George Borrow in East Anglia

by William A. Dutt

CHAPTER VII: BORROW AND THE EAST ANGLIAN GIPSIES

East Anglia has for centuries been a favourite roaming ground for certain of the families of the true Romany tribe. The reason for this, assigned by the gipsies themselves, is not a flattering one to East Englanders. They will tell you, if you are in their confidence, that they come to East Anglia on account of the simplicity and gullibility of its inhabitants. Nowhere else can the swarthy chals find gorgios so ready to purchase a doctored nag, or the dark-eyed chis so easily cozen credulous villagers and simple servant-girls by the mysteries of dukkeripen. Every fair-ground and race-course is dotted with their travelling vans; the end of every harvest sees them congregate on the village greens; the “making up” of the North Sea fishing-boats attracts them to the Eastern coast.

It may well be that Borrow first made the acquaintance of the Romanies when a child at East Dereham, for there is a heath just outside the little town which has long been their central halting-place for the district. If this was the case, he has left no

record of such a meeting: in all probability, had his wondering eyes rested upon their unfamiliar faces and smouldering camp-fires he would have shared the childish fears instilled by kitchen and nursery legends and have fled the scene. It was outside Norman Cross that he first came into close contact with the alien wanderers. Straying into a green lane he fell in with a low tent from which smoke was issuing, and in front of which a man was carding plaited straw, while a woman was engaged in the manufacture of spurious coin. Their queer appearance, so unlike that of any men or women he had hitherto encountered, excited his lively curiosity; but, ere he had time to examine them closely, they were down upon him with threats and curses. Violence was about to be done to him when a viper, which he had concealed in his jacket, lifted its head from his bosom, and the gipsies’ wrath at being discovered changed to awe of one who fearlessly handled such a deadly creature. From that day Borrow’s interest in the Romany tribe continued to widen and deepen, until, at length, when fame and fortune were his, it led him to take extended journeys into Hungary, Wallachia, and other European countries for the purpose of searching out the descendants of the original wanderers from the East and learning from them their language, customs and history.

Borrow himself says that he could remember no time when the mere mention of the name of gipsy

did not awaken within him feelings hard to be described. He could not account for it, but some of the Romanies, he remarks, “to whom I have stated this circumstance have accounted for it on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at some former period tenanted that of one of their people, for many among them are believers in metempsychosis and, like the followers of Bouddha, imagine that their souls by passing through an infinite number of bodies, attain at length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect rest and quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form.”

The Norwich Castle Hill provided Borrow with many opportunities of observing the habits of the East Anglian Romanies, who, in his day, attended in considerable numbers the horse sales and fairs that were held in the old city. Thither would come the Smiths or Petulengros, Bosviles, Grays and Pinfolds; and often, when they left the Hill, he would accompany them to their camps on Mousehold Heath and to neighbouring fairs and markets. Their daring horsemanship fascinated him, while the strange tongue they employed amongst themselves when bargaining with the farmers and dealers, aroused in him a curiosity that could only be satisfied by a closer acquaintance with its form and meaning. Many of the chals and chis to be met with in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” were transferred to the pages of those works from the East

Anglian heaths and fairsteads. It was on a heath not far from his Suffolk home that he introduced the Jew of Fez to Jasper Petulengro in order that he might refute the theory entertained by one of his critics that the Romanies were nothing less than the descendants of the two lost tribes of Israel.

The village of Oulton, too, gave him many chances of intercourse with the gipsies. Within five minutes’ walk of his home there is a spot where they frequently assembled, and where a few of them may sometimes be seen even at the present day. The writer has reason to know that the gipsies looked upon Borrow with no small amount of curiosity, for they were unaccustomed to meet with gorgios of his position who took so keen an interest in their sayings and doings. As a rule, they are exceedingly suspicious of the approaches of any one outside the Romany pale; and it must not be assumed that he was popular with them because he usually succeeded in extracting from them the information he required. There was something about Borrow that made it hard to evade his questioning; he had such a masterful way with him, and his keen eyes fixed upon a man as though they would pierce him through and read his most secret thoughts. He himself attributes his success with the gipsies to his knowledge of the Romany tongue and customs, while they firmly believed that he had gipsy blood in his veins. “He has known them,” he says,

writing of himself as the author of “The Zincali,” “for upwards of twenty years in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head or deprived him of a shred of his raiment; but he is not deceived as to the motive of their forbearance: they thought him a Rom, and on this supposition they hurt him not, their love of ‘the blood’ being their most distinguishing characteristic.” This error on their part served his purpose well, as it enabled him to obtain from them a great deal of curious knowledge that would never have come into his possession had it been known he was one of the despised gorgios. He was known amongst them as the Romany Rye; but that is a name by which, even at the present day, they distinguished any stranger who can “rokkra Romany” to the extent of a dozen words.