The Gypsies are an imaginative folk, delighting, like children, in romances and romancing; and if one may judge from the array of folk-tales [256] already collected from them, these wanderers appear to possess the gift of story-telling in generous measure. To this day, in Eastern Europe, the Gypsies still pursue their ancient rÔle of tale-telling, mystifying their hearers with stories which perhaps they brought out of India many centuries ago. Here, in the West, no one can mingle intimately with members of the Gypsy clan of Wood, amid the mountains of Wales, without feeling the charm of the wonderful tales handed down to them from their forelders.

Sometimes I have seen the beginning of a folktale in a fragment of narrative reeled off by a Gypsy on the spur of the moment.

A London Gypsy had been fiddling for my delectation, and, when he ceased, I asked him quite casually why, being a Gypsy, his hair was fair? Without a moment’s reflection he replied, “I’ll tell you why my hair is fair. One winter night I slept with my head outside the tent, and of course my hair froze to the ground. When I woke in the morning I shouted for help, and my daddy poured boiling water on my hair to get it loose. That’s why my bal is pawni” (my hair is fair).

An impromptu “lying tale” intended to amuse.

Groome, in his Gypsy-Folk Tales (Introduction, p. lxxxi.), notices the same sort of thing in a fanciful outburst on the part of a Gypsy girl. “She had been to a pic-nic in a four-in-hand, with ‘a lot o’ real tiptop gentry’; and ‘reia’ (sir), she said to me afterwards, ‘I’ll tell you the comicalist thing that ever was. We’d pulled up to put the brake on, and there was a puro hotchiwitchi (old hedgehog) come and looked at us through the hedge, looked at me hard. I could see he’d his eye on me. And home he’d go, that old hedgehog, to his wife, and “Missus,” he’d say, “what d’ye think? I seen a little Gypsy gal just now in a coach and four hosses,” and “DÂbla” she’d say, “sawkÛmi ’as vÂdÊ kenaw” (Bless us, every one has carriages now).’”

Years ago I used to hear our English Gypsies speak of a certain Happy Boz’ll, a Gypsy given to romancing about his own affairs. He was always the hero of his own stories, and to this day, among our Gypsies, a Happy Boz’ll tale is a synonym for a “crammer.”

It was once my good fortune at Lincoln Fair to come upon a van-dwelling horse-dealer, close upon his eightieth year, whose early days were spent in the company of Happy Boz’ll, and from him I obtained the tales given below:—

Old Happy had a donkey, and one day it was lost. Up and down the green lanes the Gypsy searched for the missing animal and found it not. At last, as he was wandering under some trees, he heard a familiar noise overhead. The sound came from the top of a big ash tree, and sure enough, when Happy looked up, there was the old donkey among the topmost boughs.

“What are you doing there?” shouted Happy.

“I’m gathering a bundle of sticks for your fire.”

And saying this, the donkey climbed down with a bunch of nice ash sticks.

Black as a Boz’ll. Photo. Fred Shaw

At one time Happy, who was a tinker and grinder by trade, possessed a grinding-barrow made out of a whole block of silver, and whenever he was thirsty he had only to chop off a lump of silver and go to the nearest inn to get as much ale as he could carry. In course of time his barrow grew smaller, and there came a day when Happy had no barrow at all. He had swallowed it.

One day Happy’s wife, Becky, said to him—

“Go and get a bucket of drinking water.” Away he went to the spring, and, having filled the bucket, he paused to take a drink from it, and going on again he stumbled and spilt the water. When he got home he appeared before his wife with an empty bucket in his hand.“Why haven’t you brought the water?” asked Becky.

“Well, my blessed, I filled the bucket right enough, but on the way back the water started a-laughing at me, and I couldn’t carry it no furder. Ay, the water laughed itself out of the bucket, it did—every little drop of it. There, now I’ve told you.”

Another time Happy was crossing a field, and seeing a sack filled with something he went up and examined it, and there, if it wasn’t full of eggs. He picked up the sack and carried it away on his back, and never cracked one of them.

Happy was once walking beside a hedge, cracking nuts. He had pockets and pockets full of them, and he happened to fling a nutshell over the hedge, and it hit a wery fine hare and killed it. Wasn’t that strange now?

Happy never owned a wagon. He and his wife travelled all their lives with a pack-donkey and a tent. One night their tent took fire, and in a little while they had nothing left in the world save the donkey and its blinkers. The next morning, as they crept out from under the hedge, Happy said to his wife, “We shall have to beg wery hard to-day.” By the evening they had done so well that they had provided themselves with an entirely new outfit. Under the hedge stood the finest tent you ever saw. Inside it were new blankets, new bedding, new everything.

“Well, my Becky, how do you like it?”

“We haven’t done so badly after all, my Happy. We’ve got a better tent and a better supper than we had last night.”

“And I’m thinking, my Becky,” said Happy, laughing softly, “that it’s wonderful like getting married again.”

Happy was once going along a road over the Peak o’ Derby. He hadn’t gone far before he saw a cart full of the very best china, delicate stuff all coloured and gilded, and between the shafts stood a fine horse with silver-plated harness. There they were on the wayside grass and nobody with them. Happy lit his pipe and waited a bit to see if their owner came along. But nobody came. So he led the horse and cart to an inn just round the bend of the road, and asked the landlord if he knew who was the owner, but he didn’t know. On and on went Happy, up hill and down dale, inquiring everywhere for the owner of the horse and pot-cart, but nowhere could he light on the gentleman, though he nearly broke his heart with anxiety in trying his best to find him.

Happy one day took his dog a-hunting. Two hares started up, but the dog couldn’t run after both of them at once. Just then, however, the dog ran against a scythe-blade and cut itself in two. One half of the dog ran after one hare and caught it. The other half of the dog ran after the second hare and caught it. The hares were brought to Happy’s feet. Then the two halves of the dog came together again. And the dog died. Happy took off the skin and patched his knee-breeches with it. Just a year afterwards, to the very day, his breeches burst open and barked at him.