In a recent newspaper article, gypsies are called outlaws; on turning up “outlaw” in a modern dictionary, one finds the word defined as “a person deprived of the protection of the law.” Surely this statement in the article in question must have been a reflection of the desires of the writer, for the outlaws referred to were a section of the English gypsies—virtually such as are the subjects of my pen, pencil and camera. It is to be feared that the spirit of bigotry and uncharitableness that characterized the Middle Ages is not dead; but, like the justly detested couch grass, lives and grows around us unseen, excepting for the elegant and innocent-looking but tell-tale evidences here and there on the surface.
It is high time that the obloquy and unfair treatment to which our gypsy brethren have been subjected—proceeding partly from ignorance of the people themselves, and partly from the encouragement and exercise of sentiments that are unworthy of a professedly Christian nation—gave place to some embodiment of the behest—
“Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.”
Drawing now to a conclusion, I see again with my mind’s eye, an incident in one of my recent walks abroad:—
On the day following Christmas Day, at a distance of two or three miles from any ordinary habitation, or even a gypsy camp, I saw trudging along the road and coming towards me, a Romany woman and three little children. All of them were poorly clad, the woman having no covering to her head. Although they appeared to have no food with them and the day was raw and foggy, all seemed cheerful—the woman singing in an undertone. The song was evidently, “It’s a long way to Tipperary,” for just as I came alongside the party I caught the words, “it’s a long ways to go.”
What an unconscious sarcasm on the way of that poor woman and her little ones,—aye, and of many another gypsy, through life,—assuredly “a long ways to go” if it be regarded as prospecting for even a very small share of the meanest of such things as multitudes consider indispensable to comfort, or even existence. And yet how the cheery optimism of these travelling people rebukes the discontented well-to-do idler.
Gypsies or gorgios, are we not all travellers, pilgrims of eternity, carrying nothing to the next stage in our existence but what we accumulate in our innermost selves, and the Romanichal may well be an optimist when he realizes, even in an indefinite way, that the poorest gypsy has an equal opportunity with the highest of the mighty ones of earth, of gathering to himself as he goes through life, of the best that can be carried from this world into the next.