In other vans “rock” and “toffy” making was going on with vengeance. I’ll take one case to show the kind of process carried out, and what town’s children and others have to swallow during feasts, mops, and fair time.
Surrounded by several vans and carts there was a fire in an old bucket, round which stood men, women, and a lot of poor little gipsy roadside Arabs. Presently into the pot over the fire—a large old kettle—a gipsy woman puts a lot of the commonest dirty-looking sugar, and some butter, or “butterine,” and when it has begun to boil, one of the children stirs it with a dirty stick for a time. After the boiling process is over, it is taken out and handed to the man or woman, as the case may be, to be “pulled” or twisted into the long walking-stick shape you see on some of the low, dirty gingerbread stalls attending fairs. A light-coloured “rock,” or “toffy,” is made by adding lighter-coloured sugar and flour.
The light-coloured “rock” and the dark-coloured “rock” are then mixed and twisted together, forming what is called the “scrodled rock.” The mixing process gives the hands of the mixers a clean appearance inside, contrasting strongly with the back of the hands, which at times, with this class of folks, resemble very much in colour the backs of tortoises or toads. George Herbert, in the “Fuller Worthies” Library, might almost have seen and tasted some such like, when he wrote—
“A sweetmeat of hell’s table, not of earth.”
A few yards from this manufacturing process there were man, woman, and two little children “as clean as pinks,” and a boy, who was scrubbing himself, head and shoulders, down to the waist, till he was “all of a white lather.” This case, and the few others I saw of a similar nature, were the “new comers on the road.” I expect to hear of their rising as a cow’s tail grows.
A laughable incident occurred while I was standing by watching the boy scrub at his head as if he meant to fetch the hair up by “the roots.” From beneath one of the vans a big black dog sallied forth down the fair with a piece of white paper in its mouth, carefully wrapped up, and much resembling a parcel of sandwiches. No sooner was the dog in the fair than some of the gipsies were after it, crying out, “Stop it! Stop it!” At first the dog would not listen; ultimately it stopped. The gipsies came up to the frightened animal. Everybody expected the dog had run away with something valuable in the shape of eatables, if nothing else. One big gipsy cried out to the dog, “Down with it! Down with it!” The dog did as it was told. This was no sooner done than the gipsy picked up the paper, and began to carefully unwrap it, when, to the horror of the gipsy and a few others who had taken part in the chase, and roars of laughter of onlookers, it turned out to be a paper containing a few bloaters’ heads and other unpalatable trifles. The parcel was dropped much quicker than it was picked up. Another laugh burst forth. The huntsmen pinched their noses and slunk away. One said, “I thought he had got somebody’s grub.”