“Norfolk’s the place for sarpints,” said one of the boys; “I once see one with a frog in its mouth. Lor, how the poor thing did squeal. There’s lots of lizards about here, and they say that a hotshi (hedgehog) will eat ’em, but if I thought that I’d never touch no more hotshi s’long as I live.”
I told the children of a little incident which had happened on my way to Furzemoor, how I had cycled into a family of weasels crossing the road but didn’t run over any of them, and, dismounting, I banged one of the little fellows with my hat. He lay still, and I thought he was dead, but when I turned my head for a moment he was gone like a flash. Lottie, who had drawn near and was listening, remarked—
“It’s bad luck to meet a wezzel on the drom (road), but if there’s anything we does like to meet, it’s the Romany tshiriklo (bird),” which I knew to be the pied wagtail, the foreteller of coming Gypsies.
“When we sees our tshiriklo on the road, and it flies, we knows we are going to meet Gypsies who’ll be akin to us, but if it only runs away, the travellers coming will be strangers. One day me and my man was on the drom and we see a young hare tumbling over and over in front of us. That’s a sign as means ill, and, sure enough, a few days after we heard tell of the death of my man’s uncle ’Lijah. Talking about meeting things, I’ve heard it said that if you meet two carts, one tied behind t’other, you’ll soon go to prison.”
The strains of a fiddle now proceeded from where Sam sat alone by the fire, and we joined him. As the sun was going down one of the girls proposed a dance, and soon a merry whirl of Gypsy elves enlivened the camp. By the fireside, reminiscences came crowding into Sam’s brain.
“Many’s the time, as you know, we’ve draw’d on to this place, and I takes good care to be friendly with all the keepers round here. I never meddles wi’ nothink, you see, so we never gets across wi’ ’em. Ay, but I minds when I didn’t used to be so pertikler. See that oak wood up yonder? In my young days me and my old mammy got leave from a keeper to gather acorns in that wood. Us used to take ’ur sacks and fill ’em with acorns and sell ’em to a man as we know’d. And mam ’ud warn me not to meddle with the rabbits, lest we should be forbid to stop on here. One afternoon mam had half-filled her sack, and when her back was turned, I tumbled the acorns out, and slipped into the sack three rabbits as I’d knocked over, and I put the acorns back on the top of ’em. I was a good big lad then, and, my, wasn’t I frit when I see the keeper coming with his dog. When he got up to us, he and mam got a-talking, and I see the dog sniffing round the bag. The keeper, thinking that there was only acorns in it, shouts to the dog, “Come away there.” But the dog stuck there, and I was trembling in my boots for fear we should get into trouble. Howsiver, the keeper kept calling the dog off, and soon they goes away. Then I nips up the bag and trots off home with it, and when I told mam about it afterwards she gave me a downright good scolding and begged me never to do it no more.
“Our old folks allus travelled with pack-donkeys, and they had one donkey as was a wery knowing animal. I’ll tell you one thing it did. We was stopping in a lane of a summer’s evening, and our foki (people) was smoking afore the fire under a hedge with the children playing round, and everybody was as happy as the Lord in Heaven, but all at once our maila (donkey) comes and pokes its head atween daddy and me, and I taps it on the nose, playful-like, to send it away, but it comes back, and it was that restless and fidgety, poking and pulling at us—it wouldn’t be druv off. My mammy had been watching it from the tent, and she come up and says—
“‘That maila knows summut, I reckons.’
“‘Ay, it’s a sign sure enough,’ says daddy. And the donkey still kep’ on poking and pulling at us. Long and by last dad says—
“‘We’d better clear out of here,’ for he thought there was summut queer about the donkey’s goings on. Well, we pulled up the tent rods and packed ’ur things, and we’d only just got out of the lane when two horsemen come along and began inquiring about a little pig as was missing from a farm. They made us unpack, and they searched through everythink, but, of course, they couldn’t find nothink agen us, and they goes their way and we goes ours. And that night, after we had settled down in an old quarry a bit furder on, my daddy beckoned me and took me to a deep hollow full o’ dead leaves, and, scrabbling among ’em, he takes out—what do you think? The nicest little bawlo (porker) you ever see’d, and we gets it safe home. That donkey did know summut after all. Ay, them were the old times. Things is wery different now.