"ON THE BURNING PLAINS OF THE DOBRUDJA WHERE FOR MILES AROUND NO TREE IS TO BE SEEN" (p. [48]).
"STIFLED BY THE OVERWHELMING TEMPERATURE, THEY HAD MASSED THEMSELVES TOGETHER" (p. [50]).
I have often met old couples wandering together—men and women bent with age, weary, dusty, covered with rags, with pipes in their mouths; wretched vagrants, but always perfectly picturesque. No doubt they were going to tinker in some villages, for the men carried on their backs the inevitable copper pots, whilst the old hags had heavy sacks slung over their shoulders, a thick staff in their hands. Along the sides of their earth-coloured checks grey plaits of hair hung limply down, swinging as they went. It was to me as though I had often met them before; I seemed to recognise their eyes, their weary look, even the shell, sign of the fortune-teller, that the women wore hanging from a string at their girdles; yet no doubt they were but samples of the many wanderers among this people who, homeless and foot-sore, are for ever roaming over the earth....
*
*—*
One art above all others belongs to the gipsies. They are born musicians, and the violin is their instrument; even the smallest boy will be able to make it sing. Some are musicians by profession. In groups of three and four they will wander from village to village, always where music is needed, patiently, tirelessly playing for hours and hours, in sun or rain, night or day, at marriages, funerals, or on feast-days.
When in bands these wandering minstrels have other instruments besides violins. Strange-shaped lutes, well known in Rumanian literature as the "cobsa," and a flute composed of several reeds, the classical flute used in ages past by old father Pan.