“D’ye know, my pal, what this here bit o’ the Old Dyke brings to my mind? Ay, deary me, it takes me back to times as’ll never, never come no more—the days when I were a lad along with my people, and our delations a-beshin (resting) on this here wery grass we’s passing over. See, there, under that warm bank topped with thick thorns: well, I’s slept there times on end with my dear mammy and daddy in our tent, and my uncles and aunts would be hatshin (camping) right along this sheltered bit. I can see it all while I’s talking to you—the carts with their shafts propped up and the smook a-going up from the fires afore the tents, and the ponies and donkeys grazing under the trees yonder. Ay, my son, them were the times for the likes of us.
“There’s one thing I minds” (this with a merry twinkle in his eye). “I’ll tell you about it. It were a fine summer morning, somewheres about six o’clock. My mammy and daddy was up making a fire to boil the kettle. I heard ’em bustling about, and I ought to ha’ been up to help, but I were lazy-like that morning. Then comes my daddy a-talking quick to hisself, and I know’d summut were the matter. He lifts up the tan-kopa (tent-blanket) and hollers at me as I lay stretched out upo’ the straw—
“Hatsh oprê, tshavo, kèr sig. De graiaw and mailas saw praster’d avrî. Jaw’vrî an’ dik for len.’ (Get up, boy, make haste. The horses and donkeys have all run away. Go forth and look for them.)
“I were out and off in a jiffey. I never stopped to get dressed. What’s more, me not thinking what I was a-doing, I throws away the only thing I had on my back—my shirt—just as you toss off your coat when you’s in a hurry, and away I goes down the long road to find the animals. Whilst I were away, all the family, my big brothers and sisters, and them delations as I spoke of, had gathered round the fires for sawla-hawben (breakfast), an’ they hadn’t finished when I got back with the hosses and donkeys. I’d clean forgot how I were fixed, an’, my gom, didn’t they laff when they set eyes on me; an’ my blessed mammy, she shouts—
“‘Kai sî tîro gad, m’o rinkeno tshavo?’ (Where’s your shirt, my pretty boy?) Into the tent I dived, an’ I weren’t long dressing, for I wanted to be gitting my share o’ the balovas an’ yoras (ham and eggs).”
Occasionally the spinneys skirting the deserted road obscured the view of the far-off Wolds, but one could forgive these temporary interventions, for the sprays of larch and beech hanging out from the little woods were delicate in their new spring garb, and as the breezes caught them they rose and sank with a beautiful feathery droop. Now across the fields on our left hand there came into view a familiar landmark, Dunston Pillar, concerning which I once heard a story from the lips of Bishop Edward Trollope, a whilom neighbour of mine.
At one time Lincoln Heath was a vast unenclosed rabbit warren dotted over with fir woods and quarries, and at times travellers lost their way upon it. So Dunston Pillar was erected, and a lantern was placed on top to guide benighted wayfarers over the Heath. Doubtless the old lighthouse served its purpose well, yet it did not always enable people to reach their own homes in safety, for the locality was infested with robbers on the look out for travelling gentry. Not far from the Pillar stood an old coaching inn, the “Green Man,” and one night, after assisting their driver to his box, two gentlemen who had been carousing there thought it prudent to remind their man thus: “John, be sure you keep the Pillar light upon your right, and then we shall reach Lincoln safely.” However, when the two awoke at daybreak and found themselves still near the Pillar, one of them called out, “Why, John, where are we?” Upon which, John replied drowsily from the box, “Oh, it’s a’ roight, sir, the Pillar’s on our roight.” And so it was, for he had been driving round it all night.
As we jogged along, Jonathan would occasionally jerk his whip towards a rich pasture, and with a sly wink would say, “We’s puv’d our graiaw in that field more than once.” Let me explain. In order to give their horses a good feed, the Gypsies when camping on the High Dyke would turn their animals overnight into a nice fat pasture, taking care, of course, to remove them early in the morning.
At this point we drew rein, and took a meal under the lee of a plantation in whose boughs thrushes fluted and willow-wrens made fairy music. Not far away, couch-grass fires sent their smoke across the level surface of a loamy field, making the air of the lane pungent with the scent of burning stalks. Seated there under the spreading trees, my Gypsy companion related a poaching incident with some gusto, for it is next to impossible to dispossess the Gypsy of the notion that the wild rabbits frisking about the moors and commons are as free to him as to the owner of the lands on which they happen to be playing.
