The remaining illustrations will speak for themselves, perhaps, excepting Fig. 7, which were unquestionably valuable and were beautifully made of burnished and matte yellow gold.
Nearly all the females—whether of tender years or adult—wear necklaces of some description, their fondness for beads amounting almost to a passion; but with beads, as in other gypsy matters, there appears to be a sort of vogue or preference for certain shapes and colours. Very frequently, but not invariably, the beads worn are black or red—two “lucky” colours, by the way. The shape most favoured is perhaps that of a cowrie (Fig. 8), approximately, and there appears to be ground for supposing that at one time cowries may have been used in this manner, giving place eventually to coral or stones turned to roughly imitate them. The beads used differ much in size, varying from one-eighth of an inch in length and of like diameter, to an inch or more in length by three-quarters of an inch in diameter.
Were it possible to trace these strings of beads through all their vicissitudes of time and place not a few, it would be discovered, have emanated within the last twenty or thirty years from that birthplace of so much “genuine” Hindu, Egyptian and similar work, a place known to gypsies as Kaulo gav (Black town), otherwise Birmingham, while others would be found to have been religiously cared for and passed on by generation after generation of the same family almost from the time of their shaping in the Far East; indeed, after carefully examining some of these old beads, but little imagination is needed to present to the mind’s eye a Hindu squatting at his primitive lathe, turning and shaping coral, stone or wood into just such beads.
Occasionally, the beads of a necklace are nicely graduated or otherwise regularly varied in size; again, they may be seen having no order or arrangement, as though composed of portions of several necklaces. The only rule I have been able to discover concerning the number of strings or rows of beads one wears is, that each one wears all she has,—if enough for one string only, it suffices; if she be fortunate enough to possess sufficient for three, four or six rows, then she wears all of them, but two or three rows are more usual.
Gypsy women have distinct and artistic styles of dressing the hair, of which they mostly have an abundance, and I have known more than one Romany chal who was proud of his glossy, black ringlets, but nowadays one would probably have some difficulty in finding such. Some of the men adopt the fringe style for their front locks, others cultivate the “curl” of the rural labourer, but quite frequently young men and lads have the hair closely cropped,—“it’s cleaner in the warm weather,” said one to me; “my missis allus cuts mine, she’s done it ever since we’ve been married, with the horse-clippers.”
“No I haven’t,” interpolated the wife; “I’ve done it with the small ones.”
“Well,” he retorted, “they are almost the same.”
In a gypsy encampment there is generally one of the men who is handy with scissors and razor; naturally his services are preferred by the community to those of the professional barber. Sunday is the day when the tonsorial artist of the camp is busy, and for fairly obvious reasons,—in the first place, he is not at work,—that is to say, he is not pursuing his ordinary vocation; secondly, Sunday generally finds almost every one at the vans or tents.