Tales from the Tent by Jess Smith Read Free Book Online

a terrible thing had happened, like ye were half dead or something, instead
of a wee teeny hole intae the sole o’ yer fit.’ He went on, to my annoyance, ‘you wimmin canna handle pain.’
    ‘I am half-dead, you cheeky bisom. If poison gets hold, this leg of mine will be in deep dung, I can tell you. And as for pain I’d like to see a maternity ward full of
gadjies!’
    As I thought on what I’d just said about ‘dung’ and pregnant men the red returned, and not only covered my cheeks but most of my neck as well. All of a sudden this young man
made me feel strange, my head was fuzzy, what was happening?
    He apologised for making fun of my injury, saying he was just trying to cheer me up. Then, obviously embarrassed, he got up and walked his three lurchers. Tiny by now was nosed deep into the
heaty bitch, and although what he wanted was a complete impossibility, he wasn’t taking no for an answer. The bitch rolled her eyes, and with a swish of her wiry tail let him know she was not
remotely interested. The bite she gave was enough to say that her rear-end was a no-go area.
    George (for this was the lad’s name) asked if, when he returned, he could come over for a blether? I said ‘okay’ and my very first romance began. The look, the smile, the red
face, yep—it must be love. From that moment my painful foot became more tolerable as I floated away on pink clouds with my man, George. Honest, folks, that’s how fast it happened. A
fifteen-year-old’s first love. Is there anything more blissful?
    We found through our blethers that we had much in common: high mountains, peaty burns, migrating swallows and much more. But above anything else was our love of the travelling history. I always
believed our people were descended from ancient Egypt and were brought here as Roman slaves. Handpicked for our skills. Our masters had only one skill: the art of war. It’s no secret Rome
produced a mighty army. Hence their ability to conquer a great chunk of the Earth. But the craftsmen, builders and scholars were all slaves of the highest esteem. Of course when the Romans had to
flee back home they had no place for slaves and left them behind. Now, if you were a native and had seen the tyranny of conquerors run rampant through your land for many years, then it’s
highly unlikely you’d have much time for the people brought with them. No, you’d want rid of them as well. Hence our wondering nomadic existence and fight for survival through a hostile
world.
    George had another theory, that we originated from Northern India and spread through the world, arriving in Scotland seven or eight hundred years ago.
    I didn’t accept this (and still don’t). ‘Where,’ I asked him, ‘do you get the title of gypsy from?’ I went on, ‘there are folks who call us gypsies and
them who call us Romanies. Doesn’t that speak for itself, Geordie my lad, we were Rome’s Egyptian slaves.’ After the clearances, Highlanders forced from hill and glen shared our
nomadic lifestyle and were grateful for it.
    George had his own ideas and wouldn’t be swayed, but one thing we did agree on was our puzzlement as to why Scotland accepted and gave respect to descendants of those other conquerors,
like the Vikings and the English, given the terrors they brought?
    ‘Aye, an undivided world right enough,’ we laughed, saying if big hairy three-headed spacemen come and help themselves to Scotland it will make little odds who we think we are.
We’re all ‘Jock Tamson’s bairns’, as the old folks would say.
    In passing, it is worth a mention that Egyptian mummies have been discovered with the bagpipes amongst other treasures buried in their sarcophagi.
    One thing our relatives had handed down in stone, however, was that a hell of a chunk of us were scattered and displaced Highlanders who had joined with gypsies for survival.
    The farmer, bless him, had made me, from two pitchfork handles, of all things a pair of crutches, and by