Having approached the town along a bold ridgeway commanding a countryside yellowing to harvest, I arrive to find the place astir with dealers and horses. Though now but a one-day affair, the mart is not without its pleasing aspects to a lover of such scenes. The chief centre of business is known as the Bull Ring, where well-clad dealers from our English towns, horsey-looking men slapping their thighs with malacca canes, rub shoulders with rubicund farmers from Wold and Marsh, grooms and Gypsies. Not for the purpose of buying or selling horses have I come hither, but for no other reason than to meet the Gypsy families who usually turn up at the fair.
Behind the Parish Church of St. Mary, in a pasture pleasantly open to the sun, numerous caravans are drawn up under the hedges. It is here that the better sort of Gypsies congregate. Down Hemingby Lane lies an encampment of poorer travellers, and some of the same sort of people have drawn into the yard of the “New Inn.” In the course of the day I shall visit these three companies of Gypsies.
Meanwhile, passing over the Bain Bridge, I step inside the old Parish Church and, taking out from my pocket a well-thumbed copy of The Romany Rye, I turn to the passage where Borrow talks with the sexton about the rusty scythes hanging on the wall. Just then a lady, evidently an American tourist, who has been looking up Tennyson’s footprints, which abound hereabouts, asks:—
“Can you tell me anything about those strange-looking things on the wall?”
Various theories have been advanced to account for the presence of these old scythe-blades within the sacred building, the popular opinion being that they were used as instruments of war at Winceby Fight on 11th October 1643. So much, indeed, Borrow seems to have gathered from the sexton, but the better-informed authorities of to-day think that they are relics of the rising known as the Pilgrimage of Grace in the year 1536.
Quitting the fine old church, I passed out into the fair, and straightway met a Gypsy fingering a telegram. “Will you read it for me, please?” The message was from a popular Baroness who was desirous of borrowing a caravan for a bazaar; and as I pencilled a reply on the back of the telegram, the Gypsy declared that he would sleep in a tent till his “house on wheels” returned to him.
I have always known that Gypsies readily help one another when in trouble. This man, before going off with his telegram, told me a pleasing thing. It appears that an aged Gypsy, whose horse had died suddenly, had no money to buy another with, but a pal of his, going round with a cap among the Gypsy dealers at the fair, had quickly taken ten pounds, which were handed up to the old man who was now able to buy himself an animal.
In The Romany Rye, Borrow speaks of the inn where he put up as having a yard which opened into the principal street of the town. On entering that yard he was greeted by the ostlers with—“It is no use coming here—all full—no room whatever;” whilst one added in an undertone, “That ’ere a’n’t a bad-looking horse.” In a large upstairs room overlooking a court, the newcomer dined with several people connected with the fair.
