A sunset of rare beauty was reddening the sandhills when I returned to the Gypsyry on the South Shore. For a while I walked up and down in the miniature fair, and before I turned my face towards the town, lights began to appear in the tent baulks and the stars came out over the darkening sea.
Next morning I was walking along the spacious sea-front with Archie Smith for companion, and in the distance appeared a little man pushing a grinding-barrow. Quickening our steps, we overtook him and found he was Elijah Heron on his morning round. I inquired where he was stopping, and promised to visit him later in the day. My companion, the lively Archie, was reeling off for my benefit a list of the inhabitants of the South Shore Gypsyry, and had just mentioned Bendigo Purum, when, rounding a corner, we met the man himself, a very swarthy Gypsy—almost black, one might say.
“Roker of the Beng,” whispered Archie, “and you’ll dik lesti” (see him).
Farther along in a narrow thoroughfare we observed several Gypsy women out a-shopping, their gay diklos and blouses making splashes of bright colour in the crowded street. It seemed to me that Blackpool was alive with Gypsies. In the afternoon I returned to the South Shore, and, hearing the strains of a violin proceeding from a gorgeous red blanket tent in a field near the railway, I made my way thither, and to my joy I discovered Eros and Lias Robinson at home.
Here is a song which I heard from the lips of Lias—
“Mandi’s tshori puri dai
Jaw’d adrê kongri to shun the rashai;
The gawjê saw sal’d as yoi besh’d talê;
Yoi dik’d ’drê the lil, but yoi keka del-aprê;
The rashai roker’d agen dukerin, pen’d dova sos a laj,
But yov keka jin’d mandi duker’d yov’s tshai,
Puker’d yoi’d romer a barvdo rai.”
Translation.
“My poor old mother
Went into church to hear the parson;
The gentiles all laughed as she sat down;
She looked into the book, but she could not read;
The parson talked against fortune-telling, said it was a shame,
But he never knew I had told his daughter’s fortune,
Told her she’d marry a wealthy squire.”
Lias was full of reminiscences of wanderings through the heart of Wales, and I listened with keen interest to his talk about the deep Woods. In my readings of Leland’s writings I had come upon the mention of Mat Wood whom, in after years, I had the good fortune to meet in Wales. During his Welsh wanderings, Lias had met several sons of John Roberts, the harpist, concerning whom I had learned much from Groome’s delightful book, In Gipsy Tents. Here I may mention that Old John Roberts was an occasional visitor to Lincolnshire in days gone by. He travelled widely with his harp, on which he was a talented player. My wife, who hails from the Fen country, remembers John’s visits to her native village of Fleet, near Holbeach in Lincolnshire, where he would play on the parish green, as well as on the lawns of private houses. A venerable-looking, bearded man, who might have passed for a clergyman, he was a welcome guest in the home of my father-in-law, where he would play old airs to a pianoforte accompaniment.
