Lavengro | Page 5

his critics into the future--a
future which held within its womb not only the American civil war and
the gigantic Continental struggles whose bloody reek still "smells to
heaven," but also the present carnival of dynamite, the revolver, and the
assassin's knife.

VI. BORROW'S GYPSIES.
To those who knew Borrow, the striking thing about "Lavengro" and
"The Romany Rye" is not that there is so much about the gypsies, but
that there is comparatively so little, and that he only introduces one
family group. Judged from these two books the reader would conclude
that he knew nothing whatever of the Lees, the Stanleys, and the most
noticeable of all, the Lovells, and yet those who knew him are aware

that he was thrown into contact with most of these. But here, as in
everything else, Borrow's eccentric methods can never be foreseen. The
most interesting of all the gypsies are the Welsh gypsies. The Welsh
variety of the Romany tongue is quite peculiar, and the Romanies of
the Principality are superior to all others in these islands in intelligence
and in their passion for gorgio respectability. Borrow in "Lavengro"
takes the reader to the Welsh border itself, and then turns back, leaving
the Welsh Romany undescribed. And in the only part of "Wild Wales"
where gypsy life is afterwards glanced at, the gypsies introduced are
not Welsh, but English.
The two great successes amongst Borrow's Romany characters are
undoubtedly Mrs. Petulengro's mother (old Mrs. Herne) and her
grandchild Leonora, but these are the two wicked characters of the
group. It is impossible to imagine anything better told than the attempt
of these two to poison Lavengro: it is drama of the rarest kind. The
terrible ironical dialogue over the prostrate and semi-conscious
Lavengro, between the child-murderess and the hag-murderess who
have poisoned him, is like nothing else in literature. This scene alone
should make "Lavengro" immortal. In no other race than the Romany
would a child of the elf-like intelligence and unconscious wickedness
of Leonora be possible; but also it must be said that in no other race
than the Romany would be possible a child like her who is made the
subject of my sonnet, "A Gypsy Child's Christmas," printed in the
"Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society"--a sonnet which renders in verse a
real incident recorded by my friend before alluded to:--
Dear Sinfi rose and danced along "The Dells," Drawn by the Christmas
chimes, and soon she sate Where, 'neath the snow around the
churchyard gate, The ploughmen slept in bramble-banded cells: The
gorgios passed, half fearing gipsy spells, While Sinfi, gazing, seemed
to meditate; She laughed for joy, then wept disconsolate: "De poor dead
gorgios cannot hear de bells."
Within the church the clouds of gorgio-breath Arose, a steam of lazy
praise and prayer, To Him who weaves the loving Christmas-stair O'er
sorrow and sin and wintry deeps of Death; But where stood He? Beside

our Sinfi there, Remembering childish tears in Nazareth.
Perhaps Borrow's pictures of the gypsies, by omitting to depict the
Romany woman on her loftier, her tragic side, fail to demonstrate what
he well knew to be the Romany's great racial mark of distinction all
over Europe, the enormous superiority of the gypsy women over the
gypsy men, not in intelligence merely, but in all the higher human
qualities. While it is next to impossible to imagine a gypsy hero, gypsy
heroines--women capable of the noblest things--are far from
uncommon.
The "Amazonian Sinfi," alluded to in Dr. Hake's sonnet, was a heroine
of this noble strain, and yet perhaps she was but a type of a certain kind
of Romany chi.
It was she of the bantam cock and "the left-hand body blow" alluded to
above.
This same gypsy girl also illustrated another side of the variously
endowed character of the Romany women, ignored, or almost ignored
by Borrow--their passion for music. The daughter of an extremely
well-to-do "gryengro," or dealer in horses, this gypsy girl had travelled
over nearly all England, and was familiar with London, where, in the
studio of a certain romantic artist, she was in great request as a
face-model. But having been brought into close contact with a
travelling band of Hungarian gypsy musicians who visited England
some years ago, she developed a passion for music that showed her to
be a musical genius. The gypsy musicians of Hungary, who are darker
than the tented gypsies, are the most intelligent and most
widely-travelled of even Hungarian gypsies--indeed, of all the Romany
race, and with them Sinfi soon developed into the "Fiddling Sinfi," who
was famous in Wales and also in East Anglia, and the East Midlands.
After a while she widened her reputation in a curious way as the only
performer on the old Welsh stringed instrument called