The restless desire which the more original kind of Gipsies, and those more recently from the tent, have for moving about, is generally gratified in some way or other. The poorer class will send their wives and young ones to the “grass,” in company with the nomadic portion, or to the streets in towns. In either case, they have no great occasion to feel uneasy about their support; for she would be a poor wife indeed, if she could not forage for herself and “weary bairns.” Among other things, she can hire herself to assist in disposing of the wares made by another Gipsy. Her husband will then work at his calling, or go on the tramp, like some of our ordinary mechanics.
The feeling which mankind in general have for the sweets of the country, and the longing which so many of us have to end our days in the midst of them, amount almost to a mania with these Gipsies. Frequently will Gipsies, in England, after spending the best part of their lives in a settled occupation, again take to the tent; while others of them, on arrival in America, will buy themselves places, and live on them till seized with the travelling epidemic, communicated by a roving company of their tribe accidentally arriving in their neighbourhood. Some of the more recently settled class of Gipsies, whose occupations do not easily admit of their enjoying the pleasure of a country or travelling life, show a great partiality to their wandering brethren, however poor, with whom they are on terms of intimacy, and especially if they happen to be related. Their children, from hearing their parents speak of the “good old times”—the “golden age” of the Gipsies—when they could wander hither and thither, with little molestation, and live, in a measure, at free-quarters, wherever they went, grow impatient under the restraint which society has thrown around them; and vent their feelings in abusing that same society, and all the members thereof. They envy the lot of these “country cousins.” Meetings of that kind render these Gipsies, (old as well as young,) irritable, discontented, and gloomy: they feel like “birds in a cage,” as a Gipsy expressed it. Not unfrequently will a young town Gipsy travel in the company of these country relatives, dressed a la Tinklaire, as a relief to the discontentment which a restrained and pent-up life creates within him. At other times, his parents will know nothing of his movements, beyond his coming home to “roost” at night.
The nomadic class take to winter-quarters in some village, towards the close of the year, and fret themselves all day long, till, on the return of spring, they can say, “To your tents, O Gipsies!” There is as little direct relation existing between the tent and the long-settled Gipsies, as there is between it and ordinary Scotch people. But there is that tribal or national association connected with it, that is inseparable from the feelings of a Gipsy, however high may be the position in life to which he may have risen.—Ed.
[256] The Fourteenth Annual Festival of the Rev. James Crabb’s Association, for civilizing and teaching the principles of Christianity to the Gipsies in England, was held on the 25th December, 1841. At that time, twenty Gipsy youths were attending his school. He was very sanguine of ultimately ameliorating the condition of the British Gipsies.
At Yetholm, in the same year, after the Rev. John Baird’s school had been in existence about two years, there were about forty Gipsy children receiving instruction. When they were educated, they were hired as servants to families, or bound apprentices to different trades.
[I will offer some remarks on the improvement of the Gipsies, in the [Disquisition] on the Gipsies.—Ed.]
[257] It is a difficult matter to tell some of the settled Scottish Gipsies. In searching for them, some regard must be had to the employment of the individual, his associations, and his isolation from the community generally, beyond what is necessary in following his calling and out-door relations, as contrasted with his hospitality to strangers from a distance; a close scrutiny of the habits of himself and his numerous motley visitors; the rough-and-tumble way in which he sometimes lives; his attachment to animals, such as horses, asses, dogs, cats, birds, or pets of any kind; these, and other relative circumstances, go a great way to enable one to pounce upon some of them. But the use of their language, and the effect it has upon them, (barring their responding to it,) is, at the present stage of their history, the only satisfactory test. Scottish Gipsy families will generally be found to be all dark in their appearance, or all very fair or reddish, or partly very fair, and partly very dark, and sometimes dark or fair nondescript. Many of the residentary class of mechanic Gipsies are difficult of detection; so are the better classes, generally, if it is long since their ancestors left the tent—Ed.