'Then,' said I, 'I'll turn Gypsy; I'll be the second Aylwin to own allegiance to the blood of Fenella Stanley. I'll scour Great Britain till I find her.'
'You can jine us if you like, brother. We're goin' all through the West of England with the gries. You're fond o' fishin' an' shootin', brother, an' though you're a Gorgio, you can't help bein' a Gorgio, and you ain't a mumply 'un, as I've said to Jim Burton many's the time; and if you can't give the left-hand body-blow like me, there ain't a-many Gorgios nor yit a-many Romanies as knows better nor you what their fistes wur made for, an' altogether, brother, Beng te tassa mandi if I shouldn't be right-on proud to see ye jine our breed. There's a coachmaker down in Chester, and he's got for sale the beautifullest livin'-waggin in all England. It's shiny orange-yellow with red window-blinds, an' if there's a colour in any rainbow as can't be seed in the panels o' the front door, it's a kind o' rainbow I ain't never seed nowheres. He made it for Jericho Bozzell, the rich Griengro as so often stays at Raxton and at Gypsy Dell; but Rhona Bozzell hates a waggin and allus will sleep in a tent. They do say as the Prince o' Wales wants to buy that livin'-waggin, only he can't spare the balansers just now—his family bein' so big an' times bein' so bad. How much money ha' you got? Can you stan' a hundud an' fifty gold balansers for the waggin besides the fixins?
'Shift,' I said. 'I'm prepared to spend more than that in seeking
Winnie.'
'Dordi, brother, you must be as rich as my dad, an' lie's the richest Griengro arter Jericho Bozzell. You an' me'll jist go down to Chester,' she continued, her eyes sparkling with delight at the prospect of bargaining for the waggon, 'an' we'll fix up sich a livin'-waggin as no Romany rei never had afore.'
'Agreed!' I said, wringing her hand.
'An' now you an' me's right pals,' said Sinfi.
We went to Chester, and I became owner of the famous 'livin'-waggin' coveted (according to Sinfi) by the great personage whom, on account of his name, she always spoke of as a rich, powerful, but mysterious and invisible Welshman. One of the monthly cheese-fairs was going on in the Linen Hall. Among the rows of Welsh carts standing in front of the 'Old Yacht Inn,' Sinfi introduced me to a 'Griengro' (one of the Gypsy Locks of Gloucestershire), of whom I bought a bay mare of extraordinary strength and endurance.
IX
It was, then, to find Winifred that I joined the Gypsies. And yet I will not deny that affinity with the kinsfolk of my ancestress Fenella Stanley must have had something to do with this passage in my eccentric life. That strain of Romany blood which, according to my mother's theory, had much to do with drawing Percy Aylwin and Rhona Boswell together, was alive and potent in my own veins.
But I must pause here to say a few words about Sinfi Lovell. Some of my readers must have already recognised her as a famous character in bohemian circles. Sinfi's father was a 'Griengro,' that is to say, a horse-dealer. She was, indeed, none other than that 'Fiddling Sinfi' who became famous in many parts of England and Wales as a violinist, and also as the only performer on the old Welsh stringed instrument called the 'crwth,' or cruth. Most Gypsies are musical, but Sinfi was a genuine musical genius. Having become, through the good-nature of Winifred's aunt Mrs. Davies, the possessor of a crwth, and having been taught by her the unique capabilities of that rarely seen instrument, she soon learnt the art of fascinating her Welsh patrons by the strange, wild strains she could draw from it. This obsolete six-stringed instrument (with two of the strings reaching beyond the key-board, used as drones and struck by the thumb, the bow only being used on the other four, and a bridge placed, not at right angles to the sides of the instrument, but in an oblique direction), though in some important respects inferior to the violin, is in other respects superior to it. Heard among the peaks of Snowdon, as I heard them during our search for Winifred, the notes of the crwth have a wonderful wildness and pathos. It is supposed to have the power of drawing the spirits when a maiden sings to its accompaniment a mysterious old Cymric song or incantation.