GIPSIES.

Timaru Herald, Volume XXX, Issue 1475, 13 June 1879, Page 3

GIPSIES.

(Daily Telegraph.) Eastertide is the season when the gipsies quit the town for their annual wanderings up and down the open country. Society as at present constituted is making common war upon these swarthy children of liberty. They are to be hunted out from their favorite and accustomed corners, to be driven from the commons, to be banished from the woods and forests, and to be denied the liberty and the recklessness that from time inimemoriul were thu assigned privileges of their romantic life. " The days when we went gipsying a long time ago " is the careless refrain of the old song ; but it is the melancholy burden of the chant wailed by the last of the Zing.iri. England is overgrown, and apparently there is no need for picturesque squatters. When they assemble under the railway arches in the neighborhood of Batterßea to sound the roll-call and prepare for their annual journey through England, mapping out the fairs, the races, and the country-side meetings with the regularity of a theatrical agent, they are warned off by the parish authorities and told they must congregate elsewhere. The Corporation of the City of London have issued an edict formally worded against these Eastern trespassers should they dare to approach the confines of Epping Forest ; while the magistrates of Hampstead have discovered that the gipsies are gamblers in tho strict and legal sense of the term, and are agents destructive of the peace and of morals when they set up their cocoanuts for "three shies a penny." There is something so picturesque in the life of the idea Romany, who, careless of wind and weather, and oblivious of rights of property, sets forth jwith no taxes to pny and no thought for the morrow, that, at first sight, it seems as if only mere churlishness or a rigorous straining of the law would cut short his career of abandoned but pardonable impudence. Other folks love to inhabit fine houses, but his home is in the fresh air. He has ever an object and an aim, for at fair, or race, or agricultural meeting he nets up his cocoanuts and sticks, erects a shooting gallery, holds horses, or earns a trifle in assisting his showmen companions on the road. When times are bad and the bailiff is negligent there is some corner or other where he can shelter unobserved ; and if hare or ribbit do not come across his path, or a farmyard be not handy, a rich supper can be secured by stewing a hedgehog in a stiff paste of clay or making wouderful soups from the edible herbs and turnips that surround the cosy encampment. The rural policeman, somewhnt irritated at this defiant tone and pride of liberty, regards the gipsy as an incorrigible thief ; and the country magistrate, prejudiced by stories of pedlar women and fortune-telling dames, is firmly impressed with the idea thnt the gipsy's wife is an arrant swindler. So it comes about that the days of the yellow caravan are numbered ; the dark-eyed and black-haired matron will no longer peel potatoes by the road-side on the Queen's highway as the ragged pony steals a feed from the gorse-covered common ; the ignorant country lasses will be taught to look with suspicion on the well-favored maiden in tho orange shawl who pretends to sell ribbons and whispers mysterious love promises, provided she may cross the rustic hand wilh tho smallest piece of silver ; children, brown as the berry, with their 3hock heads and bare legs, will be pounced upon by tho local School Board ; and a raco which, in spite of the antagonism to which it has been subjected, has marvellously preserved its language, its habits, its laws, and its social peculiarities, will be bidden to return as quickly as possible to the placu whence it came. Where, then, is this place ? That is the question. Are these wanderers Egyptians at all, and have they any right to blush at the old legend that tells us how their forefathers refused a restingplace to the Holy Family when they fled into Egypt, and were punished for their inhospitality by the doom of perpetual vagrancy 1 Are they not rather, as their language to this day declares, the direct descendants of aboriginals of Hindostan ? The country below Mooltan to the mouth of the Indiu is said to have been the first asylum and rendezvous of the fugitives. No one knows precisely which way they travelled. Their language, as has been proved by countless examples and treatises, is Indian. Their name seems to imply that they rested a considerable time in Egypt before they arrived among us. But every country claims them and despises them. " They had been wandering five hundred years when they came to Paris," says a French historian. " They were lodged by the police out of the city at Chapelle St. Denis. Almost all had their ears bored, and one or two silver rings in each. The men were very black, the women remarkably ugly ; in short, they were the poorest wretches that had ever been seen in France, and, notwithstanding their poverty, there were among them women who, by looking into people's hands, told their fortunes, and, what was worse, they picked people's pockets of their money, and got it into their own, by the intervention of the devil." In the early years of the fifteenth century, fourteen thousand of these same gipsies arrived at Zurich, in Switzerland. Germany is familiar with them, and a traveller estimates that there are upwards of forty thousand in Spain, where they are not allowed to possess any lands, or even serve as soldiers, though they keep village inns, and persistently follow the occupation of fortune-telling, In- that, as in other countries, they marry among themselves, stroll about in troops, and lay their dead under water. They are contented if they can procure food by showing, feats «f- dexterity, and only pilfer dgjKgjtpply themselves with what «iey ■Wwfc^pso thiti fhe^n&TOr incur (rjps^es .arstxrabnl w^Jst^oT-thy men : 3fcve »a

hen-roi'S'.s of the English farmer, teli f >rtunes at the carnage-doors un the summer racecourse, seek shelter under the Battersea and Wandsworth arches, hold proprietorship over the booths, knock-'em-downs, and shooting-galleries at " mops" and riverside amusements, or gather in the late autumn to keep gipsy carnival in Epping Forest or at Fuirlop Oak. The ideal life of a modern gipsy may be extremely picturesque, but, in the opinion of the practical man, he is considered a nuisance who ought to be pHt down, if ever he can be put down, by the' atr»ng arm of the law. At the same time, old friends and institutions should be treated at least with courtesy nnd consideration, and it would be a subject for regret if the gipsy woman, with her little child slung at her back, were hustled unceremoniously out of the country, or if more sins than could be distinctly proved were fathered upon the broad shoulders of the picturesque vagrant with the slouch hat and the bright colored handkerchief. The Corporation of the City of London, having become custodians of Epping Forest, are apparently determined to show that new brooms can sweep clean. Accordingly a beginning is made with the gipsies, who are charged with the dire offence of living as donkey and pony drivers in summer, and by poaching in winter. They are told, with all due formality, that it is an illegal act to light a fire in order to boil a kettle, and the nature-loving gipsy is accused of wrecking the " white hawthorn of its blossoms. " For these unpardonable crimes the gipsy is to be banished Epping Forest for ever, and Fairlop Fair will know him no more. Now, it is just possiblo that in these doubtless salutary reforms an unnecessary point may have been strained. If it is such a heinous offence to drive a donkey or a pony, then Hampstead Heath must straightway be purged of its iniquity, and Ranißgate sands must be patrolled by the Kentish police. If it is such an outrage to light a fire in order to boil a kettle, then let cur Whitsuntide youths beware who camp out in the apper reaches of the Thames, and woe be to the young lady who proposes a picnic in the Quarry Woods at Marlow or in the serene recesses of Burnham Beeches. As to the stolen brandies from the white hawthorn of Epping Fun-st, there is probably not a lad in Whitechapel who would not plead guilty to " stealing," on warm Sundays, a handful of almond-scented May. The gipsy may, no doubt, be an " unconscionable rogue," but in several of these instances he may not be nearly so black as he is painted. As if these transgressions were not sufficient, and did not weigh heavily enough on the Londonhaunting gipsy, he appears to have been charged before the Hampstead magistrates with tho crime of "gambling," in that he set up sticks surmounted with cocoanuts, and urged the Cockney youth to try their skill at this most harmless and inviting game. The prosecution, anxious to be rid of the gipsies, apparently wavered in their contention whether this cocoanut throwing was dangerous to the lives or limbs of the public or destructive of good morals. There was a serious attempt to prove that " three shies a penny" resulted in broken heads and damaged infants ; but the magistrate would have none of that argument. His opinion was that the cocnanut game amounted to the common cas-e of gambling," and he argued that no man could earn "an honest shilling " at n. sport in which everybody seemed to throw, and no one apparently hit the cocoanut. " But they never do hit," urged the worthy magistrate, reflecting, perhp.ps, on painful personal experience. This was too much for the undefended hawker, who broke out thereupon into a pathetic nnd forcible remonstrance. Thinking, uu doubt, of the cocoanuts he had constantly lost to skilful customers, he remarked, with honest scorn, " They never do hit ? O, that be blowed for a tale !" There is unquestionably much truth and force in tho ejaculation of the poor fellow, who was nevertheless fined forty shillings with the alternative of fourteen days' imprisonment for pursning what had hitherto been considered a harmless and legitimate amusement. If it is suddenly discovered that this virtuous age will not tolerate the enormity of the " fun of the fair," and that to throw at cocoanuts is to break the law, let us at least deal gently with the venial offenders. The gipsy is professionally a vagabond, but he is none the less un old and amusing acquaintance and a striking figure in many a scene of remembered pleasure.