ever, to be little more than attempts at translation of the English
ones. Thus the Stanleys are called Bar-engres, which means stony
fellows, the Coopers, Wardo-engres or wheelwrights, the Lovells, Camo-
mescres, or amorous fellows, the Hernes (German Haaren), Balors, hairs,
or hairy fellows, while the Smiths are called Petulengres, that is,
horseshoe-fellows, or blacksmiths. Besides the above-named gypsy clans,
there are other smaller ones, some of which do not comprise more than a
dozen individuals, children included. For example, the Bosviles, the
Browns, the Chilcotts, the Grays, Lees, Taylors and Whites; of these the
principal is the Bosvile tribe."
{249a} There's a witch and a wizard and their name is Petulengro.
{249b} _Tent_.
{256} This refers to a notorious match between a lion and six mastiffs,
arranged by George Wombwell at Warwick, in July 1825. The fight was that
between George Cooper and Ned Baldwin, 5 July, 1825.
{257} Peel's Metropolitan Police, constituted 1829.
{265} Said the gypsy lass to her mother--
'My dear mother, I am with child.'
'And what kind of a man made you with child,
My own daughter, my gypsy lass?'
'O my mother, a great gentleman,
A rich gentleman, a stranger to our race,
Who rides upon a fine stallion,
'Twas he that made me thus with child.'
'Vile little harlot that you are,
Be off, good-bye, you leave my tent!
Had a Romany lad got thee with child,
Then I had said to thee, poor lass!
But thou art just a vile harlot
By a stranger man to be with child.'
{266} _Pig-poisoning_.
{269a} _Honeycomb_.
{269b} _Tell their fortunes_.
{272} _King_.
{274} See Introduction, p. 10.
{275} The church of Willenhall, Staffordshire, near Mumpers' Dingle, is,
perhaps, intended. The hymn was originally Cennick's, but the verse in
question Charles Wesley's. The old tune Helmsley (not St. Thomas) was a
favourite of Queen Victoria.
{277} Chieftain.
{286} Dukkerin, fortune-telling: duk or dook, ghost.
{288} See Introduction, p. 9.
{289} The Shakespearean meaning was hysterical passion. See _Lear_,
II., iv. 52:
"O, how this mother swells up toward my heart!"
The word remained fairly common during the seventeenth century. Mary
Rich, Countess of Warwick, in her Diary (1667) speaks of herself as
suffering from "a fit of the spleen and mother together."
{290} _Stranger men_.
{291} Ursula is evidently intended by Borrow to typify the gyp
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