Perhaps a woman in a wide skirt and a brightly embroidered shawl came out to your car and asked if she might tell your mother's fortune. A little black-eyed baby peeped over the woman's shoulder from her nest in the shawl.
"They are gypsies," mother and father told you.
"And who are gypseies and where did they come from?" you asked.
These were hard questions, for nobody really knows the answer to them. Most people think that they came from India, a big country in Asia. But nobody knows. At any rate, they have wandered over most of the world. There is hardly a country that has not a brightly painted gypsy van. Here in America the van has become an automobile.
No mater how a gypsy travels, he must keep on the move. He does not care that he has no comfortable house or fine furniture. He much prefers a chilly tent or a crowded van. It is easy to fold up a tent or hitch the horses to the van and be off when he is tired of one place.
Gypsy boys and girls enjoy all this moving just as much as their parents do. As soon as a gypsy child is too big to be carried on his mother's back, he is expected to look out for himself, and he does. Nobody tells him when to go to bed, or not to be late to breakfast.
Perhaps you think that would be fun. But how would you like it, if darkness had come on you and you were miles from your mother and father and your little white bed? Or if it was breakfast time and there was no breakfast in sight?
Little Taro does not sit down and cry. He climbs into a hen-coop or a barn and curls up and goes to sleep. In the morning, he begs a fat chicken from the farmer's wife. I am afraid that sometimes he takes it without even asking.
Then he sets out to find his father and mother. He does not know where they are, but he does know how to look for them. Gypsies leave here and there little guiding marks to show which direction they have taken. They put two twigs or leaves together in a certain way. This guide is called a patteran. Every four-year-old gypsy child knows a patteran. Very soon father, mother and children meet. A fire is kindled. Taro's chicken is roasted and breakfast is ready.
Then the family separate for the day. children start off to explore and beg. Mother goes to the village to tell fortunes.
Big Taro, who is little Taro's father, walks slowly along with another member of the family - Ivan, the great brown bear. Ivan came from the mountains of Russia. Big Taro has tamed him and taught him how to dance. Big Taro with a troop of village children following, may lead him back to the camp where the wagons were left.
He brings out a big painted tub and tucks his fiddle under his chin. At the sound of his lively tune, the big brown bear begins to dance. he hops and turns and waves his paws. The village children shout with delight and watch the wonderful bear as long as their pennies hold out. Often Big Taro takes his bear to the village square to perform.
Gypsies like Taro's family may be seen in Roumania today. There are three hundred thousand gypsies in this little country of Europe. Such gypsies usually travel in families. Some gypsies travel in companies of from twelve to fifty or so.
Hungary is another European country where there are many gypsies. In Hungary some gypsies have settled down.
Other gypsies may settle down for a little while, but with the first breath of soft spring air, they give the vans a fresh coat of bright paint and off they go.
It is a big day for the children of the countries in the south of Europe when the gypsies come to town. Gypsies are as good as a circus to them. They gather around their camping ground and watch the men making sieves, saddles or plaiting baskets. They listen to the fiddling and to the songs that go from lip to lip. If there is one thing that a gypsy loves next to his freedom, it is music.
Perhaps we cannot like all the ways of gypsy boys and girls. At any rate, we do like to see them gay and happy, fond of music and the big outdoors.
Some summer evening, when you were driving in the country, you may have heard the sound of laughing, singing and fiddling that seemed to come from the next pasture. As you drew nearer, you caught a glimpse of a group of people gathered round a fire. The light of the flames showed faces darker than those of any summer camper.
