“What about the price?” I asked.
“If you get a tenner for it,” he replied, “there’ll be a bâ (sovereign) for yourself. What say?”
“Saw tatsho (All right). Jaw ’vrî konaw” (Go away now). And in less than ten minutes after taking my stand by the little animal, I had a bid from a young farmer of the small-holder type. His offer was accompanied by some adverse criticism. Who ever heard a man praise the horse he intended to buy?
“Examine the pony for yourself,” said I.
He looked at its teeth. He lifted its feet one by one. He pinched and punched it all over. The pony was next trotted to and fro, and so pleased was the farmer with the animal’s behaviour that he promptly handed over ten pounds and led the pony away. On seeing that I had completed the business, my Gypsy friend, who was just round the corner, came up, and on my giving up the money, he put one of the sovereigns into my hand. When I got away I had a good laugh to myself, and it took me some time to get my face straight.
Walking back into the heart of the town, I saw a dusty, ill-clad party of Gypsies going slowly along with a light dray drawn by a young horse with flowing mane and long tail, and when they reached the corner where I was standing, I spoke to the woman who was at the horse’s head. She said she was a Smith, and when I pointed to the name Hardy on the dray, she remarked, “Oh, that’s nobbut a travelling name.” It may be noted that Gypsies are extremely careless about their names.
At a later hour in a field behind the pleasure fair, I found the comfortable vâdo of my friend, Anselo Draper, and tapped at the van door with the knob of my stick. Quickly the door opened, and thrusting out his dark, handsome head, Anselo shouted, “Av adrê, baw” (Come in, friend).
What a contrast! Outside: a very babel of blaring sounds, a dark sky reflecting the glow of a myriad naphtha flares. Within: cosiness and warmth, red curtains, glittering mirrors, polished brasses, and a good fire. Over the best teacups (taken tenderly from a corner cupboard) Anselo and his wife talked of their travels. They had been as far north as Glasgow that summer, and had sold a good vâdo (van) to one of the Boswells at Newcastle Fair. They had decided to winter at Southend-on-Sea. “We shall make a tent, a big one, and very jolly it will be with a yog (fire) in the baulk. To be sure, there will be plenty of mumpers (low-class van-dwellers) around us, but we shall not be the only tatshenê Romanitshels (real Gypsies) stopping there.”
Next, Anselo plunged into an account of a low dealer’s trick at the horse fair. It seemed that this dealer had sold two horses to a farmer for forty pounds. A stranger coming up to the farmer offered to buy them at a higher price, so into a tavern they retired to talk things over. During drinks the stranger continually offered more money for the horses, and the farmer remained there a longer time than was good for him. At last when the man was hopelessly muddled the stranger disappeared. Nor had the horses so far been seen again.
“But there’s not so much of that done as there was. My father knew a Gypsy who died up in Yorkshire, a desprit hand at grai-tshorin (horse-stealing), and to this day they say, ‘If you shake a bridle over his grave, he’ll jump up and steal a horse.’” Both Wythen and Anselo laughed merrily as I told a tale I once heard of a Gypsy who had been “away” for a space. Coming out of the prison gate, he was met by a fellow who asked him what he had been in there for.