Later, the third family moves off and makes an equally effective pateran in a similarly simple manner, for with the knife they take a few slices of turf, taking care to cut deeply enough to include a little of the soil; this they break into small pieces which they drop at turnings and so on, precisely in the manner of the two other parties. For some distance at least then there will be three distinct trails along the same road, all of which will probably be entirely overlooked by every one but the gypsies who are interested, and to them they will give much information.
The soils of different districts differ much, and when a pateran of peat is found in a chalk district the inference is obvious,—gypsies from a heather country have passed, and vice versa.
It is not necessary to our purpose to explain at length other variations of the patrin, nor to describe numerous signs in everyday use by the gypsies, which have more of the nature of family secrets and which if divulged would add little of interest, for obviously the pateran may be varied indefinitely, and each family make a code of its own. The practice of making a simple device in the sand or dust at the roadside, the tying or affixing of pieces of rag to bushes, and numerous other means of imparting information might be described, but would amount to little more than repetitions in various forms of the signs already noticed.
All these devices would appear to have been instituted with the dual purpose of giving desired information to their own people and of rendering it impossible for the Gentiles to arrive at any certain knowledge concerning them.
True Romany folk, as a race, have kept aloof from the Gentiles or non-gypsy people; even now that the latter are often on friendly terms with them, they are treated in various ways as being without the pale, and so jealous are gypsies of their own tongue that they seldom speak it in the hearing of the gorgios unless it be for the purpose of keeping something secret from them.
Although they do not despise postal facilities, they have also ways of their own for transmitting intelligence, among which natural object signals and symbols have a place.
“To me men are what they are.
They wear no masks with me.”