14 An Old Gipsy: a Village Sketch. [Jan. 



paling, overhung with thorns and hoUies, comes sweeping round it, 

 to meet the rich coppices which clothe the opposite acclivity. Just 

 under the high and irregular paling, shaded by the birches and 

 sycamores of the park, and by the venerable oaks which are scattered 

 iiTcgularly on the green, is a dark deep pool, whose broken banks, 

 crowned with fern and wreathed with briar and bramble, have an air 

 of wildness and grandeur that might have suited the pencil of Sal- 

 vator Rosa. 



In this lonely place (for the mansion to which the park belonged 

 had long been uninhabited) I first saw our gipsies. They had pitched 

 their little tent under one of the oak trees, perhaps from a certain dim 

 sense of natural beauty, M^itch those who live with nature in the fields 

 are seldom totally without ; perhaps because the neighbourhood of the 

 coppices, and of the deserted hall, was favourable to the acquisition of 

 game, and of the little fuel which their hardy habits required. The 

 party consisted only of four — an old crone, in a tattered red cloak and 

 black bonnet, who was stooping over a kettle, of which the contents 

 were probably as savoury as that of Meg Merrilies, renowned in story ; a 

 pretty black-eyed girl, at work under the trees ; a sun-burnt urchin of 

 eight or nine, collecting sticks and dead leaves to feed their out-of-door 

 fire ; and a slender lad, two or three years older, who lay basking in 

 the sun with a couple of shabby dogs of the sort called mongrel, in all 

 the joy of idleness, whilst a grave patient donkey stood grazing hai*d-by. 

 It was a pretty picture, with its soft autumnal sky, its rich woodiness, 

 its sunshine, its verdure, the light smoke curling from the fire, and the 

 group disposed around it so harmless, poor outcasts ! and so happy — 

 a beautiful picture I I stood gazing on it till I was half ashamed to 

 look longer, and came away half afraid that they should depart before 

 I could see them again. 



This fear I soon found to be groundless. The old gipsy was a cele- 

 brated fortune-teller, and the post having been so long vacant, she could 

 not have brought her talents to a better market. The whole village 

 rang with the predictions of this modern Cassandra — unlike her Trojan 

 predecessor, inasmuch as her prophecies were never of evil. I myself 

 could not help admiring the real cleverness, the genuine gipsy tact 

 with which she adapted her foretellings to the age, the habits, and the 

 known desires and circumstances of her clients. 



To our little pet Lizzy, for instance, a damsel of seven, she pre- 

 dicted a fairing ; to Joe Kirby, a youth of eleven, head batter of the 

 boys, a new cricket-ball ; to Joe's sister Lucy, a girl some three years 

 his senior, and just promoted to that ensign of womanhood a cap, she 

 promised a pink top-knot ; whilst, for Miss Sophia Matthews, our old- 

 maidish school-mistress, who wovild be heartily glad to be a girl again, 

 she foresaw one handsome husband, and for the smart widow Simmons, 

 two. These were the least of her triumphs. George Wlieeler, the 

 dashing young farmer of the hill-house, a gay sportsman, who scoffed 

 at fortune-tellers and matrimony, consulted her as to whose greyhound 

 would win the courser's cup at the beacon meeting ; to which she 

 replied, that she did not know to whom the dog would belong, but that 

 the winner of the cup would be a white greyhound, with one blue ear, 

 and a spot on its side, being an exact description of Mr. George 

 Wheeler's favourite Helen, who followed her master's steps like his 

 shadow, and was standing behind him at this very instant. This pre- 



