The Romany Rye | Page 4

Cornish on one side, and on the other mainly French.

But such was the egotism of Borrow--perhaps I should have said, such
is the egotism of human nature--that the fact of his having been born in
East Anglia made him look upon that part of the world as the very hub
of the universe. East Anglia, however, seems to have cherished a very
different feeling towards Borrow. Another mistake of Mr. Hake's is in
supposing that Borrow gave me the lovely incident of the gypsy child
weeping in the churchyard because "the poor dead gorgios could not
hear the church bells." As this mistake has been shared by others, and
has appeared in print, I may as well say that it was a real incident in the
life of a well-known Romany chi, from whom I have this very morning
received a charming letter dated from "the van in the field," where she
has settled for the winter.
The anecdote about Borrow and the gypsy child who was, or seemed to
be, suffering through the mother's excessive love of her pipe can very
appropriately be introduced here, and I am glad that Mr. Hake has
recalled it to my mind. It shows not only Borrow's relations to
childhood, but also his susceptibility to those charms of womankind to
which Dr. Jessopp thinks he was impervious. Borrow was fond of
telling this story himself, in support of his anti-tobacco bias. Whenever
he was told, as he sometimes was, that what brought on the "horrors"
when he lived alone in the dingle, was the want of tobacco, this story
was certain to come up.
One lovely morning in the late summer, just before the trees were
clothed with what is called "gypsy gold," and the bright green of the
foliage showed scarcely a touch of bronze--at that very moment, indeed,
when the spirits of all the wild flowers that have left the common and
the hedgerow seem to come back for an hour and mingle their
half-forgotten perfumes with the new breath of calamint, ground-ivy,
and pimpernel, he and a friend were walking towards a certain camp of
gryengroes well known to them both. They were bound upon a quaint
expedition. Will the reader "be surprised to learn" that it was connected
with Matthew Arnold and a race in which he took a good deal of
interest, the gypsies?
Borrow, whose attention had been only lately directed by his friend to

"The Scholar Gypsy," had declared that there was scarcely any
latter-day poetry worth reading, and also that whatever the merits of
Matthew Arnold's poem might be from any supposed artistic point of
view, it showed that Arnold had no conception of the Romany temper,
and that no gypsy who ever lived could sympathise with it, or even
understand its motive in the least degree. Borrow's friend had
challenged this, contending that howsoever Arnold's classic language
might soar above a gypsy's intelligence, the motive was so clearly
developed that the most illiterate person could grasp it. This was why
in company with Borrow he was now going (with a copy of Arnold's
poems in his pocket) to try "The Scholar Gypsy" upon the first
intelligent gypsy woman they should meet at the camp: as to gypsy
men, "they were," said Borrow, "too prosaic to furnish a fair test."
As they were walking along, Borrow's eyes, which were as
long-sighted as a gypsy's, perceived a white speck in a twisted old
hawthorn bush some distance off. He stopped and said: "At first I
thought that white speck in the bush was a piece of paper, but it's a
magpie," next to the water- wagtail the gypsies' most famous bird. On
going up to the bush they discovered a magpie crouched among the
leaves. As it did not stir at their approach, Borrow's friend said to him:
"It is wounded--or else dying--or is it a tame bird escaped from a
cage?"
"Hawk!" said Borrow, laconically, and turned up his face and gazed
into the sky. "The magpie is waiting till the hawk has caught his quarry
and made his meal. I fancy he has himself been 'chivvied' by the hawk,
as the gypsies would say."
And there, sure enough, beneath one of the silver clouds that specked
the dazzling blue a hawk--one of the kind which takes its prey in the
open rather than in the thick woodlands--was wheeling up and up, and
trying its best to get above a poor little lark in order to stoop at and
devour it. That the magpie had seen the hawk and had been a witness of
the opening of the tragedy of the lark was evident, for in its dread of the
common foe of all well-intentioned and honest birds, it had forgotten
its fear of all creatures