University of Virginia Library

YANKEE GYPSIES
By JOHN G. WHITTIER.

I CONFESS it, I am keenly sensitive to “skyey influences.”
I profess no indifference to the movements of
that capricious old gentleman known as the clerk of the
weather. I cannot conceal my interest in the behavior of
that patriarchal bird whose wooden similitude gyrates on
the church spire. Winter proper is well enough. Let the
thermometer go to zero if it will; so much the better, if
thereby the very winds are frozen and unable to flap their
stiff wings. Sounds of bells in the keen air, clear, musical,
heart-inspiring; quick tripping of fair moccasoned feet on
glittering ice-pavements; bright eyes glancing above the
uplifted muff like a sultana's behind the folds of her yashmack;
school-boys coasting down street like mad Greenlanders;
the cold brilliance of oblique sunbeams flashing
back from wide surfaces of glittering snow or blazing upon
ice-jewelry of tree and roof. There is nothing in all this to
complain of. A storm of summer has its redeeming sublimities,
— its slow, upheaving mountains of cloud glooming in
the western horizon like new-created volcanoes, veined with
fire, shattered by exploding thunders. Even the wild gales
of the equinox have their varieties, — sounds of wind-shaken
woods, and waters, creak and clatter of sign and casement,

hurricane puffs and down-rushing rain-spouts. But this
dull, dark autumn day of thaw and rain, when the very
clouds seem too spiritless and languid to storm outright or
take themselves out of the way of fair weather; wet beneath
and above, reminding one of that rayless atmosphere of
Dante's Third Circle, where the infernal Priessnitz administers
his hydropathic torment, —
or rather, as everything, animate and inanimate, is seething
in warm mist, suggesting the idea that Nature, grown old
and rheumatic, is trying the efficacy of a Thompsonian
steam-box on a grand scale; no sounds save the heavy plash
of muddy feet on the pavements; the monotonous, melancholy
drip from trees and roofs; the distressful gurgling of
water-ducts, swallowing the dirty amalgam of the gutters; a
dim, leaden-colored horizon of only a few yards in diameter,
shutting down about one, beyond which nothing is visible
save in faint line or dark projection; the ghost of a church
spire or the eidolon of a chimney-pot. He who can extract
pleasurable emotions from the alembic of such a day has a
trick of alchemy with which I am wholly unacquainted.

Hark! a rap at my door. Welcome anybody just now.
One gains nothing by attempting to shut out the sprites of
the weather. They come in at the keyhole; they peer
through the dripping panes; they insinuate themselves
through the crevices of the casement, or plump down chimney
astride of the rain-drops.

I rise and throw open the door. A tall, shambling, loose-jointed
figure; a pinched, shrewd face, sunbrown and wind-dried;
small, quick-winking black eyes. There he stands,
the water dripping from his pulpy hat and ragged elbows.

I speak to him; but he returns no answer. With a
dumb show of misery quite touching he hands me a soiled

piece of parchment, whereon I read what purports to be a
melancholy account of shipwreck and disaster, to the particular
detriment, loss, and damnification of one Pietro
Frugoni, who is, in consequence, sorely in want of the alms
of all charitable Christian persons, and who is, in short, the
bearer of this veracious document, duly certified and indorsed
by an Italian consul in one of our Atlantic cities, of a
high-sounding, but to Yankee organs unpronounceable, name.

Here commences a struggle. Every man, the Mahometans
tell us, has two attendant angels, — the good one on his
right shoulder, the bad on his left. “Give,” says Benevolence,
as with some difficulty I fish up a small coin from the
depths of my pocket. “Not a cent,” says selfish Prudence;
and I drop it from my fingers. “Think,” says the good angel,
“of the poor stranger in a strange land, just escaped
from the terrors of the sea storm, in which his little property
has perished, thrown half naked and helpless on our
shores, ignorant of our language, and unable to find employment
suited to his capacity.” “A vile impostor!” replies
the left-hand sentinel. “His paper, purchased from one of
those ready writers in New York who manufacture beggar
credentials at the low price of one dollar per copy, with
earthquakes, fires, or shipwrecks, to suit customers.”

Amidst this confusion of tongues I take another survey
of my visitant. Ha! a light dawns upon me. That
shrewd, old face, with its sharp, winking eyes, is no stranger
to me. Pietro Frugoni, I have seen thee before. Si,
signor, that face of thine has looked at me over a dirty white
neckcloth, with the corners of that cunning mouth drawn
downwards, and those small eyes turned up in sanctimonious
gravity, while thou wast offering to a crowd of half-grown
boys an extemporaneous exhortation in the capacity of a
travelling preacher. Have I not seen it peering out from
under a blanket, as that of a poor Penobscot Indian who had
lost the use of his hands while trapping on the Madawaska?

Is it not the face of the forlorn father of six small children,
whom the “marcury doctors” had “pisened” and crippled?
Did it not belong to that down-east unfortunate who had
been out to the “Genesee country” and got the “fevernnager,”
and whose hand shook so pitifully when held out to
receive my poor gift? The same, under all disguises —
Stephen Leathers, of Barrington — him, and none other!
Let me conjure him into his own likeness: —

“Well, Stephen, what news from old Barrington?”

“O, well I thought I knew ye,” he answers, not the least
disconcerted. “How do you do? and how's your folks?
All well, I hope. I took this 'ere paper you see, to help a
poor furriner, who could n't make himself understood any
more than a wild goose. I thought I 'd just start him for'ard
a little. It seemed a marcy to do it.”

Well and shiftily answered, thou ragged Proteus. One
cannot be angry with such a fellow. I will just inquire into
the present state of his Gospel mission and about the condition
of his tribe on the Penobscot; and it may be not amiss
to congratulate him on the success of the steam doctors in
sweating the “pisen” of the regular faculty out of him.
But he evidently has no wish to enter into idle conversation.
Intent upon his benevolent errand, he is already clattering
down stairs. Involuntarily I glance out of the window just
in season to catch a single glimpse of him ere he is swallowed
up in the mist.

He has gone; and, knave as he is, I can hardly help exclaiming,
“Luck go with him!” He has broken in upon
the sombre train of my thoughts and called up before me
pleasant and grateful recollections. The old farm-house
nestling in its valley; hills stretching off to the south and
green meadows to the east; the small stream which came
noisily down its ravine, washing the old garden wall and
softly lapping on fallen stones and mossy roots of beeches
and hemlocks; the tall sentinel poplars at the gateway; the

oak forest, sweeping unbroken to the northern horizon; the
grass-grown carriage-path, with its rude and crazy bridge, —
the dear old landscape of my boyhood lies outstretched before
me like a daguerrotype from that picture within which
I have borne with me in all my wanderings. I am a boy
again, once more conscious of the feeling, half terror, half
exultation, with which I used to announce the approach of
this very vagabond and his “kindred after the flesh.”

The advent of wandering beggars, or, “old stragglers,” as
we were wont to call them, was an event of no ordinary interest
in the generally monotonous quietude of our farm life.
Many of them were well known; they had their periodical
revolutions and transits; we could calculate them like eclipses
or new moons. Some were sturdy knaves, fat and saucy;
and, whenever they ascertained that the “men folks” were
absent, would order provisions and cider like men who
expected to pay for it, seating themselves at the hearth or
table with the air of Falstaff, — “Shall I not take mine ease
in mine own inn?” Others, poor, pale, patient, like Sterne's
monk, came creeping up to the door, hat in hand, standing
there in their gray wretchedness with a look of heartbreak
and forlornness which was never without its effect on our
juvenile sensibilities. At times, however, we experienced a
slight revulsion of feeling when even these humblest children
of sorrow somewhat petulantly rejected our proffered
bread and cheese, and demanded instead a glass of cider.
Whatever the temperance society might in such cases have
done, it was not in our hearts to refuse the poor creatures a
draught of their favorite beverage; and was n't it a satisfaction
to see their sad, melancholy faces light up as we handed
them the full pitcher, and, on receiving it back empty from
their brown, wrinkled hands, to hear them, half breathless
from their long, delicious draught, thanking us for the favor,
as “dear, good children”! Not unfrequently these wandering
tests of our benevolence made their appearance in interesting

groups of man, woman, and child, picturesque in their
squalidness, and manifesting a maudlin affection which would
have done honor to the revellers at Poosie-Nansie's, immortal
in the cantata of Burns. I remember some who were
evidently the victims of monomania — haunted and hunted
by some dark thought — possessed by a fixed idea. One, a
black-eyed, wild-haired woman, with a whole tragedy of sin,
shame, and suffering written in her countenance, used often
to visit us, warm herself by our winter fire, and supply herself
with a stock of cakes and cold meat; but was never
known to answer a question or to ask one. She never
smiled; the cold, stony look of her eye never changed; a silent,
impassive face, frozen rigid by some great wrong or sin.
We used to look with awe upon the “still woman,” and
think of the demoniac of Scripture who had a “dumb spirit.”

One — I think I see him now, grim, gaunt, and ghastly,
working his slow way up to our door — used to gather herbs
by the wayside and call himself doctor. He was bearded
like a he-goat and used to counterfeit lameness, yet, when he
supposed himself alone, would travel on lustily as if walking
for a wager. At length, as if in punishment of his deceit,
he met with an accident in his rambles and became lame in
earnest, hobbling ever after with difficulty on his gnarled
crutches. Another used to go stooping, like Bunyan's pilgrim,
under a pack made of an old bed sacking, stuffed out
into most plethoric dimensions, tottering on a pair of small,
meagre legs, and peering out with his wild, hairy face from
under his burden like a big-bodied spider. That “man with
the pack” always inspired me with awe and reverence.
Huge, almost sublime, in its tense rotundity, the father of
all packs, never laid aside and never opened, what might
there not be within it? With what flesh-creeping curiosity
I used to walk round about it at a safe distance, half expecting
to see its striped covering stirred by the motions of a
mysterious life, or that some evil monster would leap out of

it, like robbers from Ali Baba's jars or armed men from the
Trojan horse!

There was another class of peripatetic philosophers —
half peddler, half mendicant — who were in the habit of
visiting us. One we recollect, a lame, unshaven, sinister-eyed,
unwholesome fellow, with his basket of old newspapers
and pamphlets, and his tattered blue umbrella, serving
rather as a walking-staff than as a protection from the
rain. He told us on one occasion, in answer to our inquiring
into the cause of his lameness, that when a young man
he was employed on the farm of the chief magistrate of a
neighboring State; where, as his ill luck would have it, the
governor's handsome daughter fell in love with him. He
was caught one day in the young lady's room by her father;
whereupon the irascible old gentleman pitched him unceremoniously
out of the window, laming him for life, on the
brick pavement below, like Vulcan on the rocks of Lemnos.
As for the lady, he assured us “she took on dreadfully about
it.” “Did she die?” we inquired anxiously. There was a
cunning twinkle in the old rogue's eye as he responded,
“Well, no, she did n't. She got married.”

Twice a year, usually in the spring and autumn, we were
honored with a call from Jonathan Plummer, maker of
verses, pedler and poet, physician and parson, — a Yankee
troubadour, — first and last minstrel of the valley of the
Merrimac, encircled, to my wondering young eyes, with the
very nimbus of immortality. He brought with him pins,
needles, tape, and cotton thread for my mother; jackknives,
razors, and soap for my father; and verses of his own composing,
coarsely printed and illustrated with rude woodcuts,
for the delectation of the younger branches of the family.
No lovesick youth could drown himself, no deserted maiden
bewail the moon, no rogue mount the gallows without fitting
memorial in Plummer's verses. Earthquakes, fires, fevers,
and shipwrecks he regarded as personal favors from Providence,

furnishing the raw material of song and ballad.
Welcome to us in our country seclusion as Autolycus to the
clown in Winter's Tale, we listened with infinite satisfaction
to his readings of his own verses, or to his ready improvisation
upon some domestic incident or topic suggested by his
auditors. When once fairly over the difficulties at the out-set
of a new subject his rhymes flowed freely, “as if he had
eaten ballads and all men's ears grew to his tunes.” His
productions answered, as nearly as I can remember, to
Shakespeare's description of a proper ballad — “doleful
matter merrily set down, or a very pleasant theme sung
lamentably.” He was scrupulously conscientious, devout,
inclined to theological disquisitions, and withal mighty in
Scripture. He was thoroughly independent; flattered nobody,
cared for nobody, trusted nobody. When invited to
sit down at our dinner-table, he invariably took the precaution
to place his basket of valuables between his legs for
safe keeping. “Never mind thy basket, Jonathan,” said
my father; “we sha' n't steal thy verses.” “I 'm not sure
of that,” returned the suspicious guest. “It is written,
`Trust ye not in any brother.'”

Thou too, O Parson B., — with thy pale student's brow
and rubicund nose, with thy rusty and tattered black coat
overswept by white, flowing locks, with thy professional
white neckcloth scrupulously preserved when even a shirt
to thy back was problematical, — art by no means to be
overlooked in the muster-roll of vagrant gentlemen possessing
the entrée of our farm-house. Well do we remember
with what grave and dignified courtesy he used to step over
its threshold, saluting its inmates with the same air of gracious
condescension and patronage with which in better
days he had delighted the hearts of his parishioners. Poor
old man! He had once been the admired and almost worshipped
minister of the largest church in the town where
he afterwards found support in the winter season as a pauper.

He had early fallen into intemperate habits; and at
the age of threescore and ten, when I remember him, he
was only sober when he lacked the means of being otherwise.
Drunk or sober, however, he never altogether forgot
the proprieties of his profession; he was always grave,
decorous, and gentlemanly; he held fast the form of sound
words, and the weakness of the flesh abated nothing of the
rigor of his stringent theology. He had been a favorite
pupil of the learned and astute Emmons, and was to the
last a sturdy defender of the peculiar dogmas of his school.
The last time we saw him he was holding a meeting in our
district school-house, with a vagabond pedler for deacon
and travelling companion. The tie which united the ill-assorted
couple was doubtless the same which endeared
Tam O'Shanter to the souter: —
He took for his text the first seven verses of the concluding
chapter of Ecclesiastes, furnishing in himself its fitting
illustration. The evil days had come; the keepers of the
house trembled; the windows of life were darkened. A
few months later the silver cord was loosened, the golden
bowl was broken, and between the poor old man and the
temptations which beset him fell the thick curtains of the
grave.

One day we had a call from a “pawky auld carle” of a
wandering Scotchman. To him I owe my first introduction
to the songs of Burns. After eating his bread and cheese
and drinking his mug of cider he gave us Bonnie Doon,
Highland Mary, and Auld Lang Syne. He had a rich, full
voice, and entered heartily into the spirit of his lyrics. I
have since listened to the same melodies from the lips of
Dempster (than whom the Scottish bard has had no
sweeter or truer interpreter); but the skilful performance
of the artist lacked the novel charm of the gaberlunzie's

singing in the old farm-house kitchen. Another wanderer
made us acquainted with the humorous old ballad of “Our
gude man cam hame at e'en.” He applied for supper and
lodging, and the next morning was set at work splitting
stones in the pasture. While thus engaged the village
doctor came riding along the highway on his fine, spirited
horse, and stopped to talk with my father. The fellow
eyed the animal attentively, as if familiar with all his good
points, and hummed over a stanza of the old poem: —

That very night the rascal decamped, taking with him
the doctor's horse, and was never after heard of.

Often, in the gray of the morning, we used to see one or
more “gaberlunzie men,” pack on shoulder and staff in
hand, emerging from the barn or other out-building where
they had passed the night. I was once sent to the barn to
fodder the cattle late in the evening, and, climbing into the

mow to pitch down hay for that purpose, I was startled by
the sudden apparition of a man rising up before me, just
discernible in the dim moonlight streaming through the
seams of the boards. I made a rapid retreat down the ladder;
and was only reassured by hearing the object of my
terror calling after me, and recognizing his voice as that of
a harmless old pilgrim whom I had known before. Our
farm-house was situated in a lonely valley, half surrounded
with woods, with no neighbors in sight. One dark, cloudy
night, when our parents chanced to be absent, we were sitting
with our aged grandmother in the fading light of the
kitchen fire, working ourselves into a very satisfactory state
of excitement and terror by recounting to each other all the
dismal stories we could remember of ghosts, witches,
haunted houses, and robbers, when we were suddenly startled
by a loud rap at the door. A stripling of fourteen, I
was very naturally regarded as the head of the household;
so, with many misgivings, I advanced to the door, which I
slowly opened, holding the candle tremulously above my
head and peering out into the darkness. The feeble glimmer
played upon the apparition of a gigantic horseman,
mounted on a steed of a size worthy of such a rider —
colossal, motionless, like images cut out of the solid night.
The strange visitant gruffly saluted me; and, after making
several ineffectual efforts to urge his horse in at the door,
dismounted and followed me into the room, evidently enjoying
the terror which his huge presence excited. Announcing
himself as the great Indian doctor, he drew himself up
before the fire, stretched his arms, clinched his fists, struck
his broad chest, and invited our attention to what he called
his “mortal frame.” He demanded in succession all kinds
of intoxicating liquors; and, on being assured that we had
none to give him, he grew angry, threatened to swallow my
younger brother alive, and, seizing me by the hair of my
head as the angel did the prophet at Babylon, led me about
from room to room. After an ineffectual search, in the
course of which he mistook a jug of oil for one of brandy,
and, contrary to my explanations and remonstrances, insisted
upon swallowing a portion of its contents, he released me,
fell to crying and sobbing, and confessed that he was so drunk
already that his horse was ashamed of him. After bemoaning
and pitying himself to his satisfaction he wiped his eyes,
and sat down by the side of my grandmother, giving her to
understand that he was very much pleased with her appearance;
adding, that, if agreeable to her, he should like the
privilege of paying his addresses to her. While vainly
endeavoring to make the excellent old lady comprehend his
very flattering proposition he was interrupted by the return
of my father, who, at once understanding the matter, turned
him out of doors without ceremony.

On one occasion, a few years ago, on my return from the
field at evening, I was told that a foreigner had asked for
lodgings during the night, but that, influenced by his dark,
repulsive appearance, my mother had very reluctantly refused
his request. I found her by no means satisfied with
her decision. “What if a son of mine was in a strange
land?” she inquired, self-reproachfully. Greatly to her relief,
I volunteered to go in pursuit of the wanderer, and,
taking a crosspath over the fields, soon overtook him. He
had just been rejected at the house of our nearest neighbor,
and was standing in a state of dubious perplexity in the
street. His looks quite justified my mother's suspicions.
He was an olive-complexioned, black-bearded Italian, with
an eye like a live coal, such a face as perchance looks out
on the traveller in the passes of the Abruzzi, — one of those
bandit visages which Salvator has painted. With some difficulty
I gave him to understand my errand, when he overwhelmed
me with thanks and joyfully followed me back.
He took his seat with us at the supper-table; and, when we
were all gathered around the hearth that cold autumnal

evening, he told us, partly by words and partly by gestures,
the story of his life and misfortunes, amused us with descriptions
of the grape-gatherings and festivals of his sunny clime,
edified my mother with a recipe for making bread of chestnuts;
and in the morning, when, after breakfast, his dark,
sullen face lighted up and his fierce eye moistened with
grateful emotion as in his own silvery Tuscan accent he
poured out his thanks, we marvelled at the fears which had
so nearly closed our door against him; and, as he departed,
we all felt that he had left with us the blessing of the poor.

It was not often that, as in the above instance, my mother's
prudence got the better of her charity. The regular
“old stragglers” regarded her as an unfailing friend; and
the sight of her plain cap was to them an assurance of forthcoming
creature comforts. There was indeed a tribe of lazy
strollers, having their place of rendezvous in the town of
Barrington, New Hampshire, whose low vices had placed
them beyond even the pale of her benevolence. They were
not unconscious of their evil reputation; and experience had
taught them the necessity of concealing, under well-contrived
disguises, their true character. They came to us in all
shapes and with all appearances save the true one, with
most miserable stories of mishap and sickness and all “the
ills which flesh is heir to.” It was particularly vexatious
to discover, when too late, that our sympathies and charities
had been expended upon such graceless vagabonds as
the “Barrington beggars.” An old withered hag, known by
the appellation of Hopping Pat, — the wise woman of her
tribe, — was in the habit of visiting us, with her hopeful
grandson, who had “a gift for preaching” as well as for
many other things not exactly compatible with holy orders.
He sometimes brought with him a tame crow, a shrewd,
knavish-looking bird, who, when in the humor for it, could
talk like Barnaby Rudge's raven. He used to say he could
“do nothin' at exhortin' without a white handkercher on his

neck and money in his pocket” — a fact going far to confirm
the opinions of the Bishop of Exeter and the Puseyites generally,
that there can be no priest without tithes and surplice.

These people have for several generations lived distinct
from the great mass of the community, like the gypsies of
Europe, whom in many respects they closely resemble.
They have the same settled aversion to labor and the same
disposition to avail themselves of the fruits of the industry
of others. They love a wild, out-of-door life, sing songs,
tell fortunes, and have an instinctive hatred of “missionaries
and cold water.” It has been said — I know not upon what
grounds — that their ancestors were indeed a veritable importation
of English gypsyhood; but if so, they have undoubtedly
lost a good deal of the picturesque charm of its
unhoused and free condition. I very much fear that my
friend Mary Russell Mitford, — sweetest of England's rural
painters, — who has a poet's eye for the fine points in
gypsy character, would scarcely allow their claims to fraternity
with her own vagrant friends, whose camp-fires welcomed
her to her new home at Swallowfield.

“The proper study of mankind is man”; and, according
to my view, no phase of our common humanity is altogether
unworthy of investigation. Acting upon this belief two or
three summers ago, when making, in company with my sister,
a little excursion into the hill country of New Hampshire,
I turned my horse's head towards Barrington for the
purpose of seeing these semi-civilized strollers in their own
home, and returning, once for all, their numerous visits.
Taking leave of our hospitable cousins in old Lee with
about as much solemnity as we may suppose Major Laing
parted with his friends when he set out in search of desert-girdled
Timbuctoo, we drove several miles over a rough
road, passed the Devil's Den unmolested, crossed a fretful
little streamlet noisily working its way into a valley, where
it turned a lonely, half-ruinous mill, and climbing a steep

hill beyond, saw before us a wide sandy level, skirted on the
west and north by low, scraggy hills, and dotted here and
there with dwarf pitch pines. In the centre of this desolate
region were some twenty or thirty small dwellings, grouped
together as irregularly as a Hottentot kraal. Unfenced,
unguarded, open to all comers and goers, stood that city of
the beggars — no wall or paling between the ragged cabins
to remind one of the jealous distinctions of property. The
great idea of its founders seemed visible in its unappropriated
freedom. Was not the whole round world their own?
and should they haggle about boundaries and title deeds?
For them, on distant plains, ripened golden harvests; for
them, in far-off workshops, busy hands were toiling; for
them, if they had but the grace to note it, the broad earth
put on her garniture of beauty, and over them hung the
silent mystery of heaven and its stars. That comfortable
philosophy which modern transcendentalism has but dimly
shadowed forth — that poetic agrarianism, which gives all
to each and each to all — is the real life of this city of unwork.
To each of its digny dwellers might be not unaptly
applied the language of one who, I trust, will pardon me for
quoting her beautiful poem in this connection: —

But look! the clouds are breaking. “Fair weather cometh
out of the north.” The wind has blown away the mists;
on the gilded spire of John Street glimmers a beam of sunshine;
and there is the sky again, hard, blue, and cold in its
eternal purity, not a whit the worse for the storm. In the
beautiful present the past is no longer needed. Reverently
and gratefully let its volume be laid aside; and when again
the shadows of the outward world fall upon the spirit, may
I not lack a good angel to remind me of its solace, even if
he comes in the shape of a Barrington beggar.