The impressions of childhood are enduring; and just as the smell of the wallflowers after an April shower will revive for you, dear fellow, the vision of a garden walk under a lichened wall, and the dainty step of your lady love by your side, so for me the wild scent of withering bracken in the red autumn glades prompts my fancy to envisage anew the gruesome scene as depicted by my father on that October day long gone by. Nor is this all.
To mention the name of Tom Otter is to call up for me more than one swarthy inhabitant of Gypsy Court who lived to make old bones and sit by the fire telling tales and smoking black tobacco. I have but to close my eyes to behold a procession of these “characters” straggling out of the dark court, their faces and figures lingering for a moment in memory’s beam of light, then passing again into the shadows. And what strange stories are wrapped up in the names and lives of some of these folk; quaint comedy, grim tragedy, riotous passion, tales of love, laughter, and tears.
There was old Tom, nicknamed “Tom o’ the Gibbet,” whose patronymic was Petulengro, which is Gypsy for Smith.
Each of the great Romany clans, be it known, duplicates its surname, one form being used before the gawjê (non-Gypsies, aliens); the other form, of cryptic import, is for the brotherhood of the blood.
Old Tom Petulengro, further known as “Sneezing Tommy,” owing to his liking for snuff, carried on a thriving trade in wooden meat-skewers and pegs, and in his backyard you might see him with infinite patience cutting up willow rods or splitting blocks of close-grained elder-wood; and for years I never used to hear in church the familiar words of the Psalmist, “Our bones lie strewn before the pit, like as when one heweth wood upon the earth,” without seeing that narrow yard with its shining axe lying midst a litter of chips and splinters. Elder-wood is still in request for meat-skewers, and to this day not a few country butchers prefer to use the Gypsy-made article. Old Tom used to say, with a twinkle in his eye, that he found nearly all his raw material on his journeys up and down the countryside. For, as you could not fail to observe, it was a habit with some of the dwellers in Gypsy Court to absent themselves periodically with their light carts and tents. Halcyon days were those for the court Gypsies.
Let it be remembered that the County Council legend, “No camping allowed,” had not yet begun to hit you in the eye from among the bramble brakes on bits of wayside waste. The rural constable of that time had not the conveniences his successor enjoys in the bicycle and the village telephone. There were farmers who still retained a soft place in their hearts for the Gypsy, and many a country squire viewed the nomads of the grassy lanes with a kindly eye. If a carriage-horse grew restive in passing a roadside fire at twilight, up from the hedge-bottom sprang an obliging fellow who led the animal safely along and thereby won a cheery word from the squire or his lady. Even Velveteens would hob-nob with the jovial campers on the lord’s waste, and, quaffing a dram from their black bottle, would toss a rabbit into the lap of a Romany mother and go on his way. Here and there of course were tiresome believers in the hoary policy of harassment and oppression—
“Pack, and be out of this forthwith,
D’you know you have no business here?
‘No, we hain’t got,’ said Samuel Smith,
‘No business to be anywhere.’
So wearily they went away,
Yet soon were camped in t’other lane,
And soon they laughed as wild and gay,
And soon the kettle boiled again.”
Reverting to Tom Petulengro’s sobriquet, I confess it provoked my curiosity not a little. Tom o’ the Gibbet—what could the strange “tag” mean? Time passed, even a few years, and one day its origin came to light during a talk with Ashena Brown, Tom’s married sister, an elderly Gypsy with a furrowed countenance and deep-set eyes which flashed with fire as she grew excited in her talk. I can see her bowed figure and long jetty curls, as in fancy I again stoop to enter the low-ceiled abode in the smoky court where I listened to her chatter to the persistent accompaniment of a donkey’s thump, thump, in an adjoining apartment.
“Wonderful fond o’ the County o’ Nottingham was my people,” said the old lady. “They know’d every stick and stone along the Trentside, and i’ the Shirewood (Sherwood), and many’s the time we’ve stopped at Five Lane Ends nigh Drinsey Nook. Why, my poor dear mammy (Lord rest her soul) was once fired at by a foot-pad as she were coming outen the public upo’ the bank there. The man’s pistol had nobbut powder in it, for he only meant to trash (frighten) her into handing up her lova (money), but she had none about her, for her last shukora (sixpence) had gone in levina (ale). And after that, my mammy allus wore a big diklo (kerchief) round her head for to hide her cheek as were badly blued by the rascal’s powder.