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. No one
would think anything could flourish on such an arid sand, exposed at a
great height on the open hill to the cutting winds. Contrary, however, to
appearances, fair crops, and sometimes two crops of hay are yielded, and
there is always a good bite for cattle. These squatters consequently came
to keep cows, sometimes one and sometimes two - anticipating the three
acres and a cow; and it is very odd to hear the women at the hop-picking
telling each other they are going to churn to-night.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 195 of 394
Words from 52451 to 52731
of 105669
