Most Gypsies are musical, but Sinfi was
a genuine musical genius. Having become, through the good-nature of
Winifred's aunt Mrs. Davies, the possessor of a crwth, and having
been taught by her the unique capabilities of that rarely seen
instrument, she soon learnt the art of fascinating her Welsh patrons
by the strange, wild strains she could draw from it. This obsolete
six-stringed instrument (with two of the strings reaching beyond the
key-board, used as drones and struck by the thumb, the bow only being
used on the other four, and a bridge placed, not at right angles to
the sides of the instrument, but in an oblique direction), though in
some important respects inferior to the violin, is in other respects
superior to it. Heard among the peaks of Snowdon, as I heard them
during our search for Winifred, the notes of the crwth have a
wonderful wildness and pathos. It is supposed to have the power of
drawing the spirits when a maiden sings to its accompaniment a
mysterious old Cymric song or incantation.
Among her own people it was as a seeress, as an adept in the real
dukkering--the dukkering for the Romanies, as distinguished from the
false dukkering, the dukkering for the Gorgios--that Sinfi's fame was
great.
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