for mentioning what a profligate person had talked about.
The following is an instance of conjugal attachment. A poor woman, whose eldest child is now under the care of the Society for the improvement of the Gipsies, being near her confinement, came into the neighbourhood of Southampton, to be with her friends, who are reformed, during the time. This not taking place so soon as she expected, and having promised to meet her husband at a distance on a certain day, he not daring to shew himself in Hampshire, she determined on going to him; and having mounted her donkey, set off with her little family. She had a distance of nearly fifty miles to travel, and happily reached the desired spot, where she met her husband before her confinement took place. The good people at Warminster, near which place she was, afforded her kind and needful assistance; and one well-disposed lady became God-mother to the babe, who was a fine little girl; the grateful mother pledging that, at a proper age, she should be given up to Christians to be educated.
Before this woman left Southampton, referring to many kind attentions shewn her by the charitable of that place, she was heard to say, Well—I did not think any one would take such trouble for me!
Professing to be church people whenever they speak of religion, the Gipsies generally have their children baptized at the church near which they are born,
partly because they think it right, and partly, perhaps chiefly, to secure the knowledge of the parish to which the child belongs; for every illegitimate child is parishioner in the parish in which it happens to be born. They will sometimes apply to the parish officers for something toward the support of a child, which they call settling the baby.
The sponsors at baptism are generally branches of the same family, and they speak of their God-children with pleasure, who in return manifest a high feeling of respect for them, and superstitiously ask their blessing on old Christmas-days, when in company with them. It is worthy of remark that all the better sort of Gipsies teach their children the Lord’s Prayer.
The anxiety evidenced by some parish officers to prevent these families from settling in their districts, has occasionally led the Gipsies to act unjustifiably by menacing them with the settlement of a number of their families; but this, from their perpetual wandering, need never be feared. Happy would it be for the Gipsies as a people, if these civil officers did encourage them to stay longer in their neighbourhood; for they then might be induced to commence and persevere in honest, industrious and regular habits. Not long ago thirty-five Gipsies came to a parish in Hampshire, to which they belonged, and demanded of the overseers ten pounds, declaring that, if that sum were not given them, they would remain there. Seven pounds were advanced, and they soon left the place.
CHAP. III. The Character, Manners and Habits of the English Gipsies, continued.
From the mode of living among the Gipsies, the parents are often necessitated to leave their tents in the morning, and seldom return to them before night. Their children are then left in or about their solitary camps, having many times no adult with them; the elder children then have the care of the younger. Those who are old enough gather wood for fuel; nor is stealing it thought a crime. By the culpable neglect of the parents in this respect, the children are often exposed to accidents by fire; and melancholy instances of children being burnt and scalded to death, are not unfrequent. The author knows one poor woman, two of whose children have thus lost their lives, during her absence from her tent, at different periods: and very lately a child was scalded to death in the parish where the author writes.
The Gipsies are not very regular in attending to the calls of appetite and hunger. Their principal meal is supper, and their food is supplied in proportion to the success they have had through the day; or, to use their own words, the luck they have met with.