The afternoon and evening which followed my morning ramble were crowded with Gypsy experiences. At the back of a large tent sat Kenza Boswell fiddling, while his daughters danced with exceeding grace.
Next, Noarus Tâno, in one of his skittish moods, kept me in fits of laughter for ten minutes. He was the humorist of the Blackpool camp.
Entirely unaccustomed to controlling his imagination, Noarus will tell an extraordinary tale in which he himself plays a part, with no other object than to amuse his hearer, or to lift himself a little higher in your esteem. And just as no one is expected to believe the narratives of Baron Munchausen, so the Gypsy in telling his “lying tale” is perfectly content with the laughter of the listener. This gay spirit of exaggeration certainly stamps the following tale told by Old Tâno.
The scene is the kitchen of the village inn, and poultry-lifting is the topic of conversation. It is Noarus who speaks—
“There’s a farmer’s wife up in the willage what’s been blaming a two-legged fox for robbing her hen-roost. I say it’s some low dealer what comes out of the town with a light cart on a shiny night when the stormy winds are blowing, so as folks shan’t hear him at work. You knows the sort, but us Gypsies has a different way. When did you ever know any of us to meddle with anythink in these here parts? Don’t your farmers buy ponies off us? Ain’t we highly respected by the gentle-folk for miles round? Why, there was a squire up in Yorkshire, a prize-poultry fancier, as know’d my people wery well. We often camped on his land and never meddled with nothink. He trusted us so much that he comes down to our tents one day and says to my daddy—
“‘I want to beg a favour of you, Tâno. I’m going abroad for a while, and I want you and your son to take charge of my poultry farm while I’m away.’
“Well, my daddy and me took charge of his prize fowls, and when he come back again, how do you think he found things, my gentlemen?”
The company, profoundly impressed by the speaker’s discourse, exclaimed with one voice—
“All right to a feather.”
“Nay, that he never did. We’d ate the hull blessed lot!”
Mindful of my promise to visit Elijah Heron, I sought out his tent, and I had to stoop very low to get in the doorway. In my pocket was a heavy, silver-mounted brier pipe possessing a large amber mouthpiece. This I presented to the old man, and it was good to see his face light up with pleasure. “Tatsheni rup si kova” (Real silver is this), he said, pointing to the mountings. “A swêgler’s kek kushto without tuvalo” (A pipe’s no good without tobacco), I remarked, handing him a cake of Black Jack. He lighted up and looked as happy as a king.
Noticing that I was slightly deaf, he recommended oil extracted from vipers as good for deafness. The mention of snakes took him back to his sojourn in the Antipodes. “I never talks of saps (snakes) but I thinks of the days when I was travelling in ’Stralia. One night I got leave from a farmer to stop near a river, but I didn’t hatsh odoi (remain there) for more than an hour or two, for I found there was saps about—nasty, hissing critturs. A black man as come down to the river to water some hosses told me that the saps sometimes maw’d (killed) animals near the river, so I packed up my traps and kept on the road all night. Give me Old England, I say. I’m right glad to be back here.”
In a little tent hard by, I heard Poley and his wife singing as I said “Good-night” to Elijah. Happy, twinkling eyes they were that looked out at me from that little tent door as I passed. I envy you that merry heart, Poley, that evergreen spirit of yours, and, recalling your face, I see again the array of Gypsy tents as twilight dropped its purple veil on Blackpool’s pleasant shore.