Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/371

 Ceremonial Customs of the British Gipsies. 349

specially mentioned. ^^^ Living-waggons were unknown, or comparatively rare, until half a century ago, and therefore, if the destruction were merely a formal rite and dictated by no real feeling, it is hardly likely that they would now be destroyed. But to our certain knowledge three have been burned during 191 1. On the day after the funeral of Isaac Heme, i.e., on Feb. 25, 191 1, his son Iza, by arrange- ment with the blacksmith of Sutton-on-Trent, brought his father's van on to a bare patch of garden behind the smithy. Wheels and shafts were then removed and placed, with the harness, inside the van, which already contained bedding, old clothes, a hat, boots, and other small articles in a sack. Straw saturated with paraffin was placed in and around the van, and ignited by Iza. When the fire had burned itself out the ashes were scattered about the garden. Everything that will burn is destroyed by fire ; after which drowning and burying are usually employed to dis- pose of the remains, and in some cases of the ashes from the fire. After the death of OH Heme at Withernsea in 1894, his wife, Wasti, had the waggon burned on the sea-shore in the early morning, as the tide was rising, so that the ashes might be carried away. The stove and the iron belongings, as well as the crockery^ were broken up, and the fragments thrown into the sea.^^^ About five years later, when Savaina Lovell, wife of Simpronius Bohemius (Bui) Boswell, died in Liverpool, the fragments of the crockery, together with a battered silver tea-service, and some articles of jewellery, were secretly dropped into the Mersey from one of the ferry-boats, whilst, when her

'**.\rticle by J. R. T. in Hone's Table Book for June, 1827 (quotation from a journal kept by a member of his family during the year 1769) ; Annual Register for 1773 (Sth ed., 1793), pp. 142-3 ; Note by Cuthbert Bede in N. &' Q., 2nd S., vol. iii. (1857), 442.

"* These details were obtained from Wasti by the Rev. George Hall. See also Manchester City jVems, Sept. 22, 1894 ; N. &= Q., Sth S., vol. vi., p. 286 ; Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. i., p. 358.