There spoke the true gipsy; and they are mostly of that mind. But what a mind it is for human beings in this climate! It is in a year like this of 1909, when a long cold winter and a miserable spring, with frosty nights lasting well into June, was followed by a cold wet summer and a wet autumn, that we can see properly what a mind and body is his—how infinitely more perfect the correspondence between organism and environment in his case than in ours, who have made our own conditions, who have not only houses to live in, but a vast army of sanitary inspectors, physicians and bacteriologists to safeguard us from that wicked stepmother who is anxious to get rid of us before our time! In all this miserable year, during which I have met and conversed with and visited many scores of gipsies, I have not found one who was not in a cheerful frame of mind, even when he was under a cloud with the police on his track; nor one with a cold, or complaining of an ache in his bones, or of indigestion.
The subject of gipsies catching cold connects itself just now in my mind with that of the gipsy's sense of humour. He has that sense, and it makes him happy when he is reposing in the bosom of his family and can give it free vent; but the instant you appear on the scene its gracious outward signs vanish like lightning and he is once more the sly, subtle animal, watching you furtively, but with intensity. When you have left him and he relaxes the humour will come back to him; for it is a humour similar to that of some of the lower animals, especially birds of the crow family, and of primitive people, only more highly developed, and is concerned mainly with the delight of trickery—with getting the better of some one and the huge enjoyment resulting from the process.
One morning, between nine and ten o'clock, during the excessively cold spell near the end of November 1909, I paid a visit to some gipsies I knew at their camp. The men had already gone off for the day, but some of the women were there—a young married woman, two big girls, and six or seven children. It was a hard frost and their sleeping accommodation was just as in the summer-time—bundles of straw and old rugs placed in or against little half-open canvas and rag shelters; but they all appeared remarkably well, and some of the children were standing on the hard frozen ground with bare feet. They assured me that they were all well, that they hadn't caught colds and didn't mind the cold. I remarked that I had thought the severe frost might have proved too much for some of them in that high, unsheltered spot in the downs, and that if I had found one of the children down with a cold I should have given it a sixpence to comfort it. "Oh," cried the young married woman, "there's my poor six months' old baby half dead of a cold; he's very bad, poor dear, and I'm in great trouble about him."
"He is bad, the darling!" cried one of the big girls. "I'll soon show you how bad he is!" and with that she dived into a pile of straw and dragged out a huge fat sleeping baby. Holding it up in her arms she begged me to look at it to see how bad it was; the fat baby slowly opened its drowsy eyes and blinked at the sun, but uttered no sound, for it was not a crying baby, but was like a great fat retriever pup pulled out of its warm bed.
How healthy they are is hardly known even to those who make a special study of these aliens, who, albeit aliens, are yet more native than any Englishman in the land. It is not merely their indifference to wet and cold; more wonderful still is their dog-like capacity of assimilating food which to us would be deadly. This is indeed not a nice or pretty subject, and I will give but one instance to illustrate my point; the reader with a squeamish stomach may skip the ensuing paragraph.
An old shepherd of Chitterne relates that a family, or gang, of gipsies used to turn up from time to time at the village; he generally saw them at lambing-time, when one of the heads of the party with whom he was friendly would come round to see what he had to give them. On one occasion his gipsy friend appeared, and after some conversation on general subjects, asked him if he had anything in his way. "No, nothing this time," said the shepherd. "Lambing was over two or three months ago and there's nothing left—no dead lamb. I hung up a few cauls on a beam in the old shed, thinking they would do for the dogs, but forgot them and they went bad and then dried up."
"They'll do very well for us," said his friend.
"No, don't you take them!" cried the shepherd in alarm; "I tell you they went bad months ago, and 'twould kill anyone to eat such stuff. They've dried up now, and are dry and black as old skin."
"That doesn't matter—we know how to make them all right," said the gipsy. "Soaked with a little salt, then boiled, they'll do very well." And off he carried them.
In reading the reports of the Assizes held at Salisbury from the late eighteenth century down to about 1840, it surprised me to find how rarely a gipsy appeared in that long, sad, monotonous procession of "criminals" who passed before the man sitting with his black cap on his head, and were sent to the gallows or to the penal settlements for stealing sheep and fowls and ducks or anything else. Yet the gipsies were abundant then as now, living the same wild, lawless life, quartering the country, and hanging round the villages to spy out everything stealable. The man caught was almost invariably the poor, slow-minded, heavy-footed agricultural labourer; the light, quick-moving, cunning gipsy escaped. In the "Salisbury Journal" for 1820 I find a communication on this subject, in which the writer says that a common trick of the gipsies was to dig a deep pit at their camp in which to bury a stolen sheep, and on this spot they would make their camp fire. If the sheep was not missed, or if no report of its loss was made to the police, the thieves would soon be able to dig it up and enjoy it; but if inquiries were made they would have to wait until the affair had blown over.