'Bove other swineherds. Bid me, and I will
Straight play to you, and make you melody.
Ben Jonson, 1574–1637
GIPSIES.
We have few gipsies in our neighborhood. In spite of our tempting green lanes, our woody dells, and heathy commons, the rogues don’t take to us. I am afraid we are too civilized—too cautious; our sheepfolds are too closely watched; our barn-yards are too well guarded; our geese and ducks too fastly penned; our chickens too securely locked up; our little pigs too safe in their sty; our game too scarce; our laundresses too careful. In short, we are too little primitive; we have a snug brood of vagabonds and poachers of our own, to say nothing of their regular followers, constables and justices of the peace. We have stocks in the village, and a tread-mill in the next town, and therefore we go gipsy-less—a misfortune of which every landscape painter and every lover of that living landscape, the country, can appreciate the extent. There is nothing under the sun that harmonizes so well with nature, especially in her woodland recesses, as that picturesque people, who are, so to say, the wild genus—the pheasants and roebucks of the human race.
Sometimes, indeed, we used to see a gipsy procession passing along the common, like an Eastern caravan, men, women, children, donkeys, and dogs; and sometimes a patch of bare earth, strewed with ashes and surrounded by scathed turf, on the broad green margin of some cross-road, would give token of a gipsy hall; but a regular gipsy encampment has always been so rare an event, that I was equally surprised and delighted to meet with one in the course of my walks last autumn. * * * They had pitched their little tent under one of the oak trees, perhaps from a certain dim sense of natural beauty, which those who live with nature in the fields are seldom totally without; perhaps because the neighborhood of the coppices and of the deserted hall was favorable to the acquisition of game, and of the little fuel which their hardy habits required. The party consisted only of four—an old crone in a tattered red cloak and black bonnet, who was stooping over a kettle, of which the contents were probably as savory as that of Meg Merrilies’, renowned in story; a pretty black-eyed girl at work under the trees; a sun-burned urchin of eight or nine, collecting sticks and dead leaves to feed their out-of-door fire; and a slender lad, two or three years older, who lay basking in the sun, with a couple of shabby dogs of the sort called mongrel, in all the joy of idleness, while a grave, patient donkey stood grazing hard by. It was a pretty picture, with its soft autumnal sky, its rich woodiness, its verdure, the light smoke curling from the fire, and the group disposed around it so harmless, poor outcasts! and so happy—a beautiful picture! The old gipsy was a celebrated fortune-teller, and the post having been so long vacant, she could not have brought her talents to a better market. The whole village rang with the predictions of this modern Cassandra—unlike her Trojan predecessor, inasmuch as her prophecies were never of ill. I myself could not help admiring the real cleverness and genuine gipsy tact with which she adapted her foretellings to the age, the habits, and the known desires and circumstances of her clients.
To our little pet Lizzy, for instance, a damsel of seven, she predicted a fairing; to Ben Kirby, a youth of thirteen, head batter of the boys, a new cricket-ball; to his sister Lucy, a girl some three years his senior, and just promoted to that ensign of womanhood—a cap—she promised a pink top-knot; while for Miss Sophia Matthews, our old-maidish schoolmistress, who would be heartily glad to be a girl again, she foresaw one handsome husband, and for the smart widow Simmons, two. These were the least of her triumphs. George Davis, the dashing young farmer of the Hill-house, a gay sportsman, who scoffed at fortune-tellers and matrimony, consulted her as to whose grayhound would win the courser’s cup at the beacon meeting, to which she replied that she did not know to whom the dog would belong, but that the winner of the cup would be a white grayhound, with one blue ear and a spot on its side, being an exact description of Mr. George Davis’ favorite Helen, who followed her master’s step like his shadow, and was standing behind him at this very instant. This prediction gained our gipsy half-a-crown; and Master Welles, the thriving, thrifty yeoman of the lea, she managed to win sixpence from his hard, honest, frugal hand, by a prophecy that his old blood mare, called Blackfoot, should bring forth twins. And Ned, the blacksmith, who was known to court the tall nurse-maid at the mill—she got a shilling from Ned, simply by assuring him that his wife should have the longest coffin that ever was made at our wheelwright’s shop: a most tempting prediction! ingeniously combining the prospect of winning and of surviving the lady of his heart—a promise equally adapted to the hot and cold fits of that ague called love—lightening the fetters of wedlock—uniting in a breath the bridegroom and the widower. Ned was the best pleased of all her customers, and enforced his suit with such vigor, that he and the fair giantess were asked in church the next Sunday, and married at the fortnight’s end.
Mary R. Mitford.
A STERILE FIELD.
Lo! where the heath, with withering brake grown o’er,