An old gipsy woman appeared upon the scene with two little ragged gipsy children at her heels and a long stick in her hand, reminding me of the “shepherd’s crook.” On her feet were two odd, old, and worn-out navvy’s boots stuffed with rags, pieces of which were trailing after her heels. Her dress—if it could be called dress—was short, and almost hung in shreds; crooked and disgustingly filthy, she strutted about telling fortunes. I said to the old hypocrite, “How old are you? you must be getting a good round age.” With a quivering lip, trembling voice, and a tottering limb and stick she replied, “If it please the Lord, I shall be seventy-five soon.” “Which tribe of the gipsies do you belong to?” “I belong to the Drapers.” She now altered the tone of her voice to that of earnestness and said, “My good gentleman, I hope you have got a penny for me; I’ve had nothing to eat to-day.” Her voice began to quaver again, and, looking up towards the bright blue sky, “Now, my dear good gentleman, please do give me a penny, and the Lord will bless you. I’ve had a large family—nineteen children, and only three are dead.” I said, “What will you charge me for telling me my fortune?” She seemed a different woman in a minute, and replied in sharp tones, “You know it better than I can tell you.” The old gipsy woman fancied that she “smelt a rat,” and she turned away, with some hellish language to the little gipsies, and was lost among the crowd of holiday-makers passing backwards and forwards, drinking, swearing, gambling, fighting, racing, frolicsome, funny, and thoughtful. The curtain was now drawn, and I left her to pursue her satanic work among the simple, gay, and serious.
For a few minutes I stood in meditation and wonder, while the crowds of gipsies were pursuing their work in fortune-telling and at the swings, cocoa-nuts, donkey-riding, steam horses, &c. One young fellow I saw among the gipsies was not of gipsy birth or gipsy extraction. It was quite evident from his manner and tattered, black cloth dress, that the young man was nearly at the bottom of a slippery inclined plane. His figure brought to me a familiar scene of some twenty-five years ago, and with which I was well acquainted. The young man reminded me of the only son of a Methodist local preacher who had had the sole management of extensive earthenware works in the — for a long term of years, and was highly respected in the district. The young man had been petted and almost idolized. This only son was highly educated, and in every way was being prepared to take his father’s place at the works some day. His sisters worked carpet slippers for him, and his mother warmed them before he went to bed; and “good-nights” were given in the midst of loving embraces, prayers, and kisses. Oftentimes they were given and said while tears of thankfulness to God for having given them, as they thought, a son who was to give them comfort, solace, and pride as they toddled down the hill together, while the shades of evening gathered round them. Every one in this Christian household thought no labour in winter or summer, night or day, too much to be bestowed upon their darling son. Alas! alas! this idolized boy, for whom thousands of prayers had been offered to Heaven on his behalf, in an evil hour ceased to pray for himself, and took the wrong turning or “sharp round to the left,” and the last I heard of him was that he had fallen in with a gang of gipsies, ended his days as a vagabond in a union in Yorkshire, and had brought his parents with their early grey hairs in sorrow to the grave. His loving sisters to-day are scattered to the winds. These recollections brought tears to my eyes and a deep, deep sigh from the bottom of my heart.
I hung down my head, for I thought by the smarting of my eyes they would tell a tale, and made my way on foot in the midst of clouds of dust to Chingford, at the edge of the Forest, where Easter Monday was being held in high glee. Among the people, gentle and simple, I met on my way was a cartload of drunken lads and screaming wenches being drawn to the “Robin Hood” and High Beech by a poor, bony, grey, old, worn-out pony, with knees large enough for two horses, owing to its many falls upon the hard stones without the option of choice. If it had not been that it had a load of donkeys and little live beer barrels with their vent pegs drawn, filling the air on this bright spring morning with
“We won’t go home till morning,
We won’t go home till morning,
Till daylight doth appear,”
it might have turned round and bawled out, “Am not I thine ass?” Unfortunately for the poor dumb animal there was no one in its load that had sense, except in response to a policeman’s cudgel, to understand the meaning of “Am not I thine ass?” And away it hobbled and limped till it was out of sight. By this time perhaps the poor thing has been made into sausages, and sold to the “poor” as a rich treat for Sunday only.
One of this load of young sinners stood up in their midst—or I should say was propped up—and, with his hat slouching backward in his neck, shouted, “Mates, let’s give three cheers for Epping Forest.” “All right,” they cried out, “Hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah!” Another bawled out, “Let’s give three cheers for Easter Monday.” “Bravo, Jack; that’s it!” shouted a third, as he lay “all of a heap” at the bottom of the cart. “Hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hurrah! hip, hip, hip—” but they could not in this trial of strength get any farther. The “hurrah” was left for another Easter Monday. By this time, owing to the fumes of the beer barrel and the jolting of the cart, they had become such a “set out as I never did see.” Out of this pell-mell cartload of sin one of the crew, who needed a “slobbing bib,” cried out, “I—I—I say, Bill, let’s give three cheers for your old cat.” “You fool, we have no old cat,” said Bill. “I didn’t say you had.” “You did.” “I didn’t.” “You did,” said Bill. “If you say so again, I’ll punch you.” “Punch away,” said Bill. “Stop till we get to the ‘Robin Hood,’ and then I’ll show you who’s master.” “Sit down, you fool,” said Bill; “you have not the heart of a chicken.”
The Royal Road and Connaught Lake were beheld and passed over, and now, after observing and star-gazing right and left, I was among the gipsies to the left of the Forest Hotel. There was no mistaking them; for some of the poor women with their babies in their arms showed the usual signs of having been in the “wars,” by exhibiting here and there a “black eye;” and without any signs of the maiden and virgin modesty, romantic, backwood gipsy writers, who have never visited gipsy wigwams, say is one of the peculiar traits of gipsy character. Here there were droves of gipsies of all shades, caste, and colour, shouting, fighting, swearing, lying, and thieving to their heart’s content, with hordes of children exhibiting themselves in most disgusting positions in the midst of the boisterous laughter of their beastly parents.
At one of the cocoa-nut stalls stood a big, fat, coarse gipsy woman with black hair, big mouth, and a bare bosom. Hanging at one of her breasts was a poor baby, as thin as a herring, and with festering sores all over its face and body. To me they seemed to be the outcome of starvation, poverty, neglect, and dirt. The woman said that “teething” was the sole cause of the sores. This poor child ought to have been nourished in bed instead of being on its way to the grave, which may be at the back of some bush in the Forest, as I am told has been the case with numbers of gipsy children before. Hundreds, and I might say thousands, of them have been born among the low bushes, furze, and heather on Epping Forest without a tithe of the care which is bestowed upon cats and puppies. If children have been and are still being ushered into the world in such an unceremonious manner, it may be taken for granted that they have been and still are ushered out of the world “when they are not wanted” in an equally unceremonious manner. Queer things come to my ears sometimes. Gipsy morality, cleanliness, faithfulness, honesty, and industry exist only in moonshine—with some noble exceptions—and in the brain of some backwood romantic gipsy novelists, who have more than once been bewitched by the guile of gipsydom detrimental to their own interests and the welfare of our country. A “witching eye” has blindfolded hundreds to the putrifying mass of gipsyism; and a gipsy’s deceitful tongue has thrown thousands of “simple-minded” off their guard, and left them to flounder, struggle, and die in the mud of sin, with a future hope worse than that of a dog.
A tall fellow, almost like two six feet laths nailed together, now came near, and began to abuse the poor woman in a most fearful manner for having been away from the cocoa-nut stall attending to the needs of her child. The swearing was most blood-curdling and horrifying. I left this establishment to witness the cruel treatment the poor donkeys were receiving at the hands of these vagabond gipsies, which is almost beyond description. The thrashing, kicking, and striking with sharp pointed sticks, to make the poor donkeys go faster with their loads of big and little children on their backs, were enough to make one’s hair stand on end.
