The Gypsy's Parson: his experiences and adventures

by Lincolnshire rector of Ruckland George Hall

Then I got my picture.

Reverting to the Watlands, I was not disappointed. There in a hollow on the moor I found them squatting around their fires. Wearied by travel, some of the elders had retired for the night. “Dik lesti’s pîro” (look at his foot), said one of the boys, pointing to a man’s bare brown foot protruding from beneath a tent cover. Within view of Durham’s twinkling lights we sat, and my tobacco pouch having gone the round, we were soon deep in the sayings and doings of the Watlands of other days, for when business is off Gypsies ever talk of Gypsies. As I looked at these folk, it seemed as though behind them through the dusk peered the shades of Romanies of an older, weirder sort, who shunned contact with cities and hated gawjê (non-Gypsies) with a bitterness unknown to-day.

Here is a tale of the old times, obtained from grizzled “Durham” Mike Watland, and translated more or less into my own words.

“When I was a little fellow, I used to listen with delight to a blood-curdling story which my grandfather used to tell as we sat watching the red embers die out at night. One time he found himself in a strange predicament, and got such a “gliff” as he had never experienced before. This of course was many years ago, for my grandfather lived to the age of ninety-four, and I am one of the third generation of a long-lived family of Gypsies. The ways of our people were a bit different then. In those days, you saw no harm in taking anything you had a fancy for, if you could get it. My grandfather was a young fellow, and on this particular morning he crossed a moor and came to a hamlet containing three or four straggling houses, and near one of these stood a cowshed and a low barn. In passing the shed he saw hanging there a nice porker which had been killed early that morning, and round it was wrapped a sack to prevent dogs or cats from gnawing it. All this my grandfather observed as he hawked his goods at the cottage door, inwardly resolving to pay Mr. Piggy a visit by night. All was quiet when at a late hour he re-crossed the moor and arrived at the shed, on entering which he put out his hands and felt for the pig where he had seen it hanging in the morning, but, no, it had been removed. It then occurred to him that for greater safety it might have been carried into the low-roofed barn, so in he went and felt all along the cross-beam. He was right. Sure enough the pig’s face struck cold to his hand. Quickly he cut the rope, and, slinging piggy across his shoulder, was soon making his way back to the camping-place. But crossing that rough land with a heavy load was no easy task, and you may be sure that the farther he went the heavier it became. When descending a slope, he caught his foot in a hole, and down he tumbled with his burden. Now as he arose and laid hold of the rope in order to hoist the pig once more, the moon came out from behind a cloud, and revealed the face of—a dead man! For a moment he stood mesmerized by fright, then sick at heart he proceeded to acquaint the nearest constable with the fact. The corpse was identified as that of a feeble-minded cottager who had hanged himself in the barn.”

One day I was exploring the city of Durham, for my early life in Lincoln had imbued me with a love of old architecture, and the nave of Durham minster profoundly gratified my love of the sombre, when, lo, just over the way, I saw a weather-beaten vâdo (living-van), and near it was the owner, looking up and down the street as if expecting someone to appear. Crossing the road, I greeted the Gypsy, who turned out to be one of the Winters, a North-Country family to whom has been applied (not without reason) the epithet “wild,” and I remembered how Hoyland, in his Historical Survey of the Gypsies, had written—

“The distinguished Northern poet, Walter Scott, who is Sheriff of Selkirkshire, has in a very obliging manner communicated the following statement—‘ . . . some of the most atrocious families have been extirpated. I allude to the Winters, a Northumberland clan, who, I fancy, are all buried by this time.’”

But Sheriff Scott was wrong.

The Winters had only changed their haunts, and on being driven out of the Border Country had moved southward.

As I stood chatting with Mr. Winter, his handsome wife came up with a hawking-basket on her arm. I shall always remember her in connection with a story she told me.