"I stole a plump and bonny fowl,
But ere I well had dined,
The master came with scowl and growl,
And me would captive bind.
"My hat and mantle off I threw,
And scoured across the lea;
Then cried the beng with loud halloo,
'Where does the gipsy flee?'"
He continued playing and singing for a considerable time, the two younger females dancing in the meanwhile with unwearied diligence, whilst the aged mother occasionally snapped her fingers or beat time on the ground with her stick. At last Antonio suddenly laid down the instrument, exclaiming:--
"I see the London Caloró is weary; enough, enough, to-morrow more thereof. We will now to the charipé."
"With all my heart," said I: "where are we to sleep?"
"In the stable," said he, "in the manger; however cold the stable may be, we shall be warm enough in the bufa."
We remained three days at the gipsies' house, Antonio departing early every morning on his mule, and returning late at night. The house was large and ruinous, the only habitable part of it with the exception of the stable being the hall, where we had supped; and there the gipsy females slept at night, on some mats and mattresses in a corner.
"A strange house is this," said I to Antonio, one morning as he was on the point of saddling his mule, and departing, as I supposed, on the affairs of Egypt; "a strange house and strange people. That gipsy grandmother has all the appearance of a sowanee."
"All the appearance of one!" said Antonio; "and is she not really one? She knows more crabbed things and crabbed words than all the Errate betwixt here and Catalonia. She has been amongst the wild Moors, and can make more draos, poisons, and philtres than any one alive. She once made a kind of paste, and persuaded me to taste, and shortly after I had done so my soul departed from my body, and wandered through horrid forests and mountains, amidst monsters and duendes, during one entire night. She learned many things amidst the Corahai which I should be glad to know."
"Have you been long acquainted with her?" said I. "You appear to be quite at home in this house."
"Acquainted with her!" said Antonio. "Did not my own brother marry the black Calli, her daughter, who bore him the chabí, sixteen years ago, just before he was hanged by the Busné?"