BRITISH NOMADS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1602, 5 August 1882, Page 27

BRITISH NOMADS.

Tramp-houses and Vageant Passwords.

All regular tramp-houses— there are irregular onos with peculiar and noteworthy featuresare licensed taverns, spirit-houses, or, as the phrase goes on the road, ' bingo kens ' (from It. bianco, white, the colour of gin). Most of these licenses are very old indeed, and some are the oldest in the kingdom. As a matter of fact so are the houses. It is but fair, therefore, to conclude that the system prevailing in them is at least of equal antiquity. Every one of these houses is known far and wide. No tramp, let him come from where he may, ever enters a town without very definite ideas as to the house where he is to put up. He has learned all about it— ay, a hundred miles off ; and he goes to it as rapidly, and, when inside, conforms as smoothly to all its ways, as though he had been born within its precincts. The custom of such a house is constant. The tramp stream thither is perennial, and maintains about the same level season after season and year after year. This kind of people, indeed will halt here and nowhere else so long as the house continues to maintain its reputation among them ; and they are a much more profitable company than most people would imagine. In a great many instances the tramp-house is managed by the same family for age after age. There is one— the Goat, or, as the genuine tramp prefers to term it, the Welsh Buffalo— at W , which has been held by the same people since the days of the Long Parliament, as records in the possession of the landlord show. They are just of the sort to conduct such a house successfully. In stature the family has always been absolutely gigantic; a little too stolid and surly, perhaps, out in temper and tastes tramp all over. For one thing, nobody ever heard of a regular marriage taking place among them. The eldest son takes over the house during the • old man's ' life. The younger sons, as a rule, join the police in their native town or elsewhere, but by preference in London. Wherever they settle, however— and the fact is worthy of notice— they remain to the last, in the full confidence of the fraternity among which they have been brought up. That is the usual way with tramp-houses. When there is an exception it is of the sort presented by the Turk's Head at A ten or fifteen years ago. This is a very old house indeed— how old nobody knows— though < the peculiar architecture of the older portions, the waste of space and material, the massive walls, low ceilings, and mighty supporting beams, with the ill-planned straggling apartments one opening into another, snow that this is nearly as old as the adjacent church. That same church once held a relic of considerable repute, and was the goal of pilgrimage to the inhabitants of three or four counties ; and the old tramp- house, no doubt, was the favourite resort of the pilgrims. Now and again positive proof of this has been brought to light in the shape of rosary, crucifix, saintly image, &c. laid bare in the course of alterations, under board and beam where they had been deposited of set purpose to be forgotten, or whither they had found their' way after the manner of waifs. Ten or fifteen years ago this old house was in the hands of a, widow, whose family had died out like that of her husband.' Having maintained her condition of widowhood for a decade at least, nobody suspected that she would ever change it. The Turk's Head soon afterwards fell under the control of one who soon rendered it the model tramp-house of his county. ' It is the landlords of these tramp-houses who keep up the vagabond organisation, and who renew and circulate its signs and passwords from time to time. The vagabonds themselves could not do it, and never think of doing it. It is difficult to give an idea of the beggar password and sign system; but we will do the best we can. It has no common centre and no uniformity. There may be, and probably there are, fifty different sets of them in use in England. Each has its own domain, and those domains intersect one another in curious fashion. AH depends on the way the tramp lords associate together. These landlords form small circles among themselves according to contiguity ; and a dozen or twenty of these small circles will form one great one. A great circle of tramp landlords— perhaps it were better to call it oval -may spread fifty miles along one of the great highways and ten to fifteen miles on each side of it. And so far the set of signs and passwords in use therein are good for three months, when they are regularly changed. A free tramp pays threepence for the sign and password every time they are renewed. All he has to do on these occasions is to go to any landlord of the right sort, give in the sign and password in due form, and pay his pence. And he has to pay again every time he enters a new circle. Experience teaches him very well the precise bounds of each. However, whenever he manifests ignorance on this point, he is very soon set right by the landlord, and must purchase tho freedom of the new circle in 'the usual way. He meets with little difficulty here, provided the pence are forthcoming. For the tramp landlordcan tell in an instant, by the word and sign given | by the tramp, whether the latter is one of tho right sort or not. Password and sign, indeed, serve, among other things, as a means whereby tramp" landlords levy a tax upon vagabonds all over the country. A tramp leaving London by the northern road must obtain his first country sign or password at Bamet. These will carry him well past Dunstable into the Northampton district, Here he renews his tokens, and goes forward past Leicester into the Nottingham district. Should he turn aside here to the west, he may cress Derbyshire and get' to Knutsford in Cheshire before changing again. If he elects to go east, he does not renew sign or word before reaching the Fen country," In the same way signs'are obtained at Romlord, Gravesend, Guildford, Uxbridge, &c, and renewed as the tramp continues his progress to a sufficient distance beyond each of these towns. The tramp never troubles himself about the origin of these signs ; but he finds them exceedingly useful — indispensable, in fact — and that is all he cares for. The uses of this vagabond freemasonry are manifold. It teaches the vagabond whom he may safely consort and traffic with everywhere. The man who gives the right response to mystic word and sign is invariably the one in whom confidence may be safely reposed. On the road-side the exchange of these tokens is immediately followed by a free exchange of recent experiences, to the benefit of both parties. Nor is this all. The vagrant out of luck is entitled to all the assistance his more fortunate brother can reader, and invariably receives it. A fortunate vagrant never objects to picking up a brother in bad plight, and treating him to supper, bed, and breakfast, besides starting him_ on his next clay's journoy with a few pence in his pocket. Tlils, indeed, is the rule among them. Again, there is a good deal of secret work for ever going on within the vagabond ranks, and here sign and password are useful at every turnbut more of this hereafter. The uninitiated vagrant notifies, as he cannot help noticing, the constant use of these signs and countersigns on tho road, and the effects that Itow them in numerous instances, He often

sees a fellow as badly off as himself picked up and made much of by a perfect stranger, and for no reason on earth that he can see, except that one addresses another with an apparently unmeaning catchword. He picks up the word and employs ,it on all occasions, in the hopo that some time or other it may bring tho like fortune to himself. Other silly ones catch it from him, and use it, for no reason at all that they can give, as a salutation. Thus spread over the country such phrases as : ' Have you seen Simpson ?' 'Is Murphy right ?' ' Is your father working ?' &c— Pall Mall Gazette.