The Romany Rye | Page 4

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 except the hawk. Man it looked upon as a protecting friend.
As Borrow and his friend were gazing at the bird a woman's voice at their elbows said--
"It's lucky to chivvy the hawk what chivvies a magpie. I