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. 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. They have, in fact,
little dairies. Such are the better class of squatters. But others there
are who have shown no industry, half-gipsies, who do anything but
work - tramp, beg, or poach; sturdy fellows, stalking round with
toy-brooms for sale, with all the blackguardism of both races. They keep
just within the law; they do not steal or commit burglary; but decency,
order, and society they set utterly at defiance. For instance, a
gentleman pleased with the splendid view built a large mansion in one
spot, never noticing that the entrance was opposite a row of cottages, or
rather thinking no evil of it. The result was that neither his wife nor
visitors could go in or out without being grossly insulted, without rhyme
or reason, merely for the sake of blackguardism. Now, the pure gipsy in
his tent or the Anglo-Saxon labourer would not do this; it was the
half-breed. The original owner was driven from his premises; and they are
said to have changed hands several times since from the same cause. All
over the parish this half-breed element shows its presence by the
extraordinary and unusual coarseness of manner. The true English rustic
is always civil, however rough, and will not offend you with anything
unspeakable, so that at first it is quite bewildering to meet with such
behaviour in the midst of green lanes. This is the explanation - the gipsy
taint. Instead of the growing population obliterating the gipsy, the
gipsy has saturated the English folk.
When people saw the red man driven from the prairies and backwoods of
America, and whole states as large as Germany without a single Indian
left, much was written on the extermination of the aborigines by the
stronger Saxon. As the generations lengthen, the facts appear to wear
another aspect. From the intermarriage of the lower orders with the
Indian squaws the Indian blood has got into the Saxon veins, and now the
cry is that the red man is exterminating the Saxon, so greatly has he
leavened the population. The typical Yankee face, as drawn in - Punch - , is
indeed the red Indian profile with a white skin and a chimney-pot hat.
Upon a small scale the same thing has happened in this village by the
forest; the gipsy half-breed has stained the native blood. Perhaps races
like the Jew and gipsy, so often quoted as instances of the permanency of
type, really owe that apparent fixidity to their power of mingling with
other nations. They are kept alive as races by mixing; otherwise one of
two things would happen - the Jew and the gipsy must have died out, or
else have supplanted all the races of the globe. Had the Jews been so
fixed a type, by this time their offspring would have been more numerous
than the Chinese. The reverse, however, is the case; and therefore we may
suppose they must have become extinct, had it not been for fresh supplies
of Saxon, Teuton, Spanish, and Italian blood.
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