“Well, yes, he had three wives. There was Yoki Shuri. You’s heard tell of her, sure-ly—a wery clever woman she was at getting money. Then there was Lucy Boswell, Old Tyso’s gell, a nicer woman never breathed, but Ryley was rough with her and made her sleep in a little tent with his dogs Musho and Ponto. Nobody blamed her when she left him and went to ’Merikay with her six children. Then there was Charlotte Hammond as went away and took on with Zacky Lee. A lot of those Lees round London sprang from them. In his best days Ryley had heaps of money and travelled all over the country. He had a fine black mare, Bess Beldam, and he rode on her a-hunting with the gentry up in Yorkshire. He was partic’lar fond o’ that country, was Ryley. I minds how fine he looked on his splendid mare as had silver shoes, and him in a coat with golden guineas for buttons. I’s heard of him riding slap-dash through a camp, springing over the tents and scutching the nongê tshavê (naked children) with his tshupni (whip): ‘I’ll let ’em know who I am—Ryley Boswell, King of the Gypsies.’ But at last his luck left him, and he took hisself off to London with his Yoki Shuri. Even to her as stuck to him through all, he was unkind. One day he tied her to a cart-wheel and leathered her, ’cos she told him of his ill-doings. At London, they lived in the Potteries, but he never did no good in the big city. One day, as he was skinning a rabbit, he scratched his hand and got blood-poisoning, and died in a little house underneath the railway arches. They buried him in Brompton Churchyard.”
Thus she would spin on at great length about Ryley Boswell.
Another time she would talk about the Herons. She was old enough to remember Niabai and Crowy (the parents of my aged friend, Ike Heron), as well as “handsome” William, “lame” Robert, Miller, Lusha, and other members of the same family. According to her account, these fellows were a tall, dark, big-boned, rough set.
Asked if she had ever known any Gypsy called Reynolds, Eldi replied—
“To be sure, there was Reynolds Heron as married my Aunt Peggy.”
Then I understood how Ambrose Smith (alias Reynolds) came in his last years to adopt for his own travelling surname the Christian name of his wife Sanspirela’s father, Reynolds Heron, concerning whom it is recorded that he used to fast on the five Fridays next after the season of Lent, in memory of the five wounds of the Saviour.
I used to like to hear Eldi talk of the days when artists, squires, and their ladies would pay visits to the camp. “There was my husband’s Aunt ‘Norna’—her proper name was Lucretia Boswell—she was a beautiful woman, and Mr. Oakley painted a picture of her wearing an orange shawl about her shoulders. She never married, and always travelled with her sister Deloraifi, who never married neither. Ay, when I was a barefooted gell with the wind a-blowing my hair about, the painting-gentlemen would get me to sit for my picture; and squires would stop us in the lanes and try to pick up our words.”
Rascalities of which modern Gypsydom knows nothing would creep into Eldi’s memory-pictures. I mean the wayside robberies, the bloody fights, the sheep and horse stealing of the rough old days of her girlhood. She would get so rapt away in the past that she would speak of people dead and gone as though they were living still, and, awaking to the present, would remark with a deep-drawn sigh—“But, there, I’s seen none of ’em for a wery long time.”
Under the heading of “A Modern Enchantress,” the following note, describing my Gypsy friend, was communicated by an Irish clergyman to The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society of the year 1890:—
“A short time since, a clergyman stopping at my house told me that some time ago, when he was assisting in the work of All Saints’ Parish, Derby, he had residing in the parish a Gypsy family named Boswell. One of the family was sick, and he found the greatest difficulty in getting into the house; and when he did get in, the sick man told him that the sooner he cleared out of the house the better—if he came to talk about religion. In fact, it was only by most judicious management, and by promises not to speak about religion till the sick man spoke of it first, that he was able to establish a footing in the house. But after a little time he got on quite friendly terms with the family. He then discovered that when any of the family were sick an old aunt came into the room and seemed to perform a kind of incantation over them. His description of her performance was very like what we read about Eastern Dervishes. She gradually worked herself up into a species of frenzy, flinging her arms about and muttering a kind of incantation or prayer, until her voice ascended into a wild scream and descended again into a whisper as the frenzy passed away, and she was left lying exhausted and apparently in fainting condition on the floor. When she arrived at this state she was immediately carried out of the sick-room by her relatives.”