Gypsy Coppersmiths in Liverpool and Birkenhead
9781465645203
281 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
When you want to find a Gypsy the police are more likely to be able to give you his address than directories, bankers, or ministers of religion; and it was a Liverpool policeman who sent me to the back of the municipal slaughter-house to seek a horde of “Hungarian” Roms whose arrival had been announced by the evening papers. In a squalid street, at a corner where insanitary dwellings had been demolished, I found a vacant plot of brick-strewn ground surrounded by high walls. There, evidently, were my Gypsies, for a crowd of boys had gathered round the one door, struggling for a glance through its keyhole. Mistaking me for a detective, they made way, and I knocked loudly and long. The boys were not mistaken. There was a scene within which was worth looking at. The strangers had journeyed so rapidly from Marseilles to Liverpool that they had outstripped their heavy baggage, and, arriving before their tents, were obliged to bivouac under tiny extemporized shelters propped against the windowless house-walls which formed two sides of the square. They were making the best of circumstances with considerable success, for they had with them countless beds of eiderdown in brilliantly coloured covers, and they had their all-important samovars. The men were out, but the women, protected by a police-serjeant from the inhospitable attentions of their neighbours, were in the camp, and into that shabby yard they had brought an unaccustomed glory which was altogether foreign and oriental. He who stepped through the battered door in St. Andrew Street travelled fifteen hundred miles in a second. Without, the slaughter-house and slums—dull, drab Liverpool; within, the glorious East—strange dark faces of exotic beauty, a blaze of scarlet gowns and yellow gold. For the women were bedizened with much jewellery: rings shone on their fingers, barbaric bracelets on their arms, chains and corals dangled from their necks, heavy pendants from their ears, and on their blouses sparkled many trinkets and brooches. Their jet-black hair hung in two plaits over their shoulders, and in each plait was woven a cord to which were attached six or seven great gold medals, generally Continental coins of 100 francs, but often our own magnificent five-pound pieces. And everywhere children gambolled—pictures of health and happiness, fawn-like creatures whose scanty shifts scarcely concealed their lithe brown bodies. Centuries ago man’s inhumanity taught Gypsies the lesson that language is given them for the purpose of concealing their thoughts, and even now a Gypsy invitation, especially if it be pressing and cordial, often proves to have been a device for preventing a second visit. I was assured that carts had been ordered for seven o’clock to effect the removal of the band to two houses they had rented in Pitt Street. Wishing to see the flitting, I returned earlier than the time stated, found that they had departed at six, tracked them with difficulty, and overtook them, not in Pitt Street, but on the Landing-stage, awaiting the Birkenhead luggage-boat. At the head of the procession was a large tilted cart in which squatted all the women and children, from elderly and angular Mothers of Egypt to beautiful Vola, the chief’s daughter-in-law, carrying her little baby. Two waggons followed, loaded with luggage, over which, high piled, was the bedding, and on top of all, dressed in the costume of theatrical brigands, the black-bearded men carrying long staves elaborately decorated with silver. There were full forty souls in the party, but when the boat arrived at Birkenhead, Kola, the chief, held up the traffic by engaging the ticket-collector in an altercation as to the exact number. Since he spoke in Russian and the official in English, neither convinced the other.
