Gipsies are very much attached to their dogs, and in return the dogs are very much attached to their masters—so much so that there are numerous instances, perfectly authenticated, of the faithful animals having been in the habit of ranging the country alone, at great distances from the tent, and obtaining hares, rabbits, or other game, which they carefully and secretly brought by night to their owners as a slight testimonial of their regard and gratitude. As the dogs have no moral appreciation of the Game Laws, save as manifested in gamekeepers, no one can blame them. Gipsies almost invariably prefer, as canine manifesters of devotion, lurchers, a kind of dog which of all others can be most easily taught to steal. It is not long since a friend of mine, early one morning between dark and dawn, saw a lurcher crossing the Thames with a rabbit in his mouth. Landing very quietly, the dog went to a Gipsy tan, deposited his burden, and at once returned over the river.
Dogs once trained to such secret hunting become passionately fond of it, and pursue it unweariedly with incredible secrecy and sagacity. Even cats learn it, and I have heard of one which is “good for three rabbits a week.” Dogs, however, bring everything home, while puss feeds herself luxuriously before thinking of her owner. But whether dog or cat, cock or jackdaw, all animals bred among Gipsies do unquestionably become themselves Rommanised, and grow sharp, and shrewd, and mysterious. A writer in the Daily News of October 19, 1872, speaks of having seen parrots which spoke Rommany among the Gipsies of Epping Forest. A Gipsy dog is, if we study him, a true character. Approach a camp: a black hound, with sleepy eyes, lies by a tent; he does not bark at you or act uncivilly, for that forms no part of his master’s life or plans, but wherever you go those eyes are fixed on you. By-and-by he disappears—he is sure to do so if there are no people about the tan—and then reappears with some dark descendant of the Dom and Domni. I have always been under the impression that these dogs step out and mutter a few words in Rommany—their deportment is, at any rate, Rommanesque to the highest degree, indicating a transition from the barbarous silence of doghood to Christianly intelligence. You may persuade yourself that the Gipsies do not mind your presence, but rest assured that though he may lie on his side with his back turned, the cunning jucko is carefully noting all you do. The abject and humble behaviour of a poor negro’s dog in America was once proverbial: the quaint shrewdness, the droll roguery, the demure devilry of a real Gipsy dog are beyond all praise.
The most valuable dogs to the Gipsies are by no means remarkable for size or beauty, or any of the properties which strike the eye; on the contrary, an ugly, shirking, humble-looking, two-and-sixpenny-countenanced cur, if he have but intellect, is much more their affaire. Yesterday morning, while sitting among the tents of “ye Egypcians,” I overheard a knot of men discussing the merits of a degraded-looking doglet, who seemed as if he must have committed suicide, were he only gifted with sense enough to know how idiotic he looked. “Would you take seven pounds for him?” asked one. “Āvo, I would take seven bar; but I wouldn’t take six, nor six an’ a half neither.”
The stranger who casts an inquisitive eye, though from afar off, into a Gipsy camp, is at once noted; and if he can do this before the wolf—I mean the Rom—sees him, he must possess the gift of fern-seed and walk invisible, as was illustrated by the above-mentioned yesterday visit. Passing over the bridge, I paused to admire the scene. It was a fresh sunny morning in October, the autumnal tints were beautiful in golden brown or oak red, while here and there the horse-chestnuts spread their saffron robes, waving in the embraces of the breeze like hetairæ of the forest. Below me ran the silver Thames, and above a few silver clouds—the belles of the air—were following its course, as if to watch themselves in the watery winding mirror. And near the reedy island, at the shadowy point always haunted by three swans, whom I suspect of having been there ever since the days of Odin-faith, was the usual punt, with its elderly gentlemanly gudgeon-fishers. But far below me, along the dark line of the hedge, was a sight which completed the English character of the scene—a real Gipsy camp. Caravans, tents, waggons, asses, smouldering fires; while among them the small forms of dark children could be seen frolicking about. One Gipsy youth was fishing in the stream from the bank, and beyond him a knot of busy basketmakers were visible.
I turned the bridge, adown the bank, and found myself near two young men mending chairs. They greeted me civilly; and when I spoke Rommany, they answered me in the same language; but they did not speak it well, nor did they, indeed, claim to be “Gipsies” at all, though their complexions had the peculiar hue which indicates some other than Saxon admixture of blood. Half Rommany in their knowledge, and yet not regarded as such, these “travellers” represented a very large class in England, which is as yet but little understood by our writers, whether of fact or fiction. They laughed while telling me anecdotes of gentlemen who had mistaken them for real Rommany chals, and finally referred me to “Old Henry,” further down, who “could talk with me.” This ancient I found a hundred yards beyond, basketing in the sun at the door of his tent. He greeted me civilly enough, but worked away with his osiers most industriously, while his comrades, less busy, employed themselves vigorously in looking virtuous. One nursed his infant with tender embraces, another began to examine green sticks with a view to converting them into clothes-pegs—in fact I was in a model community of wandering Shakers.
I regret to say that the instant I uttered a Rommany word, and was recognised, this discipline of decorum was immediately relaxed. It was not complimentary to my moral character, but it at least showed confidence. The Ancient Henry, who bore, as I found, in several respects a strong likeness to the Old Harry, had heard of me, and after a short conversation confided the little fact, that from the moment in which I had been seen watching them, they were sure I was a gav-mush, or police or village authority, come to spy into their ways, and to at least order them to move on. But when they found that I was not as one having authority, but, on the contrary, came talking Rommany with the firm intention of imparting to them three pots of beer just at the thirstiest hour of a warm day, a great change came over their faces. A chair was brought to me from a caravan at some distance, and I was told the latest news of the road.
“Matty’s got his slangs,” observed Henry, as he inserted a ranya or osier-withy into his basket, and deftly twined it like a serpent to right and left, and almost as rapidly. Now a slang means, among divers things, a hawker’s licence.
“I’m glad to hear it,” I remarked. There was deep sincerity in this reply, as I had more than once contributed to the fees for the aforesaid slangs, which somehow or other were invariably refused to the applicant. At last, however, the slangs came; and his two boys, provided with them (at ten shillings per head), were now, in their sphere of life, in the position of young men who had received an education or been amply established in business, and were gifted with all that could be expected from a doting father. In its way this bit of intelligence meant as much to the basketmaker as, “Have you heard that young Fitz-Grubber has just got the double-first at Oxford?” or, “Do you know that old Cheshire has managed that appointment in India for his boy?—splendid independence, isn’t it?” And I was shrewdly suspected by my audience, as the question implied, that I had had a hand in expanding this magnificent opening for the two fortunate young men.
“Dick adoi!” cried one, pointing up the river. “Look there at Jim!”
I looked and saw a young man far off, shirking along the path by the river, close to the hedge.