The profession of the Gypsies, according to a reverend Spanish professor, whom Borrow quotes, is idleness; and by their proverb Butin hi dinilenge (Work is for fools) the German Gypsies plead guilty to the charge. In this respect the coppersmiths were exceptional, for among them diligence raged almost as an epidemic fever. The missionary of the eight-hours day would not have found a welcome in their camp, nor the agent of a Sabbath-observance society any encouragement. On all days of the week, at all hours of the day, the rhythmic tap of their hammers and the muffled gust of their bellows preached eloquent sermons on industry, while knots of busy women, sewing, washing and cooking, gave an equally striking object-lesson in the same subject.

Nor did they seek to compensate by recreation for long hours of labour. The young people showed a certain skill in games like knuckle-bones or pitch-and-toss, and took a slight interest in boxing and wrestling but seldom practised them. Only on rare occasions did they and their elders play cards or visit music-halls, and the gramophones which several families possessed were little heard. If they danced it was when there was a prospect of extorting baksheesh from visitors, and the ill-remembered tales and songs which they sold to collectors of such curiosities seemed to be rather what they had heard others tell or sing than what they cherished for their own amusement. Unlike many of their brethren they were not entertainers, and they had no strong desire to be themselves entertained.

Judged from a trade-union point of view, or even from that of a picture-palace proprietor, this excessive devotion to work would be regarded as a symptom of savagery; yet, as increasing productiveness and wealth, it might with equal justice be taken as a sign of advanced civilization. In one respect, however, the Gypsies were undoubtedly primitive, and that was in their faith in parliaments. When day had faded into night and toil had ceased, if they were not eating their irregular meals or drinking glasses of tea made in samovars whose hours of work were scarcely less than their own, the coppersmiths were holding interminable divans. In wet or cold weather parliament assembled within a tent; but on warm evenings sessions were held in the open air, the members sitting in a ring cross-legged on the ground or lolling on beds of eiderdown. Although the children were kept at a distance these meetings were not councils of elders, since the young men as well as the old were present. Their wives and daughters sat apart engaged in womanly occupations, for there was in the tribe no need to blow a “trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.”

Probably Kola, the chief, would not have permitted the constant presence of inquisitive visitors when important matters were under discussion, or would have changed the subject on their arrival. In any case to have sat evening after evening, as it were in the distinguished strangers’ gallery, listening to debates which were only half intelligible, was an entertainment drearier than any of his visitors was prepared to face. Thus it is impossible to decide whether these parliaments had legislative and judicial functions, or whether, as Kola’s privy council, they were only deliberative and advisory. When strangers were present Fardi sometimes improved the occasion by producing a little ragged map of the world to question them about the amenities of different countries. It was a projection after the method of Mercator, in which Greenland appeared, grossly exaggerated, as an attractive patch of bright colour equal in size to the whole of Europe and pleasantly unspotted by the names of icy mountains or any other geographical complexities. This image of Greenland had for Fardi the same attraction as the bellman’s chart for the Snark-hunting crew, and he was convinced only with difficulty that, the climate being intolerable and the natives poor, he was unlikely to do there a great trade in mending copper pots. To parliament, too, Kola exhibited his first large payment in British money, a big bundle of Bank of England notes. His subjects passed them from grimy hand to grimy hand, tugged them viciously, held them up to the light, and then delivered judgment: “Ugly notes, but tough paper.”

The discussions were as solemn as those of the mother of parliaments at Westminster, and much more sincere, although they were neither opened with prayer nor encumbered by any decorative formalities. If the chief was chairman—and he sometimes enthroned himself upon an upturned cauldron—his services were seldom required either to keep order, which was amply secured by the native dignity of the members, or to direct a debate that had no tendency to stray from the one subject which was uppermost in all their minds. Generalities that had no concrete application to their trade did not interest them, and they would have refused to send a representative to the congress which was held in Hungary in 1879 to deliberate on the common interests of Gypsies everywhere. Sometimes when Russians visited the camp the coppersmiths would listen so eagerly to long accounts of events in the outside world that it seemed as though the divan was their newspaper or club, and stood to them in the same relation as the “crack i’ the kirkyard” to Scottish farm-folk a century ago, or as his favourite public-house to the British workman. But in truth only those facts really interested them which affected their work and industry, and most of what they heard passed in at one ear and out at the other. They were greedy for knowledge of the wealth of nations, the size of cities, or the trades by which towns prospered; they collected scraps of paper on which chance acquaintances had scribbled the addresses of factories; and in fact all their conversation and all their thoughts were concerned with the problem of work and where to find it.