Last month I was gratified by observing the funereal attentions of the gipsy tribes to Cooper, then lying in state on a common, near Epping forest. The corpse lay in a tent clothed with white linen; candles were lighted over the body, on which forest flowers and blossoms of the season were strewn and hung in posies. Cooper’s wife, dressed in black, perceiving I did not wish to see the face of her husband, said in perfect naïveté, “Oh, sir, don’t fear to look at him, I never saw his countenance so pleasant in all my life.” A wit might have construed this sentence otherwise; but too much kindness emanated from this scene of rustic association to admit of levity. Her partner was cold, and her heart beat the pulsations of widowhood. The picture would have caught an artist’s eye. The gipsy-friends and relations sat mutely in the adjoining tents; and, like Job and his comforters, absorbed their grief in the silence of the summer air and their breasts. When Cooper was put in his coffin, the same feeling of attachment pervaded the scene. A train of several pairs, suitably clothed, followed their friend to the grave, and he was buried at the neighbouring church in quiet solemnity.
In addition to this, I transcribe a notice from a MS. journal, kept by a member of my family, 1769, which confirms the custom above alluded to. “Here was just buried in the church, (Tring,) the sister of the queen of the gipsies, to whom it is designed by her husband, to erect a monument to her memory of 20l. price. He is going to be married to the queen (sister to the deceased.) He offered 20l. to the clergyman to marry him directly; but he had not been in the town a month, so could not be married till that time. When this takes place, an entertainment will be made, and 20l. or 30l. spent. Just above esquire Gore’s park these destiny readers have a camp, at which place the woman died; immediately after which, the survivors took all her wearing apparel and burnt them, including silk gowns, rich laces, silver buckles, gold earrings, trinkets, &c.,—for such is their custom.”
J. R. P. June, 1827.
LITERARY INGENUITY.
Odo tenet mulum, madidam mappam tenet anna.
The above line is said, in an old book, to have “cost the inventor much foolish labour, for it is a perfect verse, and every word is the very same both backward and forward.”