In this respect the gypsy must not for a moment be likened to the aboriginal Australian, or to the Red man, for while they are gradually but not the less surely being extinguished by the vices they have adopted from the white man, the gypsy adapts himself to circumstances to a certain extent but keeps more or less aloof from the “Gentile” and is in little danger of becoming so civilized—if we may so term it—as to lose in any degree his hold upon, or fidelity to, gypsydom, and down to the present time he has falsified predictions by declining to die off.
Most of the present-day fairs bring together a good sprinkling of the “people of Egypt,” as the gypsies at one time called themselves, and I have often met in my own locality some whom I have seen at similar gatherings in other parts of the country. At one anniversary of the local fair when a goodly number of my gorgio acquaintances happened to be present, a Romany girl espied me as I sauntered along between the stalls, and said as she slipped her arm through mine—
“Come along with me, my Rye; I’ll show you something to photo,” and to the evident astonishment of those of my friends whose conduct was regulated by Mrs. Grundy, I was escorted just out of the fair to where an old woman was seated beside a ditch.
“There!” exclaimed my dusky guide, “she’ll make a good photo; she ain’t long for this world, so you’d better get one now.”
Writing of fairs reminds me of an occasion when I looked up some Romany acquaintances on the evening preceding a fair. There was every prospect of a large gathering on the morrow, and quite a number of gypsy families were on the ground. Work was finished for the day and it was nearly dark as we sat around the fire. As we chatted mainly in Romany, the youngsters—who had not yet been disposed of for the night—evidently considered that their elders should not monopolize the conversation and therefore kept up a running fire of questions, partly with the hope that they might catch me tripping:—
“What’s a bokkra?”
“What are chokkars?”
“What’s tuv?”
“He dunno what mullo mas is, I sh’ think.”
“Do you know what a juggal is, my Rye?”