Like Lincoln, York, and Chester, the town of Horncastle originated within the boundaries of a Roman castrum, and to this day an old-world atmosphere clings to its narrow, cobbled streets.

Readers who know their Borrow will recall the visit of “The Romany Rye” to Horncastle in the August of 1825, in order to sell a horse which he had purchased by means of a loan from his Gypsy friend Jasper.

Nowhere perhaps are the changes wrought by the passing years more plainly seen than at a horse-fair of ancient standing. Horncastle has inhabitants who remember when the great August Horse-Fair occupied fully a fortnight or three weeks, and was widely recognized as an event of the first rank. Within my own observation, this fair, like others of its kind, has declined with swift strides. In my time, buyers would be present from all parts of the country, as well as from the Continent, and members of our best Gypsy families invariably made a point of attending. In all these respects, however, the once famous fair has dwindled in a very marked manner.Let me describe a twentieth-century visit to the August horse-mart.

Having approached the town along a bold ridgeway commanding a countryside yellowing to harvest, I arrive to find the place astir with dealers and horses. Though now but a one-day affair, the mart is not without its pleasing aspects to a lover of such scenes. The chief centre of business is known as the Bull Ring, where well-clad dealers from our English towns, horsey-looking men slapping their thighs with malacca canes, rub shoulders with rubicund farmers from Wold and Marsh, grooms and Gypsies. Not for the purpose of buying or selling horses have I come hither, but for no other reason than to meet the Gypsy families who usually turn up at the fair.

Horncastle Horse Fair. Photo. Carlton

Behind the Parish Church of St. Mary, in a pasture pleasantly open to the sun, numerous caravans are drawn up under the hedges. It is here that the better sort of Gypsies congregate. Down Hemingby Lane lies an encampment of poorer travellers, and some of the same sort of people have drawn into the yard of the “New Inn.” In the course of the day I shall visit these three companies of Gypsies.

Meanwhile, passing over the Bain Bridge, I step inside the old Parish Church and, taking out from my pocket a well-thumbed copy of The Romany Rye, I turn to the passage where Borrow talks with the sexton about the rusty scythes hanging on the wall. Just then a lady, evidently an American tourist, who has been looking up Tennyson’s footprints, which abound hereabouts, asks:—

“Can you tell me anything about those strange-looking things on the wall?”

Various theories have been advanced to account for the presence of these old scythe-blades within the sacred building, the popular opinion being that they were used as instruments of war at Winceby Fight on 11th October 1643. So much, indeed, Borrow seems to have gathered from the sexton, but the better-informed authorities of to-day think that they are relics of the rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace in the year 1536.

Quitting the fine old church, I passed out into the fair, and straightway met a Gypsy fingering a telegram. “Will you read it for me, please?” The message was from a popular Baroness who was desirous of borrowing a caravan for a bazaar; and as I pencilled a reply on the back of the telegram, the Gypsy declared that he would sleep in a tent till his “house on wheels” returned to him.

I have always known that Gypsies readily help one another when in trouble. This man, before going off with his telegram, told me a pleasing thing. It appears that an aged Gypsy, whose horse had died suddenly, had no money to buy another with, but a pal of his, going round with a cap among the Gypsy dealers at the fair, had quickly taken ten pounds, which were handed up to the old man who was now able to buy himself an animal.In The Romany Rye, Borrow speaks of the inn where he put up as having a yard which opened into the principal street of the town. On entering that yard he was greeted by the ostlers with—“It is no use coming here—all full—no room whatever;” whilst one added in an undertone, “That ’ere a’n’t a bad-looking horse.” In a large upstairs room overlooking a court, the newcomer dined with several people connected with the fair.

The “George” Inn Yard at Horncastle. Photo. Carlton

During former visits to Horncastle I had tried to identify Borrow’s inn, but without result. Happily, on the present occasion, I came upon a local antiquary from whom I gathered that Borrow’s inn was undoubtedly the “George,” now converted into a post office. Strolling down the quondam inn-yard, my friend pointed out the bow-window through which the jockey so neatly pitched his bottle of pink champagne. Also, he told a good tale of the fair in its palmy days—

Ready for the Fair. Photo. Fred Shaw

Public-houses, though very numerous in the town, were yet unable to supply the fair folk with all the drink they required, and any householder could take out what was called a Bough Licence on payment of seven shillings and sixpence. Having decided to take out such a licence, a man and his wife obtained a barrel of beer and displayed the customary green bough over their door. On the eve of the fair the husband said to his wife—

“I’ll see if this beer is good.”“You won’t without paying for it.”

“Very well, my dear, I’ll have three-pen’orth,” handing over the coins to his wife.

He appeared to enjoy it so much that she said—

“Let me have three-pen’orth,” handing the pence to her husband. Then he had another drink, passing the threepence back again. And the same coppers passed to and fro until the barrel was empty.

It was to Horncastle Fair, years ago, that Jem Mace came with his master, Nat Langham, to whom he had been introduced at Lincoln Fair, where Nat had a sparring troupe which he had brought down from the metropolis. At Horncastle, Jem had a tremendous glove-fight with the local champion, who was the terror of the district. This fellow was bigger and older than Mace, who was then only in his eighteenth year, and for a long time the issue was doubtful, but at last the Horncastle champion was licked to a standstill, and had to give in.

Walking down a crooked by-lane, past a shop where a chatty little tailor sat repairing a scarlet hunting-coat (the South Wolds Kennels lie a few miles outside the town), I found a camp of Gypsies in a field, and near one of the fires on the grass sat Liddy Brown, a crone of seventy years, puffing a black pipe, her curls peeping from beneath a gay diklo (kerchief). In the course of our talk, she spoke of our hilly country, and recalled the days when her folk had pack-donkeys and camped in the green lanes on the Wolds. A grand-daughter of Fowk Heron, she had some diverting reminiscences of her mother Mizereti, and her aunts Cinderella and Tiena. The last-named was bitten by a mad dog, and thereby came to an untimely end.

Returning to the town, I looked into the “New Inn” yard and found a number of Gypsies stopping there. The women and girls had donned their smartest fair-going raiment. As I viewed these wanderers, it was not easy to realize that they were the lingering remnants of the once powerful tribes of Browns and Winters hailing from the Border country in the days of Sheriff Walter Scott.

Passing through the archway of the inn, I mingle again with the crowd, but no thimblengro, no Irish Murtagh, no Jack Dale meet the eye, though, curiously enough, from the racing stables at Baumber, where the Derby winner of 1875—Prince Batthyany’s Galopin—was born, there are two or three jockeys looking more than usually diminutive among the burly dealers in the street.

Towards the end of the afternoon the fair began to slacken. The few remaining groups of horses seemed to have gone to sleep in the sultry Bull Ring. Already farmers were moving off in their light traps, and dealers were making for the railway station. Going along the riverside path I saw a Gypsy man asleep at the foot of a tree, and, climbing a fence, I found myself in the encampment behind the church. The scene was enlivening. Seated around their fires most of the Gypsies were making ready for the evening meal. Near a little tent the aged Mrs. Petulengro, a veritable “Mother in Egypt,” was lighting her pipe. Her grand-daughter coming out of the tent offers her a stool to sit upon, but the old lady scorns the idea. “I should tumble off a thing like that. I’m better down here,” pointing to a sack spread by the fire beside which two kettles are hissing.

In various parts of the field the Petulengros are gathered together. Here are tall Alfy and Hook-nosed Suki, “Rabbitskin” Bob, and “Ratcatcher” Charley. During supper, I had to listen to a disquisition on lying from Suki. Put into a nutshell, her ideas amount to this: Lying is of two kinds. There is lying for a living, else how could any sort of business be carried on. But business deceptions are not to be mentioned in the same breath with nasty lies which are meant to “hurt a body.”

“Do you remember, rashai, that time we met you by Newark, when Elijah was with us? A jolly old fellow he were. He often got into staruben (prison) for fighting but never for stealing. He would go through an orchard, like that one there” (pointing to some apple-trees close by), “but do you think he’d ever pick up an apple? Not he, he’d never steal nothink, wouldn’t Elijah. He could stand hard knocks, and would only fight a better man than hisself. He was that tough, nothing ever hurt him. He would lay asleep under a wagon with never a shirt on him and take no harm.”

Elijah was one of three brothers—tall, powerful fellows. Sometimes the trio, Elijah, Master, and Swallow, would enter a lonely tavern, and having ordered ale would depart without paying for it. When the publican protested, the Gypsies displayed their brawny arms and huge fists before his face. One day they had performed this favourite trick several times, and were paying an evening call at a village inn, where they sat a long time. Waxing quarrelsome, the brothers first brawled among themselves, and afterwards got at cross-purposes with a farmer in the tap-room. In the course of a tussle with this person, Swallow fell upon him as he lay on the floor, and, as they struggled there, a steel rush-threading needle of large size, used in mending chair bottoms, dropped from the Gypsy’s pocket. Seizing this, Elijah pricked the farmer in the ribs, and then flung the needle at the feet of Swallow, who picked it up. The farmer’s cries attracted the attention of a village constable who was going by.

“Eh, what’s the matter here?” said the constable, stepping into the tap-room.

“These Gypsies are trying to murder me,” said the farmer. “One of ’em’s stuck me with a long knife as he’s got about him.”

The pockets of the Gypsies were searched, and the steel needle was found upon Swallow. As the constable held it up between his fingers, the farmer cried—“That’s it. That’s what he tried to kill me with.”

The three brothers were arrested and underwent their trial, with the result that Elijah and Master were sent to prison for a year, but poor Swallow, although innocent of the charge made against him, was transported for fourteen years.

By that Gypsy fire the evening meal passed pleasantly enough, and when at a later hour I returned to the town, the darkened houses were framing the cobbled street, and through the open window of a tavern I caught a soft Romany phrase along with the clinking of glasses. And then from under the archway of the inn yard a dwarfish Gypsy, mounted on a lean horse, rode off with a great clatter into the dusk.