ANIMALS.

AMBROL (in gypsy=_a pear_), LAVENGRO’S little gry or pony.

TRAVELLER, a donkey (gypsy, mailla), belonging to ISOPEL BERNERS.

THE SCENE is laid under the greenwood tree, in the height of an
English summer.

THE DINGLE is a deep, wooded, and consequently somewhat gloomy, hollow in the middle of a very large, desolate field. The shelving sides of the hollow are overgrown with trees and bushes.  A belt of sallows crowns the circular edge of the small crater. At the lowest part of the Dingle are discovered a stone and a fire of charcoal, from which spot a winding path ascends to “the plain.” On either side of the fire is a small encampment.  One consists of a small pony cart and a small hut-shaped tent, occupied by the word-master. On the other side is erected a kind of tent, consisting of large hoops covered over with tarpaulin, quite impenetrable to rain; hard by stands a small donkey-cart. This is “the tabernacle” of ISOPEL BERNERS. A short distance off, near a spring of clear water, is the encampment of the Romany chals and chies—­the Petulengres and their small clan.

THE PLACE is about five miles from Willenhall in Staffordshire.

THE TIME is July 1825.

CHAPTER I—­THE SCHOLAR SAYS GOOD-BYE TO THE GYPSY, AND PITCHES HIS TENT IN THE DINGLE.

[In May 1825 our autobiographer, known among the gypsies as the word-master, decided to leave London, and travelled, partly on foot and partly by coach, to Amesbury; and then, after two days at Salisbury, struck northwards.  A few days later, in a small beer-house, he met a tinker and his wife; the tinker was greatly depressed, having recently been intimidated by a rival, one Bosville, “the flaming tinman,” and forced by threats to quit the road.  The word-master, who meditated passing the summer as an amateur vagrant, and had some 15 or 16 pounds in his pocket, conceived the idea of buying the pony-cart, the implements and the beat of the tinker, one Jack Slingsby, whose face he remembered having seen some ten years before.  “I want a home and work,” he said to the tinker.  “As for a home, I suppose I can contrive to make a home out of your tent and cart; and as for work, I must learn to be a tinker; it would not be hard for one of my trade to be a tinker:  what better can I do?” “What about the naming tinman?” said the tinker.  “Oh, don’t be afraid on my account,” said the word-master:  “if I were to meet him, I could easily manage him one way or the other:  I know all kinds of strange words and names, and, as I told you before, I sometimes hit people when they put me out.”