A PLAGUE of an incline to joints stiffened by age, the Steep Hill at Lincoln is for me aureoled by all the fair colours of youth. Have I not more than once rent my nether garments in gliding down the adjacent hand-rail? Likewise in the time of snow have I not, defiant of police-notices, made slides where the gradient is sharpest?

Now it happened one day that under the shadow of the ancient, timbered houses just below the crown of the hill there stood at his workshop on wheels a Gypsy tinker whose wizened figure and general air of queerness would have charmed a Teniers, and I, a town boy with no small capacity for prying, hovered at his elbow, studying his operations. Suz-z-z-z-z went the tinker’s wheel, as the sparks scattered in a rosy shower from the edge of a deftly handled blade. Then of a sudden something happened, causing me to jump as one who had been shot. There was a dull thud of a falling body, followed immediately by a shrill cry issuing from the throat of a sprawling pedlar—

“Stop my leg, stop my leg!”A glance at the poor fellow revealed the whole story. His wooden leg, having become detached from its moorings, was rolling down the paved incline. Several persons were passing at the time, and more than one made a dash to recover the defaulting limb, but, youth’s suppleness favouring me, I managed to capture the elusive treasure, and up the hill I bore it in triumph. With admirable agility the tinker reattached the limb, and the pedlar went on his way rejoicing.

“Gimme yer knife, boy,” said the tinker.

I had one resembling a saw, which he whisked from my hand and duly restored with a nice edge. He then resumed his work as though nothing worthy of remark had happened to stay the song of his wheel.

A craft of hoary antiquity is that of the nomad metal-worker. An Austrian ecclesiastic, in the year 1200, describes the “calderari,” or tinkers, of that time: “They have no home or country. Everywhere they are found alike. They travel through the world abusing mankind with their knavery.”

Four hundred years later, an Italian writer gives an account of the tinker who enchants the knives of the peasants by magnetizing them so as to pick up needles, and for this he accepts payment in the shape of a fowl or a pie. To this day in Eastern Europe, the smith, usually a Gypsy, is regarded as a semi-conjurer who has dealings with the Devil.

In Scotland you will find numberless “Creenies, crinks, and tinklers” who roam in primitive Gypsy fashion, with donkeys, ramshackle carts, tents, and a tinker’s equipment. If you have dropped into the shepherd’s cottage in the heathery glen, or the lone farmhouse on the Lowland fell, you will have noticed the horn spoons and ladles, or the rude smoothing-irons. These are the handiwork of the tinklers of a bygone generation.

Two or three generations ago most of our English Gypsies were wandering tinkers carrying their outfits on their backs.

For my own part, I have everywhere found the caste of tinkers a cheerful, happy-go-lucky fellowship, and in talks with them I have observed that they generally know a few Gypsy words, even when it is clear that they do not belong to the dark race.

Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, in Henry IV. (First Part, Act 2, Scene 4), is made to say, “I can drink with any tinker in his own language.” This language, or jargon, known as Shelta, [207] has been the subject of much learned writing.

My first lesson in Shelta was taken near the Shire Bridge, where the Great North Road, approaching Newark-on-Trent from the south, quits Lincolnshire for the county of Nottingham. A favourite halting-place is this for wayfaring folk of all sorts. Seated on Mother Earth’s green carpet, a tinker and his wife were taking tea, and at their invitation I sat beside them for a chat. Presently I showed two bright new pennies to the tinker, saying—

“If you’ll tell me what these are in Shelta, they’re yours.”

A Tinker of the Olden Times. By permission of Mrs. Johnson

In a moment he replied, “Od nyok” (two heads), and I handed over the coins. With a comic gesture he queried—

“Yer wouldn’t like to larn a bit more o’ thet langwidge, would yer?”

A Welsh Gypsy Tinker. Photo. Fred Shaw

“Rat-tat-tat” went the old brass knocker one morning at the side-door of my house, and on being informed that a tinker was inquiring for me, I hastened to see what manner of man he was. Before me stood a battered specimen of the Romany of the roads, and with a view to testing his depth, I asked—

“Do you ever dik any Romanitshels on the drom?” (see any Gypsies on the road).

“You ’ave me there, mister,” said he. “Upon my soul, I dunno what you’re talkin’ about.”The man’s face was a study in innocence.

“You know right enough what I’m saying,” I continued in Romany.

My man could endure it no longer, and, exploding with mirth, he turned and shouted to his brother, who stood near a grinding-barrow on the road.

“Av akai, Bill, ’ere’s a rashai rokerin Romanes as fast as we can” (Come here, Bill, here’s a parson talking Gypsy). “Bring that shushi (rabbit) out o’ the guno” (sack).

With unaffected goodwill, the two Gypsies insisted on my accepting the rabbit as a token of friendship. This I did gladly, asking no questions as to how they had come by a newly-killed rabbit. After grinding my garden axe, they both set off whistling down the road.

One day a Gypsy tinker, whom I had met a few times, took me aside, saying—

“My sister lives in the next street” (he told me the number). “She has a pony, a poor, scraggy thing, which she wants to get rid of badly. Go you and say to her—

“‘I hear you have a nice little cob to sell.’ And when she brings it round for you to look at, say—

“‘Bless my soul, do you think I’d buy a hoppy grai like dova?’” (a lame horse like that).

Presently, at that sister’s threshold, I waited for the pony to be brought round, which on arriving proved to be a miserable-looking animal indeed. The woman looked first at me, then at the pony, which limped badly, while its bones showed through its skin.

Said I, “Well, really, I didn’t expect to see quite such a wafodu kova” (wretched thing).

Readily entering into the joke, she laughed heartily. She had taken me for a dinelo gawjo (gentile simpleton), and to her astonishment I had turned out to be a Gypsy of a higher sort.

At one time I used to have frequent visits from a travelling tinker, and when his grinding-barrow was standing in my yard, I would chat with him while he was doing some little job. He was an interesting fellow who had seen something of the world. He had a remarkable knowledge of the medicinal properties of wild herbs, and would spend hours by the chalk stream in our valley, grubbing up liverwort of which he would make decoctions. One morning he was in the tale-telling mood.

“It was this very barrer what you’re looking at now. You notice there’s lots of bits of brass nailed on it for to catch the sunshine. I likes my barrer to look cheerful. Well, there was a fellow came to me with summut wrapped up in brown paper, a flat thing it was, and he says, ‘I want you to buy this here off me.’ Says I, ‘Let’s have a look at it,’ and when he opened it out, it was a fine bit of copper-plate with summut engraved on it. I asked him what the engraving was about, for you know I can’t read. He says, ‘It’s an architex business plate, that’s all, and you can have it for a shilling.’ So I bought it and nailed it on to my barrer among the other bits of brass and things. Well, happens that a parson was a-talking to me one day, and I noticed his eye lighted on this here copper-plate. Says he, looking wery serious, ‘I’m afraid this will get you into trouble, if a policeman sees it.’ ‘How’s that?’ I asked. ‘What’s wrong with the copper-plate?’ ‘Well,’ says he, ‘it’s a plate for printing £5 notes. Where did you get it from?’ And I told him. You may be sure I soon had that plate off my barrer, and, turning to the parson, I says, ‘Perhaps you’ll buy it off me, for a sort of nicknack?’ And he gave me half-a-crown for it.”

Looking slyly at me, the tinker remarked—

“When that parson got home, being a man of eddication, he would know where to get the right sort of paper, and then he would make £5 notes cheap, you bet.”

For several Christmas Eves past, this tinker’s boy and a little pal have walked some miles from a neighbouring town to sing carols at my Rectory door. They possess good voices and sing very tunefully some of the old carols, “God rest you, merry gentlemen,” and the like.

One summer afternoon, in the market-place at Hull, I met two grinders coming out of a tavern, near which stood a tinker’s barrow belonging to one of them, Golias Gray, a Gypsy, whom I had seen before at fair-times in the seaport town. “Black as the ace of spades” is Golias, and he was, as usual, sporting a yellow shirt. His pale-faced companion, a stranger to me, after a little talk, waxed communicative, and, whilst his Gypsy pal resumed his grinding of knives, he gave me a short list of words in Shelta (Tinker’s Talk).