About the middle of the afternoon I sought out my hospitable friend Arthur West before quitting the fair, and, looking me straight in the eyes, he said, “Are you quite sure that you have enough lova (money) to see you home? For if I thought you hadn’t, I should chuck a handful on the drom (road) and leave it for you to pick up.”
How shall we ever get you to understand the spirit of these wanderers; you who coddle yourselves in hot, close rooms; who are wedded to the life of a mill-horse jogging in convention’s dusty track, and whose souls are imprisoned within the dimensions of a red-ochred flower-pot?
CHAPTER V
A GYPSY BAPTISM—ROMANY NAMES
Quitting the Wolds, described in the preceding chapter, I took up my abode in a large village situated on Lincoln Heath, where I had further opportunities of pursuing my Gypsy studies round about home.
In a sinuous turfy lane which ran behind our house, the Gypsies would pitch their camp from time to time, and one of these wandering families conceived the notion of renting a cottage in the village. In my mind’s eye I can see that little house, wearing a lost, desolate air. It stood in a walled-in yard, where loose stones lay strewn, and the ridge of the red-tiled roof sunken in the middle threatened a collapse.
Unaccustomed to sleeping under a roof, and a rickety one at that, the Gypsies fled in alarm from their chamber one wild, boisterous night, fearing lest the chimney-pots should tumble in upon them. Near by stood their green caravan, and snugly abed therein they felt secure from all harm. Next day a timid rap came at the Rectory door, and a black-eyed girl whispered in my ear that her mother would like the baby, a few hours old, to be christened. This I did, and a day or two afterwards I was agreeably surprised to meet the Gypsy mother with her baby taking the fresh air on the high road. What mother in any other rank of life could carry her child in the open so soon after its birth?
“It’s a way we have,” said Walter Heron, when explaining to me that a plate, cup, and saucer are set apart for the mother’s use during the four weeks following the birth of a child. The vessels are then destroyed in accordance with an old puerperal tabu. This custom is still observed in all good Romany families.
Tom Lee, an English Gypsy, broke up a loaf of bread and strewed the crumbs around his tent when his son Bendigo was born, for some of the old-time Gypsies hold the notion that bread possesses a protective magic against evil influences. Seated one day in the tent of Bendigo Lee on the South Shore at Blackpool, I questioned him about his father’s practice. “In the days when I was born,” he replied, “there were people that could do hurt by looking at you, and I s’pose my dadus (father) sprinkled the crumbs lest any evil person going by should cast harm upon me.”
A distinct survival of the belief in the evil eye.
Romany “fore,” or Christian names, [53] are often peculiar, and afford much material for reflection.