And the two can be combined—poetry and song. There are those who sing all poetry and call recitation singing. They incant and intone as they tramp. They are lifted up in an ecstasy which makes them independent of physical tiredness or difficulties or meannesses or past misfortunes or ill-treatment. Song and poetry enfranchise you in the universe. The tramp for moments becomes citizen of the universe and knows all secrets, all mysteries, all depths, all heights. He comes back to earth anon, but he has seen and understood.
Such happiness is explored in one’s personal repertoire of poetry and song that the tramp who makes tramping a great part of his life does well to add to what he has, taking pains to note down the words of haunting airs and verses. In Italy, in France, Spain, Germany, and Slav countries, one inevitably hears melodies one would like to remember. There is folk music, and it can only be learned in the countries where it is natural. There is something in the singing of it which escapes all notation. The ear, the mood of the soul, can alone enable you to imitate it, to repeat just what you have heard, what moved you. Even those who know little of music can capture these songs if they will take the trouble to copy the words and make the native singers repeat and repeat till the songs come back again truly from your lips.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SCROUNGING
ONE might call it by a better name; it means getting a meal for nothing when you can. In certain unspoiled parts of the world there are outlandish folk who will take the wanderer in, give him meat and drink, and send him on his way rejoicing. You can still get a swig of milk and a heaped pile of bannocks in the North. They will fill you with apples in Hereford and cream in Devon. A good deal depends on your appearance. It is not always fair, when you have been turned away, to think you have met with inhospitality. You may have a fearsome appearance. You have omitted the daily shave; your hat may have a hole in it. Some one may have been at the house asking ungraciously for something just before you came.
One should not trade upon hospitality. But it is pleasant now and then to knock up a farmer for a dinner, or rather, a farmer’s wife, when the farmer has gone to the fields. For she is much more tender-hearted. Unfortunately, in America, the professional hobo has spoilt the field for Nature’s knight-errant. The hobo shamelessly works whole neighborhoods, leaving nothing to chance or choice, and will bang every door in a village till he gets what he calls a “hand-out.”
The supposed tramp hieroglyphics are of little value—“Good feed here,” “’Ware dog; want you to work for it,” etc. You have to make good where these sharks have failed, and it can be done occasionally by sheer good humor and high spirits. A hot meal is worth having occasionally, even if one has to make friends with baby, or rescue the cat or blarney the farm wife.
A good method of approach is by offering to buy something. One has always to be buying milk for one’s coffee. The purchase may lead to a friendly interest and the interest to a seat at the table with the family, or at least in the kitchen. Generally, speaking, it is better for the family to have you in their midst. You come from far, you have stories to tell, you have the record of wild life. The children’s eyes open as you discourse. The good man drops his fork—but you do not drop yours.
Thus the tramp may sometimes, for a change, spend a pleasant noontide or evening at a farm, fill up with a change of food, get some good drink, and then round it off with a pleasant sleep in a barn.