Читать книгу The Gypsy's Parson: his experiences and adventures - George rector of Ruckland Lincolnshire Hall - Страница 5

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A FEW miles outside my native city, there stands on the bank of the Roman Fossdyke a lonely house known as “Drinsey Nook,” formerly a tavern with bowling greens, swings, and skittle alleys, a resort of wagonette and boating parties out for a frolic in the sunshine. Often on bygone summer eves have I loitered about the old inn gleaming white amid its guardian trees, but best of all I loved to see the beechen boughs drop their fiery leaves upon its mossy roof in the fading of the year.

To-day, as of yore, the brown-sailed barges, laden with grain or scented fir-planks, glide lazily past the place, and a motor-boat will at times go racing by, to the alarm of the waterhens which had almost come to look on the sleepy canal as their own.

Does it ever dream of its gay past, I wonder—this old forgotten house fronting upon the rush-fringed waterway?

One golden October morning, my father, who had a passion for boating on our local waters, hired a small sailing craft, and, the breezes aiding us, we were wafted along the Fossdyke as far as the said riparian house of call. Hour after hour we wandered in the beech woods stretching behind the inn, resting now on some protruding snag or fallen bole to watch the squirrels at play, and again pushing our way breast-high through sheets of changing bracken to the hazel thickets where the nuts hung in clusters well within reach of our hooked sticks.

Linked with this ramble in the time of the falling leaves is an impression I have never forgotten. “Look,” said my father, pointing to a decayed stump of a post almost buried amid dank moss, “this is all that remains of Tom Otter’s gibbet-tree.” I shuddered as he told how in other days he had heard the chains clanking in the wind, and he went on to relate that his father was among the crowd of citizens who, starting from Lincoln Castle one March morning in the year 1806, followed the murderer’s corpse until it was hanged in irons on a post thirty feet high on Saxilby Moor. For several days after the event, the vicinity of the gibbet resembled a country fair with drinking booths, ballad singers, Gypsy fiddlers, and fortune-tellers.

The impressions of childhood are enduring; and just as the smell of the wallflowers after an April shower will revive for you, dear fellow, the vision of a garden walk under a lichened wall, and the dainty step of your lady love by your side, so for me the wild scent of withering bracken in the red autumn glades prompts my fancy to envisage anew the gruesome scene as depicted by my father on that October day long gone by. Nor is this all.

To mention the name of Tom Otter is to call up for me more than one swarthy inhabitant of Gypsy Court who lived to make old bones and sit by the fire telling tales and smoking black tobacco. I have but to close my eyes to behold a procession of these “characters” straggling out of the dark court, their faces and figures lingering for a moment in memory’s beam of light, then passing again into the shadows. And what strange stories are wrapped up in the names and lives of some of these folk; quaint comedy, grim tragedy, riotous passion, tales of love, laughter, and tears.

There was old Tom, nicknamed “Tom o’ the Gibbet,” whose patronymic was Petulengro, which is Gypsy for Smith.

Each of the great Romany clans, be it known, duplicates its surname, one form being used before the gawjê (non-Gypsies, aliens); the other form, of cryptic import, is for the brotherhood of the blood.

Old Tom Petulengro, further known as “Sneezing Tommy,” owing to his liking for snuff, carried on a thriving trade in wooden meat-skewers and pegs, and in his backyard you might see him with infinite patience cutting up willow rods or splitting blocks of close-grained elder-wood; and for years I never used to hear in church the familiar words of the Psalmist, “Our bones lie strewn before the pit, like as when one heweth wood upon the earth,” without seeing that narrow yard with its shining axe lying midst a litter of chips and splinters. Elder-wood is still in request for meat-skewers, and to this day not a few country butchers prefer to use the Gypsy-made article. Old Tom used to say, with a twinkle in his eye, that he found nearly all his raw material on his journeys up and down the countryside. For, as you could not fail to observe, it was a habit with some of the dwellers in Gypsy Court to absent themselves periodically with their light carts and tents. Halcyon days were those for the court Gypsies.

Let it be remembered that the County Council legend, “No camping allowed,” had not yet begun to hit you in the eye from among the bramble brakes on bits of wayside waste. The rural constable of that time had not the conveniences his successor enjoys in the bicycle and the village telephone. There were farmers who still retained a soft place in their hearts for the Gypsy, and many a country squire viewed the nomads of the grassy lanes with a kindly eye. If a carriage-horse grew restive in passing a roadside fire at twilight, up from the hedge-bottom sprang an obliging fellow who led the animal safely along and thereby won a cheery word from the squire or his lady. Even Velveteens would hob-nob with the jovial campers on the lord’s waste, and, quaffing a dram from their black bottle, would toss a rabbit into the lap of a Romany mother and go on his way. Here and there of course were tiresome believers in the hoary policy of harassment and oppression—

“Pack, and be out of this forthwith,

D’you know you have no business here?

‘No, we hain’t got,’ said Samuel Smith,

‘No business to be anywhere.’

So wearily they went away,

Yet soon were camped in t’other lane,

And soon they laughed as wild and gay,

And soon the kettle boiled again.”

Reverting to Tom Petulengro’s sobriquet, I confess it provoked my curiosity not a little. Tom o’ the Gibbet—what could the strange “tag” mean? Time passed, even a few years, and one day its origin came to light during a talk with Ashena Brown, Tom’s married sister, an elderly Gypsy with a furrowed countenance and deep-set eyes which flashed with fire as she grew excited in her talk. I can see her bowed figure and long jetty curls, as in fancy I again stoop to enter the low-ceiled abode in the smoky court where I listened to her chatter to the persistent accompaniment of a donkey’s thump, thump, in an adjoining apartment.

“Wonderful fond o’ the County o’ Nottingham was my people,” said the old lady. “They know’d every stick and stone along the Trentside, and i’ the Shirewood (Sherwood), and many’s the time we’ve stopped at Five Lane Ends nigh Drinsey Nook. Why, my poor dear mammy (Lord rest her soul) was once fired at by a foot-pad as she were coming outen the public upo’ the bank there. The man’s pistol had nobbut powder in it, for he only meant to trash (frighten) her into handing up her lova (money), but she had none about her, for her last shukora (sixpence) had gone in levina (ale). And after that, my mammy allus wore a big diklo (kerchief) round her head for to hide her cheek as were badly blued by the rascal’s powder.

“Ay, and I minds how my daddy used to make teeny horseshoes, knife handles, and netting needles, outen the bits o’ wood he tshin’d (cut) off the gibbet post, and wery good oak it was. Mebbe you’s heard o’ Tom Otter’s post nigh to the woods? Ah, but p’raps you’s never been tell’d that our Tom was born’d under it? The night my mammy were took bad, our tents was a’most blown to bits. The wind banged the old irons agen the post all night long, as I’ve heard her say. And when they wanted to name the boy, they couldn’t think of no other name but Tom, for sure as they tried to get away from it, the name kept coming back again—Tom, Tom, Tom—till it sort o’ dinned itself into their heads. So at last my daddy says, ‘Let’s call him Tom and done with it,’ and i’ time, folks got a-calling him Tom o’ the Gibbet, and it stuck to him, it did. There, now, I must give that here maila (donkey) a bite o’ summut.”

But I have not done with Tom Otter.

Here is a story even more “creepy” than the last. Ashena is again the speaker. “I’ them days I’d some delations as did funny things that folks wouldn’t never think o’ doing nowadays. I’d an uncle as used to talk to the Beng (Devil). If anything went wrong wi’ a hoss, he’d say, ‘Beng, do this, and Beng, do that,’ like we talks to the Duvel (God) when we says ’ur prayers. But he weren’t eddicated, you see, he didn’t know no better. And whenever uncle and aunt used to pass by Tom Otter’s gibbet, they’d stop and look up at the poor man hanging there, and they allus wuser’d (threw) him a bit o’ hawben (food). They couldn’t let theirselves go by wi’out doing that.

“And there was a baker from Harby, and whenever he passed by the place he would put a bread loaf on to the pointed end of a long rod and shove it into that part o’ the irons where poor Tom’s head was, and sure enough the bread allus went. The baker got hisself into trouble for doing that, as I’ve heard our old people say.”

Commenting on a parallel instance, occurring about the year 1779, in which some women were wont to throw up to a gibbeted man a bunch of tallow candles for him to eat, the Rev. S. Baring-Gould, in his Book of Folk-Lore, writes: “Obviously the idea was still prevalent that life continued to exist in the body after execution.”

In the procession of “characters” issuing from the dark court, I see two familiar figures, the parents of my Gypsy schoolmate, who would surely have arrested even a stranger’s gaze.

Partly from age, and partly from the habit of his calling, Plato Smith the tinman stooped somewhat, yet his legs, which were long in comparison with his body, carried him over the ground fast enough. A nearer view of the old man’s countenance revealed certain scars concerning which tales were told to his credit as a fighter. True, he had on one occasion been worsted by an adversary, for the bridge of his nose diverged somewhat from the straight line, a record of a telling blow. Always alert, Plato looked the picture of spryness when soap and water had removed all traces of the workshop, and he had donned a green cutaway coat, a bright yellow neckcloth, and a felt “hat of antique shape,” high in the crown and broad of brim, which was pulled well over his eyes whenever he went out. It was whispered that none knew better than he how to whistle a horse out of a field, but in this art I fancy he had grown rusty of late years. To be sure, his long record as a poacher had brought him occasional lodgments in the local house of detention, yet so ingrained was this Gypsy habit that he could hardly refrain from chalking his gun-barrel and sallying forth on moonlit nights.

A riverside incident associated with Sibby’s father is as fresh in my memory as if it happened but yesterday. A stream neither broad nor deep is our homely Witham, crawling onward through fenny flats to the North Sea. It was here that I learned on summer days to pull an oar in an old black coble, and to glide steel-shod over the ice in the Christmas holidays. Along a certain reach of the river, I was initiated by an elder brother into the mysteries of angling on those tranquil evenings when the bold perch showed their heads above water, like the fishes that listened to St. Anthony’s sermon. Now it fell upon a day that my brother and I were crossing the river by ferry-boat, a few miles outside the city, our companions being Plato Smith and an ecclesiastic from the minster-close—four happy anglers were we. At one end of the flat-bottomed ferry-boat stood the parson fingering his rod and whistling a lively tune, when, in midstream, there was a sudden hitch in the chain, flinging the perspiring ferryman upon his face, and at the same time precipitating our friend from the minster-close headlong into the river. Never have I seen a wild duck, or a white-pate coot, disappear more cleanly from sight than did our brother of “the cloth” into the liquid element. Thanks mainly to Gypsy Plato’s resourcefulness, he was extricated pretty quickly, and we left him in the care of an innkeeper, in whose parlour at dusk we met him in borrowed raiment, looking more than usually pallid of countenance beneath the broad eaves of our kindly host’s old-fashioned Sunday “topper” padded to fit with a vivid red handkerchief.

A personality even more striking was Plato’s consort, Abigail, as you saw her sunning herself under the parapet of the Witham bridge hard by the “Three Magpies” Inn, her black eyes blinking as a gust from the river flapped the loose ends of her gay kerchiefs which she wore three or four deep, meeting on her bosom in old-time style. Hooked like a falcon’s beak, her nose drooped over her pursed lips towards a prominent chin, giving her a witchlike mien. Quadrupled strings of corals encircled her wizened neck, and a black velvet bodice bedecked with silver buttons, a skirt of bold check pattern, and a poke-bonnet formed her customary walking attire. Often, on her homeward way after her daily round with the basket, have I met her puffing a small black pipe as she shuffled along our lane. By didakais (half-breeds) she was certainly feared, and they maintained it was bad luck to meet her first thing of a morning, and were known to turn back on seeing her in the street. “Her eyes make you feel that queer” was a common saying, and it follows that she ranked high as a fortune-teller. Seldom a fair passed but you met her in the noisy throng, chaffing the gawjê (gentiles), or surrounded by a group of village Johnnies and Mollies eager to have their palms read. What a picture she made as she stooped to tighten the girths of her shaggy donkey at whose head stood the wild, dusky Sibby with a spring wind whisking her black locks about her cheeks, out on the open road beyond the town, for maid and mother were devoted companions on many a foray into the villages dotted over Lincoln Heath.

Another conspicuous character of the court was a quaint little hunchback, a pedlar by trade, whose sad deformity and resentful temper caused him to become the butt of every street gamin’s joke. He would often be seen in company with Sammy Noble, a wooden-legged vendor of firewood. The pair, I regret to say, called too frequently at taverns, and more than once I have seen them assisted home by kindly policemen, or “peelers,” as they were then called, who if resurrected to-day in their long black coats and chimney-pot hats, would surely be taken for nothing short of cathedral dignitaries.

The hero of the Gypsy colony was a tall athletic fellow, “Soldier” ’Plisti (or Supplistia) Boswell, who also bore the nickname of “Jumping Jack,” of whom I give a reminiscence or two here.

One day a country squire was driving a pony chaise along a lane, and, rounding a corner, he came upon a ring of Gypsies roasting hedgehogs. Imagine his astonishment to see a slender lad spring up, and, running a few yards, take a flying leap clear over the pony’s back, a feat so pleasing to the squire that he called the boy to his side and, presenting him with a bright crown-piece, offered—so the tale runs—“to keep him like a gentleman for life.” In return for which kindness, the Gypsy was expected to disown his people, a condition which was not jumped at by Jack.

’Plisti’s home in Gypsy Court was one day the scene of a singular incident. A fox closely pursued by the hounds dashed through the open door of the living-room, where before the fire lay the Gypsy asleep and snoring. Reynard in his haste managed to sweep the sleeper’s face with his brush; and mighty was the yell that burst from ’Plisti’s throat on being thus disturbed, causing the fox to seek refuge in a hovel hard by, where the dogs fell upon him. A brother of mine who was in the court at the time obtained possession of the brush, and the trophy was given a conspicuous place in our home.

In those days it was no unusual course for the Gypsy lads to enlist in the Militia, and ’Plisti looked every inch a soldier as he marched homeward from the morning’s drill on the common. In play he would level his musket at you, and laugh like a merry boy, if you caught his spirit and made believe that you were wounded. If he was proud of his scarlet jacket, his characteristic Gypsy vanity led him to glory in shirts of dyes so resplendent that in comparison the vaunted multi-coloured coat of Joseph would indeed have been thrown into the shade.

The Gypsy spell cast upon me in childhood was now reinforced by my discovery of the autobiographical writings of George Borrow. It was in my teens that I devoured Lavengro in its original three-volume form. By taper-light in an attic bedroom at home, or in some hollow on the common where the battered race-cards whitened the base of the gorse bushes—our old common is the annual scene of the Lincolnshire Handicap—I thrilled over the boy Borrow’s encounter with the Gypsies in the green lane at Norman Cross. I followed him through the crowded horse-fair at Norwich, and into the smoky tents pitched upon Mousehold Heath. But the episode which impressed me most of all was the fight with the Flaming Tinman. The dramatis personæ of that narrative would pursue me even into my dreams. The Romany Rye, with its vivid picture of Horncastle Fair, was pleasant enough reading, though not nearly so fascinating as Lavengro. Little did I think that the coming days were to bring some of Borrows originals within my ken.

How far Borrow’s Gypsies are portraits of individuals, and to what extent we are able to identify them, are questions which have often been asked. Don Jorge would probably have denied the charge of individual portraiture, yet there is no doubt that he had definite prototypes in his mind’s eye when penning his narratives. Just as in Guy Mannering, Sir Walter Scott portrayed an actual Jean Gordon under the name of Meg Merrilies, so we know that Borrow has given us his old friend Ambrose Smith under the now famous cognomen of “Jasper Petulengro,” a fact made plain by Dr. Knapp in his monumental work [28] familiar to all Gypsy students. Shortly before his death at Dunbar in October, 1878, Ambrose Smith and his wife Sanspirela (a Heron before marriage), together with their family, had been noticed and befriended by Queen Victoria. To wit: the following entry in More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands.

“August 26th, 1878.—At half-past three started with Beatrice, Leopold, and the Duchess in the landau, and four, the Duke, Lady Ely, General Ponsonby, and Mr. Yorke, going in the second carriage, and Lord Haddington riding all the way. We drove through the west part of Dunbar, which was very full, and we were literally pelted with small nosegays, till the carriage was full of them; then for some distance past the village of Belheven, Knockendale Hill, where were stationed in their best attire the queen of the gipsies, an oldish woman [Sanspirela] with a yellow handkerchief on her head, and a youngish, very dark, and truly gipsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl, and another woman. The queen is a thorough gipsy, with a scarlet cloak and a yellow handkerchief around her head. Men in red hunting-coats, all very dark, and all standing on a platform here, bowed and waved their handkerchiefs.”

In the seventh chapter of The Romany Rye, Borrow tells how he one day got his dinner “entirely off the body of a squirrel which had been shot the day before by a chal of the name of Piramus, who, besides being a good shot, was celebrated for his skill in playing on the fiddle.”

Nieces of Piramus Gray, whom I know, have testified to their uncle’s excellence as a marksman, and on the authority of Sinfai, a daughter of Piramus, I have been told that Ambrose Smith’s praise of her father’s fiddling was well founded.

“About a week ago my people and myself” (the speaker is Ambrose, i.e. Jasper Petulengro) “were encamped on a green by a plantation in the neighbourhood of a great house. In the evening we were making merry, the girls dancing, while Piramus was playing on the fiddle a tune of his own composing, to which he had given his own name, Piramus of Rome, and which is much celebrated amongst our people, and from which I have been told one of the grand gorgio composers who once heard it has taken several hints.”