“Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me,
Bless Thy little lamb to-night,
Through the darkness be Thou near me,
Keep me safe till morning light.“Let my sins be all forgiven.
Bless the friends I love so well,
Take me when I die to heaven,
Happy there with Thee to dwell.
For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”
They now fastened their van top door down and bade me good-night. Their dog had snoozled under their home on wheels. Fogs and chills were creeping round. The policeman’s tramp was to be heard, and with death-like silence reigning I crept between the cold sheets to toss and tumble about till the bright morning sun appeared, to fasten upon my heart the sights of the previous day at the Oxford St. Giles’s fair, not to be removed till eternity dawns upon my soul with heaven in full view. To, as Marianne Farningham says in The Christian World—
“A land where noises of the earth
For evermore shall cease,
Where the weary ones are resting
In the calm of perfect peace.”
Rambles Among the Gipsies at Hinckley Fair.
Hinckley September fair has for many long years been regarded as one of the greatest “screw” fairs in England, and as a place where many gipsies annually gather together to follow their usual and profitable occupation of horse-dealing. At this fair they buy all the good-looking “screws” they can put their hands upon, and palm and physic them off, temporarily, as sound horses. They both, as one told me, “make their market” and “make hay while the sun shines” at this fair. A thorough old “screw” knows as if by instinct the scent of gipsy pantaloons; and by some means, known only to a few, the horses find their way back into gipsy hands again.
With these facts before me, I was prompted to pay the gipsies a visit at their Eldorado. The morning was like a spring morning. The sun shone cheerfully, lovely, and warmingly, and was fast drying up the mud. On my way to the station some slovenly waggoner had left some thorns in the way, which I threw over the fence and passed on. I had not gone far before I found, on a rising hill, a large piece of granite in the centre of the road, which some idle and careless Johnny had left behind him. I rolled it out of the way and sped along. On the top of the hill a coal higgler had left a large lump of coal in the way—or it had jolted off while he was asleep, or akin to it. This I deposited among the thistles and nettles in the ditch, where it remained for some weeks. While I was clearing these little troublesome and somewhat dangerous things out of the way, the skylark was singing cheeringly and sweetly overhead as of spring-time. My gipsy friends would say that these were forebodings and prognostications, ruled by the planets, which indicated joys and troubles, pleasure or sorrows for the travellers, according to the amount of silver and gold there was floating about within their reach. How I was guided by the Creator and the planets, and with what success I pursued my course, will be seen before I have done rambling.
At the station a poor woman was in a difficulty. She had promised to have tea with her long-absent daughter, at the “feast” at four o’clock the same day; but, unfortunately, the train would not take her to the “feast.” Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the porters, the good woman got into the train and said, “I shall go,” and she sped her way, but not to the “feast.”
A mother’s love sees no difficulties and fears no dangers, and will draw more tears from the human fountain than any other force on this side heaven.
At Nuneaton there was the usual long time to wait; after which I duly arrived at the “screw fair.”
At the entrance there was gipsy — and his wife—with their six lost little children, and the probability of a seventh being soon added—setting up their stall.