Part 15

After the performance “Boscoe” came off the stage and invited me to go into the “show,” which invitation I accepted, and was led in by the side door. I witnessed “Boscoe’s” tricks, such as eating fire, making leaden bullets, putting a red-hot poker down his throat, and drawing a red-hot bar across his tongue, and the bending of red-hot iron bars with his feet. “There are dodges in every trade, except rag-gathering,” said the old rag-woman the other day, as she sat by the side of the brook, wetting her rags before she sold them. The acrobat performances of a poor boy about twelve were cruel in the extreme. After one of his movements I could see that the poor thin-faced lad was suffering intense pain by his twinging and limpy walk. This poor specimen of humanity could not read or write a sentence. To bend, twist, twirl, and contort the limbs and bones of a poor child to bring smiles upon the faces of fools—for they are no better who witness such exhibitions—is hellish, and money gotten in this way provides those engaged in it with “workhouse” and “spittles” uniform. Other performances, such as a pony telling fortunes, &c., brought the entertainment to a close. On coming away old “Boscoe” came off the stage to shake hands with me among the crowd, which circumstance seemed to puzzle some of the bystanders.

I had a turn round with the gingerbread and toy stall-keepers, and I was not long among them before I found out two old “backsliders,” one of whom was from Northampton, and until two years ago was a “member of a class.” Now, with her son, she was tramping the country, and attending fairs and races in the daytime, and sleeping under their stall at night! A chat with her about old times, and the “blessed seasons” she once had, and the peace of mind she once enjoyed, brought scalding tears to her eyes, as copiously as if I had been talking to her of the death of a darling rosy-checked, curly-headed little boy, whose little wax taper flickered out as its soul was being wafted to Paradise in the midst of a convoy of angels. The good woman with quivering lips said, “Do you remember giving me, sir, at Long Buckby, a little book and a picture card?” I said, “Yes.” “Well, I sent them to my son, who is a soldier in South Africa, and they pleased him very much.” I could see that I could press the subject a little nearer home, and I said to her, “How do you get on with this kind of life? How do you manage to say your prayers at night?” “Well,” she said, “this kind of life is not the right thing, and I am not what I ought to be; but somehow or other I say my prayers at night, and feel safer after it. I hope to give up travelling and settle down again.” While moistened sorrow was reddening her eyes, I said in substance if not in words—

“’Tis a star about to drop From thine eye, its sphere; The sun will stoop to take it up.”

With a deep, deep-drawn sigh she bade me good-night several times over, and the curtain dropped.

I now came upon a man and woman sitting at a weighing machine. (I might state that I was weighed at two different weighing machines in the fair. Nabob Brown’s machine put me down at eleven stone ten pounds, and F—’s machine showed that I weighed twelve stone and eleven pounds.) Both looked above the ordinary kind of gipsies. The clean, good-looking woman was nursing a baby, and trying the weight of “ladies and gentlemen,” and the man was “ringing” his cheap fashionable sticks off to those who would try “three throws a penny.”

This couple, I soon found out, were Primitive Methodist “backsliders.” Their names were F— although they were known among the travellers as W—. His father was one of the oldest local preachers in the Brinklow district. He had worked hard in the cause of the Great Master, and had succeeded in raising a “Band of Hope,” two hundred members strong, in one of the London districts; but in the fulness of his heart, and in what turned out to be an evil moment for him, he admitted another “brother” as a co-secretary, who, instead of helping my friend the gipsy in the good work, supplanted him, and “collared” the tea-cake, at which the committee winked. This worked up the tender feelings of my gipsy friend to such a pitch that he withdrew from the society he had raised, and took the downhill turning, and in this course both he and his wife are, at the time of writing this, gipsying the country. Richard Crashaw says—

“These are the knotty riddles Whose dark doubts Entangle his lost thoughts Fast getting out.”

I asked my friend F— a few questions about the gipsies he had been mixed up with. Among other questions was the following. “Now, Mr. F—, how many gipsies and travellers have you known, during your travels, to attend a place of worship on Sundays?” “Well, sir,” said Mr. F—, “you ask me a straightforward question and I will give you a straightforward answer. I do not remember ever having seen one.” I said, “This state of things is truly awful.” “Yes,” he said; “it is no more awful than true. I’m getting tired of it, and I think I shall settle down this next winter.”

A long conversation with them both brought out tears, downcast looks, and sighs, which contrasted somewhat strangely with the yelling “fools,” “clowns,” and simpletons in the fair. I gave them and their children some books, pictures, &c., and they in return gave me a walking stick as a “keepsake,” which I shall preserve; and after shaking hands several times over, I toddled off into the fair, to wander among the vans with my “keepsake” stick in my hand, gently tapping the gipsy children as they turned up their smiling faces.

It was now about eleven o’clock, the buzz and din of fools, wise men and simple, was getting gradually less. The echo was getting fainter and fainter. The crowd was thinning. Policemen seemed to be numerous; the gipsies dogs were sneaking from under the vans, and prowling after bones and thrown-out trifles. The swearing of drunken gipsies was heard more distinctly than ever. The gipsy women—some of whom had “had a little too much”—were loud in their oaths and hard words. In many instances blows threatened to be the outcome. Children were screaming, and big sons and daughters were quarrelling.

Half-past eleven arrived, and the inmates of the two hundred and twenty vans and shows, numbering about a thousand men, women, and children, were bedding themselves down in their, in many instances, wretched abodes. As I wandered among them at midnight hour I felt a cold chill of horror creeping over me, and nightly dewdrops of sorrow forcing their way down my face. To witness the sight I saw was enough to cause the blood to freeze in any man’s veins. One of the most hellish sights upon earth is a dirty, drunken, swearing woman putting her children to bed upon rags undressed and unwashed, and with a flickering candle dying in the socket. Fathers and mothers, sons and daughters all lying mixed together, numbering on an average four, six, eight, ten, and twelve men, women, and children, of all ages and sizes, in the space of a covered waggon, is what ought never to be allowed in any civilized country, much less Christian England, which spends millions in trying to convert the Indian, civilize the savage, transform the Chinaman, Christianize the African, and in preparing the world for the millennium which is to follow the redeeming efforts of Christ’s followers. Oh! haste happy day, when John’s vision shall dawn upon us with all its never-ending transcendent splendour, tenderness, and heavenly reality. {161}

“And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain, for the former things are passed away.”

Not half a dozen of this thousand human beings would be offering up an evening prayer other than that of hell. The backsliding woman from Northampton and her son had crept for the night under their stall. Of course she had said her prayers, as she had told me, according to her wont, by the side of their stall, or may be after she had drawn their tent covering round them for the night; at any rate I left them to have one other peep at my friends the gipsies F— before wending my way to my lodgings. On arriving at the van I saw a flickering light in the windows. The top window was nearly shut. The woman had had _a little too much_, but not sufficient to drive her wild or out of her senses. The husband had been “cross” with her. They had finished their midnight meal. The poor little children were almost “dead sleepy,” and for a minute or two all was quiet, and then I heard the backsliding mother teaching the poor sleepy children as they knelt down in the van to repeat,

“Jesus, tender Shepherd, hear me, Bless Thy little lamb to-night, Through the darkness be Thou near me, Keep me safe till morning light.

“Let my sins be all forgiven. Bless the friends I love so well, Take me when I die to heaven, Happy there with Thee to dwell. For Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.”

They now fastened their van top door down and bade me good-night. Their dog had snoozled under their home on wheels. Fogs and chills were creeping round. The policeman’s tramp was to be heard, and with death-like silence reigning I crept between the cold sheets to toss and tumble about till the bright morning sun appeared, to fasten upon my heart the sights of the previous day at the Oxford St. Giles’s fair, not to be removed till eternity dawns upon my soul with heaven in full view. To, as Marianne Farningham says in _The Christian World_—

“A land where noises of the earth For evermore shall cease, Where the weary ones are resting In the calm of perfect peace.”

Rambles Among the Gipsies at Hinckley Fair.

HINCKLEY September fair has for many long years been regarded as one of the greatest “screw” fairs in England, and as a place where many gipsies annually gather together to follow their usual and profitable occupation of horse-dealing. At this fair they buy all the good-looking “screws” they can put their hands upon, and palm and physic them off, temporarily, as sound horses. They both, as one told me, “make their market” and “make hay while the sun shines” at this fair. A thorough old “screw” knows as if by instinct the scent of gipsy pantaloons; and by some means, known only to a few, the horses find their way back into gipsy hands again.

With these facts before me, I was prompted to pay the gipsies a visit at their Eldorado. The morning was like a spring morning. The sun shone cheerfully, lovely, and warmingly, and was fast drying up the mud. On my way to the station some slovenly waggoner had left some thorns in the way, which I threw over the fence and passed on. I had not gone far before I found, on a rising hill, a large piece of granite in the centre of the road, which some idle and careless Johnny had left behind him. I rolled it out of the way and sped along. On the top of the hill a coal higgler had left a large lump of coal in the way—or it had jolted off while he was asleep, or akin to it. This I deposited among the thistles and nettles in the ditch, where it remained for some weeks. While I was clearing these little troublesome and somewhat dangerous things out of the way, the skylark was singing cheeringly and sweetly overhead as of spring-time. My gipsy friends would say that these were forebodings and prognostications, ruled by the planets, which indicated joys and troubles, pleasure or sorrows for the travellers, according to the amount of silver and gold there was floating about within their reach. How I was guided by the Creator and the planets, and with what success I pursued my course, will be seen before I have done rambling.

At the station a poor woman was in a difficulty. She had promised to have tea with her long-absent daughter, at the “feast” at four o’clock the same day; but, unfortunately, the train would not take her to the “feast.” Notwithstanding the remonstrances of the porters, the good woman got into the train and said, “I shall go,” and she sped her way, but not to the “feast.”

A mother’s love sees no difficulties and fears no dangers, and will draw more tears from the human fountain than any other force on this side heaven.

At Nuneaton there was the usual long time to wait; after which I duly arrived at the “screw fair.”

At the entrance there was gipsy — and his wife—with their six lost little children, and the probability of a seventh being soon added—setting up their stall.

As I neared them, the poor woman met me and said, “I don’t know what to do; I ought not to be here in this market-place like this. I am liable to be down at any minute, and I don’t know one in the place. I wish our Jim had settled down last spring. It is a hard lot to be a gipsy’s wife,” and she began to cry. “Nobody knows what I have had to put up with since I took to travelling. Why, bless you, dear sir, it would make your heart ache if I were to tell you a tenth part of what myself and the children have gone through. Between Hilmorton and Ashby St. Ledgers will never be forgotten by me. It was a cold night, at the back end of the year; rain came down in torrents. We had only an uncovered cart for all of us to sleep in down one of the lanes. The children crouched under the cart upon the ground like dogs. Our Jim, myself, and three of the children slept, or lay down, in the body of the cart with our dripping clothes on us. We drew an old torn woollen rug over us, and did the best we could, shivering and shaking till morning. The children cried, and were half starved to death. I cannot tell you, if I went down upon my knees, of a twentieth part of our sufferings and hardships on that night, and hundreds of other nights besides. I had a black eye, and was black and blue on many parts of my body. Our Jim was very cruel at that time; but he has not been so bad lately.” Her husband, Jim, is about three parts a gipsy, or between a _posh_ and a Romany chal. He has six children by his first wife, living with their grandmother near Epping Forest, who are left to gipsy and take care of themselves. I don’t think that he would be a bad sort of a man if it were not for “drink” and gipsy companies. The only one who can read in this family is the poor woman, and that is only very little. With tears in her eyes she said, “I often read the little books you gave me, to our Jim at bedtime, till he cries, sometimes like a baby. My heart is at times ready to break when I see how our children are being brought up.” Business was beginning to look up with them, and I made myself scarce for a time. Such sad, heartrending instances of gipsy neglect, depravity, poverty, and wretchedness would be impossible if our Government would carry out my plans for reclaiming them, and Christians and philanthropists would do their duty towards drawing them into the arms of the State and the fold of God.

I had not gone far before a terrible row was echoing in the air from a stall lower down the market, between two gipsy women and a “potato master.” The gipsy women said the potato master had promised them three roasted potatoes for a halfpenny, and he had only given them two. A fight, hair-pulling, and bloodshed seemed to be in a fair way for being the outcome of this trumpery dispute, and would have taken place if the policeman had not put in an appearance. As it was the fracas ended, for the present, in nothing worse than threats of vengeance, oaths and curses being poured upon the head of the potato seller without stint or measure.

I now turned into the horse fair, and had scarcely got many yards before I found myself roughly jostled in the midst of a gipsy row over a dog. The gipsy horse-dealer had a lurcher dog with him, which was owned by a collier. The collier said his dog had been stolen by some gipsies about two months ago. High words, carrying mischief and blows, were flying about thick and fast, and bade fair to end in bloodshed and the pulling of the dog limb from limb. The dog preferred his old master to the gipsy. This the gipsy saw, and at the approach of the police the pair withdrew to a public-house to “square” matters. In the end the collier came out with his dog, which he said “had won more handicaps than any dog in the county,” and off he started home, with a smile instead of blood and bruises upon his face, and the dog wagging its tail with delight at his heels, much to the chagrin and discomfiture of the gipsy.

While I was among gipsy horse-dealers I made the best use of my eyes for a little time, and one of the first dodges of the gipsies was to hire a country Johnny to ride one of their “screws” up and down the fair. Of course the gipsies kept clear away, hoping thereby to draw the attention of customers to the horse as one that a farmer had no further use for. Johnny had very nearly sold the horse to a higgler, but “at the last pinch” the question of reducing the amount Johnny was to sell it for, by one pound, necessitated an appeal to the gipsy owner, who was not far away. The higgler saw the dodge of the gipsy and he withdrew his offer. The gipsy’s blessing was given, but the higgler did not mind it, and he went to seek other quarters for horseflesh.

A little higher up the fair there stood a man with two horses, who was evidently a small farmer in somewhat needy circumstances. It might be, for anything I knew, that he was wanting some money to pay for the cutting of his corn, which was ripening very fast. The horses looked like two thoroughly good sound horses, although aged. The price he asked for the best-looking was £25, and £20 for the other. The gipsies saw that this farmer was very anxious to sell. A big, good-looking gipsy came up to him and said, “What for the big horse? Now, then, speak the lowest price you will take for it in a word.” The farmer said, “£25.” “Nonsense,” said the gipsy; “you must think everybody is either a fool or asleep. I’ll give you a ‘fiver’ for it, and it is dear at that price.” To one of his gipsy mates he said, “Jack, jump across it and ride it up the fair.” Jack jumped across the horse, and off they started at a rattling pace, almost frightening people out of their wits who were in the way. After going up and down a few times several gipsies clustered round the horse when it and its gipsy rider had cleared to outside the throng of the fair. The group stood for a few minutes, and then the horse was brought back and given up to the owner. The bargain was not struck, and the gipsies cleared away. In the course of ten minutes the horse began to get very restless, kick, and plunge about. Sometimes it seemed as if it wanted to lie down. It would then begin to cringe and kick, much to the danger of the lookers on. The owner said that a horse-fly was on it somewhere. He stroked and tapped it, but all to no purpose. Presently another gipsy came up, evidently one of the gang, and said to the farmer, “Why, governor, your horse has either got the ‘bellyache’ or an inflammation; it will be dead in half an hour; what will you take for it at all risks? Now, speak your lowest figure at once.” The farmer said, very much “chopfallen,” “A little time ago I asked £25, but I suppose I must take less than that now.” The gipsy saw his chance, and at once said, “I will give you a ‘tenner,’ and not a farthing more; say either ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ and I’m off.” The horse was still kicking about. The farmer, much dejected, said, “I suppose you may as well have it.” The bargain was struck and the kicking horse led away. In going up the fair a group of gipsies clustered round it with evident glee. A few hours afterwards I saw the horse led off quietly enough from Hinckley fair at the heels of a gipsy. No doubt the horse had been doctored by the gipsies in some way when they first took it in hand and while it was surrounded by the first group.

In another instance a countryman bought a horse of a “farmer-looking” gipsy and paid the money, when, just before the horse was handed over to the purchaser, another gipsy came upon the scene and claimed the horse as his own, and, apparently, threatened vengeance and the gaol to be the doom of the man who had sold the horse. The two gipsies now began to pull each other about—without any bones being broken or blood flowing—and to wrestle and struggle for the possession of the horse. The country man had parted with his money and he had not got the horse, nor any prospect of it. Another gipsy came up and suggested that the whole business should be ended by the countryman having his money back except ten shillings and the payment of “glasses round.” To this arrangement the countryman assented, and they turned into the public-house to carry out the bargain. What sharp men and fools there are in the world, to be sure, to be met with on gipsy fair ground!