A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy LanguageSimson, Walter
History
A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language
Simson, Walter
Romanies; Romanies -- Languages
[48] In no part of the world is the Gipsy life more in accordance with
the general idea that the Gipsy is like Cain--a wanderer on the face
of the earth--than in England; for there, the covered cart and the
little tent are the houses of the Gipsy; and he seldom remains more
than three days in the same place. So conducive is the climate of
England to beauty, that nowhere else is the appearance of the race so
prepossessing as in that country. Their complexion is dark, but not
disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their
foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are
taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak
the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are
easy and graceful; in both respects standing in striking contrast with
the peasantry, who, in speech, are slow and uncouth, and, in manner,
dogged and brutal.--_Borrow._--ED.
The English Gipsies also travel in Scotland, with earthenware in carts
and waggons. A body of them, to the number of six tents, with sixteen
horses, encamped, on one occasion, on the farm of Kingledoors, near the
source of the Tweed. They remained on the ground from Saturday night
till about ten o'clock on Monday morning, before they struck their tents
and waggons.
At St Boswell's fair I once inspected a horde of English Gipsies,
encamped at the side of a hedge, on the Jedburgh road as it enters St.
Boswell's Green. Their name was Blewett, from the neighbourhood of
Darlington. The chief possessed two tents, two large carts laden with
earthenware, four horses and mules, and five large dogs. He was attended
by two old females and ten young children. One of the women was the
mother of fourteen, and the other the mother of fifteen, children. This
chief and the two females were the most swarthy and barbarous looking
people I ever saw. They had, however, two beautiful children with them,
about five years of age, with light flaxen hair, and very fair
complexions. The old Gipsy women said they were twins; but they might
have been stolen from different parents, for all that, as there was
nothing about them that had the slightest resemblance to any one of the
horde that claimed them. Apparently much care was taken of them, as they
were very cleanly and neatly kept.[49]
[49] It does not follow, from what our author says about these two
children, that they were stolen. I have seen some of the children of
English Gipsies as fair as any Saxon. It sometimes happens that the
flaxen hair of a Gipsy child will change into raven black before he
reaches manhood.--ED.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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