TRANSLATION.
THE WATER VILLAGE, Dec. 16, 1871.
MY DEAR DAUGHTER,—Good luck! my love to your husband and your father, and best luck! We’ve had bad fortune, my sister has been sick this here week, we’re doing very badly and could not get any money. Your two brothers are doing well, running about the country selling things. Your old uncle came to his sister and stayed three days, and went away like an old dog and never gave me a penny.
Nothing much new. A girl here took a watch the other day from another girl, and the one who lost it said: “Give it back to me and I won’t hurt you.” But the other girl said “No,” and so they sent for the constable. He took the girl to the station (or carriage), and just before she got there she put her hand in her pocket and threw it away, and the policeman picked it up. So they sent her to prison.
I have no horse, and can’t get any money to buy none. My dear daughter, if you could send me a few pounds it would be agreeable. I carry my traps on my back now. I saw my uncle the other day among a lot of Gipsies, all drinking. There were the women fighting there, and the men fighting, and there was a great shindy, some with black eyes, and some with heads cut so that the blood ran down on the road. There were two or three pounds to pay in the morning for the horses and asses that were in the pound.
Your brother has got a capital horse that can go along the road nicely. L---, too, has a large fine horse. He went to the fair in --- with a broken-winded horse and a glandered. You could have killed that horse and nobody said a word to you. I gave it some lard to stop his breathing, and I sold it for nine pound to a gentleman whom you know well.
Lotty was at the fair telling fortunes to the ladies. She got some excellent food, and her apron was quite full, when she saw her husband and cried out: “Come here! I’ve got some nice victuals!” She said to a girl: “Put you money in your hand and I’ll tell you your fortune.” And she took half a sovereign from the lady. She told her: “You love a gentleman who is far away. He is dark, and there is another gentleman, a fair-haired man that loves you, and you’ll soon get a letter. You’ll marry before two years, and be the mother of three children.”
There was a horse going with a waggon along the road; and I saw a youth, and asked him, “How much money?” (for the horse), and he replied to me, “Ten pounds.” I said, “Is that your horse?” “Yes.” Well, a Gipsy gave him ten pounds for the horse, and sold it for twelve pounds to a great gentleman. It was a good black horse, with a (handsome) strong leg (literally large), but it had a bad foot; it was the near foot, and it was a kicker. He gave it some opium medicament to keep quiet (literally to stop there), and held his rein (i.e., trotted him so as to show his pace, and conceal his faults) on the road.
At the cock-shy a gentleman came, and Wantelo halloed out, “Three sticks for a penny, eighteen for a sixpence!” And the gentleman took a stick, and we had five shillings for three dozen throws! The gentleman played well, and got five cocoanuts, and took us to his carriage and gave me three glasses of brandy, so that I was almost drunk. He was a good gentleman, and his lady was as good as her husband.
There was another man playing; and I said, “Set the sticks more back, set ’em there; don’t go further or he’ll get all the things! Set ’em back!” A Gipsy girl talked to the gentlemen (i.e., persuaded them to play), and got fifteen shillings from one. And no more to-day from your dear brother,
M.
* * * * *
One thing in the foregoing letter is worth noting. Every remark or incident occurring in it is literally true—drawn from life—pur et simple. It is, indeed, almost the resumé of the entire life of many poor Gipsies during the summer. And I may add that the language in which it is written, though not the “deep” or grammatical Gipsy, in which no English words occur—as for instance in the Lord’s Prayer, as given by Mr Borrow in his appendix to the Gipsies in Spain [{70}]—is still really a fair specimen of the Rommany of the present day, which is spoken at races by cock-shysters and fortune-tellers.
The “Water Village,” from which it is dated, is the generic term among Gipsies for all towns by the sea-side. The phrase kushto (or kushti), bak!—“good luck!” is after “Sarishan!” or “how are you?” the common greeting among Gipsies. The fight is from life and to the life; and the “two or three pounds to pay in the morning for the horses and asses that got impounded,” indicates its magnitude. To have a beast in pound in consequence of a frolic, is a common disaster in Gipsy life.
During the dictation of the foregoing letter, my Gipsy paused at the word “broken-winded horse,” when I asked him how he could stop the heavy breathing?
“With ballovas (or lard and starch)—long enough to sell it.”
“But how would you sell a glandered horse?”
Here he described, with great ingenuity, the manner in which he would tool or manage the horse—an art in which Gipsies excel all the world over—and which, as Mr Borrow tells us, they call in Spain “de pacuaró,” which is pure Persian.
“But that would not stop the running. How would you prevent that?”
“I don’t know.”
“Then I am a better graiengro than you, for I know a powder, and with a penny’s worth of it I could stop the glanders in the worst case, long enough to sell the horse. I once knew an old horse-dealer who paid sixty pounds for a nokengro (a glandered horse) which had been powdered in this way.”
The Gipsy listened to me in great admiration. About a week afterwards I heard he had spoken of me as follows:—
“Don’t talk about knowing. My rye knows more than anybody. He can cheat any man in England selling him a glandered horse.”
Had this letter been strictly confined to the limits originally intended, it would have spoken only of the sufferings of the family, the want of money, and possibly, the acquisition of a new horse by the brother. In this case it bears a decided family-likeness to the following letter in the German-Gipsy dialect, which originally appeared in a book entitled, Beytrag zur Rottwellischen Grammatik, oder Wörterbuch von der Zigeuner Spracke, Leipzig 1755, and which was republished by Dr A. F. Pott in his stupendous work, Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien. Halle, 1844.