XII

A GIPSY CAMP

349

the mind which attributes the mazy windings of the Thetford streets to the tortuous routes of the Ancient British trackways which led down to the river, peoples the wild wastes of warren with the phantoms of by-gone warlike races, and finds in the Castle Hill the grave-heap of some unknown Icenic king.

Thetford is almost surrounded by heaths and warrens, and on one of these tracts of waste land not far from the Bury road I come upon a party of encamped gipsies. It consists of about half-a-dozen persons in all, and some of them, I find, are genuine Romanies. Three brightly-painted travelling vans, a ramshackle cart, and a couple of dingy kraal-shaped tents comprise their laager; half-a-dozen horses of somewhat starved appearance graze on the browning bent grasses. A wood fire smoulders in front of one of the tents; the odour of its smoke, mingled with the scent of sun-scorched gorse, pervades the whole camp. I recognise in one of the gipsies an old acquaintance. He is a griengro or horsedealer whom I have met once or twice near the Suffolk coast, and who usually confines his wanderings to the Eastern counties. A tall, slim, sinewy rover, of middle-age, with swarthy complexion and keen restless eyes, one can easily believe what is said of him: that twenty years ago he was a clever boxer and step-dancer, capable of holding his own among pugilistic and terpsichorean experts. Now he is content. to rest on his laurels; that is, unless he is unlucky enough to have a little disagreement with the police, when he proves that he has not forgotten how to force home an argument and use his hands in self-defence. His wife is about the same age as he, but looks fifteen years older. Her hair, once of raven blackness, is plentifully streaked with grey; her back is bowed by the weight of the wicker basket full of knick-knacks she generally carries slung on her shoulder; her face is wrinkled, her eyes sunken, and her few remaining teeth are stained with tobacco juice to the yellowish hue of her hollow cheeks. Yet

350

THE ROMANY LIFE

CHAP.

she is quite as active as her Romany spouse, and probably does more work in a day than he in a week, for, like most Romany chals, her husband prefers to use his wits rather than his hands in gaining a livelihood. Even in this she often excels him, and by penning dukkerins (telling fortunes) at back doors during the daytime and in her caravan at night will often in a few hours do more to replenish the family exchequer than he will do by a profitable "deal" at a horse-fair.

The man is driving towards the camp a horse which has strayed on to the highway; but as soon as he sees me he leaves the horse to crop the brown bents and comes towards me. "Do you remember that bit of a buffle I had with the policeman at L-?" he asks, when I have joined the party gathered round the camp fire. I recollect the “buffle” quite well; also the success of the scheme, concocted because the gipsy was more sinned against than sinning, by which he escaped the clutches of the law. We enjoy a laugh over our reminiscences while a dusky-haired girl prepares a cup of tea and sets it before me with a plate of gipsy cake. "So you've took to the road, as you often said you'd like to!" continues my swarthy friend. "How long will it be before you're tired of sleeping under a strange roof every night?" I assure him that while I can spend the days as I am now doing I shall care little where I spend the nights; but he shakes his head doubtingly: evidently he sets small value on my avowed inclinations towards a roving life. We speak of the gradual disappearance of the real Romanies from the roads and heaths of rural England, and of the increasing difficulty with which those who remain manage to gain a livelihood-subjects we have discussed before in the shelter of an East Suffolk copse within hearing of the surging of the sea. I learn that there are very few gipsy families in the country whose blood is not mixed with that of the housedwellers, and that county and parish councils, by forbidding encamping on the waste lands which were formerly free to all

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THE ROMANY TONGUE

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comers, are making it harder than ever for the surviving Romanies to exist. I can see that these changes are very unwelcome to the griengro, who has never yet spent a night under a house-roof, and in his early days often made his bed on a couch of bracken and slept under the sky's wide stargemmed canopy. Although my companion and some of his friends are true Romanies, I listen in vain to hear them use some of the words which are left of the language of the first Romany wanderers from the Far East. Old Mother Grey, who until a few years ago was well-known all over East Anglia, could rokker Romany with amazing fluency-she was nearly eighty years old when I last met her, and for all I know her roamings may be for ever at an end. The Romanies here have forgotten-or profess to have forgotten that their grandfathers' called horses gries, and though they speak depreciatingly of house-dwellers never call them kair-engres. True, a touzle-headed youth who is lolling against the steps of a van, teazing an equally touzle-headed girl, makes use of the word "gorger," which may be the gorgio of George Borrow and the gaujoe of Mr. Hindes Groome; but I have heard the derisive term applied by one house-dweller to another, and doubt whether it is more Romany than slang.

I am much tempted to become a gipsy for one night, and find out how it feels to sleep on a bed of bracken, with a horsecloth for my coverlet and a rolled-up coat for my pillow. Then, perhaps, I might enjoy for a while what Emerson calls an "original relation to the universe," and better understand how much there is in life a man can easily dispense with, and what it is that makes the Romany cling to his roving life. As an Englishman, I am inclined to boast that I can adapt myself to hard circumstances. I tell myself that if a British soldier can sleep soundly on the open veldt, in the midst of an African midwinter rainstorm, surely I can be content and comfortable on an English heath on a warm summer night. But I remember that I have still a long journey before me and cannot afford to run

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GOOD-BYE TO THE GIPSIES

CH. XII

the risks of unaccustomed exposure to the night dews, so having drunk a cup of the black tea in which the Romany delights, and finished my plate of gipsy cake, I bid my roving friends. good-bye. I confess I am loth to leave them so soon, for I love to hear them talk-as they will if you have their confidenceof their Arabic existence and its attendant pleasures and hardships, of their successes in disposing of doctored horsesif a horse has one lame foreleg, drive a nail through the hoof into the hock of the other and it will pick up its feet as daintily as a colt-and the strange credulity of the country folk with whom they have dealings. On this last subject I have often discoursed with them, and have been surprised to discover how grudgingly the rustic mind admits that there is nothing supernatural or mysterious in the garrulous forecastings of the shrewd old gipsy crones. Even the griengro himself, while his mother was alive, would sometimes consult her before starting on a fresh journey or concluding the purchase of a horse. I would like to ascertain the extent of his credulity; but I know from previous experience that however willing he may be to speak of that of other people he is very chary of referring to his own. So, having expressed

a hope that it may not be long before our wanderings again bring us in touch with each other, and having again been reminded of that "bit of a buffle" with the policeman, I make my way out of the rovers' camp.

Near East Dereham.

BLOOMFIELD'S COUNTRY AND BURY ST. EDMUNDS

NOWADAYS one seldom hears the name of Robert Bloomfield, whose sad life-story seems fated to be numbered among the world's forgotten tragedies. Thirty or forty years ago hardly any rural social gathering in Suffolk was considered a complete success unless at some point of the proceedings someone read or recited a poem composed by the Honington tailor's

son.

The Farmer's Boy, The Horkey, and Fair Day are compositions which then appealed to the rustic mind. Their language is that of the field and farmyard; their humour that of the annual fair and village club. Bloomfield at eleven years of age was himself a farmer's boy. He knew what it meant to rise from his bed at the chill dark hour before a winter's daydawn, creep down stairs from a bare-floored attic, and with frostbitten hands chop swedes in a byre. He early learnt that the farm-hand's life is largely made up of labour and sorrow, and

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