I retired from the hubbub for a few minutes, to stand against one of the huge trees growing upon the edge of the “green,” and while there I heard some gipsies chuckling over the “gingered” and “screwed” horses and ponies they had sold during the fair, and arranging which of their party should hunt the customer out the next day, to buy back for a five-pound note their palmed-off “broken-winded” and “roaring old screws” which they had sold for seventeen pound or twenty pound during the fair. A fine-looking broken-winded horse, “roarer” or “cribber,” with the mark intact, is almost a fortune for a gipsy. During two or three years “while he will go,” the “screw” is sold and bought in again scores of times. Many of the horse-dealing gipsies are dressed nowadays as farmers, and by these means they more readily palm off their “screws” upon young beginning town or street hawkers, carriers, and higglers.
Living in some of the vans of gipsies there were man, woman, and, in some instances, seven or eight sons and daughters of all ages. In other vans and tents there was a mixture of men, women, and children, not of the same blood relationship; and the same may be said of some of the travelling gingerbread hawkers.
Those of the hawkers who were rich enough to own a van slept in it “higgledy-piggledy,” “pell-mell,” and “all of a heap.” Those who had not vans, the men, women, and “chaps” slept upon the ground, under the stall boards, in a manner which would be a disgrace to South African civilization and Zulu morals.
In the midst of waning twilight and the gathering of sheets and rents, some of the gipsy women were preparing for their last meal before shutting the van doors and drawing to their tent curtains. Scores of poor little lost, dirty, ignorant, neglected, and almost naked, gipsy children gathered round me for “coppers” and “sweets.” After digging deep into my pocket for all I could find, and distributing them among the children, I bade the gipsy parents “good-night” and a “good-bye,” and then turned to have a chat and a “good-night” with George Bagworth, the steam-horse driver, and his wife, the “popgun” firer. George was dressed in his best large Scotch plaid suit from head to foot. His “hurdy-gurdy steam organ,” and “flying horses,” had winged married and single, men, women, and children, round and round, exhibiting their thick and thin legs, not modestly for the riders, but successfully for George and his sharp, good-looking, business wife. George was in good humour with himself and everybody else. He entered freely into conversation about his troubles and trials in former years, and of his successes, position, and future views.
He is very good to poor cocoa-nut gamblers. It often happens that some of the poor unfortunate fraternity arrive upon the “course,” “green,” or “fair” without a “tanner.” A wink of his wife’s eye prompts George to advance them sufficient money to give them a start. This—for there is honour among thieves—is paid back at the close of the fair, with many thanks. George pointed out to me again with pride the vans he had made, and with little greater pride to his artistic painting of the heathen gods and goddesses, which were the mainstays of his whirligig establishment.
George’s wife hung down her head at the non-success of her “popgun” galleries. “But it is no use ‘frettin’ and cryin’ over spilt milk,’” she said, while preparing their supper tea. “You’ll join us, won’t you, sir? you shall be made right welcome, and have the best we’ve got.” They fetched out their best antique china cup and saucer, and we three sat down to a box table with cloth cover to enjoy the twilight meal, with the twinkling stars overhead, and the gipsies’ lurcher dogs prowling about the tents and vans, snuffling and smelling after the odds and ends and other trifles. Speaking within compass, I should think there would not be fewer than thirty lurchers skulking under the stalls as eagerly as if after hares and rabbits. Of course George Bagworth’s joined in the scent and sniffle. “Mine host” was a poacher bred and born—at least he had a spell of it in his younger days among the woods, parks, spinnies, and plantations joining Leicestershire and Staffordshire coalfields. The twinkling star repast was finished; hubbub, din, screeching, yelling, fighting, singing, shouting, swearing, blaspheming, and loud oaths were dying out. Pluto seemed to be getting tired of his feast; Somnus was observed stealthily wending his way among Bacchus’s wounded followers, and the vast herds and tribes of poor, neglected, uneducated, and lost little children living in sin, pestilential, and vitiated atmosphere with dark—very dark—and black future before them, which the rising of a morning’s sun could not dispel.
As I wended my way to my lodgings I could not help thinking of Sennacherib’s army besieging Jerusalem with no Hezekiah to deliver.
I had now found my way to my lodgings. Round the family table in the cottage there were Mr. and Mrs. Gayton, “mine host and hostess,” and one or two friends. While the conversation was going on a party of drunken fellows were bawling out down the road some kind of song, which I could not comprehend. Mr. Gayton’s sister said it was a song she knew well; and with a little persuasion—notwithstanding Mrs. Gayton’s twitching, nervous manner and disinclination to hear it—the good woman struck up in a sweet but rather shrill voice, and in somewhat affecting tremulous tone, the song, as follows:
“Little empty cradle, treasured so with care,
Tho’ thy precious burden now has fled,
How we miss the locks of curly golden hair,
Peeping from the tiny snow-white bed.
When the dimpled cheeks and pretty laughing eyes,
From the rumpled pillows shone,
Then I gazed with gladness, now I looked with sighs,
Empty is the cradle—baby’s gone.“Baby left her cradle for the golden shore,
O’er the silvery waters she has flown,
Gone to join the angels, peaceful evermore,
Empty is the cradle—baby’s gone.”
After the first verse was ended I noticed again a little subdued and stifled sobbing, and the mistress of the house wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron.