Wine-Tasting CaravanMusic CD PlaylistSept-Oct. 2012

George Meredith's Poem "The Lark Ascending"

The Lark Ascending is a work by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, inspired by George Meredith's 122-line poem of the same name about the skylark. He included this portion of Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work:

He rises and begins to round,He drops the silver chain of sound,Of many links without a break,In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,‘Tis love of earth that he instils,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cupAnd he the wine which overflowsto lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial ringsIn light, and then the fancy sings.

Part 1: Sensation and Hope

Champagne / Royce Campbell, producer and jazz guitarist / Jazz for Wine Tasting (CD) / Moon Cycles (2008)

The Light In Your Eyes / Steven Halpern / Gifts of the Angels (CD) / Inner Peace Music (1994)

Hide ‘n Seek / Ofer Golany, Musicians for Peace / Healing the Holy Land (CD) / Soundings of the Planet (2007)

Shadows in the Myst / David Arkenstone / Shadows in the Myst (CD) / Spring Hill (2007)

Cabernet / Royce Campbell, producer and jazz guitarist / Jazz for Wine Tasting (CD) / Moon Cycles (2008)

The Best Is Yet To Come / Laura Fygi / The Best Is Yet To Come (CD) / Universal (2011)

Drops of Water / Maneesh de Moor / Sadhana (CD) / Sounds True (2005)

Love Is Here To Stay (from Goldwyn Follies of 1938) / Andy Williams / George Gershwin / Warm and Willing (CD) / Collectibles (2002), Original 1962

Beaujolais / Royce Campbell, producer and jazz guitarist / Jazz for Wine Tasting (CD) / Moon Cycles (2008)

The Eagle and Me (from American Road) / Barbara Cook/ Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg / Barbara Cook Sings Mostly Sondheim (CD) / DRG (2001)

Hope Has a Place / Enya / In Memory of Trees (CD) / Time Warner (1995)

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Sangiovese / Royce Campbell, producer and jazz guitarist / Jazz for Wine Tasting (CD) / Moon Cycles (2008)

You and the Night and the Music / Laura Fygi / The Best Is Yet To Come (CD) / Universal (2011)

Pure Essence / Maneesh de Moor / Sadhana (CD) / Sounds True (2005)

Beguiled / Tim Story / Beguiled (CD) / Hearts of Space (1991)

Peace Song / Halla Bassam, Sevara Nazarkhan / Healing the Holy Land (CD) / Soundings of the Planet (2007)

Placenza / The Mike Marshall Quintet / Tasting the Wine Country (CD) / Menus and Music (2001)

World Without End (MP3) / Heidi Breyer / Beyond the Turning (CD) / Winterhall (2012)

Barbera / Royce Campbell, producer and jazz guitarist / Jazz for Wine Tasting (CD) / Moon Cycles (2008)

Canadian Sunset / Andy Williams / 16 Biggest Hits (MP3 Amazon) / Columbia-Legacy CD (2000), original 1956

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Part 2:Joy and Discovery

Sto Patihraki / Kristi Stassinopoulou / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

After the Fleadh / Running through the Woods with Keetu

(I Could Drink) A Case of You / Joni Mitchell / Blue (CD) /

Andras Pou Den Ekatehe / Psarandonis / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

Medley: Drink To Me Only With Thine Eyes, Pennies from Heaven (Bourbon), Hello, Dolly (Vegas)! / Dean Martin / Dean Martin Live from Las Vegas (CD) / Capitol (2005), original tracks 1967

Kelome Se Gongila / Nena Venetsanou / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

Beaujolais / Royce Campbell, producer and jazz guitarist / Jazz for Wine Tasting (CD) / Moon Cycles (2008)

Voiceover is by Austin Beeman (Toledo, OH) giving professional 5-step advice on beginning wine tasting.X003 - The Wine Tasting Process ( audio ) - Blubrry www.blubrry.com/understandingwine/.../x003-the-wine-tasting-proc...

The Lark Ascending / Vaughn Williams / David Greed, violin, English Northern Philharmonia, David Lloyd-Jones, conducting / Vaughn Williams: The Lark Ascending; Job (CD) / Naxos (1997)

Maisa Selini / Nikos Papazoglou / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

Tra Vigne / The Mike Marshall Quintet / Tasting the Wine Country (CD) / Menus and Music (2001)

Rixte Sto Yuali Farmaki / Sophia Papazoglou / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

Kontrabatzidhes / Lesvos Aiolis / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

Stretching Your Wings / Dean Evenson, Soundings Ensemble / Eagle River (CD) / Soundings of the Planet (2005), bird sounds

Ston Eptalofo / Himerinoi Kolimvites / The Rough Guide To Greek Café (CD) / World Music Network (2010)

Embrace Me / Andy Williams / George Gershwin / Warm and Willing (CD) / Collectibles (2002), Original 1962

In Memory of Trees / Enya / In Memory of Trees (CD) / Time Warner (1995)

END

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CREDITS AND ARTICLES:

Wine Tasting Caravan

Wine-tasting Caravan:http://www.tbsholom.org/tbs-news/events/154-wine-tasting http://www.tbsholom.org/documents/2012VPCreport.pdf

Please join us on Friday, November 23rd for a wine tasting day.  Let's make the most of Willamette Valley Wine Country's Thanksgiving Day tasting weekend!  

We will meet at the Temple at 10:30am to divide into vans and hand out maps so we can caravan to the following wineries:  Willamette Valley Vinyards, Sass Winery, St. Innocent, Cristom, Witness Tree, Bethel Heights, and we will end the day dancing at Cubanismo.  Members with families should contact one another to work out babysitting.  We will need a few members with vans to come, and if anyone is interested in being a "designated driver," please let Daryl know. Tasting fees will vary from winery to winery- and most wineries will allow 2 people to share a tasting.  There will be nibbles at most of the wineries as well.  Please RSVP to the Temple office

Temple Beth Sholom1274 Cunningham Lane SSalem OR 97302P: 503.362.5004F: 503.586.0237

Birds

Bird Flock:09_flock_crossbills.jpg (finches and crossbills)www.allaboutbirds.org

Birds in Trees Picture (color)www.flickriver.com

Birdbath: http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.youcanlearnseries.com/Landscape/Images/LandscapeImages/BirdBathLarge.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.youcanlearnseries.com/Landscape/Design/LandscapeDesign-FullSunPerennials.aspx&h=323&w=300&sz=101&tbnid=jxZfVA_zB4zZPM:&tbnh=97&tbnw=90&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dbirdbath%2Bpicture%26tbm%3Disch%26tbo%3Du&zoom=1&q=birdbath+picture&usg=__BYX4ZYtJ4QDFwF_SHyZHISn7r8w=&docid=mXMGBg7YUPXAWM&sa=X&ei=N5-CULjkKcTw0gHKfA&ved=0CCQQ9QEwAQ&dur=8524

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Andy Williams - Love Is Here to Stay

► 2:4 7 ► 2:4 7

www.youtube.com/watch?v=j1cghtLS6f4Aug 30, 2012 - 3 min - Jymster46Album: Warm and Willing (1962)

Music to drink wine by: Vintner insists music can change wine's flavors

A maverick vintner insists that Mozart and Metallica changes the flavors of wine

W. Blake Gray, Special to The Chronicle

Published 4:00 a.m., Friday, November 2, 2007

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CLARKSMITH02_062_cl.JPG Photo of Clark Smith for a story about how listening to different types of music can have an affect on whether or not you like or dislike the same glass of wine. In this photo, he is listening to "People are Strange" by the Doors which is playing on his iPod. He is also a guitar player. on 10/22/07 in Santa Rosa. photo by Craig Lee / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/NO SALES-MAGS OUT Photo: Photo By Craig Lee / SF

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CLARKSMITH02_155_cl.JPG Photo of Clark Smith for a story about how listening to different types of music can have an affect on whether you like or dislike the same glass of wine. on 10/22/07 in Santa Rosa. photo by Craig Lee / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/NO SALES-MAGS OUT Photo: Photo By Craig Lee / SF

Which goes better with a fine Napa Valley Cabernet: Mozart or Metallica?

Until recently, I would have said "Mozart, of course." But I have since had a life-changing experience: I paid attention to the latest theory from wine industry provocateur Clark Smith. Now I may never taste wine and listen to music the same way again. Beware: If you read this article, the same thing may happen to you.

Music influences the way wine tastes. This seems obvious, and is the reason professional tastings are done in silence. If food, glassware, ambient temperature, perfume and the people sitting next to you all influence the taste of wine, why wouldn't music?

Smith, 56, isn't content without experimentation. His premise is that different music makes some wines taste better and others taste worse, and the great majority of tasters will agree with the "right" and "wrong" pairings regardless of their taste in wine or music. Moreover, it's not possible to record a generic "music to drink wine by" CD because a song that might make Pinot

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Noir taste great can make Cabernet Sauvignon taste awful. You have to pay attention to individual music and wine pairings.

He's only getting started, but he already has made some surprising, counterintuitive discoveries in an area of wine taste-testing that didn't even exist until he created it.

"Just about everybody who hears about what I'm doing is either completely baffled by what I have to say or they think it's so obvious that they don't see any point in talking about it," Smith says.

Smith - an MIT dropout who drifted to California to become R.H. Phillips' founding winemaker - is never satisfied to accept the status quo.

As founder of Santa Rosa's one-stop wine consultancy company Vinovation, Smith has helped drive many of the technical advances like alcohol reduction and tannin removal that, depending on where you stand, have either improved California wine or stolen its soul. He's an unabashed technologist - he sells some of his wines in a "micro-oxygenation three-pack" - yet he talks about wines having melody, and he's a mysticist who still believes in the ancient Greek idea of separating thoughts and activities into Apollonian (logical) and Dionysian (intuitive).

Smith spent months with various tasting panels sampling 150 different wines with 250 different songs to find harmonies and discordances. He has worked up a set of some of the most convincing examples that he is beginning to present to industry groups.

He's not the first winemaker to think about the wine-music connection. Smith was exposed to the idea by Don Blackburn, a French-trained winemaker now at Emeritus Vineyards in Sebastopol, who made a brief presentation in 1998 at a symposium called "Focus on Chardonnay." Then the winemaker at Bernardus in Carmel Valley, Blackburn poured three different vintages of his Chardonnay and played 10 different pieces of classical music.

"I had 4 of the 10 pieces of music where all the groups - French and American tasters - agreed that it worked with one wine in particular," Blackburn says.

Blackburn was interested in synesthesia, in which people experience one type of sensation with a different sense. Famous synesthetes include composers like Duke Ellington and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, who experienced musical notes as colors.

But Smith felt something else going on. He wasn't experiencing music as flavor; he believed the music was changing the flavor of the wines.

Moreover, the more Smith worked with alcohol reduction - the technology for which he is most famous - the more he thought about wine and music.

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The reason is his theory of "sweet spots." When reducing the alcohol level of a wine from the "natural" level produced by fermentation, it's possible to create a finished wine with any percentage of alcohol you choose: 14.2, 12.7, whatever. But Smith says (and demonstrates convincingly) that only a few specific alcohol percentages - "sweet spots" - actually taste good, and the only way to know which work is to make test reductions and taste them. He compares the sweet spots to musical chords - a particular percentage of alcohol tastes harmonious, while just 0.1 percent more or less alcohol tastes dissonant (like Black Flag guitarist Greg Ginn's feedback riffs, for you punk synesthetes.)

As with his wine and music pairings, he uses science to answer a non-scientific question: "Which is more delicious?"

For his demonstration, Smith plays different music with three red wines - a Beaujolais, a Carneros Pinot Noir and WineSmith's Crucible Napa Valley Cabernet Sauvignon. (For details of his presentation, see " 'Enter Sandman' with Cab? Road testing Smith's theories" at right.) Most tasters agree on the results: Pinot Noir is good with Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik," but Cab isn't. Smith postulates that Cabernet is best with what he calls Dionysian music, or music of darkness. Hence, Metallica is a good choice with that bottle of 1961 Bordeaux you've been saving.

He has even found a piece of music (the North Water Street Tavern Band's polka-like "Milorganite Blues") that made Sutter Home White Zinfandel taste better than any of the reds, including his own $100 Cab.

Smith has only a few guidelines so far for music and wine pairing.

"Never play polkas with anything," he says, unless you really like White Zinfandel.

"Red wines need either minor key or they need music that has negative emotion. They don't like happy music. With expensive reds, don't play music that makes you giggle. Pinots like sexy music. Cabernets like angry music. It's very hard to find a piece of music that's good for both Pinot and Cabernet."

Smith may be onto something here, but typically, pronouncements like "Cabernet tastes better by firelight, in a cave" aren't quite scientific enough for the academic community.

"I know how Clark usually does things," says Ann Noble, professor emeritus of sensory science at UC Davis, and inventor of the wine aroma wheel used in wine analysis. "He doesn't vary the order. The experiment (of changing the perception of wine's flavor by changing music) might not be replicable. But it's an extremely interesting experiment. The question is, is it a one-off phenomena?"

Noble says she'd like to see the experiment performed on subjects in the middle of an MRI, to see what's happening in the brain as they taste.

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"But it's hard to get research grant money for MRIs, and wine tasting isn't a hot area for brain research," says Noble.

Smith's spiel for the wine-music interaction effect involves cutaway slides of the brain and explanations of what function different parts of it play in processing music. But he doesn't actually know, physiologically, why Cabernet tastes significantly better with the Doors' "People Are Strange" or the overture to Carmina Burana, than with Mozart or the Beach Boys.

Smith postulates that wine tasting requires the same logical processing areas of the brain as listening to music. A slice of brain research that particularly interests him is a study published by Anne J. Blood and Robert J. Zatorre of McGill University in Montreal in 2001. Blood and Zatorre showed that when subjects listen to music they enjoy (different from Smith's experiments because the subjects chose the music), they activate pleasure centers of the brain - the same areas of the brain that react to, their abstract states, "euphoria-inducing stimuli, such as food, sex and drugs of abuse." In other words, good music can make us feel the same as a good duck confit - and wine probably fits in there as one of those three euphoria-inducing stimuli, if not all three. (Blood and Zatorre did not respond to a request for comment on Smith's theories.)

Petr Janata, assistant professor of psychology at the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis, mentioned similar, more recent, research that says the areas of the medial prefrontal cortex responsible for identifying familiar music overlap with those for sensing odors - and aromas play a huge role in our perception of flavor. The medial prefrontal cortex is also activated when we make judgments about whether we like something or not.

Could the brain be crossing signals between wine and music? Maybe, Janata says - it's possible that the brain might have "difficulty identifying the source" of the familiar sensation.

Until Smith gets huge grant money and decides to give up winemaking for sensory research, all he has are a few interesting phenomena. Yet the idea is compelling, and the implications for restaurants are immense: What if the music playing makes the Pinot Noir taste sour? And how can a restaurateur choose between orderly music that makes the Riesling delightful and threatening music that makes the Cab profound? Is the world ready for the Steakhouse of Darkness?

Restaurateur Pat Kuleto has always considered music a crucial part of establishing the right mood for his establishments, including San Francisco's Boulevard and Farallon and St. Helena's Martini House. Kuleto carefully controls the overall sound level and gives the restaurants suggested CDs. But he's never taken it to the level Smith has, such as Smith's suggestion that sommeliers only taste wine while they're listening to music that will play in the restaurant during dinner.

"In a restaurant, you're really playing with people's psyche. Music is messing with your psyche," says Kuleto, who also owns an eponymous winery in St. Helena. "You're changing people's mood. What mood you're in changes your palate. I think there's absolute truth to what you're talking about, but it's part of a bigger picture."

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Tasting rooms might also take an interest. How can wineries that make several different kinds of wine ever come up with a playlist?

"This is why Muzak is such a profitable company," says Dan Fredman, a wine industry consultant and music fanatic. "They establish the atmosphere in companies, and it changes throughout the days, from mellow in the morning to more lively in the afternoon, when people need a pick-me-up."

Fredman speculates that if Smith's preliminary research - like avoiding Mozart with Cabernet - gains attention, Muzak might develop music for wine tasting. Craig Root, president of St. Helena tasting-room consultancy Visitor Management Resources, already does that, but not based on flavor profiles.

"For me, choosing music for a tasting room is demographics," Root says. "I tend to lean toward jazz that's not frenetic and classical music, especially in the morning. In the afternoon, when younger people come in, maybe blues and classic rock."

Of course, no matter how convincing Smith's findings get in the future, just as plenty of diners order Cabernet with spicy seafood dishes no matter what the sommelier says, there will always be plenty of wine lovers who simply refuse to worry about finding the right tunes for their wine. "I don't want to think about it," says importer and blues singer Kermit Lynch. "I did a tasting once of different shaped glasses. But I stopped before we finished. That's how I feel about this - I didn't want to know about it. I don't want to have different glasses all over the house. I want to just use one glass."

And yet, even Lynch couldn't help speculating.

"Let's say you're going to listen to a Mozart piano, violin and cello trio," he says. "Do you choose a Muscadet, light and crisp? Or say you're going to listen to one of Beethoven's late quartets, among the most soulful of all music. Is that the time to pull out the 1929 Romanee-Conti?"

I don't know. Neither does Smith. But open that bottle, turn on the iPod and let's find out.

FULL LINK to pages 1A, 1B, 2, 3 -- see “go to pages 1, 2, 3” at end of text, and 2 parts of page 1 at top:http://www.sfgate.com/wine/article/Music-to-drink-wine-by-Vintner-insists-music-can-3235602.php

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X003 - The Wine Tasting Process ( audio ) - Blubrry www.blubrry.com/understandingwine/.../x003-the-wine-tasting-proc...

May 29, 2011 – Understanding Wine (with Austin Beeman) HD. X003 - The Wine Tasting Process (audio).

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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

George Meredith's Poem "The Lark Ascending"

The Lark Ascending is a work by the English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams, inspired by George Meredith's 122-line poem of the same name about the skylark. He included this portion of Meredith's poem on the flyleaf of the published work:

He rises and begins to round,He drops the silver chain of sound,Of many links without a break,In chirrup, whistle, slur and shake.

For singing till his heaven fills,‘Tis love of earth that he instils,And ever winging up and up,Our valley is his golden cupAnd he the wine which overflowsto lift us with him as he goes.

Till lost on his aerial ringsIn light, and then the fancy sings.

The work was written in two versions: violin and piano, written in 1914; and violin and orchestra, written in 1920. The orchestral version is the one that is almost always heard now. It is one of the most popular pieces in the Classical repertoire among British listeners.

Vaughan Williams sketched the work while watching troop ships cross the English Channel at the outbreak of the First World War. A small boy observed him making the sketches and, thinking he was jotting down a secret code, informed a police officer, who subsequently arrested the composer.[citation needed] The war halted his compositional activities, but the work was revised in 1920 with the help of the English violinist Marie Hall, during their stay at Kings Weston House near Bristol.

The Lark Ascending was dedicated to Marie Hall, who premiered both versions. The piano-accompanied premiere was in December 1920, in conjunction with the Avonmouth and Shirehampton Choral Society. This was followed by the first London performance, and first orchestral performance, on 14 June 1921, under conductor Adrian Boult. The critic from The Times said of that performance, "It showed supreme disregard for the ways of today or yesterday. It dreamed itself along".

The use of pentatonic scale patterns frees the violin from a strong tonal centre, and shows the impressionistic side of Vaughan Williams' style. This liberty also extends to the metre. The cadenzas for solo violin are written without bar lines, lending them a sense of meditational release. [1]

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In 2011 it was chosen as Britain's all-time favourite 'Desert Island Disc' in a poll of listeners to chose the nation's Desert Island Discs.[2]

From 2007 to 2010, the piece was voted number one in the Classic FM annual Hall of Fame poll, over Edward Elgar's Cello Concerto, Sergei Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2, Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and another work of Vaughan Williams', the Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.[3] In 2011 it was usurped by Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. In 2011, in a poll to find what music New Yorkers would like to hear on the radio for the commemoration of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, The Lark Ascending came second.[4]

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eil.com

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Caravan, Bowtop Caravan, Romany Caravan:

Bowtop –2637894667_d2f4908670.jpgwww.Flickrhivemind.net 500 × 375 - bowtop gypsy romany wagon caravan slippy edinburgh travelers

http://www.journeyfolki.org.uk/HistoryCulture/TheEnglishGypsyVardo/TheOriginEvolution/tabid/881/language/en-US/Default.aspx

The Origin & Evolution The Birth Of The Living Wagon

The best horse-drawn living wagons were built in Victorian England, in particular the final quarter of the 19th century and

also the first part of the 20th century. House-dwellers (gaujo) called this house on wheels a caravan, but to England’s

travelling people they called their home a wagon, van or vardo. The word caravan is derived from the Persian word ‘Karwan’ and it is perhaps this eastern word, along

with the original belief that the Romani~Gypsies originated in Egypt, that

lead people to wrongly assume that it was they who first introduced the living-wagon to England. It is more likely, however, that the living-wagon originated from France rather than England in the 18th century. This is mainly due to the fact that England’s roads were considered among the worst in Europe before and in 1760, whereas France boasted around 15,000 miles of what was back then considered to be first class roads, while England was relying on water transport. In

fact, before the Turnpike Road Acts of 1730 to 1780 it took on average six strong horses to draw stage-coaches and stage-wagons over England’s terrible roads. Things did not change or alter

until the 1820’s when the engineers Thomas Telford and John McAdam began work, and England’s roads became more hospitable for allowing people of simple means to live on them in

wagons.

So when did Romanies actually take to the vardo?Evidence suggests that is was the travelling showmen who had had living-wagons from around

the 1820’s and that it is not until almost thirty years or so later in around the 1850’s that Romanies first began living in vardo’s. The earliest engraving of a vardo with Romanies is dated

around 1879, and the earliest photograph 1874. In the very early days, many of the travelling people journeyed in tilted carts, though Romanies were usually always on foot, preferring their

bender tents. In truth Romanies were very reluctant to give up their bender tents for living-

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wagons. However, in around 1815, although still living in bender tents, it was not entirely unusual for some Romanies to sleep in tilt carts. In George Borrows book Lavengro (1851) he

describes a Romani encampment dating around 1815:

Beneath on of the largest trees, upon the grass, was a kind of low tent or booth, from the top of which a thin smoke was curling; beside it stood a couple of light carts, whilst two or three lean horses or ponies were cropping the herbage which was growing high. Wondering to whom this odd tent could belong, I advanced till I was close before it, when I found that it consisted of two tilts, like those wagons, placed upon the ground and fronting each other, connected behind by

sail or large piece of canvas which was but partially drawn across the top; upon the ground, in the intervening space, was a fire, over which, supported by a kind of iron crowbar, hung a

cauldron; my advance had been so noiseless as not to alarm the inmates, who consisted of a man and a woman, who sat apart, one on each side of the fire …

It was Walter Simpson, who got a little closer to the living-wagon when gathering material for A History of Gipsies in the 1840’s:

In no part of the world is the gipsy life more in accordance with the general idea that the gipsy is like Cain – a wanderer on the face of the earth – than in England; for there the covered cart and

the little tent are the houses of the gipsy ..

In his book, Borrow first gives mention to caravans when in the 1820’s Lavengro goes to what is said to be Greenwich:

I reached in about three-quarters of an hour a kind of low dingy town in the neighbourhood of the river; the streets were swarming with people, and I concluded from the number of wild beast

shows, caravans, gingerbread stalls and the like, that a fair was being held.

In Borrows book The Romany Rye (1857) it describes how Ursula Herne says to Lavengro: “We are not over-fond of gorgios, brother, and we hates basket-makers and folks that live in

caravans.” So while some Romanies did take to the tilt carts quite early on, many kept to their tents and despised travellers who lived otherwise. It was definitely not unusual for tinkers,

basket-makers and other such travellers to sleep in tilt carts in the 1830’s. It was not until Wild Wales (1862) which was set in the 1850’s that Borrow makes his first

certain reference to a living-wagon, when Lavengro meets Black Jack Bosvile, The Flaming Tinman, a half-and-half travelling pugilist:

After walking about half an hour I saw a kind of wooden house on wheels drawn by two horses coming down the hill towards me. A short, black-looking fellow in brown-top boots, corduroy breeches, jockey coat and jockey cap, sat on the box, holding the reins in one hand and a long

whip in the other. Beside him was a swarthy woman in a wild flaunting dress. Behind the box on the fore-part of the caravan peered two or three black children’s heads …

It is not clear from his description if it had a stove or not, but either way, as it was described as a ‘house on wheels’ it is clear that by the 1850’s they were not a common sight. However, Dickens

described a chimneyed caravan some ten years before this in 1840 in the Old Curiosity Shop:

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It was not a shabby, dingy, dusty cart, but a smart little house upon wheels, with white dimity curtains festooning the windows, and window shutters of green picked out with panels o a

staring red, in which happily-constructed colours the whole concern shone brilliant. Neither was it a poor caravan drawn by a single donkey or emaciated horse, for a pair of horses in pretty

good condition were released from the shafts and grazing on the grouzy grass. Neither was it a gipsy caravan, for at the open door (graced with a bright brass knocker) sat a Christian lady, stout and comfortable to look upon, who wore a large bonnet trembling with bows. And that it

was not an unprovided or destitute caravan was clear from this lady’s occupation, which was the very pleasant and refreshing one of taking tea … the steps being struck by George, and stowed

under the carriage, away they went …When they had travelled slowly forward for some short distance, Nell ventured to steal a look

around the caravan and observe it more closely. One half of it – the moiety in which the comfortable properties was then seated – was carpeted, and so partitioned off at the further end as to accommodate a sleeping-place, constructed after the fashion of a berth on board a ship,

which was shaded, like the little windows, with fair white curtains, and looked comfortable enough by what kind of gymnastic exercise the lady of the caravan ever contrived to get into it,

was an unfathomable mystery.The other half served as a kitchen, and was fitted up with a stove whose small chimney passed through the roof. It held also a closet or larder, several chests, a great pitcher of water, and a

few cooking utensils and articles of crockery …

Dickens points out the difference between this chimneyed van and the lesser wagons of other travellers, including Romanies. Also you will note that both the van described here and the van Borrow described which belonged to Jack Bosvile, both needed to be drawn by two horses, as it

was not until the second half of the century when the roads had improved that the vans were drawn by only one horse. The van in which Dickens describes is actually not unlike the later

ones which we are now familiar with. So, by the beginning of Victoria’s reign, the kind of living-wagon with which we are looking at was in use in England by showmen, which was at that time

a novelty.

England’s roads were fast becoming the best in the world by the 1830’s and coaching was in its hey-day causing the coach-building industry to boom. It was in the 1830’s that the Hansom cab

was introduced, and Robinson and Cook’s brougham, named for the Lord Chancellor. Passenger-carriers had already improved by being suspended on metal springs, which were called ‘spring

vans’ and the old connecting pole or perch was done away with. The word cab became an abbreviation of cabriolet, and van was abbreviated from caravan, meaning any common box-like

vehicle with an arched roof, whether carrying people or goods, so caravan began to be used as meaning a wagon in which people actually lived.

Between 1821 and 1841 there were quite a few changes, for a start England’s population had increased by around a third and concentration in towns intensified. Where the fairs, for centuries had once been the place where people would buy and sell things they could not obtain elsewhere,

they were now becoming more and more obsolete as trading was focused within the towns instead and shops began springing up more and more within them. This caused great concern to

the showmen, who then began to concentrate more on the entertainment, fun and amusement side

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of their trade rather tan with buying and selling. Their occupation had always been highly competitive and fast moving, and their competitive natures began to spill out into some of the fairs causing many to be closed down because of some boisterous and ill-behaved individuals.

Showmen raced on narrow roads to get into the best positions on the tober, or site, often resulting in fights between the wagon trains.

Both the showmen and the Romanies prided themselves in keeping separateness, even from each other; both classes had a close community which contained economic interests. Both were

itinerant, both depended on and spent much time travelling between the great fairs. The showman relied heavily on horses, and few equalled the Romani horse dealers (Gryengro’s), also

the Romani women were renowned for their fortune telling (Dukkering), so each were an integral part of the whole system which worked both ways, keeping the two classes together,

however, in general each held the other very much at a social distance.

In addition to the Romanies and the showmen, who had their own language, customs and traditions, there were of course other groups of travelling folki on the drom, such as tinkers,

basket-makers, brush-makers, half-and-halfs, didikais, broom-makers, potters, muggers, peg-makers, bagmen, chapmen, peddlers, the hoi-polloi of the highways. Some had Romani blood, most had none at all. To the settled folki (gaujo) all these wanderers, having no fixed abode,

lacked respectability and were all classed as ‘one and the same’ and all called Gypsy. (A mistake which has been carried through right into the 21st century!) Hence the name Gypsy Caravan

regardless of who lived in them.

It was natural for the showmen to be the first to live in wagons, just as it was for Romanies to be the last. The showmen had money and already employed the relatively heavy conveyances

necessary for his equipment and wild beasts. It was more common for the showman to build their wagons themselves, whether they were a large or small business concern. They probably built

their wagons on drays made by Cartwright’s or bought second hand for the purpose. The showmen by nature were eccentric, adaptable, quick to sense change in taste and eager to modify

his attractions to suit the paying public. Whereas the Romanies were a conservative people, changing their ways only when they had to in order to live and survive. Materialistic ways were

despised by Romanies. However, as time moved on, the vardo became the Romani~Gypsy woman’s most coveted possession, the paramount domestic status symbol. The few that over a long period of time retained their condition and charm were often owned by showmen or the

more wealthy Romani families, who cared for them with persistence, pride ad skill of the most house-proud of the gaujo societies. Romanies generally returned their vardo’s to the gaujo builders, whose craftsmen repainted and reconditioned them, much the same was true with

showmen, although this class of traveller, who’s lifestyle was also a business, usually employed craftsmen to keep equipment in tip top condition, painting and even refurbishing the wagons.

Rodney Smith, better known as ‘Gipsy Smith’ the evangelist, was born in a tent in 1860. His autobiography records that in the spring of 1877 the family travelled from Cambridge to London

in their wagons:

The young gipsy couple start their married life by purchasing a wagon. This costs anywhere from £40 to £150 and is obtained from a gorgio wagon-builder. Oddly enough, the gipsies never

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learn the trade of making their own wagons. The wagons are very warm and very strong, and last a great many years. The young husband is, of course, the manufacturer of the goods, and his

wife the seller. When she leaves the wagon in the morning to go her rounds she arranges with her husband where the wagon shall be placed at night, and thither she betakes herself when her days toil is over. If the husband has been refused permission to stand the wagon on the arranged

spot and has had to move on, he lets his wife know where he is going by leaving behind him a track of grass.

It is hardly strange that Romanies didn’t learn the trade of wagon-building as the crafts involved were more skilled perhaps that Rodney Smith appreciated, and their rudiments took some years

to master, also it was highly unlikely that any wagon-builder would accept Romanies as apprentices. It demanded an investment in tools, timber and premises, and above all a settled,

steady way of life, which was definitely not for Romanies.

Compiled and derived from The English Gypsy Caravan by C.H. Ward Jackson & Denis E. Harvey

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