The Gypsies Part 15

"_Pen mengy if mandy'll be b.i.t.c.hade padel for chorin a gry_, _or nasherdo for merin a gav-mush_." (Tell me if I am to be transported for stealing a horse, or hung for killing a policeman.)

The old woman's face changed. "You'll never need to steal a horse. The man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who _you_ are _now_; you're not one of these tourists. You're the boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag about it in your house,--and well you may,--that Old Moll of the Roads couldn't take you in, and that you found her out. Never another _rye_ but you will ever say that again. Never."

And she went dancing away in the sunshine, capering backwards along the road, merrily shaking the pennies in her hand for music, while she sang something in gypsy,--witch to the last, vanishing as witches only can.

And there came over me a feeling as of the very olden time, and some memory of another witch, who had said to another man, "_Thou_ art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;" and who, when he called her the mother of the giants, replied, "Go thy way, and boast at home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never." That was the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the world away to Romanys and rags--when the G.o.ds are gone.

When I laughed at the younger professor for confounding forty years in the church with as many at the wash-tub, he replied,--

"Cleanliness is with me so near to G.o.dliness that it is not remarkable that in my hurry I mistook one for the other."

So we went on and climbed Cader Idris, and found the ancient grave of rocks in a mystic circle, whose meaning lies buried with the last Druid, who would perhaps have told you they were--

"Seats of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand But wrocht by Nature as it ane house had bene For Nymphes, G.o.ddis of floudes and woodis grene."

And we saw afar the beautiful scene, "where fluddes rynnys in the foaming sea," as Gawain Douglas sings, and where, between the fresh water and salt, stands a village, even where it stood in earliest Cymric prehistoric dawn, and the spot where ran the weir in which the prince who was in grief because his weir yielded no fish, at last fished up a poet, even as Pharaoh's daughter fished out a prophet. I shall not soon forget that summer day, nor the dream-like panorama, nor the ancient grave; nor how the younger professor lay down on the seat of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand, and declared he had a nap,--just enough to make him a poet.

To prove which he wrote a long poem on the finding of Taliesin in the nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be behindhand, wrote another, in imitation of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen, which were so greatly admired as tributes to Welsh poetry that they were forthwith translated faithfully into lines of consonants, touched up with so many _w_'s that they looked like saws; and they circulated even unto Llandudno, and, for aught I know, may be sung at Eistedfodds, now and ever, to the tw.a.n.ging of small harps,--_in soecula saeculorum_. Truly, the day which had begun with a witch ended fitly enough at the tomb of a prophet poet.

III. THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH.

Aberystwith is a little fishing-village, which has of late years first bloomed as a railway-station, and then fruited into prosperity as a bathing-place. Like many _parvenus_, it makes a great display of its Norman ancestor, the old castle, saying little about the long centuries of plebeian obscurity in which it was once buried. This castle, after being woefully neglected during the days when n.o.body cared for its early respectability, has been suddenly remembered, now that better times have come, and, though not restored, has been made comely with gra.s.s banks, benches, and gravel walks, reminding one of an Irish grandfather in America, taken out on a Sunday with "the childher," and looking "gintale"

in the clean shirt and whole coat unknown to him for many a decade in Tipperary. Of course the castle and the wealth, or the hotels and parade, are well to the fore, or boldly displayed, as Englishly as possible, while the little Welsh town shrinks quietly into the hollow behind. And being new to prosperity, Aberystwith is also a little muddled as to propriety. It would regard with horror the idea of allowing ladies and gentlemen to bathe together, even though completely clad; but it sees nothing out of the way when gentlemen in pre-fig-leaf costume disport themselves, bathing just before the young ladies'

boarding-school and the chief hotel, or running joyous races on the beach. I shall never forget the amazement and horror with which an Aberystwithienne learned that in distant lands ladies and gentlemen went into the water arm in arm, although dressed. But when it was urged that the Aberystwith system was somewhat peculiar, she replied, "Oh, _that_ is a very different thing!"

On which words for a text a curious sermon might be preached to the Philistiny souls who live perfectly reconciled to absurd paradoxes, simply because they are accustomed to them. Now, of all human beings, I think the gypsies are freest from trouble with paradoxes as to things being different or alike, and the least afflicted with moral problems, burning questions, social puzzles, or any other kind of mental rubbish.

They are even freer than savages or the heathen in this respect, since of all human beings the Fijian, New Zealander, Mpongwe, or Esquimaux is most terribly tortured with the laws of etiquette, religion, social position, and propriety. Among many of these heathen unfortunates the meeting with an equal involves fifteen minutes of bowing, re-bowing, surre-bowing, and rejoinder-bowing, with complementary complimenting, according to old custom, while the worship of Mrs. Grundy through a superior requires a half hour wearisome beyond belief. "In Fiji," says Miss C. F. Gordon c.u.mming, "strict etiquette rules every action of life, and the most trifling mistake in such matters would cause as great dissatisfaction as a breach in the order of precedence at a European ceremonial." In dividing cold baked missionary at a dinner, especially if a chief be present, the host committing the least mistake as to helping the proper guest to the proper piece in the proper way would find himself promptly put down in the _menu_. In Fiji, as in all other countries, this punctilio is nothing but the direct result of ceaseless effort on the part of the upper cla.s.ses to distinguish themselves from the lower.

Cannibalism is a joint sprout from the same root; "the devourers of the poor" are the scorners of the humble and lowly, and they are all grains of the same corn, of the devil's planting, all the world over. Perhaps the quaintest error which haunts the world in England and America is that so much of this stuff as is taught by rule or fashion as laws for "the _elite_" is the very nucleus of enlightenment and refinement, instead of its being a remnant of barbarism. And when we reflect on the degree to which this naive and child-like faith exists in the United States, as shown by the enormous amount of information in certain newspapers as to what is the latest thing necessary to be done, acted, or suffered in order to be socially saved, I surmise that some future historian will record that we, being an envious people, turned out the Chinese, because we could not endure the presence among us of a race so vastly our superiors in all that const.i.tuted the true principles of culture and "custom."

Arthur Mitch.e.l.l, in inquiring What is Civilization? {209} remarks that "all the things which gather round or grow upon a high state of civilization are not necessarily true parts of it. These conventionalities are often regarded as its very essence." And it is true that the greater the fool or sn.o.b, the deeper is the conviction that the conventional is the core of "culture." "'It is not genteel,' 'in good form,' or 'the mode,' to do this or do that, or say this or say that." "Such things are spoken of as marks of a high civilization, or by those who do not confound civilization with culture as differentiators between the cultured and the uncultured." Dr. Mitch.e.l.l "neither praises nor condemns these things;" but it is well for a man, while he is about it, to know his own mind, and I, for myself, condemn them with all my heart and soul, whenever anybody declares that such bra.s.s counters in the game of life are real gold, and insists that I shall accept them as such.

For small play in a very small way with small people, I would endure them; but many men and nearly all women make their capital of them. And whatever may be said in their favor, it cannot be denied that they constantly lead to lying and heartlessness. Even Dr. Mitch.e.l.l, while he says he does not condemn them, proceeds immediately to declare that "while we submit to them they const.i.tute a sort of tyranny, under which we fret and secretly pine for escape. Does not the exquisite of Rotten Row weary for his flannel shirt and shooting-jacket? Do not 'well-const.i.tuted' men want to fish and shoot or kill something, themselves, by climbing mountains, when they can find nothing else? In short, does it not appear that these conventionalities are irksome, and are disregarded when the chance presents itself? And does it not seem as if there were something in human nature pulling men back to a rude and simple life?" To find that _men_ suffer under the conventionalities, "adds, on the whole," says our canny, prudent Scot, "to the respectability of human nature." _Tu ha ragione_ (right you are), Dr.

Mitch.e.l.l, there. For the conventional, whether found among Fijians as they were, or in Mayfair as it is, whenever it is vexatious and merely serves as a cordon to separate "sa.s.siety" from society, detracts from the respectability of humanity, and is in itself vulgar. If every man in society were a gentleman and every woman a lady, there would be no more conventionalism. _Usus est tyrannus_ (custom is a tyrant), or, as the Talmud proverb saith, "Custom is the plague of wise men, but is the idol of fools." And he was a wise Jew, whoever he was, who declared it.

But let us return to our black sheep, the gypsy. While happy in not being conventional, and while rejoicing, or at least unconsciously enjoying freedom from the bonds of etiquette, he agrees with the Chinese, red Indians, May Fairies, and Fifth Avenoodles in manifesting under the most trying circ.u.mstances that imperturbability which was once declared by an eminent Philadelphian to be "the Corinthian ornament of a gentleman." He who said this builded better than he knew, for the ornament in question, if purely Corinthian, is simply bra.s.s. One morning I was sauntering with the Palmer in Aberystwith, when we met with a young and good-looking gypsy woman, with whom we entered into conversation, learning that she was a Bosville, and acquiring other items of news as to Egypt and the roads, and then left.

We had not gone far before we found a tinker. He who catches a tinker has got hold of half a gypsy and a whole cosmopolite, however bad the catch may be. He did not understand the greeting _Sarishan_!--he really could not remember to have heard it. He did not know any gypsies,--"he could not get along with them." They were a bad lot. He had seen some gypsies three weeks before on the road. They were curious dark people, who lived in tents. He could not talk Romany.

This was really pitiable. It was too much. The Palmer informed him that he was wasting his best opportunities, and that it was a great pity that any man who lived on the roads should be so ignorant. The tinker never winked. In the goodness of our hearts we even offered to give him lessons in the _kalo jib_, or black language. The grinder was as calm as a Belgravian image. And as we turned to depart the professor said,--

"_Mandy'd del tute a shahori to pi moro kammaben_, _if tute jinned sa mandi pukkers_." (I'd give you a sixpence to drink our health, if you knew what I am saying.)

With undisturbed gravity the tinker replied,--

"Now I come to think of it, I do remember to have heard somethin' in the parst like that. It's a conwivial expression arskin' me if I won't have a tanner for ale. Which I will."

"Now since you take such an interest in gypsies," I answered, "it is a pity that you should know so little about them. I have seen them since you have. I saw a nice young woman, one of the Bosvilles here, not half an hour ago. Shall I introduce you?"

"That young woman," remarked the tinker, with the same immovable countenance, "is my wife. And I've come down here, by app'intment, to meet some Romany pals."

And having politely accepted his sixpence, the griddler went his way, tinkling his bell, along the road. He did not disturb himself that his first speeches did not agree with his last; he was not in the habit of being disturbed about anything, and he knew that no one ever learned Romany without learning with it not to be astonished at any little inconsistencies. Serene and polished as a piece of tin in the sunshine, he would not stoop to be put out by trifles. He was a typical tinker.

He knew that the world had made up proverbs expressing the utmost indifference either for a tinker's blessing or a tinker's curse, and he retaliated by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or banned him.

In all ages and in all lands the tinker has always been the type of this droning indifference, which goes through life bagpiping its single melody, or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs, "Toujours Santerre."

"Es ist und bleibt das alte Lied Von dem versoff'nen Pfannenschmied, Und wer's nicht weiter singen kann, Der fang's von Vorne wieder an."

'T will ever be the same old song Of tipsy tinkers all day long, And he who cannot sing it more May sing it over, as before.

I should have liked to know John Bunyan. As a half-blood gypsy tinker he must have been self-contained and pleasant. He had his wits about him, too, in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison he made a flute or pipe out of the leg of his three legged-stool, and would play on it to pa.s.s time. When the jailer entered to stop the noise, John replaced the leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent as only a gypsy tinker could,--calm as a summer morning. I commend the subject for a picture.

Very recently, that is, in the beginning of 1881, a man of the same tinkering kind, and possibly of the same blood as Honest John, confined in the prison of Moyamensing, Philadelphia, did nearly the same thing, only that instead of making his stool leg into a musical pipe he converted it into a pipe for tobacco. But when the watchman, led by the smell, entered his cell, there was no pipe to be found; only a deeply injured man complaining that "somebody, had been smokin' outside, and it had blowed into his cell through the door-winder from the corridore, and p'isoned the atmosphere. And he didn't like it." And thus history repeats itself. 'T is all very well for the sticklers for Wesleyan gentility to deny that John Bunyan was a gypsy, but he who in his life cannot read Romany between the lines knows not the jib nor the cut thereof. Tough was J. B., "and de-vil-ish sly," and altogether a much better man than many suppose him to have been.

The tinker lived with his wife in a "tramps' lodging-house" in the town.

To those Americans who know such places by the abominable dens which are occasionally reported by American grand juries, the term will suggest something much worse than it is. In England the average tramp's lodging is cleaner, better regulated, and more orderly than many Western "hotels." The police look closely after it, and do not allow more than a certain number in a room. They see that it is frequently cleaned, and that clean sheets are frequently put on the beds. One or two hand-organs in the hall, with a tinker's barrow or wheel, proclaimed the character of the lodgers, and in the sitting-room there were to be found, of an evening, gypsies, laborers with their families seeking work or itinerant musicians. I can recall a powerful and tall young man, with a badly expressive face, one-legged, and well dressed as a sailor. He was a beggar, who measured the good or evil of all mankind by what they gave him. He was very bitter as to the bad. Yet this house was in its way upper cla.s.s. It was not a den of despair, dirt, and misery, and even the Italians who came there were obliged to be decent and clean. It would not have been appropriate to have written for them on the door, "_Voi che intrate lasciate ogni speranza_." (He who enters here leaves soap behind.) The most painful fact which struck me, in my many visits, was the intelligence and decency of some of the boarders. There was more than one who conversed in a manner which indicated an excellent early education; more than one who read the newspaper aloud and commented on it to the company, as any gentleman might have done. Indeed, the painful part of life as shown among these poor people was the manifest fact that so many of them had come down from a higher position, or were qualified for it. And this is characteristic of such places. In his "London Labour and the London Poor," vol. i. p. 217, Mahew tells of a low lodging-house "in which there were at one time five university men, three surgeons, and several sorts of broken-down clerks." The majority of these cases are the result of parents having risen from poverty and raised their families to "gentility." The sons are deprived by their bringing up of the vulgar pluck and coa.r.s.e energy by which the father rose, and yet are expected to make their way in the world, with nothing but a so-called "education," which is too often less a help than a hindrance. In the race of life no man is so heavily handicapped as a young "gentleman." The humblest and raggedest of all the inmates of this house were two men who got their living by _shelkin gallopas_ (or selling ferns), as it is called in the Shelta, or tinker's and tramp's slang.

One of these, whom I have described in another chapter as teaching me this dialect, could conjugate a French verb; we thought he had studied law. The other was a poor old fellow called Krooty, who could give the Latin names for all the plants which he gathered and sold, and who would repeat poetry very appropriately, proving sufficiently that he had read it. Both the fern-sellers spoke better English than divers Lord Mayors and Knights to whom I have listened, for they neither omitted _h_ like the lowly, nor _r_ like the lofty ones of London.

The tinker's wife was afflicted with a nervous disorder, which caused her great suffering, and made it almost impossible for her to sell goods, or contribute anything to the joint support. Her husband always treated her with the greatest kindness; I have seldom seen an instance in which a man was more indulgent and gentle. He made no display whatever of his feelings; it was only little by little that I found out what a heart this imperturbable rough of the road possessed. Now the Palmer, who was always engaged in some wild act of unconscious benevolence, bought for her some medicine, and gave her an order on the first physician in the town for proper advice; the result being a decided amelioration of her health. And I never knew any human being to be more sincerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with crocus powder, "to put an edge on." He had a remarkably fine whetstone, "the best in England; it was worth half a sovereign," and this he often and vainly begged me to accept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an evening to the lodging-house, he would cunningly borrow my knife, and then disappear. Presently the _whiz-whiz_, _st'st_ of his wheel would be heard without, and then the artful dodger would reappear with a triumphant smile, and with the knife sharpened to a razor edge. Anent which grat.i.tude I shall have more to say anon.

One day I was walking on the Front, when I overtook a gypsy van, loaded with baskets and mats, lumbering along. The proprietor, who was a stranger to me, was also slightly or lightly lumbering in his gait, being cheerfully beery, while his berry brown wife, with a little three-year-old boy, peddled wares from door to door. Both were amazed and pleased at being accosted in Romany. In the course of conversation they showed great anxiety as to their child, who had long suffered from some disorder which caused them great alarm. The man's first name was Anselo, though it was painted Onslow on his vehicle. Mr. Anselo, though himself just come to town, was at once deeply impressed with the duty of hospitality to a Romany rye. I had called him _pal_, and this in gypsydom involves the shaking of hands, and with the better cla.s.s an extra display of courtesy. He produced half a crown, and declared his willingness to devote it all to beer for my benefit. I declined, but he repeated his offer several times,--not with any annoying display, but with a courteous earnestness, intended to set forth a sweet sincerity.

As I bade him good-by, he put the crown-piece into one eye, and as he danced backward, gypsy fashion up the street and vanished in the sunny purple twilight towards the sea I could see him winking with the other, and hear him cry, "Don't say no--now's the last chance--do I hear a bid?"

We found this family in due time at the lodging-house, where the little boy proved to be indeed seriously ill, and we at once discovered that the parents, in their ignorance, had quite misunderstood his malady and were aggravating it by mal-treatment. To these poor people the good Palmer also gave an order on the old physician, who declared that the boy must have died in a few days, had he not taken charge of him. As it was, the little fellow was speedily cured. There was, it appeared, some kind of consanguinity between the tinker or his wife and the Anselo family.

These good people, anxious to do anything, yet able to do little, consulted together as to showing their grat.i.tude, and noting that we were specially desirous of collecting old gypsy words gave us all they could think of, and without informing us of their intention, which indeed we only learned by accident a long time after, sent a messenger many miles to bring to Aberystwith a certain Bosville, who was famed as being deep in Romany lore, and in possession of many ancient words. Which was indeed true, he having been the first to teach us _pisali_, meaning a saddle, and in which Professor Cowell, of Cambridge, promptly detected the Sanskrit for sit-upon, the same double meaning also existing in _boshto_; or, as old Mrs. Buckland said to me at Oaklands Park, in Philadelphia, "a _pisali_ is the same thing with a _boshto_."

"What will gain thy faith?" said Quentin Durward to Hayradden Maugrabhin.

"Kindness," answered the gypsy.

The joint families, solely with intent to please us, although they never said a word about it, next sent for a young Romany, one of the Lees, and his wife whom they supposed we would like to meet. Walking along the Front, I met the tinker's wife with the handsomest Romany girl I ever beheld. In a London ball-room or on the stage she would have been a really startling beauty. This was young Mrs. Lee. Her husband was a clever violinist, and it was very remarkable that when he gave himself up to playing, with _abandon_ or self-forgetfulness, there came into his melodies the same wild gypsy expression, the same chords and tones, which abound in the music of the Austrian Tsigane. It was not my imagination which prompted the recognition; the Palmer also observed it, without thinking it remarkable. From the playing of both Mat Woods and young Lee, I am sure that there has survived among the Welsh gypsies some of the spirit of their old Eastern music, just as in the solo dancing of Mat's sister there was precisely the same kind of step which I had seen in Moscow. Among the hundreds of the race whom I have met in Great Britain, I have never known any young people who were so purely Romany as these. The tinker and Anselo with his wife had judged wisely that we would be pleased with this picturesque couple. They always seemed to me in the house like two wild birds, and tropical ones at that, in a cage.

There was a tawny-gold, black and scarlet tone about them and their garb, an Indian Spanish duskiness and glow which I loved to look at.

Every proceeding of the tinker and Anselo was veiled in mystery and hidden in the obscurity so dear to such grown-up children, but as I observed after a few days that Lee did nothing beyond acting as a.s.sistant to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised that the visit was solely for our benefit. As the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo and his dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave little fellow, and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and st.u.r.diness so greatly admired by the Romanys of the road; and when he would take a whip and lead the horse, or in other ways show his courage, the delight of his parents was in its turn delightful. They would look at the child as if charmed, and then at one another with feelings too deep for words, and then at me for sympathetic admiration.

The keeper of the house where they lodged was in his way a character and a linguist. Welsh was his native tongue and English his second best. He also knew others, such as Romany, of which he was proud, and the Shelta or Minklas of the tinkers, of which he was not. The only language which he knew of which he was really ashamed was Italian, and though he could maintain a common conversation in it he always denied that he remembered more than a few words. For it was not as the tongue of Dante, but as the lingo of organ-grinders and such "catenone" that he knew it, and I think that the Palmer and I lost dignity in his eyes by inadvertently admitting that it was familiar to us. "I shouldn't have thought it," was all his comment on the discovery, but I knew his thought, and it was that we had made ourselves unnecessarily familiar with vulgarity.

It is not every one who is aware of the extent to which Italian is known by the lower orders in London. It is not spoken as a language; but many of its words, sadly mangled, are mixed with English as a jargon. Thus the Italian _scappare_, to escape, or run away, has become _scarper_; and a dweller in the Seven Dials has been heard to say he would "_scarper_ with the _feele_ of the _donna_ of the _ca.s.sey_;" which means, run away with the daughter of the landlady of the house, and which, as the editor of the Slang Dictionary pens, is almost pure Italian,--_scappare colla figlia della donna_, _della casa_. Most costermongers call a penny a _saltee_, from _soldo_; a crown, a _caroon_; and one half, _madza_, from _mezza_. They count as follows:--

ITALIAN.

Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo.

Dooey saltee, twopence Dui soldi.

Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi.

Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi.

c.h.i.n.ker saltee, fivepence Cinque soldi.

Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi.

Say oney saltee, or setter Sette soldi.

saltee, sevenpence Say dooee saltee, or otter Otto soldi.

saltee, eightpence Say tray saltee, or n.o.bba saltee, Nove soldi.

ninepence Say quarterer saltee, or dacha Dieci soldi.

(datsha) saltee, tenpence Say c.h.i.n.ker saltee, or dacha one Dieci uno soldi saltee, elevenpence Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco.

A beong say saltee, one shilling Uno bianco sei soldi.