So Old, So
Very, Very Old, Older Than The Chinese, Older Than The Copts Of Egypt,
Older Than The Aztecs; Back To Those Dim Sanskrit Times That Seem Like
The Clouds On The Far Horizon Of Human Experience, Where Space And Chaos
Begin To Take Shape, Though But Of Vapour.
So old, they went through
civilisation ten thousand years since; they have worn it all out, even
hope in the future; they merely live acquiescent to fate, like the red
deer.
The crescent moon, the evening star, the clatter of the fern-owl,
the red embers of the wood fire, the pungent smoke blown round about by
the occasional puffs of wind, the shadowy trees, the sound of the horses
cropping the grass, the night that steals on till the stubbles alone are
light among the fields - the gipsy sleeps in his tent on mother earth; it
is, you see, primeval man with primeval nature. One thing he gains at
least - an iron health, an untiring foot, women whose haunches bear any
burden, children whose naked feet are not afraid of the dew.
By sharp contrast, the Anglo-Saxon labourer who lives in the cottage
close by and works at the old timbered farmstead is profoundly religious.
The gipsies return from their rambling soon after the end of hop-picking,
and hold a kind of informal fair on the village green with cockshies,
swings, and all the clumsy games that extract money from clumsy hands. It
is almost the only time of the year when the labouring people have any
cash; their weekly wages are mortgaged beforehand; the hop-picking money
comes in a lump, and they have something to spend. Hundreds of pounds are
paid to meet the tally or account kept by the pickers, the old word tally
still surviving, and this has to be charmed out of their pockets. Besides
the gipsies' fair, the little shopkeepers in the villages send out
circulars to the most outlying cottage announcing the annual sale at an
immense sacrifice; anything to get the hop-pickers' cash; and the packmen
come round, too, with jewelry and lace and finery. The village by the
forest has been haunted by the gipsies for a century; its population in
the last thirty years has much increased, and it is very curious to
observe how the gipsy element has impregnated the place. Not only are the
names gipsy, the faces are gipsy; the black coarse hair, high
cheek-bones, and peculiar forehead linger; even many of the shopkeepers
have a distinct trace, and others that do not show it so much are known
to be nevertheless related.
Until land became so valuable - it is now again declining - these forest
grounds of heath and bracken were free to all comers, and great numbers
of squatters built huts and inclosed pieces of land. They cleared away
the gorse and heath and grubbed the fir-tree stumps, and found, after a
while, that the apparently barren sand could grow a good sward.
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