The Gypsies

came in Spring to the Bog Meadows.

They arrived always around Easter Time and the villagers could hear the trundling of the heavy wooden wheels as the caravans moved along the track.

The villagers left them alone but treated them with detached suspicion - the way people do when they don’t understand the ways of others. The gypsies had dark eyes and willowy bodies and spoke a language that was their own.

Some of the older villagers remembered an incident from many years ago which never needed any embellishment in the telling and re-telling because none was needed.

The Duke’s daughter had galloped her pony too fast into the interior beyond the mountain. This was also the place where the gypsies went hunting. She had to rest the pony as it was exhausted. She sat under a tree but was bitten by a dangerous yellow snake. She was missing for hours and search parties were sent out. They found her but she was unconscious and close to death. A group of gypsies came then and stood in a row behind the villagers who didn’t know what to do. The leader of the gypsies approached the young girl and knelt down beside her. He saw the bite on her arm and he bent down and sucked the poison from her. He spit it out but then called to his companions to gather herbs that grew wild in that place. He rubbed them onto her arm and then covered the wound in honey they had been gathering in trees.

The girl made a full recovery and promised her parents never to go beyond the mountain again.

The gypsies left that night and they were not seen for 3 years.

One day they appeared again but the incident was never mentioned. It was as though it never happened

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I have been using oil pastels for the first time today. I have copied Vincent van Gogh’s ‘Gypsy’s Encampment’ which he painted near Arles in 1888..

I found using the pastels not as easy as I thought it would be and I have made a lot of mistakes. But I will persevere as I like the effect. You can see the original in extra. It’s beautiful.