Wanderers in the New Forest

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We did find time to visit many Romany families and compounds together. I especially remember our visit to the Lights. Mr. Light was embittered because he was convinced that a Gypsy curse had killed his first three sons. Her husband had died years before I met her, and her telling of his death was typical of the old Gypsy woman, for she informed me that her husband Oliver had foreseen his own death when he was in hale health and several weeks before he was taken from her. Twas an angel that took 'im, you see!' It’s in this shop that you can find the following story displayed in the window… Why is it so witchy in Burley?

Wilton has become the accepted burial place for the local forest Gypsies, ever since a Gypsy boy killed in an accident was buried there, and the mourning Gypsies were very kindly treated by the Church and the local people, so it is told. But there are Gypsy graves also at Wood Green, another Gypsy stronghold, part of which was 'and still is in places 'squatters' land, and which once had a name for being 'a terrible wild place', with frequent bloody fights between poachers and Gypsies and gamekeepers and Gypsies. Two crosses of stone, pressed flat into the forest loam, mark the graves of two Gypsies killed in a fight there, and many more had secret burials.

My children and our hound all ate the wild garlic in quantities with much enjoyment, and we were not alone in our liking for it. Many of the foresters also sought it eagerly, and the forest ponies and cattle ate up all which came within their questing reach. The more settled and house-dwelling that the English Gypsies became, the more they seemed to feel the handicap of being a racial minority. Their feelings might have been unjustified on some counts, but with the bans in force against the pulling-in of their vans, found almost throughout the British Isles, and many other anti-Gypsy or general anti-nomad laws, it was to be expected that the present generations of those people should seek to conceal their origin and often end all Gypsy association.

Eiza told me once that, being a Gypsy, her favourite way of spending her time would be out in the forest by a big wood fire, a hook and a ball of string with her, making rabbit nets and smoking 'baccy'. Her choice seemed pathetic considering what unnatural disease had done to the forest rabbit population, and the present-day price of 'baccy' which made it almost prohibitive for the Gypsies unless they had well-paid employment, which Eiza had not, as she worked mostly by herself as a collector of rags since the death of her pony-trader husband. Matt Says:“You can’t put together a list of New Forest walks without including a good woodland wander, and this route is a dendrologist’s dream, with towering tall trees.” I also took away a box of pansy roots, and I massed them around the base of a white lilac tree, and what pleasure those Gypsy pansies gave to me all the time until I left Abbots Well, with their beautiful and brilliant colours and their almost perpetual flowering! Unfortunately, her fame and lifestyle attracted a huge amount of interest and people began to besiege her home. If you can make it down to the village during a weekend close to Halloween , then you can expect things like:When visiting, please respect this delicate and fragile landscape by following The New Forest Code. This code has been developed by the New Forest National Park Authority in conjunction with other partner organisations to help those visiting care for the Forest. Eiza then told how she and her brother were taken by the lady to a place near where they had met her, and told to dig there. They did not do so as they had nothing to dig with, but ran and told their family about their strange encounter, and they then brought their hoes to the place. The lady had gone, but after they had dug around for a short while in the place shown to them, a box was found containing some pieces of old money and jewellery of not much value. (I wonder now if the strange links bracelet which Eiza later gave to Georges Brunon, the French painter, could have come from there.)

One evening at The Crown I became acquainted with Gypsy Granny Walters. She spoke to me of the time at Epsom races when she and her sisters were asked by King Edward VII himself to dance beneath the grandstand where he had his party. Shaking tambourines, and dressed 'all colours of the rainbow', the Gypsy girls danced beneath a shower of coins, including many sovereigns flung down to them by the royal party. Granny Walters remembered the past happy days when she and her sisters would take fifty pounds a day dancing at the race meetings.The old Gypsy concluded our conversation by dancing some steps for me, inspired then by Christopher's guitar playing and he singing Green Broom, a song always close to the Romanies. Known as the 'grandmother of herbalism', Juliette de Bairacli Levy travelled throughout Europe and North America in pursuit of her passion for herbs and holistic medicine, living mostly in rural places whose nomadic communities helped expand her knowledge of plants and living from the land. In the early 1950s, she settled in a thatched 'cabin' in the New Forest for three years and raised her children in the woods. When I asked about the Romany love letters and what degree of romance they contained, I found that they consisted of the general 'I hopes you are well', then trivial gossip, and usually ending, 'I hopes to see you soon', and ''hoping this finds you as it finds me!' Finally ''Love from’

Eiza told me about her own wreath for her Uncle Robert Cooper's funeral. She had been entirely without money to buy flowers and no wild ones to be had around her then, therefore she had made one of best artificial, melting down her only candle to glaze the flowers and make them weather-proof.

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Originally published in 1958, Wanderers in the New Forest describes an extraordinary family life living wild: drawing spring water from Abbots Well, bathing in Windmill Hill Pond and sharing the water with their animal neighbours, foraging for fruits and fungi or tending to their forest garden of herbs, flowers and vegetables. Juliette's friendships within the local Gypsy community enabled her to record the impact that post-war modernisation was having on their traditions, ancient rights and intimate knowledge of the New Forest. This new edition is illustrated throughout with photographs taken by Juliette while living in the forest.