29S Institution and Custom Section. such as ' D'mele se gauje te pdtsen te kerella kbva tovo." A'hich, being interpreted, means that Gentiles are fools to suppose that this brings them wealth. Nor does it, indeed, for when the ap- pointed four weeks have gone by, and the farmer, as bidden, goes and digs up the buried parcel, expecting to find his treasure quadrupled (" For money, you know, my gentleman, breeds money"), lo ! his parcel is gone, and another one put in its place, and the gypsy sorceress is miles away, over the border. That old, old trick — the gypsy hokhann haro — was played again only last year (I met the sorceress myself in Glasgow), and, in spite of all School Boards, it will doubtless be played again and again in the twentieth century.
" A little bird told me" — the phrase is familiar enough, and yet it seems strange that, within the present age of steam and elec- tricity, a gypsy woman should have travelled East Anglia with a little bird that, like the popinjay of old ballads, told her secrets. Here is Dr. Jessopp's account of her, derived from Tinker Joe : — " Mrs. Smith, yes ! she 's buried in Troston churchyard, close by Ixworth — been a laying there close upon fifty year. She travelled Norfolk, she did, with a sparrer in a cage; and the sight o' money she got out o' folks long as the sparrer lived — lawk ! you wouldn't credit it — nor nobody else wouldn't. She were a wonder, she was. She was a woman as 'd never tell you nothing the fust time she come round. When folks went to her she'd go to that sparrer, and she'd say, ' Chippy, what do you know about it, eh ? ' and then she'd put her head under a sort of a great thing like a cart- cover, and she and Chippy would seem as if they was a talkin', and Chippy a tellin' of her things, and she'd come out as often as not, saying as Chippy he wasn't kindly, and wouldn't say nothing. And she'd go to the public-house, and it wasn't often as she didn't larn something to say there by the time she got back. There was a small shopkeeper at Hockley who'd been a buying a piece o' land with a bad title, and Mrs. Smith she'd somehow found it out, and one day soon arter he'd got the land she goes into the man's shop as cheerful as a grasshopper, and she says, ' If you please,' says she, ' I want a pen'orth o' sugar for my Chippy ; and the man was just a handing it to her when Chippy began to chirp won'erful loud, and Mrs. Smith she set him down on the counter, and looked all o' a heap — just as if she was mazed. ' What ! yeou
