One cool spring evening I stood in a cramped yard in Derby, and, tapping at a cottage door, I heard a tremulous voice inviting me to enter. Within that little room my aged friend, Coralina Boswell, was warming her thin hands at a few glowing coals in the grate. A flickering candle on the chimney-piece cast a fitful yellow gleam on the old lady seated on the hearthrug not far from a truckle bed. Wrapped about her shawl-wise was a portion of a scarlet blanket throwing up her features, swarthy and deeply seamed, into strong relief. She begged me to take the only chair, which I drew up to the fire.
“I am glad to see you, my son. I’m a lonely old woman. My tshăvê (children) are all far away.” Here she picked up a black pipe which she had laid down on my entering, and went on chatting about her family, mentioning a daughter named Froniga.
“Yes, we name’t her after the one that wiped the dear Lord’s face wiv a diklo” (handkerchief).
This set her thoughts a-wandering, and she went on to tell how last night she saw strange things.
“I was in a wesh (wood), thick and green, and I went on and on, and I felt wild beasts rubbing agen me, but they never hurted me, ’cos my blessed Saviour was a-sitting wiv His angels among the clouds just above the roundy tops o’ the big trees. It was beautiful to see Him there. And sometimes, as I sits here, I sees Him come into this room, as real as when you came in yourself.
“What made you come so far to see the likes o’ me? It’s wery kind o’ you. I’s travelled all through your country, and a nice part it is. I remembers the green fields all lying in the sun by the riverside.” (Clearly she was thinking of the Trentside haunts of her clan.)
“Now, my son, will you tshiv some kosht on the yog (put some wood on the fire) and light that vâva mumeli (other candle) on the chimbly-shelf?”
On the walls of the room were several black-framed funeral cards, in the midst of which was a blurred enlargement of a Romany vâdo (cart), and, seeing my eyes wandering towards this picture, Coralina broke out again—
“Ah, that’s my rom’s (husband) wagon there, as we’s travelled in many a year, and there he is on the steps a-looking at me so loving-like. I rokers (talk) to him sometimes, forgetting he’s been gone this many a year.