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
in their philosophy. There is a substratum of iniquity lower than any
writers have ever touched. There are certain things in connection with
their dark lives, hidden and veiled by their slang language, that may not
come out in my day, but most surely daylight will be shed upon them some
day. They will kill and murder each other, fight and quarrel like
hyenas, but certain things they will not divulge, and so long as the
well-being of society is not in danger I suppose we have no right to
interfere. A query arises here. Their past actions back me up in this
theory. Upon Mitcham Common last week there were nearly two hundred
tents and vans. In one tent, which may be considered a specimen of many
others, there were two men and their wives, and about twelve children of
both sexes and of all ages. In another tent there were nine children of
both sexes and all ages, some of them men and women, and for the life of
me I cannot tell how they are all packed when they sleep—I suppose like
herrings in a box, pell-mell, “all of a heap.” One of these Gipsy young
women was a model, and has her time pretty much occupied during the day.
I have been among house-dwelling Gipsies in the Midland counties, and
have found twelve to fifteen men, women, and children, squatting about on
the floor, which they used as a workshop, sitting-room, drawing-room, and
bed-room; although there was a bed-room up-stairs it was not often
used—so I was told by the landlady.
There is much more sickness among the Gipsies than is generally known,
especially among the children. They have strong faith in herbs; the
principal being chicken-weed, groundsel, elder leaves, rue, wild sage,
love-wort, agrimony, buckbean, wood-betony, and others; these they boil
in a saucepan like they would cabbages, and then drink the decoction.
They only go to the chemist or surgeon at the last extremity. They are
very much like the man who tried by degrees to train his donkey to live
and work without food, and just as he succeeded the poor Balaam died; and
so it is with the poor Gipsy children. It kills them to break them in to
the hardships of Gipsy life. Occasionally I have heard of Gipsies who
act as human beings should do with their children. A well-to-do Gipsy
whom I know—one of the Lees, a son of Mrs. Simpson—has spent over £30 in
doctors’ bills this winter for his children’s good. Not one Gipsy in a
thousand would do likewise.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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