Маша 68 "AFFAIRS OF EGYPT" CHAP. The Pier, Lowestoft. garrulous chal "did him the honour," as he says, of paying him a visit and discoursing with him on the "affairs of Egypt." These "affairs of Egypt " were the affairs of the gipsies. "There is no living for the poor people, brother," said Petulengro to III Borrow; "the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the gorgios are becoming either so poor or miserly that they grudge our cattle a bite of grass by the wayside, and ourselves a yard of ground to light a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no probability unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro (justice of the peace or prime minister), I am afraid the poor persons will have to give up wandering, and then what will become of them?" The "poor persons still make the same complaint. The era of county and parish councils looks with little favour upon the English Ishmaelites, who have even greater difficulty than in Borrow's day in finding a grazing ground by the wayside or a heath where they may light a camp fire. But they are still with us in East Anglia-the Greys, the Smiths, the Coopers, Borrows Griengres, Petulengros, and Wardo-engres-and not far from the site of their historian's old home, on a tract of waste land near a grove of elms and birches, I have sat by their fires and tried to rokker Romany with their wizened old crones. With passages from the Lavo-Lil (Borrow's Gipsies' Word-Book) I have tested their knowledge of the strange tongue of their forefathers, and I have seen them exchange glances of surprise and suspicion at hearing a gorgio discourse of things he should not know. While the smoke rose in a blue cloud against the background of dusky trees, and the nightingales' heart-searching songs were heard from the grove, it was easy to understand why George Borrow moped and felt his soul fettered in murky London, and could find no peace nor joy in life until he took to the Great North Road, slept in a gipsy's tent in a dingle, and heard a black-eyed Romany chi sing "The Romany chi And the Romany chal And dook the gry 70 "LENTEN STUFFE" CHAP. Heathenish gibberish it sounds to modern ears, but smacks of the joy of life under summer sun, on "the field and heath and windy moor!" But the "Walking Lord of Gipsy Lore" has led me out of Lowestoft into the leafy lanes of Oulton, and I must return to the town for a while. I would like to find some indication that the name of Thomas Nash is not forgotten in his native town; but a place which has little recollection of Borrow and FitzGerald, who were here twenty years ago, can scarcely be expected to cherish the memory of a satirist who was born here at the end of the sixteenth century. Yet he wrote Lenten Stuffe, or the Praise of the Red Herring, fitte of all clearkes of all noblemen's kitchens to be read, and not unnecessary by all serving men that have short board wages to be remembered; and what Lowestoft does not know about herrings is not worth knowing. Doubtless the hardy seafarers who throng the quays could have told Nash a good deal about their calling that would have been news to him; but they would have stood agape and aghast at his euphuistic rhapsodies. Listen to him. "To fetch the red herring in Trojan equipage, some of every of the Christ Cross alphabet of outlandish cosmopoli furrow up the rugged brine, and sweep through his tumultuous ooze. For our English Microcosmos or Phoenician Dido's hide of ground, no shire, county, county palatine, or quarter of it, but rigs out some oaken squadron or other to waft him along Cleopatraean Olympickly, and not the least nook or crevice of them but is parturient of the like super-officiousness, arming forth, though it be but a catch or pink, no capabler than a rundlet or washing bowl to imp the wings of his convoy. Holy St. Taurbard, in what droves the gouty Londoners hurry down, and dye the watchet air of an iron russet hue with the dust that they raise in hot spurred rowelling it on to perform compliments unto him." Lenten Stuffe-queer stuff! Outside the metropolis there are few scenes of more bustling activity than the Lowestoft fishmarkets on a busy day, when III FISHMARKETS 71 scores of smacks from the North Sea trawling grounds have arrived in port, and the wharves are heaped with fish boxes and clamorous with the cries of the salesmen. In the basins the smacks lie so close together that one may walk from pier to pier 72 FISHMARKETS CHAP. upon them. Here, a little crowd of idlers is gathered around a monster halibut or sturgeon, or, maybe, a vicious-looking thresher shark, which while ravaging the mackerel shoals found its way into a drifter's nets; there, tackling on to a rope, a row of smacksmen are hauling ashore a broken trawl beam. Mingled with the sturdy, ruddy-cheeked East Coast men are a few Frenchmen or Belgians, whose clumsy boats, from Boulogne, Trouville, Calais, and Ostende, are moored alongside the smarter and more graceful Lowestoft trawlers; occasionally a clatter of sabots betokens the presence of heavy-gaited Dutchmen. Or if it be late autumn, when herring and mackerel are plentiful off the coast, a large fleet of fast sailing luggers from Kirkcaldy, Banff, and Inverness will be intermingled with the dandy-rigged Lowestoft boats which make for port every morning; and everywhere in the streets you will rub shoulders with sturdy Scotchmen. Then is the herring market heaped from end to end with glistening herring and rainbow-hued mackerel, and you need be wary in walking among them to escape the clattering barrows. But to fully appreciate the extent and importance of the Lowestoft fishing industry you must be in touch with it from January to December, and not for one year only but many years; and even then you will have something to learn. For one year's fishermen's harvest differs from another as do the farmers' harvests, and it is always the weather that rules the harvesting. I stay longer in Lowestoft than will most people who follow the route I have travelled, and it is early summer when I resume my ramblings. I then set out for Yarmouth; but on my way thither turn aside and visit Fritton, where is one of the loveliest lakes in Broadland. It is not a broad, as the term is understood in Norfolk, where it means the "broadening” of a river; but it possesses all the beauty that Wroxham and Barton boast and many charms of its own. Engirdled by woods, scarcely a murmur of human life disturbs its brooding peace; you may |