CAST TO THE WINDS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21542, 14 January 1932, Page 11

CAST TO THE WINDS

NOTED SCHOLAR’S ASHES CEREMONY ON MOUNTAIN TOP Here’s the top-peak! The multitude below Live, for they can there. This man decided not to Live but Know— Bury this man there? Here—here’s his place, where meteors shoot,, clouds form, Lightnings are loosened, ■- Stars come and go! let joy break with th« storm— Peace let the dew send I Lofty designs must close In like effects; Loftily lying Leave him—still loftier than the world suspects, ; Living and dying. ' —Browning ("A Grammarian’s Funeral.”? Mr Augustus John, the famous R.A., looking rather gipsy-like with his full grey beard and his scarlet-spotted scarf, stood recently in the midst of a company of gipsies on the top of Foel Gocli —the Red Hill—a few miles from Corwen, Wales, and saw scattered to the winds the ashes of his friend, Dr John Sampson, one of the world’s chief Romany scholars (says the Daily Express). The great painter and gipsies from all over Wales and the north had climbed the 2000 feet of the mountain from thrs village of Llangwm to the music of gipsy harps and fiddles, with the ashes horns in a wooden casket by Ithal Lee, a blackhaired, dark-faced Birkenhead gipsy who had known Dr Sampson for 40 years. Mr Augustus John stood bareheaded in a little circle on the mountain top. The sky was a brilliant blue, and the sun shone. All around rose the immemorial hills, green and brown, and in the far distance the black shoulders of the Snowden Range. The wind lifted the hair of those present. ! THE ROMANY BENEDICTION.

Mr Augustus John spoke, his eyes fixed on the distance, a smouldering cigarette in his hand. “ Obeying his last wishes,” he said, “ we, his friends, bear hither the ashes of John Sampson in order that, scattered over the slopes of this beautiful mountain, they may become part of the land he loved, and rest near the remnant of the ancient race for whom he lived. We rejoice that he was sent among us to be our companion in sorrow and in joy, to protect from decay our . old tradition, and to enrich the world’s store of learning.”

There was a pause —an eerie stillness. Then the strong voice rang out again in the Romany tongue: “ Over the dark w-ater of death I give thee my hand. Mayest thou sleep well.” The mourners repeated the Romany benediction: “Te soves misto” (Sleep thou well). The sun shone. The wind lifted the hair. A little stir in the crowd.

Mr Michael Sampson, Dr Sampson’s son, and Gipsy Lee stood together. The gipsy held the wooden casket, while the son, with a set, expressionless face, drew out a handful of dust, and flung it into the air. Again and again he drew out his hand, again and again the white powder that had once been a man sprinkled the grass. No one spoke. No one stirred.

Then the harps and fiddles began their music, and ILial Lee took the empty box, filled it with paper, and struck a match. When the flame began to leap and flutter in the breeze he stooped down solemnly and lit his pipe at the fire. AIR OF PROUD PENURY. Professors, judges, and other of the dead man’s Liverpool friends, representatives of the Gipsy Lore Society, farmhands in their rough moleskin, village girls and young men chattering in shrill, excited Welsh, were among those who climbed to the mountain top. There were gipsies with flaming scarves round their heads, strings of coins that jingled as they moved, tattered jackets of exotic patch-work design. An air of proud penury about them. The writer talked with Turpin Wood, a witty, black-browed little man who had walked that morning with his wife and children over the mountains from a village miles away. Of course, he had known Dr Sampson. They all had. “ Indeed,” he said, “my father taught Dr Sampson the Welsh Romany dialect.” Among those present were the Roberts family—grandfather, father, and son, all named Reuben—who had played before royalty and whose wild music was the last homage to their dead friend. ,