With that I dropped down beside the fire, and, yielding the soul to the witchery of red-gold flames dancing against the dark, it was easy enough to glide into the realm of Faerie. Sibby, who had been lying at full length before the fire, now gathered herself into a cross-legged posture, and, lapsing into meditation, sat twisting a black elf-lock round her forefinger. A touch of the “creepy” world seemed also to have fallen upon Snakey, for he lay in silence staring into the beyond as though he had sighted fairy faces peering between the brier sprays; or was it that the knotted tree-bole leaning from the hedge had begun to make grimaces? At last the boy awoke with a start. By his side lay a maiden ash-plant with numerous hearts and rings neatly cut on its green bark, and, whipping out a knife, he proceeded to add further touches to his kosht (stick). This led me to talk of my own achievement of that day in carving my initials on a beech tree not far from where we were sitting. Whereat Sibby remarked—
“Why, it was only last week that me and mother went in our cart past Dalton Brook, and we pulled up to look at the old tree what has dui vastaw (two hands) cut into it by Orferus Herren, and there they were right enough. It was his brother Evergreen who broke his neck by tumbling headlong into a stone-pit, wasn’t it, Snakey?”
“For sure it was, pen (sister), and our uncles Fennix and Euri were well-nigh killed the same way right up agen Scotland, as I’ve heard dad say times and agen.”
“How was that?” I asked.
Then followed Snakey’s story, which, as well as I remember, ran (in his own words) something like this—
“One night my uncles Fennix and Euri was crossing a moor among the mountains, a long way up into the North Country. They’d been sitting all the day in a kitshima (tavern) and at last they begins to think it were time to be marching to their stopping-place, some five miles away across the moor, a wery nasty country with deep pits and ponds in it. It was getting dark and the teeny stars were shining above the mountains. Well, my uncles made off with a deal of bustle at first along a beaten track, but after going a mile or two, down comes a fog—a clear thick ’un it was—and they soon got off the path and were lost. It looked like ’em having to besh avrí (lie out) all night, as poor Jacob did. Only my uncles didn’t see no silver ladder with angels dancing up and down on it, and mi dîri Duvel (God) sitting atop of it. But just as they were about dead beat after poddling up and down for I can’t tell you how long, they walked as nigh as nothing over the edge of a deep pit. It were a narrow shave, for they only managed to save theirselves by clutching at the bushes atop of the pit. Then what do you think, baw? They just turned round, and there afore ’em stood a terrible crittur rearing itself up and groaning loud. Their hearts was in their mouths. They thought their time had come.
“‘If that ain’t a mulo (ghost), my name’s not Fennix,’ whispered my uncle.
“‘Keka’ (No); ‘it’s the wery Beng (Devil) hisself,’ says Euri.
“And there they stands a-dithering like leaves, till at last my uncle Fennix pulls hisself together and walks on a yard or two, staring hard afore him, and weren’t Euri glad above a bit to hear his brother say in his nat’ral voice, ‘Come on, it’s nobbut a blessed dunnock (steer) after all.’ And with that the crittur kicked up its heels and galloped away, and by a bit of luck my uncles stumbled right on to a cartway as led ’em straight to the tents.”
Among Gypsies, when the tale-telling mood is on, story will follow story, often until drowsiness supervenes; for these folk dearly love a tale, and are themselves possessed of no small store of family legends and folk-narratives.