I had one resembling a saw, which he whisked from my hand and duly restored with a nice edge. He then resumed his work as though nothing worthy of remark had happened to stay the song of his wheel.
A craft of hoary antiquity is that of the nomad metal-worker. An Austrian ecclesiastic, in the year 1200, describes the “calderari,” or tinkers, of that time: “They have no home or country. Everywhere they are found alike. They travel through the world abusing mankind with their knavery.”
Four hundred years later, an Italian writer gives an account of the tinker who enchants the knives of the peasants by magnetizing them so as to pick up needles, and for this he accepts payment in the shape of a fowl or a pie. To this day in Eastern Europe, the smith, usually a Gypsy, is regarded as a semi-conjurer who has dealings with the Devil.
In Scotland you will find numberless “Creenies, crinks, and tinklers” who roam in primitive Gypsy fashion, with donkeys, ramshackle carts, tents, and a tinker’s equipment. If you have dropped into the shepherd’s cottage in the heathery glen, or the lone farmhouse on the Lowland fell, you will have noticed the horn spoons and ladles, or the rude smoothing-irons. These are the handiwork of the tinklers of a bygone generation.
Two or three generations ago most of our English Gypsies were wandering tinkers carrying their outfits on their backs.
For my own part, I have everywhere found the caste of tinkers a cheerful, happy-go-lucky fellowship, and in talks with them I have observed that they generally know a few Gypsy words, even when it is clear that they do not belong to the dark race.
Shakespeare’s Prince Hal, in Henry IV. (First Part, Act 2, Scene 4), is made to say, “I can drink with any tinker in his own language.” This language, or jargon, known as Shelta, [207] has been the subject of much learned writing.
My first lesson in Shelta was taken near the Shire Bridge, where the Great North Road, approaching Newark-on-Trent from the south, quits Lincolnshire for the county of Nottingham. A favourite halting-place is this for wayfaring folk of all sorts. Seated on Mother Earth’s green carpet, a tinker and his wife were taking tea, and at their invitation I sat beside them for a chat. Presently I showed two bright new pennies to the tinker, saying—
“If you’ll tell me what these are in Shelta, they’re yours.”
