It was about “Gypsy Ford” that I put a question to Old Frank sitting by my side, and he described the shallow crossing at a bend in the river over which before now I had passed by a narrow plank-bridge. According to my Gypsy, one night many years ago a quarrel arose in the Romany tents encamped near the ford, and in the course of a fight between two kinsmen, one of them was slain. Speedily a grave was dug, and, the corpse having been covered up, the Gypsies fled the spot. This affair became widely known, and little wonder that a legend arose about a “something” having been seen in the neighbourhood of the ford.
“You’s mebbe heard,” said Frank, “about Gypsy Jack’s wife, ‘Flash’ Rosabel, who was drownded at the ford on just such a wild night as this.”
“‘Let’s camp in the lane on this side of the water,’ says Jack’s wife.
“‘Keka’ (No), says he, ‘not in this drom (road) where the mulo (ghost) walks. With a bright moon like this, our grai (horse) will see to pull us through the river all right, never fear.’
“Anyway, he whipped up the horse and steered straight into the ford. And then a sad thing happened. There had been a deal o’ rain and the stream was bigger and stronger than Jack had any idea of. Somewheres about the middle of the river, the hoss was swept off its feet, the wagon tumbled over on to its side, and poor old ‘Flash’ Rosabel was carried away and drownded. Jack allus said that the grai must have dik’d the mulo” (the horse must have seen the ghost). “That’s a tale what’s been told by many a traveller’s fire.”
Just then the publican came in, panting after a tussle with the wind, and, being on good terms with my Gypsy friends, he said, “I’m glad to see you’ve brought your music. Gi’ us a tune, Frank.” Then the Gypsy, taking his fiddle from its baize bag, screwed up the strings, and, having tuned them to his liking, gave us a merry air from memory’s repertoire. At the back of the clear cantabile of the air, you heard the deep roar of the storm. Once I went to the window and looked out into the night. Athwart the white moonlit road lay the sharp black shadows of the ash trees rising from the far hedgerow, and, as I watched the swaying, writhing boughs, a lonely horseman sped past, a phantom he seemed more than a living being, and, returning to my nook in the ingle, I heard in fancy all through the Gypsy’s music the haunting clatter of the night-rider’s horse, and wondered what mysterious mission had called him forth on this riotous March evening. Now the fiddler ceased, and his pewter was forthwith replenished. “Good ale, this,” says Frank, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Why, yes,” put in the landlady, looking over her spectacles, and glad, if the truth be known, to give her darning a rest; “it’s Newark ale, and no better drink could any man wish for; we’ve sold nothing else for years.”
Said the landlord, who by this time had recovered his breath—
“That was a strange case as I see’d in the paper t’other day about the wise woman getting ‘trapped’ by the constable’s wife as went to have her fortune told. The paper said as how a crystal ball were used, but I’m blest if I knows how anybody can expect to see their future in a thing o’ that sort.”
“Dunno so much about that,” remarked Old Liddy, who had been dreaming over the fire. “A woman as had a crystal once told my dad he would go to prison in a fortnight, and sure enough he did, along wi’ a conjurer who’d been up to his tricks, and dad says to him when they was in jail, ‘A mighty poor conjurer you be, my fine fellow, if you can’t conjure us out of this place.’ I believes there is summut in crystals.”