Ch. 19: The Dark People of the Village - Page 2

said he
would not exchange one for a rabbit. He always spent his holidays
pig-hunting; he had no dog and didn't want one; he found them himself,
and his method was to look for the kind of place in which they were
accustomed to live--a thick mass of bramble growing at the side of an
old ditch as a rule. He would force his way into it and, moving round
and round, trample down the roots and loose earth and dead leaves with
his heavy iron-shod boots until he broke into the nest or cell of the
spiny little beast hidden away under the bush.

He was a short, broad-faced man, with a brown skin, black hair, and
intensely black eyes. Talking with the shepherd that evening I told him
of the encounter, and remarked that the man was probably a gipsy in
blood, although a labourer, living in the village and married to a woman
with blue eyes who belonged to the place.

This incident reminded him of a family, named Targett, in his native
village, consisting of four brothers and a sister. He knew them first
when he was a boy himself, but could not remember their parents. "It
seemed as if they didn't have any," he said. The four brothers were very
much alike: short, with broad faces, black eyes and hair, and brown
skins. They were good workers, but somehow they were never treated by
the farmers like the other men. They were paid less wages--as much as
two to four shillings a week less per man--and made to do things that
others would not do, and generally imposed upon. It was known to every
employer of labour in the place that they could be imposed upon; yet
they were not fools, and occasionally if their master went too far in
bullying and abusing them and compelling them to work overtime every
day, they would have sudden violent outbursts of rage and go off without
any pay at all. What became of their sister he never knew: but none of
the four brothers ever married; they lived together always, and two died
in the village, the other two going to finish their lives in the
workhouse.

One of the curious things about these brothers was that they had a
passion for eating hedgehogs. They had it from boyhood, and as boys used
to go a distance from home and spend the day hunting in hedges and
thickets. When they captured a hedgehog they would make a small fire in
some sheltered spot and roast it, and while it was roasting one of them
would go to the nearest cottage to beg for a pinch of salt, which was
generally given.

These, too, I said, must have been gipsies, at all events on one side.
Where there is a cross the gipsy strain is generally strongest, although
the children, if brought up in the community, often remain in it all
their lives; but they are never quite of it. Their love of wildness and