IN GIPSY TENTS.*
ONE summer evening, in a meadow near Dolgelly, Mr. Groome found that some old acquaintances had pitched their tents. Gipsies they were, some thirty in number, of ages varying from two months to sixty years, headed by the patriarch of the family, Silvanus Lovell, and his wife Lementina. Seven sons and three of their daughters accompanied the old couple, with their spouses ; whilst " grandchildren, horses, ponies, donkeys, and dogs would almost outnumber Homer's catalogue of ships." Fraternising with these people, who gave him a hearty welcome, Mr. Groome spent a considerable portion of their stay of four days at the tents or in their company, and the greater part of this book is a record of converse and yarn-spinning between his friends and himself. Your true-born gipsy is ever ready for a talk ; or, as old Matty Cooper once said, " has good deliverance of tongue." Old Matty, who is not unknown to Mr. Groome, does a little field-work sometimes ; but when he is at work, he is ever on the look-out for some excuse to leave off, and will begin to bow and touch his hat when one is a quarter of a mile away, hoping for a chance of a talk about some famous ran with the Queen's hounds, with whom he was runner in former years. Asking him one day about his son Oliver, he said, " Oliver don't like work, as you know, Sir ; but he has a good deliverance of tongue, has Oliver,— a good de- liverance of tongue." Oliver had gone off on a round of race .meetings. And as with Oliver Cooper, so was it with the • In Gipsy Tents. By Francis H. Grooms. Edinburgh: Nimmo and Co. 1880. Lovells. When the day's work—which consisted in fiddling, fishing, and begging--was over, these gipsies seem to have sought escape from the cares which infest the day by telling stories, in which quantity, it must be admitted, has often to make up for quality. We are reminded of the Christy Minstrels, with Bones and Pompey at either end, and Mr. Groome taking the place of the suave and explanatory gentleman-nigger in the middle. Some of these "deliverances" are amusing, and Mr. Groome has caught the manner of speech of people of this class. Here is a sample :- " Silvanus faltered, thoughts too deep for words arresting further progress ; and Mantis, seeing his chance, took up the running instantly. 'Ay, bor, and my daddy was fined onest by Albrighton, only for stopping on the road. He was just going to shave himself, and my mammy had been making cakes to the fire, and there was two hedge- hogs roasting, and a lot of potatoes roasting in the ashes ; when on turning round, my daddy saw the fine policemen coming. Pretty hangman said, Good morning, Lovell." Good morning,' said my daddy, with the razor in his hand. You've got to go along with me,' he said. `All right,' my daddy answered, we'll go anywheres you has a mind to,' thinking he was only joking. And then he pulled out the handcuffs, and put them on my daddy's hands, and took him off. About five miles it was he took him, to Shifnal, to have him tried, only for stopping in the road. And the magistrate there wouldn't say nothing against him, so then he took him to another magistrate's, where my mammy used to call, and after a deal of trouble, my daddy got off with paying three half-crowns. And the pretty hangman was afeared to walk along the road with my daddy afterwards ; he wouldn't go with him. And whiles they were away, Dimiti pulled the tent down and took the two biggest tent-rods, and made himself ploughing up and down the road with them. And he drank a great big canful of milk, and ate up all the cakes. That was his day's work, when my daddy was took ; never paid the slightest notice. And that was the first and last time as ever that pretty hangman had anything to say to we. My daddy sold him a pair of breeches after that, and thrashed his brother.' —` There ! and I met him onest, and shouted " Object !" ' said Dimiti, jealous for his filial piety ; and wasn't I troubled all that blessed day, pulling the tent down, minding you young children, and keeping an eye upon the animals ? But the nicest policeman as ever I knowed, refa, was him as married Mrs. Elliott's Susan. They were both quite young, and she always used to go with him every night upon his rounds ; said she never liked to trust him by himself. And when they'd come by our tents, they'd stand and talk for ever so long ; and very often she'd come in and sit down, and he'd stand outside talking. He didn't bide there long; gdrgios saw he was too good for a policeman. He never took up nobody, and the pretty fine magistrates didn't like Wanting in zeal be doubtless seemed to them ; but what, Silvanus, really is the law about gipsies stopping by the side of roads? In some few parts of England, one sees every stretch of turf blackened with tent-places ; in others, Romang must hire fields, at least if they can't get them for the asking.'—' The law ? Why, that you mustn't make up your place with fifteen feet of the crown of the highway ; but mostwise it goes by squire's or parson's liking, whether they're partial to our kind of people. Some places you are free to stop, and welcome ; and some you durstn't stop at for the life of yon, no, not if you was to make right off the road, a hundred yards and more. I never stops much in roads my- self, fear of the horses and neddies getting pounded ; nor it isn't often I pays for a field, 'cause all the highest gentry knows me where I travel. Now, Pyramus was paying ten shillings a week, when he was stay- ing up by London last December ; and Plato was in a field by Brum- magem, oh ! two years gone, with some of the Hernes and Bucklands, and the lot of them were paying thirty shillings. Lord bless us all, how times is altered ! If you'd told my grandfather, old Henry Lovell, of paying for a bit of ground to stop, he'd have thought the world was coming to an end.' " These gipsies were without houses on wheels, which are ill- suited for Welsh hills, but they had with them two-wheeled tilted carts. The price of a gips), sleeping-waggon ranges be- tween £20 and £130, whilst the cost of the tilt-like tents, which are of rough blankets, varies from £10 to £20. There were seven of such tents in the Lovells' camp. We are told that "a real gipsy who cannot in an emergency find his £10 or L20, is a very exceptional character."
Mr. Groome is an advanced scholar in gipsy-lore, and has acquired the art of " rOkering Romanes," or talking Romany, in a way that can deceive gipsies themselves. As he told Plato Lovell :-
" I was walking one day in London, not so long ago, past the great church of Westminster, when I saw two men, and a look was enough to tell me what they were. One was tall, hook-nosed, and elderly, the other a slim, good-looking, young fellow, but both were as black as any tea-kettle ; so presently I came up by them. How d'ye do ?' said I, in Romanes ; and the tall one answered, ' And how are you, brother ? I haven't set eyes on you I don't know when.' Which was likely enough, Plato, because he had never seen me in his life.— 'No,' I said, it is a goodish while ; and as we walked on talking, I learned they were two of the Smiths, staying at Battersea. By-and- by, Hook-nose says, You'll take a glass, brother ?' So we went into a public-house, and first he paid for a quart, and then I paid for a quart. And, then, Yon haven't been out long, brother ?'—' No, not very long, brother.'—Seven years was it, brother ?'—' Seven years it was.'—' About a horse, brother?'—`About a horse.'—And then I came away."
The knowledge of Romanes is not confined to gipsies. Betting-men and horse-dealers understand it ; so do" Gorgios " —Gentiles—in many parts of the country, and in towns where gipsies have permanent quarters. But there are few who have the depth of knowledge possessed by Mr. Groome, or who could write a Romany song such as he has written, and sung to the tune of " Billy Taylor " to an appreciative audience in the gipsy tents. Mr. Groome is evidently impressed with the romance of gipsy life, and this idea runs through the whole of his book. In a sentence, perhaps more remarkable than intelligible, we are informed that "my Elfland from boyhood had been this Little Egypt, a region of lotos, mirage, and enchant- ments, whose crocodiles had seemed to me to weep, whose :rams (` varmint '), for me had been no worse Third Plague than plaguey Cleopatras." But where, now-a-days, we ask, is the romance of gipsy life ? If ever it existed, it has perished long since. It is in vain that we have looked in this book for anything like romance or poetry ; nothing of the sort lingers any longer among the tents of the wandering gipsies. That there is a certain picturesqueness about an encampment, in fine weather, is not to be denied, but taking the year round, life under such conditions does not present very attractive aspects. As specimens of the human animal, some of these wanderers are very fine. Old Silvanus Lovell is over six feet, with dazzling teeth and bright, hazel eyes ; and his wife, Lementina, though fifty-seven years old, is " straight, lithe, and able to walk three miles an hour, handsome withal, if somewhat weather-worn ;" whilst their seven sons are all strap- ping men. It will be remembered how Charles Kingsley ad- mired the physical beauty and fine carriage of the gipsy race, but there fascination ends. For what does all this talk in gipsy tents amount to ? The Lovells talk very much as one would expect such illiterate, ignorant people to talk. They have their folk-lore tales to tell, and they spin very long yarns of their own experiences, most of these being accounts of dealings in horses and donkeys, of drinking—old Silvanus is described by his affectionate daughter Ruth as " such a funny old chicken, when- ever he get the leasest spot to drink,"—or of quarrels, either among themselves, or with the "pretty hangman." But there is nothing romantic in any of these pages, and this is unfortu- nate for Mr. Groome's " Little Egypt." In the last English 'Census, 8,025 persons are set down as living in tents, caravans, and the open air, but the number of pure-blooded gipsies among these must be very few. As a rule, the truer bred they are, the better are they found in disposition ; but the lower- • class cross-bred gipsies, such as go round the country with rifle-galleries and cocoa-nuts, are among the lowest of the population, and it is a serious question how such people, and .especially their children, are to be got at. It is idle to say that they are no worse than the refuse population of great towns. At present, all nomads escape entirely from educational and sanitary legislation, and we have noticed how comparatively large a per-tentage of such people are marked with small-pox. The fact is, that gipsies of the Lovell type are very rare, and, if we remember rightly, this family, with a few others, are ex- cepted by Mr. George Smith from his sweeping condemnation of nomads in general.
Our author falls foul of Mr. Smith's statements in Gipsy Life, and in letters to various newspapers. He read some of these to his friends, and strongly excited their wrath and indignation. Our readers must refer to the book itself for the details of this controversy. In the end, Mr. Groome agrees with his adversary in recommending registration of all carts, caravans, &c., used 'for dwellings. He proposes that gipsies so registered should be allowed to encamp again on the old camping-places, which are still to be found by scores throughout the country. He also .supports, in principle, Mr. Smith's scheme of education for gipsy children, which is similar to that of the Canal Boats Act of 1877 If gipsies could be induced to settle in England, as they have been in Scotland, where roamers are now very few, they would have to work, and would soon be absorbed in the surrounding popula- tion. We are told that nine-tenths, on the very first hint that their children would be taken from them and put in industrial schools, would go to America,—a land, we should have thought, much better suited than our own to their roving 'habits. This part of Mr. Groome's book, and his chapter on gipsy burial, are the most thoughtful and valuable portions of his work. Although we do not find any warrant in these pages for the very exalted opinions Mr. Groome holds of the gipsy character, yet the book is interesting, in giving the views of a man who, if he is an enthusiast, knows a great deal about gipsy-lore and gipsies, and has evidently brought himself into very close sympathy with them. It is easy to believe that John Roberts, the Welsh harper, and Sylvester Boswell are superior men of their class, and worthy of Mr. Groome's friendship and esteem ; even though we are inclined to take some of his opinions about the Lovells cum grand salts.
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