The English Gipsies and Their Language Part 16

"It does, indeed, seem to me," I replied, "that if you _had_, some people who were not Gipsies _must_ have learned it."

"Of course," resumed the Gipsy, philosophically, "all people who keep together get to using a few peculiar terms. Tailors and shoemakers have their own words. And there are common vagabonds who go up and down talking thieves' slang, and imposing it on people for Gipsy. But as for any Gipsy tongue, I ought to know it" ("So I should think," I mentally e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed, as I contemplated his brazen calmness); "and I don't know three words of it."

And we, the Gorgios, all smiled approval. At least that humbug was settled; and the Rommany tongue was done for--dead and buried--if, indeed, it ever existed. Indeed, as I looked in the Gipsy's face, I began to realise that a man might be talked out of a belief in his own name, and felt a rudimentary sensation to the effect that the language of the Black Wanderers was all a dream, and Pott's Zigeuner the mere tinkling of a pot of bra.s.s, Paspati a jingling Turkish symbol, and all Rommany a _praeterea nihil_ without the _vox_. To dissipate the delusion, I inquired of the Gipsy--

"You have been in America. Did you ever hunt game in the west?"

"Yes; many a time. On the plains."

"Of course--buffalo--antelope--jack rabbits. And once" (I said this as if forgetfully)--"I once ate a hedgehog--no, I don't mean a hedgehog, but a porcupine."

A meaning glance shot from the Gipsy's eye. I uttered a first-cla.s.s pa.s.sword, and if he had any doubt before as to who the Rommany rye might be, there was none now. But with a courteous smile he replied--

"It's quite the same, sir--porcupine or hedgehog. I know perfectly well what you mean."

"Porcupines," I resumed, "are very common in America. The Chippeways call them _hotchewitchi_."

This Rommany word was a plumper for the Gipsy, and the twinkle of his eye--the smallest star of mirth in the darkest night of gravity I ever beheld in my life--was lovely. I had trumped his card at any rate with as solemn gravity as his own; and the Gorgios thought our reminiscences of America were very entertaining.

"He had more tow upon his distaffe Than Gervais wot of."

But there was one in the party--and I think only one--who had her own private share in the play. That one was the pretty young lady. Through all the conversation, I observed from time to time her eyes fixed on my face, as if surmising some unaccountable mystery. I understood it at once. The bread and b.u.t.ter on the table, partly eaten, and the snow-white napkin indicated to a feminine eye that some one not of the household had been entertained, and that I was the guest. Perhaps she had seen the old woman's quick glance at me, but it was evident that she felt a secret. What she divined I do not know. Should this work ever fall into her hands, she will learn it all, and with it the fact that Gipsies can talk double about as well as any human beings on the face of the earth, and enjoy fun with as grave a face as any Ojib'wa of them all.

The habits of the Gipsy are pleasantly ill.u.s.trated by the fact that the collection of "animated books," which no Rommany gentleman's library should be without, generally includes a jackdaw. When the foot of the Gorgio is heard near the tent, a loud "_wa-awk_" from the wary bird (sounding very much like an alarm) at once proclaims the fact; and on approaching, the stranger finds the entire party in all probability asleep. Sometimes a dog acts as sentinel, but it comes to the same thing. It is said you cannot catch a weasel asleep: I am tempted to add that you can never find a Gipsy awake--but it means precisely the same thing.

Gipsies are very much attached to their dogs, and in return the dogs are very much attached to their masters--so much so that there are numerous instances, perfectly authenticated, of the faithful animals having been in the habit of ranging the country alone, at great distances from the tent, and obtaining hares, rabbits, or other game, which they carefully and secretly brought by night to their owners as a slight testimonial of their regard and grat.i.tude. As the dogs have no moral appreciation of the Game Laws, save as manifested in gamekeepers, no one can blame them.

Gipsies almost invariably prefer, as canine manifesters of devotion, lurchers, a kind of dog which of all others can be most easily taught to steal. It is not long since a friend of mine, early one morning between dark and dawn, saw a lurcher crossing the Thames with a rabbit in his mouth. Landing very quietly, the dog went to a Gipsy _tan_, deposited his burden, and at once returned over the river.

Dogs once trained to such secret hunting become pa.s.sionately fond of it, and pursue it unweariedly with incredible secrecy and sagacity. Even cats learn it, and I have heard of one which is "good for three rabbits a week." Dogs, however, bring everything home, while puss feeds herself luxuriously before thinking of her owner. But whether dog or cat, c.o.c.k or jackdaw, all animals bred among Gipsies do unquestionably become themselves Rommanised, and grow sharp, and shrewd, and mysterious. A writer in the _Daily News_ of October 19, 1872, speaks of having seen parrots which spoke Rommany among the Gipsies of Epping Forest. A Gipsy dog is, if we study him, a true character. Approach a camp: a black hound, with sleepy eyes, lies by a tent; he does not bark at you or act uncivilly, for that forms no part of his master's life or plans, but wherever you go those eyes are fixed on you. By-and-by he disappears--he is sure to do so if there are no people about the _tan_--and then reappears with some dark descendant of the Dom and Domni. I have always been under the impression that these dogs step out and mutter a few words in Rommany--their deportment is, at any rate, Rommanesque to the highest degree, indicating a transition from the barbarous silence of doghood to Christianly intelligence. You may persuade yourself that the Gipsies do not mind your presence, but rest a.s.sured that though he may lie on his side with his back turned, the cunning _jucko_ is carefully noting all you do. The abject and humble behaviour of a poor negro's dog in America was once proverbial: the quaint shrewdness, the droll roguery, the demure devilry of a real Gipsy dog are beyond all praise.

The most valuable dogs to the Gipsies are by no means remarkable for size or beauty, or any of the properties which strike the eye; on the contrary, an ugly, shirking, humble-looking, two-and-sixpenny-countenanced cur, if he have but intellect, is much more their _affaire_. Yesterday morning, while sitting among the tents of "ye Egypcians," I overheard a knot of men discussing the merits of a degraded-looking doglet, who seemed as if he must have committed suicide, were he only gifted with sense enough to know how idiotic he looked. "Would you take seven pounds for him?" asked one. "Avo, I would take seven bar; but I wouldn't take six, nor six an' a half neither."

The stranger who casts an inquisitive eye, though from afar off, into a Gipsy camp, is at once noted; and if he can do this before the wolf--I mean the Rom--sees him, he must possess the gift of fern-seed and walk invisible, as was ill.u.s.trated by the above-mentioned yesterday visit.

Pa.s.sing over the bridge, I paused to admire the scene. It was a fresh sunny morning in October, the autumnal tints were beautiful in golden brown or oak red, while here and there the horse-chestnuts spread their saffron robes, waving in the embraces of the breeze like hetairae of the forest. Below me ran the silver Thames, and above a few silver clouds--the belles of the air--were following its course, as if to watch themselves in the watery winding mirror. And near the reedy island, at the shadowy point always haunted by three swans, whom I suspect of having been there ever since the days of Odin-faith, was the usual punt, with its elderly gentlemanly gudgeon-fishers. But far below me, along the dark line of the hedge, was a sight which completed the English character of the scene--a real Gipsy camp. Caravans, tents, waggons, a.s.ses, smouldering fires; while among them the small forms of dark children could be seen frolicking about. One Gipsy youth was fishing in the stream from the bank, and beyond him a knot of busy basketmakers were visible.

I turned the bridge, adown the bank, and found myself near two young men mending chairs. They greeted me civilly; and when I spoke Rommany, they answered me in the same language; but they did not speak it well, nor did they, indeed, claim to be "Gipsies" at all, though their complexions had the peculiar hue which indicates some other than Saxon admixture of blood. Half Rommany in their knowledge, and yet not regarded as such, these "travellers" represented a very large cla.s.s in England, which is as yet but little understood by our writers, whether of fact or fiction.

They laughed while telling me anecdotes of gentlemen who had mistaken them for real Rommany chals, and finally referred me to "Old Henry,"

further down, who "could talk with me." This ancient I found a hundred yards beyond, basketing in the sun at the door of his tent. He greeted me civilly enough, but worked away with his osiers most industriously, while his comrades, less busy, employed themselves vigorously in looking virtuous. One nursed his infant with tender embraces, another began to examine green sticks with a view to converting them into clothes-pegs--in fact I was in a model community of wandering Shakers.

I regret to say that the instant I uttered a Rommany word, and was recognised, this discipline of decorum was immediately relaxed. It was not complimentary to my moral character, but it at least showed confidence. The Ancient Henry, who bore, as I found, in several respects a strong likeness to the Old Harry, had heard of me, and after a short conversation confided the little fact, that from the moment in which I had been seen watching them, they were sure I was a _gav-mush_, or police or village authority, come to spy into their ways, and to at least order them to move on. But when they found that I was not as one having authority, but, on the contrary, came talking Rommany with the firm intention of imparting to them three pots of beer just at the thirstiest hour of a warm day, a great change came over their faces. A chair was brought to me from a caravan at some distance, and I was told the latest news of the road.

"Matty's got his slangs," observed Henry, as he inserted a _ranya_ or osier-withy into his basket, and deftly twined it like a serpent to right and left, and almost as rapidly. Now a _slang_ means, among divers things, a hawker's licence.

"I'm glad to hear it," I remarked. There was deep sincerity in this reply, as I had more than once contributed to the fees for the aforesaid _slangs_, which somehow or other were invariably refused to the applicant. At last, however, the slangs came; and his two boys, provided with them (at ten shillings per head), were now, in their sphere of life, in the position of young men who had received an education or been amply established in business, and were gifted with all that could be expected from a doting father. In its way this bit of intelligence meant as much to the basketmaker as, "Have you heard that young Fitz-Grubber has just got the double-first at Oxford?" or, "Do you know that old Cheshire has managed that appointment in India for his boy?--splendid independence, isn't it?" And I was shrewdly suspected by my audience, as the question implied, that I had had a hand in expanding this magnificent opening for the two fortunate young men.

"_d.i.c.k adoi_!" cried one, pointing up the river. "Look there at Jim!"

I looked and saw a young man far off, shirking along the path by the river, close to the hedge.

"He thinks you're a _gav-mush_," observed Henry; "and he's got some sticks, an' is tryin' to hide them 'cause he daren't throw 'em away. Oh, aint he scared?"

It was a pleasing spectacle to see the demi-Gipsy coming in with his poor little green sticks, worth perhaps a halfpenny, and such as no living farmer in all North America would have grudged a cartload of to anybody.

Droll as it really seemed, the sight touched me while I laughed. Oh, if charity covereth a mult.i.tude of sins, what should not poverty do? I care not through which door it comes--nay, be it by the very portal of Vice herself--when sad and shivering poverty stands before me in humble form, I can only forgive and forget. And this child-theft was to obtain the means of work after all. And if you ask me why I did not at once proceed to the next magistrate and denounce the criminal, I can only throw myself for excuse on the ill.u.s.trious example of George the Fourth, head of Church and State, who once in society saw a pickpocket remove from a gentleman's fob his gold watch, winking at the king as he did so. "Of course I couldn't say anything," remarked the good-natured monarch, "for the rascal took me into his confidence."

Jim walked into camp amid mild chaff, to be greeted in Rommany by the suspected policeman, and to accept a gla.s.s of the ale, which had rained as it were from heaven into this happy family. These basketmakers were not real Gipsies, but _churdi_ or half-bloods, though they spoke with scorn of the two chair-menders, who, working by themselves at the extremity of the tented town (and excluded from a share in the beer), seemed to be a sort of pariahs unto these higher casters.

I should mention, _en pa.s.sant_, that when the beer-bearer of the camp was sent for the three pots, he was told to "go over to Bill and borrow his two-gallon jug--and be very careful not to let him find out what it was for." I must confess that I thought this was deeply unjust to the imposed-upon and beerless William; but it was another case of confidence, and he who sits among Gipsies by hedgerows green must not be over-particular. _Il faut heurler avec les loups_. "Ain't it wrong to steal dese here chickens?" asked a negro who was seized with scruples while helping to rob a hen-roost. "Dat, Cuff, am a great moral question, an' we haint got time to discuss it--so jist hand down anoder pullet."

I found that Henry had much curious knowledge as to old Rommany ways, though he spoke with little respect of the Gipsy of the olden time, who, as he declared, thought all he needed in life was to get a row of silver b.u.t.tons on his coat, a pair of high boots on his feet, and therewith--_basta_! He had evidently met at one time with Mr George Borrow, as appeared by his accurate description of that gentleman's appearance, though he did not know his name. "Ah! he could talk the jib first-rateus," remarked my informant; "and he says to me, 'Bless you!

you've all of you forgotten the real Gipsy language, and don't know anything about it at all.' Do you know Old Frank?" he suddenly inquired.

"Avo," I replied. "He's the man who has been twice in America."

"But d'ye know how rich he is? He's got money in bank. And when a man gets money in bank, _I_ say there is somethin' in it. An' how do you suppose he made that money?" he inquired, with the air of one who is about to "come down with a stunner." "He did it _a-dukkerin_'." {171} But he p.r.o.nounced the word _durkerin_'; and I, detecting at once, as I thought, an affinity with the German "turkewava," paused and stared, lost in thought. My pause was set down to amazement, and the Ancient Henry repeated--

"Fact. By _durkerin_'. I don't wonder you're astonished. Tellin'

fortunes just like a woman. It isn't every man who could do that. But I suppose you could," he continued, looking at me admiringly. "You know all the ways of the Gorgios, an' could talk to ladies, an' are up to high life; ah, you could make no end of money. Why don't you do it?"

Innocent Gipsy! was this thy idea of qualification for a seer and a reader of dark lore? What wouldst thou say could I pour into thy brain the contents of the scores of works on "occult nonsense," from Agrippa to Zadkiel, devoured with keen hunger in the days of my youth? Yes, in solemn sadness, out of the whole I have brought no powers of divination; and in it all found nothing so strange as the wondrous tongue in which we spoke. In this mystery called Life many ways have been proposed to me of alleviating its expenses; as, for instance, when the old professor earnestly commended that we two should obtain (I trust honestly) a donkey and a _rinkni juva_, who by telling fortunes should entirely contribute to our maintenance, and so wander cost-free, and _kost-frei_ over merrie England. But I threw away the golden opportunity--ruthlessly rejected it--thereby incurring the scorn of all scientific philologists (none of whom, I trow, would have lost such a chance). It was for doing the same thing that Matthew Arnold immortalised a clerke of Oxenforde: though it may be that "since Elizabeth" such exploits have lost their prestige, as I knew of two students at the same university who a few years ago went off on a six weeks' lark with two Gipsy girls; but who, far from desiring to have the fact chronicled in immortal rhyme, were even much afraid lest it should get into the county newspaper!

Leaving the basketmakers (among whom I subsequently found a grand-daughter of the celebrated Gipsy Queen, Charlotte Stanley), I went up the river, and there, above the bridge, found, as if withdrawn in pride, two other tents, by one of which stood a very pretty little girl of seven or eight years with a younger brother. While talking to the children, their father approached leading a horse. I had never seen him before, but he welcomed me politely in Rommany, saying that I had been pointed out to him as the Rommany rye, and that his mother, who was proficient in their language, was very desirous of meeting me. He was one of the smiths--a Petulengro or Petulamengro, or master of the horse- shoe, a name familiar to all readers of Lavengro.

This man was a full Gipsy, but he spoke better English, as well as better Rommany, than his neighbours, and had far more refinement of manner. And singularly enough, he appeared to be simpler hearted and more unaffected, with less Gipsy trickery, and more of a disposition for honest labour.

His brother and uncle were, indeed, hard at work among the masons in a new building not far off, though they lived like true Gipsies in a tent.

Petulamengro, as the name is commonly given at the present day, was evidently very proud of his Rommany, and talked little else: but he could not speak it nearly so well nor so fluently as his mother, who was of "the old sort," and who was, I believe, sincerely delighted that her skill was appreciated by me. All Gipsies are quite aware that their language is very old and curious, but they very seldom meet with Gorgios who are familiar with the fact, and manifest an interest in it.

While engaged in conversation with this family, Petulamengro asked me if I had ever met in America with Mr ---, adding, "He is a brother-in-law of mine."

I confess that I was startled, for I had known the gentleman in question very well for many years. He is a man of considerable fortune, and nothing in his appearance indicates in the slightest degree any affinity with the Rommany. He is not the only real or partial Gipsy whom I know among the wealthy and highly cultivated, and it is with pleasure I declare that I have found them all eminently kind-hearted and hospitable.

It may be worth while to state, in this connection, that Gipsy blood intermingled with Anglo-Saxon when educated, generally results in intellectual and physical vigour. The English Gipsy has greatly changed from the Hindoo in becoming courageous, in fact, his pugnacity and pluck are too frequently carried to a fault.

My morning's call had brought me into contact with the three types of the Gipsy of the roads. Of the half-breeds, and especially of those who have only a very slight trace of the dark blood or _kalo ratt_, there are in Great Britain many thousands. Of the true stock there are now only a few hundreds. But all are "Rommany," and all have among themselves an "understanding" which separates them from the "Gorgios."

It is difficult to define what this understanding is--suffice it to say, that it keeps them all in many respects "peculiar," and gives them a feeling of free-masonry, and of guarding a social secret, long after they leave the roads and become highly reputable members of society. But they have a secret, and no one can know them who has not penetrated it.

One day I mentioned to my old Rommany, what Mr Borrow has said, that no English Gipsy knows the word for a leaf, or _patrin_. He admitted that it was true; but after considering the subject deeply, and dividing the deliberations between his pipe and a little wooden bear on the table--his regular oracle and friend--he suddenly burst forth in the following beautiful ill.u.s.tration of philology by theology:--

"Rya, I pens you the purodirus lav for a leaf--an' that's a _holluf_.

(Don't you jin that the holluf was the firstus leaf? so holluf must be the Rommany lav, sense Rommanis is the purodirest jib o' saw.) For when the first mush was kaired an' created in the tem adree--and that was the boro Duvel himself, I expect--an' annered the tem apre, he was in the bero, an' didn't jin if there was any puvius about, so he b.i.t.c.hered the chillico avree. An' the chillico was a dove, 'cause dove-us is like Duvel, an' pash o' the Duvel an' Duvel's chillico. So the dove mukkered avree an' jalled round the tem till he latchered the puvius; for when he d.i.c.kered a tan an' lelled a holluf-leaf, he jinned there was a tem, an'

hatched the holluf apopli to his Duvel. An' when yuv's Duvel jinned there was a tem, he kaired bitti tiknos an' foki for the tem--an' I don't jin no more of it. Kekoomi. An' that is a wery tidy little story of the leaf, and it sikkers that the holluf was the first leaf. Tacho."

"Sir, I will tell you the oldest word for a leaf--and that is an olive.

(Don't you know that the olive was the first leaf? so olive must be the Rommany word, since Rommanis is the oldest language of all.) For when the first man was made and created in the world--and that was the great G.o.d himself, I expect--and brought the land out, he was in the ship, and didn't know if there was any earth about him, so he sent the bird out.

And the bird was a dove, because _dove_ is like _Duvel_ (G.o.d), and half G.o.d and G.o.d's bird. So the dove flew away and went around the world till he found the earth; for when he saw a place and took an olive-leaf, he knew there was a country (land), and took the olive-leaf back to his Lord. And when his Lord knew there was land, he made little children and people for it--and I don't know anything more about it. And that is a very tidy little story of the leaf, and it shows that the olive was the first leaf."

Being gratified at my noting down this original narrative from his own lips, my excellent old friend informed me, with cheerfulness not unmingled with the dignified pride characteristic of erudition, and of the possession of deep and darksome lore, that he also knew the story of Samson. And thus spake he:--