Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvementSmith, George
History
Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement
Smith, George
Romanies -- Great Britain
Thereupon Ryley and Yocky Shuri left Yorkshire and wended their way to
London, where they took up their abode in the Gipsyry near Shepherd’s
Bush. Shuri went about dukkering and hokking, but not with the spirit of
former times, for she was not quite so young as she had been, and her
jaw, which was never properly cured, pained her very much. Ryley went
about tinkering, but he was unacquainted with London and its
neighbourhood, and did not get much to do. An old Gipsy man, who was
driving about a little cart filled with skewers, saw him standing in a
state of perplexity at a place where four roads met:—
OLD GIPSY.
“Methinks I see a brother.
Who’s your father? Who’s your mother?
And what be your name?”
RYLEY.
“A Bosvil was my father,
A Bosvil was my mother,
And Ryley is my name.”
OLD GIPSY.
“I’m glad to see you, brother;
I am a kaulo camlo. {218a}
What service can I do?”
RYLEY.
“I’m jawing petulengring, {218b}
But do not know the country;
Perhaps you’ll show me round.”
OLD GIPSY.
“I’ll sikker tulle prala!
Ino bikkening escouyor, {218c}
And av along with me.”
The old Gipsy showed Ryley about the country for a week or two, and Ryley
formed a kind of connection and did a little business. He, however,
displayed little or no energy, was gloomy and dissatisfied, and
frequently said that his heart was broken since he had left Yorkshire.
Shuri did her best to cheer him, but without effect. Once when she bade
him get up and exert himself, he said that if he did it would be of no
use, and asked her whether she did not remember the parting prophecy of
his other wife, that he would never thrive. At the end of about two
years he ceased going his rounds, and did nothing but smoke under the
arches of the railroad and loiter about beershops. At length he became
very weak and took to his bed; doctors were called in by his faithful
Shuri, but there is no remedy for a bruised spirit. A Methodist came and
asked him, “What was his hope?” “My hope,” said he, “is that when I am
dead I shall be put into the ground, and my wife and children will weep
over me,” and such, it may be observed, is the last hope of every genuine
Gipsy. His hope was gratified. Shuri and his children, of whom he had
three—two stout young fellows and a girl—gave him a magnificent funeral,
and screamed and shouted and wept over his grave. They then returned to
the “arches,” not to divide his property among them, and to quarrel about
the division, according to Christian practice, but to destroy it. They
killed his swift pony—still swift though twenty-seven years of age—and
buried it deep in the ground without depriving it of its skin. Then they
broke the caravan to pieces, making of the fragments a fire, on which
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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