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There I fell in with some ballad singers and mumpers, who were making very merry, and who asked me what was the matter. I told them how I had been treated, and they laughed at me, but gave me some supper, so I forgave them. An old man, who governed the party, then asked me whether I had any money. I produced my enormous capital of eight-pence.
Aren't you he that beat Flaming Bosville, in Mumpers' Dingle? 'I never beat Flaming Bosville, said I, 'he beat himself. Had he not struck his hand against a tree, I shouldn't be here at the present moment. 'Hear, hear! said the landlord, 'now that's just as it should be; I like a modest man, for, as the parson says, nothing sits better upon a young man than modesty.
He, himself, was no mean student of the art of self-defence, and there is some ground for believing that the scene between Lavengro and the Flaming Tinman, in which the burly tinker succumbs to the former’s prowess after a warm encounter in the Mumpers’ Dingle, is founded upon an event which occurred during Borrow’s wayward progress through rural England.
"But oh unkind you 've forgotten the sugar." He gazed helplessly at the tea-table. Anthony brought him the sugar-bowl. "Are those cruffins?" he asked, eyeing a dish on the cake-stand. "They 're mumpers," said Miss Sandus, pushing the cake-stand towards him. "But you 're keeping us on tenter-hooks." "I 'm so sorry. It's beyond my control. I must eat a mumpet.
'I do, said the man in black, looking around. 'Do you know the name of this place? 'I was told it was Mumpers' or Gypsies' Dingle, said the man in black. 'Good, said I; 'and this forge and tent, what do they look like? 'Like the forge and tent of a wandering Zigan; I have seen the like in Italy. 'Good, said I; 'they belong to me. 'Are you, then, a gypsy? said the man in black.
But, you fool,’ said he, pushing Hunter violently on the breast, ‘do you know whom you are going to tackle with?—this is the young chap that beat Blazing Bosville, only as late as yesterday, in Mumpers’ Dingle.
There was a sort of club also in that street, of larking sort of young men; and when they perceived that the others gave the old man money to get rid of his squeaking, they sent him out money, with orders to stay and play to them, so then the others sent out more for him to go away, and between the two, the old fellow brought home more money than all the cadgers and mumpers in the district.
But I must tell you that the vicar of Jambert ascribed this copious prolification of the women, not to that sort of food that we chiefly eat in Lent, but to the little licensed stooping mumpers, your little booted Lent-preachers, your little draggle-tailed father confessors, who during all that time of their reign damn all husbands that run astray three fathom and a half below the very lowest pit of hell.
He paused by the second and ushered me into a sleeping-chamber, which, though narrow, was comfortable enough a vast improvement, at any rate, on the mumpers' lodgings I had been used to for many months past. "You can undress here," he said. "The sheets are aired, and if you'll wait a moment, I'll fetch a nightshirt one of my own." "Sir, you heap coals of fire on me."
Anxiety about the safety of their 'homes, that is, the assurance of an untroubled reception upon their customary camping-ground, is a peculiarity of the gipsies, distinguishing them, equally with their cleanliness and thriftiness, from mumpers and the common wanderers. It is their tribute to civilization, which generally keeps them within the laws.
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