk up on to the Heath for a chat with Niabai and his wife “Crowy,” so called by reason of her very dark features. Borrow picked up from Crowy many a Romany lav (word). Gypsy fights were common on the Heath, and at times the fern would be trampled down by the crowds who came from far and near to witness these thrilling scenes.

Old Isaac had two uncles of whom he made mention—William Heron, always known as “the handsome man,” and Robert Heron, known as “the lame man.” Examples of a remarkable exactness of observation are Borrow’s pen-portraits of the two last-named brothers contained in the Introduction to The Zincali. The writer does not mention them by name, but when I submitted a memorized version of these word-pictures to my friend Isaac he at once recognized his uncles, William and Robert.

Let us open The Zincali.

Handsome William is standing by his horse. He is tall, as were all the men of his clan.

“Almost a giant, for his height could not have been less than six feet three. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive anything more perfectly beautiful than were the features of this man, and the most skilful sculptor of Greece might have taken them as his model for a hero and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty—a rare thing in a Gypsy; the nose less Roman than Grecian—fine, yet delicate; the eyes large, overhung with long, drooping lashes, giving them almost a melancholy expression; it was only when the lashes were elevated that the Gypsy glance was seen, if that can be called a glance which is a strange stare, like nothing else in the world. His complexion was a beautiful olive, and his teeth were of a brilliance uncommon even amongst these people, who have all fine teeth. He was dressed in a coarse wagoner’s slop, which, however, was unable to conceal altogether his noble and Herculean figure. He might be about twenty-eight.”

William is said to have persisted in carrying his own silver mug in his coat pocket, and would drink out of no other vessel. “I’d scorn to wet my lips with a drop of drink out of a gawjikeno kuro,” meaning the publican’s mugs.

Robert, William’s elder brother, remained on horseback, looking “more like a phantom than anything human. His complexion was the colour of pale dust, and of that same colour was all that pertained to him, hat and clothes. His boots were dusty of course, for it was midsummer, and his very horse was of a dusty dun. His features were whimsically ugly, most of his teeth were gone, and as to age, he might be thirty or sixty. He was somewhat lame and halt, but an unequalled rider when once upon his steed, which he was naturally not very solicitous to quit.”

Robert was always considered the wizard of the clan. Never having been married, he dispensed with a tent, preferring, like some of the deep Woods of Wales, to sleep in a barn. He was nicknamed “Church” Robert, because he was a reader and had a wonderful memory, and sometimes going to church he listened to lessons and psalms and would afterwards reel them off like a rokerin tshiriklo (parrot).

When I made a move to go, Old Isaac drew himself to his full height and said, “Av akai apopli, rashai” (Come here again, parson), and the boys to whom I had mentioned my roving experiences urged me to come and camp near them. “Let us put up a tent for you here next to ours.” Sinfai, who walked to the field-gate with me, slipped into my pocket a bita delaben (small gift), a green wineglass.

A sunset of rare beauty was reddening the sandhills when I returned to the Gypsyry on the South Shore. For a while I walked up and down in the miniature fair, and before I turned my face towards the town, lights began to appear in the tent baulks and the stars came out over the darkening sea.

Next morning I was walking along the spacious sea-front with Archie Smith for companion, and in the distance appeared a little man pushing a grinding-barrow. Quickening our steps, we overtook him and found he was Elijah Heron on his morning round. I inquired where he was stopping, and promised to visit him later in the day. My companion, the lively Archie, was reeling off for my benefit a list of the inhabitants of the South Shore Gypsyry, and had just mentioned Bendigo Purum, when, rounding a corner, we met the man himself, a very swarthy Gypsy—almost black, one might say.

“Roker of the Beng,” whispered Archie, “and you’ll dik lesti” (see him).

Farther along in a narrow thoroughfare we observed several Gypsy women out a-shopping, their gay diklos and blouses making splashes of bright colour in the crowded street. It seemed to me that Blackpool was alive with Gypsies. In the afternoon I returned to the South Shore, and, hearing the strains of a violin proceeding from a gorgeous red blanket tent in a field near the railway, I made my way thither, and to my joy I discovered Eros and Lias Robinson at home.

Here is a song which I heard from the lips of Lias—

“Mandi’s tshori puri dai
Jaw’d adrÊ kongri to shun the rashai;
The gawjÊ saw sal’d as yoi besh’d talÊ;
Yoi dik’d ’drÊ the lil, but yoi keka del-aprÊ;
The rashai roker’d agen dukerin, pen’d dova sos a laj,
But yov keka jin’d mandi duker’d yov’s tshai,
Puker’d yoi’d romer a barvdo rai.”

Translation.

“My poor old mother
Went into church to hear the parson;
The gentiles all laughed as she sat down;
She looked into the book, but she could not read;
The parson talked against fortune-telling, said it was a shame,
But he never knew I had told his daughter’s fortune,
Told her she’d marry a wealthy squire.”

Lias was full of reminiscences of wanderings through the heart of Wales, and I listened with keen interest to his talk about the deep Woods. In my readings of Leland’s writings I had come upon the mention of Mat Wood whom, in after years, I had the good fortune to meet in Wales. During his Welsh wanderings, Lias had met several sons of John Roberts, the harpist, concerning whom I had learned much from Groome’s delightful book, In Gipsy Tents. Here I may mention that Old John Roberts was an occasional visitor to Lincolnshire in days gone by. He travelled widely with his harp, on which he was a talented player. My wife, who hails from the Fen country, remembers John’s visits to her native village of Fleet, near Holbeach in Lincolnshire, where he would play on the parish green, as well as on the lawns of private houses. A venerable-looking, bearded man, who might have passed for a clergyman, he was a welcome guest in the home of my father-in-law, where he would play old airs to a pianoforte accompaniment.

The gypsy’s parson with his friends. Photo. Fred Shaw

The afternoon and evening which followed my morning ramble were crowded with Gypsy experiences. At the back of a large tent sat Kenza Boswell fiddling, while his daughters danced with exceeding grace.

Next, Noarus TÂno, in one of his skittish moods, kept me in fits of laughter for ten minutes. He was the humorist of the Blackpool camp.

Entirely unaccustomed to controlling his imagination, Noarus will tell an extraordinary tale in which he himself plays a part, with no other object than to amuse his hearer, or to lift himself a little higher in your esteem. And just as no one is expected to believe the narratives of Baron Munchausen, so the Gypsy in telling his “lying tale” is perfectly content with the laughter of the listener. This gay spirit of exaggeration certainly stamps the following tale told by Old TÂno.

Friends at the fair. Photo. Fred Shaw

The scene is the kitchen of the village inn, and poultry-lifting is the topic of conversation. It is Noarus who speaks—

“There’s a farmer’s wife up in the willage what’s been blaming a two-legged fox for robbing her hen-roost. I say it’s some low dealer what comes out of the town with a light cart on a shiny night when the stormy winds are blowing, so as folks shan’t hear him at work. You knows the sort, but us Gypsies has a different way. When did you ever know any of us to meddle with anythink in these here parts? Don’t your farmers buy ponies off us? Ain’t we highly respected by the gentle-folk for miles round? Why, there was a squire up in Yorkshire, a prize-poultry fancier, as know’d my people wery well. We often camped on his land and never meddled with nothink. He trusted us so much that he comes down to our tents one day and says to my daddy—

“‘I want to beg a favour of you, TÂno. I’m going abroad for a while, and I want you and your son to take charge of my poultry farm while I’m away.’

“Well, my daddy and me took charge of his prize fowls, and when he come back again, how do you think he found things, my gentlemen?”

The company, profoundly impressed by the speaker’s discourse, exclaimed with one voice—

“All right to a feather.”

“Nay, that he never did. We’d ate the hull blessed lot!”

Mindful of my promise to visit Elijah Heron, I sought out his tent, and I had to stoop very low to get in the doorway. In my pocket was a heavy, silver-mounted brier pipe possessing a large amber mouthpiece. This I presented to the old man, and it was good to see his face light up with pleasure. “Tatsheni rup si kova” (Real silver is this), he said, pointing to the mountings. “A swÊgler’s kek kushto without tuvalo” (A pipe’s no good without tobacco), I remarked, handing him a cake of Black Jack. He lighted up and looked as happy as a king.

Noticing that I was slightly deaf, he recommended oil extracted from vipers as good for deafness. The mention of snakes took him back to his sojourn in the Antipodes. “I never talks of saps (snakes) but I thinks of the days when I was travelling in ’Stralia. One night I got leave from a farmer to stop near a river, but I didn’t hatsh odoi (remain there) for more than an hour or two, for I found there was saps about—nasty, hissing critturs. A black man as come down to the river to water some hosses told me that the saps sometimes maw’d (killed) animals near the river, so I packed up my traps and kept on the road all night. Give me Old England, I say. I’m right glad to be back here.”

In a little tent hard by, I heard Poley and his wife singing as I said “Good-night” to Elijah. Happy, twinkling eyes they were that looked out at me from that little tent door as I passed. I envy you that merry heart, Poley, that evergreen spirit of yours, and, recalling your face, I see again the array of Gypsy tents as twilight dropped its purple veil on Blackpool’s pleasant shore.