GYPSY TRUTH.
“Master, you want me to tell you all the truth,—yes? If it’s a big or a little thing, I’ll tell the truth, so help me God, upon my life! The devil be in my soul if I tell the least lie! And what is it? Did I ever in all my life steal a chicken? and what do the gypsies do with the feathers, because nobody ever saw any near a gypsy tent? Never, sir,—I never stole a chicken; and in all the sixty years that I’ve been on the roads, in all that time I never saw or heard or knew of a gypsy’s stealing one. What’s that you say?—that Petulengro told you yesterday that he carried a gun to kill chickens! Ah yes, sir,—that is true, too. The man meant in his heart wood chickens [that is, pheasants]. But not domestic chickens. Gypsies never steal them.” [324]
CHOVIHANIPEN.
“Miri diri bībī, me kamāva butidiro tevel chovihani. Kāmāva ta dukker geeris te ta jin kūnjerni cola. Tu sosti sikker mengi sārakovi.”
“Oh miri kamli! vonka tu vissa te vel chovihani, te i Gorgie jinena lis, tu lesa buti tugnus. Sār i chavi tevel shellavrī, te kair a gudli te wūsser baria kánna dikena tute, te shyan i bori foki mérena tute. Awer kūshti se ta jin garini covva, kushti se vonka chori churkni jūva te sār i sweti chungen’ apré, jinela sā ta kair lende wafodopen ta pessur sār lenghis dūsh. Te man tevel sikker tute chomany chovihaneskes. Shun! Vonka tu kamesa pen o dukkerin, lesa tu sār tiro man [325] ta latcher ajafera a manush te manushī lis se. Dé lende o yack, chiv lis drován opā lakis yakka tevel se rakli. Vonka se pash trasherdo yoi tevel pen būti talla jinaben. Kánna tu sos kédo lis sórkon chérus tu astis risser buti dinneli chaia sa tav trūstal tiro āngushtri. Kennā-sig tiri yakka dikena pensa sappa, te vonka tu shan hoïni tu tevel dikk pens’ o puro beng. O pāshno covva mīri deari se ta jin sā ta plasser, te kāmer, te masher foki. Vanka rakli lela chumeni kek-siglo adré lakis mūi, tu sastis pen laki adovo sikerela buti bāk. Kánna lela lulli te safráni balia, pen lāki adovo se tatcho sigaben yoi sasti lel buti sonakei. Kánna lakis koria wena ketenes, dovo sikerela yoi tevel ketni buti barveli rya. Pen sarjā vonka tu dikesa o latch apré lākis cham, talla lakis kor, te vaniso, adovos sigaben yoi tevel a bori rāni. Mā kessur tu ki lo se, ’pré o truppo te pré o bull, pen lāki sarjā o latch adoi se sigaben o
boridirines. Hammer laki apré. Te dikessa tu yoi lela bitti wastia te bitti piria, pen lāki trūstal a rye ko se divius pā rinkeni pīria, te sā o rinkeno wast anela kūmi bacht te rinkno mūi. Hammerin te kāmerin te masherin te shorin shan o pāsh o dukkerin. Se kek rakli te kekno mush adré mi duvel’s chollo-tem savo ne se boïno te hunkari pā chomani, te sī tu astis latcher sā se tu susti lel lender wongur. Stastis, latcher sār o rakkerben apré foki.
“Awer miri bibi, adovos sar hokkanipen. Me kamāva buti ta sikker tachni chovihanipen. Pen mandy sī nanei tachi chovahanis, te sā yol dikena.”
“O tachi chovihani miri chavi, lela yakka pensa chiriclo, o kunsus se rikkeredo apré pensa bongo chiv. Buti Yahūdi, te nebollongeri lena jafri yakka. Te cho’hani balia shan rikkerdi pa lākis ankairoben te surri, te adenna risserdi. Vonka Gorgikani cho’hani lena shelni yākka, adulli shan i trasheni.
“Me penava tuki chomani sirines. Vonka tu latchesa o pori te o sasterni krafni, te anpāli tu latchesa cuttor fon papiros, tu sastis chin apré lis sār o pori savo tu kamesa, te hā lis te tu lesa lis. Awer tu sasti chin sār tīro noko rātt. Sī tu latchessa pāsh o lon-doeyav o boro matcheskro-bar, te o puro curro, chiv lis keti kan, shunesa godli. Tevel tastis kana pordo chone peshela, besh sar nangi adré lakis dūd hefta ratti, te shundes adré lis, sarrāti o gudli te vel tachodiro, te anpāle tu shunesa i feris rakerena sig adosta. Vonka tu keresa hev sār o bar adré o mulleskri-tan, jasa tu adoi yeck ratti pāsh a waver te kennā-sig tu shunesa sā i mūlia rakerena. Sorkon-chirus penena ki lovo se garrido. Sastis lel o bar te risser lis apré o mulleskri-tan, talla hev si kédo.
“Me penāva tūki apopli chomani cho’haunes. Le
vini o sar covva te suverena apré o pani, pā lenia, pā doeyav. Te asar i paneskri mullos kon jivena adré o pani rakkerena keti pūveskri chovihanīs. Si manūsh dikela pāno panna, te partan te diklo apré o pani te lela lis, adovo sikela astis lel a pireni, o yuzhior te o kushtidir o partan se, o kushtidir i rakli. Sī latchesa ran apré o pani, dovo sikela sastis kūr tiro wafedo geero. Chokka or curro apré o pāni penela tu tevel sig atch kāmelo sar tiri pīreni, te pireno. Te safrāni rūzhia pā pāni dukerena sonaki, te pauni, rupp, te loli, kammaben.”
“Kána latchesa klisin, dovo se būti bacht. Vonka haderesa lis apré, pen o manusheskro te rakleskri nav, te yān wena kamlo o tute. Butidir bacht sī lullo dori te tav. Rikker lis, sikela kushti kāmaben. Man nasher lis avrī tiro zī miri chavi.”
“Nanei, bibi, kekker.”
WITCHCRAFT. [327]
“My dear aunt, I wish very much to be a witch. I would like to enchant people and to know secret things. You can teach me all that.”
“Oh, my darling! if you come to be a witch, and the Gentiles know it, you will have much trouble. All the children will cry aloud, and make a noise and throw stones at you when they see you, and perhaps the grown-up people will kill you. But it is nice to know secret things; pleasant for a poor old humble woman whom all the world spits upon to know how to do them evil and pay them for their cruelty. And I will teach you something of witchcraft. Listen!
When thou wilt tell a fortune, put all thy heart into finding out what kind of a man or woman thou hast to deal with. Look [keenly], fix thy glance sharply, especially if it be a girl. When she is half-frightened, she will tell you much without knowing it. When thou shalt have often done this thou wilt be able to twist many a silly girl like twine around thy fingers. Soon thy eyes will look like a snake’s, and when thou art angry thou wilt look like the old devil. Half the business, my dear, is to know how to please and flatter and allure people. When a girl has anything unusual in her face, you must tell her that it signifies extraordinary luck. If she have red or yellow hair, tell her that is a true sign that she will have much gold. When her eyebrows meet, that shows she will be united to many rich gentlemen. Tell her always, when you see a mole on her cheek or her forehead or anything, that is a sign she will become a great lady. Never mind where it is, on her body,—tell her always that a mole or fleck is a sign of greatness. Praise her up. And if you see that she has small hands or feet, tell her about a gentleman who is wild about pretty feet, and how a pretty hand brings more luck than a pretty face. Praising and petting and alluring and crying-up are half of fortune-telling. There is no girl and no man in all the Lord’s earth who is not proud and vain about something, and if you can find it out you can get their money. If you can, pick up all the gossip about people.”
“But, my aunt, that is all humbug. I wish much to learn real witchcraft. Tell me if there are no real witches, and how they look.”
“A real witch, my child, has eyes like a bird, the corner turned up like the point of a curved pointed
knife. Many Jews and un-Christians have such eyes. And witches’ hairs are drawn out from the beginning [roots] and straight, and then curled [at the ends]. When Gentile witches have green eyes they are the most [to be] dreaded.
“I will tell you something magical. When you find a pen or an iron nail, and then a piece of paper, you should write on it with the pen all thou wishest, and eat it, and thou wilt get thy wish. But thou must write all in thy own blood. If thou findest by the sea a great shell or an old pitcher [cup, etc.], put it to your ear: you will hear a noise. If you can, when the full moon shines sit quite naked in her light and listen to it; every night the noise will become more distinct, and then thou wilt hear the fairies talking plainly enough. When you make a hole with a stone in a tomb go there night after night, and erelong thou wilt hear what the dead are saying. Often they tell where money is buried. You must take a stone and turn it around in the tomb till a hole is there.
“I will tell you something more witchly. Observe [take care] of everything that swims on water, on rivers or the sea. For so the water-spirits who live in the water speak to the earth’s witches. If a man sees cloth on the water and gets it, that shows he will get a sweetheart; the cleaner and nicer the cloth, the better the maid. If you find a staff [stick or rod] on the water, that shows you will beat your enemy. A shoe or cup floating on the water means that you will soon be loved by your sweetheart. And yellow flowers [floating] on the water foretell gold, and white, silver, and red, love.
“When you find a key, that is much luck. When you pick [lift it] up, utter a male or female name,
and the person will become your own. Very lucky is a red string or ribbon. Keep it. It foretells happy love. Do not let this run away from thy soul, my child.”
“No, aunt, never.”
THE ORIGIN OF THE GYPSIES.
This chapter contains in abridged form the substance of papers on the origin of the gypsies and their language, read before the London Philological Society; also of another paper read before the Oriental Congress at Florence in 1878; and a resumé of these published in the London Saturday Review.
It has been repeated until the remark has become accepted as a sort of truism, that the gypsies are a mysterious race, and that nothing is known of their origin. And a few years ago this was true; but within those years so much has been discovered that at present there is really no more mystery attached to the beginning of these nomads than is peculiar to many other peoples. What these discoveries or grounds of belief are I shall proceed to give briefly, my limits not permitting the detailed citation of authorities. First, then, there appears to be every reason for believing with Captain Richard Burton that the Jāts of Northwestern India furnished so large a proportion of the emigrants or exiles who, from the tenth century, went out of India westward, that there is very little risk in assuming it as an hypothesis, at least, that they formed the Hauptstamm of the gypsies of Europe. What other elements entered into these, with whom we are all familiar, will be considered presently. These gypsies came from India, where caste is established and callings are hereditary even
among out-castes. It is not assuming too much to suppose that, as they evinced a marked aptitude for certain pursuits and an inveterate attachment to certain habits, their ancestors had in these respects resembled them for ages. These pursuits and habits were that
They were tinkers, smiths, and farriers.
They dealt in horses, and were naturally familiar with them.
They were without religion.
They were unscrupulous thieves.
Their women were fortune-tellers, especially by chiromancy.
They ate without scruple animals which had died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig, which, when it has thus been “butchered by God,” is still regarded even by prosperous gypsies in England as a delicacy.
They flayed animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar detested callings that in several European countries they long monopolized them.
They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles of wood.
They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers, acrobats; and it is a rule almost without exception that there is hardly a traveling company of such performers or a theatre, in Europe or America, in which there is not at least one person with some Romany blood.
Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they retain it longer than do Europeans or ordinary Orientals.
They speak an Aryan tongue, which agrees in the
main with that of the Jāts, but which contains words gathered from other Indian sources. This is a consideration of the utmost importance, as by it alone can we determine what was the agglomeration of tribes in India which formed the Western gypsy.
Admitting these as the peculiar pursuits of the race, the next step should be to consider what are the principal nomadic tribes of gypsies in India and Persia, and how far their occupations agree with those of the Romany of Europe. That the Jāts probably supplied the main stock has been admitted. This was a bold race of Northwestern India, which at one time had such power as to obtain important victories over the caliphs. They were broken and dispersed in the eleventh century by Mahmoud, many thousands of them wandering to the West. They were without religion, “of the horse, horsey,” and notorious thieves. In this they agree with the European gypsy. But they are not habitual eaters of mullo bālor, or “dead pork;” they do not devour everything like dogs. We cannot ascertain that the Jāt is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and basket maker, a rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a peddler. We do not know whether they are peculiar in India among the Indians for keeping their hair unchanged to old age, as do pure-blood English gypsies. All of these things are, however, markedly characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers, or gypsies, in India. From this we conclude, hypothetically, that the Jāt warriors were supplemented by other tribes,—chief among these may have been the Dom,—and that the Jāt element has at present disappeared, and been supplanted by the lower type.
The Doms are a race of gypsies found from Central
India to the far northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appears as the Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan. In “The People of India,” edited by J. Forbes Watson and J. W. Kaye (India Museum, 1868), we are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a marked difference from those of the people who surround them (in Behar). The Hindus admit their claim to antiquity. Their designation in the Shastras is Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater. They are wanderers; they make baskets and mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings on it. They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling all dead bodies. They eat all animals which have died a natural death, and are particularly fond of pork of this description. “Notwithstanding profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white.” The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers. Travelers speak of them as “gypsies.” A specimen which we have of their language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English gypsy, and be called pure Romany. Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective gypsydom, Domnipana. D in Hindustani is found as r in English gypsy speech,—e.g., doi, a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as roi. Now in common Romany we have, even in London,—
Rom . . . A gypsy.
Romni . . . A gypsy wife.
Romnipen . . . Gypsydom.
Of this word rom I shall have more to say. It may be observed that there are in the Indian Dom certain distinctly-marked and degrading features, characteristic of the European gypsy, which are out of keeping with the habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the caliphs. Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making baskets, eating carrion, being given to drunkenness, does not agree with anything we can learn of the Jāts. Yet the European gypsies are all this, and at the same time “horsey” like the Jāts. Is it not extremely probable that during the “out-wandering” the Dom communicated his name and habits to his fellow-emigrants?
The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other European gypsies appears to link them with the Luri of Persia. These are distinctly gypsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves, fortune-tellers, and minstrels. The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that about the year 420 a.d. Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels, male and female, called Luri. Though lands were allotted to them, with corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds. Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:—
“They bear a marked affinity to the gypsies of Europe. [335] They speak a dialect peculiar to themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping and pilfering. Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and monkeys that are broke in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks. In each company there are always two or three members who profess . . . modes of divining, which procure them a ready admission into every society.”
This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and monkeys, identifies them with the Ričinari, or bear-leading gypsies of Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania. A party of these lately came to England. We have seen these Syrian Ričinari in Egypt. They are unquestionably gypsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied the early migration of Jāts and Doms.
The Nāts or Nuts are Indian wanderers, who, as Dr. J. Forbes Watson declares, in “The People of India,” “correspond to the European gypsy tribes,” and were in their origin probably identical with the Luri. They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents. They eat everything, except garlic. There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by travelers as “gypsies.” They are traveling merchants or peddlers. Among all these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in England. This slang extends even into Persia. Each tribe has its own, but the name for the generally spoken lingua franca is Rom.
It has never been pointed out, however, by any writer, that there is in Northern and Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded, even by the Nāts and Doms and Jāts themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly gypsy. There are, however, such wanderers, and the manner in which I became aware of their existence was, to say the least, remarkable. I was going one day along the Marylebone Road when I
met a very dark man, poorly clad, whom I took for a gypsy; and no wonder, as his eyes had the very expression of the purest blood of the oldest families. To him I said,—
“Rakessa tu Romanes?” (Can you talk gypsy?)
“I know what you mean,” he answered in English. “You ask me if I can talk gypsy. I know what those people are. But I’m a Mahometan Hindu from Calcutta. I get my living by making curry powder. Here is my card.” Saying this he handed me a piece of paper, with his name written on it: John Nano.
“When I say to you, ‘Rakessa tu Romanes?’ what does it mean?”
“It means, ‘Can you talk Rom?’ But rakessa is not a Hindu word. It’s Panjabī.”
I met John Nano several times afterwards and visited him in his lodgings, and had him carefully examined and cross-questioned and pumped by Professor Palmer of Cambridge, who is proficient in Eastern tongues. He conversed with John in Hindustani, and the result of our examination was that John declared he had in his youth lived a very loose life, and belonged to a tribe of wanderers who were to all the other wanderers on the roads in India what regular gypsies are to the English Gorgio hawkers and tramps. These people were, he declared, “the real gypsies of India, and just like the gypsies here. People in India called them Trablūs, which means Syrians, but they were full-blood Hindus, and not Syrians.” And here I may observe that this word Trablūs which is thus applied to Syria, is derived from Tripoli. John was very sure that his gypsies were Indian. They had a peculiar language, consisting
of words which were not generally intelligible. “Could he remember any of these words?” Yes. One of them was manro, which meant bread. Now manro is all over Europe the gypsy word for bread. John Nano, who spoke several tongues, said that he did not know it in any Indian dialect except in that of his gypsies. These gypsies called themselves and their language Rom. Rom meant in India a real gypsy. And Rom was the general slang of the road, and it came from the Roms or Trablūs. Once he had written all his autobiography in a book. This is generally done by intelligent Mahometans. This manuscript had unfortunately been burned by his English wife, who told us that she had done so “because she was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not read.”
Reader, think of losing such a life! The autobiography of an Indian gypsy,—an abyss of adventure and darksome mysteries, illuminated, it may be, with vivid flashes of Dacoitee, while in the distance rumbled the thunder of Thuggism! Lost, lost, irreparably lost forever! And in this book John had embodied a vocabulary of the real Indian Romany dialect. Nothing was wanting to complete our woe. John thought at first that he had lent it to a friend who had never returned it. But his wife remembered burning it. Of one thing John was positive: Rom was as distinctively gypsy talk in India as in England, and the Trablūs are the true Romanys of India.
What here suggests itself is, how these Indian gypsies came to be called Syrian. The gypsies which roam over Syria are evidently of Indian origin; their language and physiognomy both declare it plainly. I offer as an hypothesis that bands of gypsies who
have roamed from India to Syria have, after returning, been called Trablūs, or Syrians, just as I have known Germans, after returning from the father-land to America, to be called Americans. One thing, however, is at least certain. The Rom are the very gypsies of gypsies in India. They are thieves, fortune-tellers, and vagrants. But whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish. Their language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that the word rom, like dom, is one of wide dissemination, dūm being a Syrian gypsy word for the race. And the very great majority of even English gypsy words are Hindi, with an admixture of Persian, and do not belong to a slang of any kind. As in India, churi is a knife, nāk the nose, balia hairs, and so on, with others which would be among the first to be furnished with slang equivalents. And yet these very gypsies are Rom, and the wife is a Romni, and they use words which are not Hindu in common with European gypsies. It is therefore not improbable that in these Trablūs, so called through popular ignorance, as they are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at least of the real stock. It is to be desired that some resident in India would investigate the Trablūs. It will probably be found that they are Hindus who have roamed from India to Syria and back again, here and there, until they are regarded as foreigners in both countries.
Next to the word rom itself, the most interesting in Romany is zingan, or tchenkan, which is used in twenty or thirty different forms by the people of every country, except England, to indicate the gypsy. An incredible amount of far-fetched erudition has
been wasted in pursuing this philological ignis fatuus. That there are leather-working and saddle-working gypsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a fair basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar gypsies of Jāt affinity in the Punjab. Wonderful it is that in this war of words no philologist has paid any attention to what the gypsies themselves say about it. What they do say is sufficiently interesting, as it is told in the form of a legend which is intrinsically curious and probably ancient. It is given as follows in “The People of Turkey,” by a Consul’s Daughter and Wife, edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, London, 1878: “Although the gypsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to be founded upon a strange legend current in the country. This legend says that when the gypsy nation were driven out of their country (India), and arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a wheel was attached.” From the context of this imperfectly told story, it would appear as if the gypsies could not travel farther until this wheel should revolve:—
“Nobody appeared to be able to turn it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only when he had married his sister Guin. The chief accepted the advice, the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident became that of the combined names of the brother and sister, Chenguin, the appellation of all the gypsies of Turkey at the present day.”
The legend goes on to state that in consequence of
this unnatural marriage the gypsies were cursed and condemned by a Mahometan saint to wander forever on the face of the earth. The real meaning of the myth—for myth it is—is very apparent. Chen is a Romany word, generally pronounced chone, meaning the moon; [341a] while guin is almost universally given as gan or kan. That is to say, Chen-gan or -kan, or Zin-kan, is much commoner than Chen-guin. Now kan is a common gypsy word for the sun. George Borrow gives it as such, and I myself have heard Romanys call the sun kan, though kam is commoner, and is usually assumed to be right. Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun. And it may be remarked in this connection, that the neighboring Roumanian gypsies, who are nearly allied to the Turkish, have a wild legend stating that the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister, was condemned as the sun to wander forever in pursuit of her, after she was turned into the moon. A similar legend exists in Greenland [341b] and in the island of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish. It is in fact a spontaneous myth, or one of the kind which grow up from causes common to all races. It would be natural, to any imaginative savage, to regard the sun and moon as brother and sister. The next step would be to think of the one as regularly pursuing the other over the heavens, and to this chase an erotic cause would naturally be assigned. And as the pursuit is interminable, the pursuer never attaining his aim, it would be in time regarded as a penance. Hence it comes that in the most distant and different
lands we have the same old story of the brother and the sister, just as the Wild Hunter pursues his bride.
It was very natural that the gypsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with that of these luminaries. That they have a tendency to assimilate the idea of a wanderer and pilgrim to that of the Romany, or to Romanipen, is shown by the assertion once made to me by an English gypsy that his people regarded Christ as one of themselves, because he was always poor, and went wandering about on a donkey, and was persecuted by the Gorgios. It may be very rationally objected by those to whom the term “solar myth” is as a red rag, that the story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek. Everything about it indicates an Indian origin, and if it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted as the possible origin of the greatly disputed word zingan. It is quite as plausible as Dr. Miklosich’s very far-fetched derivation from the Acingani,—’Ατσίyανοι,—an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century. The mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon story came from India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name. And if gypsies call themselves or are called Jen-gan, or Chenkan, or Zingan, in the East, especially if they were so called by Persian poets, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name from the Gorgios of Europe. It is really extraordinary that all the philologists who have toiled to derive the word zingan from a Greek
or Western source have never reflected that if it was applied to the race at an early time in India or Persia all their speculations must fall to the ground.
One last word of John Nano, who was so called from two similar Indian words, meaning “the pet of his grandfather.” I have in my possession a strange Hindu knife, with an enormously broad blade, perhaps five or six inches broad towards the end, with a long handle richly mounted in the purest bronze with a little silver. I never could ascertain till 1 knew him what it had been used for. Even the old ex-king of Oude, when he examined it, went wrong on it. Not so John Nano.
“I know well enough what that knife is. I have seen it before,—years ago. It is very old, and it was long in use; it was the knife used by the public executioner in Bhotan. It is Bhotanī.”
By the knife hangs the ivory-handled court-dagger which belonged to Francis II. of France, the first husband of Mary Queen of Scots. I wonder which could tell the strangest story of the past!
“It has cut off many a head,” said John Nano, “and I have seen it before!”
I do not think that I have gone too far in attaching importance to the gypsy legend of the origin of the word chen-kan or zingan. It is their own, and therefore entitled to preference over the theories of mere scholars; it is Indian and ancient, and there is much to confirm it. When I read the substance of this chapter before the Philological Society of London, Prince Lucien Bonaparte,—who is beyond question a great philologist, and one distinguished for vast research,—who was in the chair, seemed, in his comments on my paper, to consider this sun and
moon legend as frivolous. And it is true enough that German symbolizers have given us the sun myth to such an extent that the mere mention of it in philology causes a recoil. Then, again, there is the law of humanity that the pioneer, the gatherer of raw material, who is seldom collector and critic together, is always assailed. Columbus always gets the chains and Amerigo Vespucci the glory. But the legend itself is undeniably of the gypsies and Indian.
It is remarkable that there are certain catch-words, or test-words, among old gypsies with which they try new acquaintances. One of these is kekkávi, a kettle; another, chinamangrī, a bill-hook, or chopper (also a letter), for which there is also another word. But I have found several very deep mothers in sorcery who have given me the word for sun, kam, as a precious secret, but little known. Now the word really is very well known, but the mystery attached to it, as to chone or shule, the moon, would seem to indicate that at one time these words had a peculiar significance. Once the darkest-colored English gypsy I ever met, wishing to sound the depth of my Romany, asked me for the words for sun and moon, making more account of my knowledge of them than of many more far less known.
As it will interest the reader, I will here give the ballad of the sun and the moon, which exists both in Romany and Roumani, or Roumanian, in the translation which I take from “A Winter in the City of Pleasure” (that is Bucharest), by Florence K. Berger,—a most agreeable book, and one containing two Chapters on the Tzigane, or gypsies.
THE SUN AND THE MOON.
Brother, one day the Sun resolved to marry. During nine years, drawn by nine fiery horses, he had rolled by heaven and earth as fast as the wind or a flying arrow.
But it was in vain that he fatigued his horses. Nowhere could he find a love worthy of him. Nowhere in the universe was one who equaled in beauty his sister Helen, the beautiful Helen with silver tresses.
The Sun went to meet her, and thus addressed her: “My dear little sister Helen, Helen of the silver tresses, let us be betrothed, for we are made for one another.
“We are alike not only in our hair and our features, but also in our beauty. I have locks of gold, and thou hast locks of silver. My face is shining and splendid, and thine is soft and radiant.”
“O my brother, light of the world, thou who art pure of all stain, one has never seen a brother and sister married together, because it would be a shameful sin.”
At this rebuke the Sun hid himself, and mounted up higher to the throne of God, bent before Him, and spoke:—
“Lord our Father, the time has arrived for me to wed. But, alas! I cannot find a love in the world worthy of me except the beautiful Helen, Helen of the silver hair!”
God heard him, and, taking him by the hand, led him into hell to affright his heart, and then into paradise to enchant his soul.
Then He spake to him, and while He was speaking
the Sun began to shine brightly and the clouds passed over:—
“Radiant Sun! Thou who art free from all stain, thou hast been through hell and hast entered paradise. Choose between the two.”
The Sun replied, recklessly, “I choose hell, if I may have, for a life, Helen, Helen of the shining silver hair.”
The Sun descended from the high heaven to his sister Helen, and ordered preparation for his wedding. He put on her forehead the waving gold chaplet of the bride, he put on her head a royal crown, he put on her body a transparent robe all embroidered with fine pearls, and they all went into the church together.
But woe to him, and woe to her! During the service the lights were extinguished, the bells cracked while ringing, the seats turned themselves upside down, the tower shook to its base, the priests lost their voices, and the sacred robes were torn off their backs.
The bride was convulsed with fear. For suddenly, woe to her! an invisible hand grasped her up, and, having borne her on high, threw her into the sea, where she was at once changed into a beautiful silver fish.
The Sun grew pale and rose into the heaven. Then descending to the west, he plunged into the sea to search for his sister Helen, Helen of the shining silver hair.
However, the Lord God (sanctified in heaven and upon the earth) took the fish in his hand, cast it forth into the sky, and changed it anew into the moon.
Then He spoke. And while God was speaking the entire universe trembled, the peaks of the mountains bowed down, and men shivered with fear.
“Thou, Helen of the long silver tresses, and thou resplendent Sun, who are both free from all stain, I condemn you for eternity to follow each other with your eyes through space, without being ever able to meet or to reach each other upon the road of heaven. Pursue one another for all time in traveling around the skies and lighting up the world.”
* * * * *
Fallen from a high estate by sin, wicked, and therefore wandering: it was with such a story of being penitent pilgrims, doomed for a certain space to walk the earth, that the gypsies entered Europe from India, into Islam and into Christendom, each time modifying the story to suit the religion of the country which they invaded. Now I think that this sun and moon legend is far from being frivolous, and that it conforms wonderfully well with the famous story which they told to the Emperor Sigismund and the Pope and all Europe, that they were destined to wander because they had sinned. When they first entered Europe, the gypsies were full of these legends; they told them to everybody; but they had previously told them to themselves in the form of the Indian sun and moon story. This was the root whence other stories grew. As the tale of the Wandering Jew typifies the Hebrew, so does this of the sun and moon the Romany.
A GYPSY MAGIC SPELL.
There is a meaningless rhyme, very common among children. It is repeated while counting off those who are taking part in a game, and allotting to each a place. It is as follows:—
“Ekkeri akkery u-kery an
Fillisi’, follasy, Nicolas John
Queebee-quābee—Irishman.
Stingle ’em—stangle ’em—buck!”
With a very little alteration in sounds, and not more than children make of these verses in different places, this may be read as follows:—
“’Ekkeri, akai-ri, you kair—án.
Filissin follasy. Nakelas jā’n.
Kivi, kavi. Irishman.
Stini—stani—buck!”
This is nonsense, of course, but it is Romany, or gypsy, and may be translated:—
“First—here—you begin.
Castle—gloves. You don’t play. Go on!
Kivi—kettle. How are you?
Stini—buck—buck.”
The common version of the rhyme begins with:—
“One ’eri—two-ery, ékkeri—án.”
But one-ry is the exact translation of ékkeri; ek or yek being one. And it is remarkable that in
“Hickory dickory dock,
The rat ran up the clock;
The clock struck one,
And down he run,
Hickory dickory dock.”
We have hickory or ekkeri again, followed by a significant one. It may be observed that while, the first verses abound in Romany words, I can find no trace of any in other child-rhymes of the kind. It is also clear that if we take from the fourth line the ingle ’em, angle ’em, evidently added for mere jingle, there remains stan or stani, “a buck,” followed by the very same word in English.
With the mournful examples of Mr. Bellenden Kerr’s efforts to show that all our old proverbs and tavern signs are Dutch, and Sir William Betham’s Etruscan-Irish, I should be justly regarded as one of the too frequent seekers for mystery in moonshine if I declared that I positively believed this to be Romany. Yet it is possible that it contains gypsy words, especially “fillissi,’ follasy,” which mean exactly château and gloves, and I think it not improbable that it was once a sham charm used by some Romany fortune-teller to bewilder Gorgios. Let the reader imagine the burnt-sienna wild-cat eyed old sorceress performing before a credulous farm-wife and her children the great ceremony of hākk’ni pānki, which Mr. Borrow calls hokkani boro, but for which there is a far deeper name,—that of the great secret,—which even my best friends among the Romany tried to conceal from me. This feat is performed by inducing some woman of largely magnified faith to believe that there is hidden in her house a magic treasure, which can only be made to come to hand by depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by
natural affinity and attraction. “For gold, as you sees, my deari, draws gold, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher and leaves it, you’ll find it doubled. An’ wasn’t there the Squire’s lady, and didn’t she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where they’d laid in a old grave,—and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; an’ I hope you’ll do better by the poor old gypsy, my deari --- ---.”
The gold and all the spoons are tied up,—for, as the enchantress observes, there may be silver too,—and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles give the only light. The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her cloak he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again, and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the bundle must not be touched or spoken of for three weeks. “Every word you tell about it, my-deari will be a guinea gone away.” Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said.
Back to the farmer’s wife never again. After three weeks another Extraordinary instance of gross credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the school-master. There is wailing and shame in the house,—perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years have beer swept away. The charm has worked.
But the little sharp-eared children remember it and sing it, and the more meaningless it is in their ears the more mysterious does it sound. And they never talk about the bundle, which when opened was found to contain only sticks, stones, and rags, without repeating it. So it goes from mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it passes current for even worse nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however,—and the remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the language,—that there is a Romany turn to even the roughest corners of these rhymes. Kivi, stingli, stangli, are all gypsyish. But, as I have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses of the kind. There is nothing of it in
“Intery, mintery, cutery corn”—
or in anything else in Mother Goose. It is alone in its sounds and sense,—or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer of the roads who on hearing it would not explain, “Rya, there’s a great deal of Romanes in that ere.”
I should also say that the word na-kelas or né-kelas, which I here translate differently, was once explained to me at some length by a gypsy as signifying “not speaking,” or “keeping quiet.”
Now the mystery of mysteries of which I have spoken in the Romany tongue is this. The hokkani boro, or great trick, consists of three parts. Firstly, the telling of a fortune, and this is to pen dukkerin or pen durkerin. The second part is the conveying away of the property, which is to lel dūdikabin, or to take lightning, possibly connected with the very old English slang term of bien lightment. There is evidently a great confusion of words here. And the third is to
“chiv o manzin apré lati,” or to put the oath upon her, which explains itself. When all the deceived are under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has “a safe thing of it.”
The hokkani boro, or great trick, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practiced by them all over the world, it is still played every day somewhere. This chapter was written long ago in England. I am now in Philadelphia, and here I read in the “Press” of this city that a Mrs. Brown, whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine, who walks before the world in other names, was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the grand deception. And Mrs. Brown, good old Mrs. Brown, went to prison, where she will linger until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is evaded in Pennsylvania, delivers her.
Yet it is not a good country, on the whole, for hokkani boro, since the people here, especially in the rural districts, have a rough-and-ready way of inflicting justice which interferes sadly with the profits of aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy woman robbed a farmer by the great trick of all he was worth. Now it is no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee greatly resemble Indians in certain respects, and when I saw thousands of them, during the war, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied their dark brown faces, high cheek bones, and long straight black hair, that the American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee farmer and his neighbors,
at any rate, reverted very strongly indeed to the original type when robbed by the gypsies, for they turned out all together, hunted them down, and, having secured the sorceress, burned her alive at the stake. And thus in a single crime and its punishment we have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offense, an European Middle-Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the red Indians.
SHELTA, THE TINKERS’ TALK.
“So good a proficient in one quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life.”—King Henry the Fourth.
One summer day, in the year 1876, I was returning from a long walk in the beautiful country which lies around Bath, when, on the road near the town, I met with a man who had evidently grown up from childhood into middle age as a beggar and a tramp. I have learned by long experience that there is not a so-called “traveler” of England or of the world, be he beggar, tinker, gypsy, or hawker, from whom something cannot be learned, if one only knows how to use the test-glasses and proper reagents. Most inquirers are chiefly interested in the morals—or immorals—of these nomads. My own researches as regards them are chiefly philological. Therefore, after I had invested twopence in his prospective beer, I addressed him in Romany. Of course he knew a little of it; was there ever an old “traveler” who did not?
“But we are givin’ Romanes up very fast,—all of us is,” he remarked. “It is a gettin’ to be too blown. Everybody knows some Romanes now. But there is a jib that ain’t blown,” he remarked reflectively. “Back slang an’ cantin’ an’ rhymin’ is grown vulgar,
and Italian always was the lowest of the lot; thieves kennick is genteel alongside of organ-grinder’s lingo, you know. Do you know anythin’ of Italian, sir?”
“I can rakker it pretty flick” (talk it tolerably), was my reply.
“Well I should never a penned [thought] sitch a swell gent as you had been down so low in the slums. Now Romanes is genteel. I heard there’s actilly a book about Romanes to learn it out of. But as for this other jib, its wery hard to talk. It is most all Old Irish, and they calls it Shelter.”
This was all that I could learn at that time. It did not impress me much, as I supposed that the man merely meant Old Irish. A year went by, and I found myself at Aberystwith, the beautiful sea-town in Wales, with my friend Professor Palmer—a palmer who has truly been a pilgrim outre-mer, even by Galilee’s wave, and dwelt as an Arab in the desert. One afternoon we were walking together on that end of the beach which is the antithesis of the old Norman castle; that is, at the other extremity of the town, and by the rocks. And here there was a little crowd, chiefly of young ladies, knitting and novel-reading in the sun, or watching children playing on the sand. All at once there was an alarm, and the whole party fled like partridges, skurrying along and hiding under the lee of the rocks. For a great rock right over our heads was about to be blasted. So the professor and I went on and away, but as we went we observed an eccentric and most miserable figure crouching in a hollow like a little cave to avoid the anticipated falling stones.
“Dikk ó dovo mush adoi a gavverin lester kokero!” (Look at that man there, hiding himself!) said the
professor in Romanes. He wished to call attention to the grotesque figure without hurting the poor fellow’s feelings.
“Yuv’s atrash o’ ye baryia” (He is afraid of the stones), I replied.
The man looked up. “I know what you’re saying, gentlemen. That’s Romany.”
“Jump up, then, and come along with us.”
He followed. We walked from rock to rock, and over the sand by the sea, to a secluded nook under a cliff. Then, seated around a stone table, we began our conversation, while the ocean, like an importunate beggar, surfed and foamed away, filling up the intervals with its mighty roaring language, which poets only understand or translate:—
“Thus far, and then no more:”
Such language speaks the sounding sea
To the waves upon the shore.
Our new acquaintance was ragged and disreputable. Yet he held in his hand a shilling copy of “Helen’s Babies,” in which were pressed some fern leaves.
“What do you do for a living?” I asked.
“Shelkin gallopas just now,” he replied.
“And what is that?”
“Selling ferns. Don’t you understand? That’s what we call it in Minklers Thari. That’s tinkers’ language. I thought as you knew Romanes you might understand it. The right name for it is Shelter or Shelta.”
Out came our note-books and pencils. So this was the Shelter of which I had heard. He was promptly asked to explain what sort of a language it was.
“Well, gentlemen, you must know that I have no
great gift for languages. I never could learn even French properly. I can conjugate the verb être,—that is all. I’m an ignorant fellow, and very low. I’ve been kicked out of the lowest slums in Whitechapel because I was too much of a blackguard for ’em. But I know rhyming slang. Do you know Lord John Russell?”
“Well, I know a little of rhyming, but not that.”
“Why, it rhymes to bustle.”
“I see. Bustle is to pick pockets.”
“Yes, or anything like it, such as ringing the changes.”
Here the professor was “in his plate.” He knows perfectly how to ring the changes. It is effected by going into a shop, asking for change for a sovereign, purchasing some trifling article, then, by ostensibly changing your mind as to having the change, so bewilder the shopman as to cheat him out of ten shillings. It is easily done by one who understands it. The professor does not practice this art for the lucre of gain, but he understands it in detail. And of this he gave such proofs to the tramp that the latter was astonished.
“A tinker would like to have a wife who knows as much of that as you do,” he remarked. “No woman is fit to be a tinker’s wife who can’t make ten shillings a day by glantherin. Glantherin or glad’herin is the correct word in Shelter for ringing the changes. As for the language, I believe it’s mostly Gaelic, but it’s mixed up with Romanes and canting or thieves’ slang. Once it was the common language of all the old tinkers. But of late years the old tinkers’ families are mostly broken up, and the language is perishing.”
Then he proceeded to give us the words in Shelta, or Minklers Thari. They were as follows:—
| Shelkin gallopas | Selling ferns. |
| Soobli, Soobri | Brother, friend—a man. |
| Bewr | Woman. |
| Gothlin or goch’thlin | Child. |
| Young bewr | Girl. |
| Durra, or derra | Bread. |
| Pani | Water (Romany). |
| Stiff | A warrant (common cant). |
| Yack | A watch (cant, i.e. bull’s eye, Yack, an eye in Romany). |
| Mush-faker | Umbrella mender. |
| Mithani (mithni) | Policeman. |
| Ghesterman (ghesti) | Magistrate. |
| Needi-mizzler | A tramp. |
| Dinnessy | Cat. |
| Stall | Go, travel. |
| Biyêghin | Stealing. |
| Biyêg | To steal. |
| Biyêg th’eenik | To steal the thing. |
| Crack | A stick. |
| Monkery | Country. |
| Prat | Stop, stay, lodge. |
| Nêd askan | Lodging. |
| Glantherin (glad’herin) | Money, swindling. |
This word has a very peculiar pronunciation.
Can you thari Shelter? Can you bug Shelta? Can you talk tinkers’ language?
| Shelter, shelta | Tinker’s slang. |
| Lárkin | Girl. |
Curious as perhaps indicating an affinity between the Hindustani larki, a girl, and the gypsy rakli.
| Snips | Scissors (slang). |
| Dingle fakir | A bell-hanger. |
| Dunnovans | Potatoes. |
| Fay (vulgarly fee) | Meat. |
Our informant declared that there are vulgar forms of certain words.
| Gladdher | Ring the changes (cheat in change). |
“No minkler would have a bewr who couldn’t gladdher.”
| Reesbin | Prison. |
| Tré-moon | Three months, a ‘drag.’ |
| Rauniel, Runniel | Beer. |
| Max | Spirits (slang). |
| Chiv | Knife. (Romany, a pointed knife, i.e. tongue.) |
| Thari | To speak or tell. |
“I tharied the soobri I sonnied him.” (I told the man I saw him.)
Mushgraw.
Our informant did not know whether this word, of Romany origin, meant, in Shelta, policeman or magistrate.
| Scri, scree | To write. |
Our informant suggested scribe as the origin of this word.
| Reader | A writ. |
“You’re readered soobri.” (You are put in the “Police Gazette,” friend.)
Our informant could give only a single specimen of the Shelta literature. It was as follows:—
“My name is Barney Mucafee,
With my borers and jumpers down to my thee (thigh).
An’ it’s forty miles I’ve come to kerrb yer pee.”
This vocabulary is, as he declared, an extremely imperfect specimen of the language. He did not claim to speak it well. In its purity it is not mingled with Romany or thieves’ slang. Perhaps some student of English dialects may yet succeed in recovering it all. The pronunciation of many of the words is singular, and very different from English or Romany.
Just as the last word was written down, there came up a woman, a female tramp of the most hardened
kind. It seldom happens that gentlemen sit down in familiar friendly converse with vagabonds. When they do they are almost always religious people, anxious to talk with the poor for the good of their souls. The talk generally ends with a charitable gift. Such was the view (as the vagabond afterwards told us) which she took of our party. I also infer that she thought we must be very verdant and an easy prey. Almost without preliminary greeting she told us that she was in great straits,—suffering terribly,—and appealed to the man for confirmation, adding that if we would kindly lend her a sovereign it should be faithfully repaid in the morning.
The professor burst out laughing. But the fern-collector gazed at her in wrath and amazement.
“I say, old woman,” he cried; “do you know who you’re rakkerin [speaking] to? This here gentleman is one of the deepest Romany ryes [gypsy gentlemen] a-going. And that there one could gladdher you out of your eye-teeth.”
She gave one look of dismay,—I shall never forget that look,—and ran away. The witch had chanced upon Arbaces. I think that the tramp had been in his time a man in better position. He was possibly a lawyer’s clerk who had fallen into evil ways. He spoke English correctly when not addressing the beggar woman. There was in Aberystwith at the same time another fern-seller, an elderly man, as wretched and as ragged a creature as I ever met. Yet he also spoke English purely, and could give in Latin the names of all the plants which he sold. I have always supposed that the tinkers’ language spoken of by Shakespeare was Romany; but I now incline to think it may have been Shelta.
Time passed, and “the levis grene” had fallen
thrice from the trees, and I had crossed the sea and was in my native city of Philadelphia. It was a great change after eleven years of Europe, during ten of which I had “homed,” as gypsies say, in England. The houses and the roads were old-new to me; there was something familiar-foreign in the voices and ways of those who had been my earliest friends; the very air as it blew hummed tunes which had lost tones in them that made me marvel. Yet even here I soon found traces of something which is the same all the world over, which goes ever on “as of ever,” and that was the wanderer of the road. Near the city are three distinct gypsyries, where in summer-time the wagon and the tent may be found; and ever and anon, in my walks about town, I found interesting varieties of vagabonds from every part of Europe. Italians of the most Bohemian type, who once had been like angels,—and truly only in this, that their visits of old were few and far between,—now swarmed as fruit dealers and boot-blacks in every lane; Germans were of course at home; Czechs, or Slavs, supposed to be Germans, gave unlimited facilities for Slavonian practice; while tinkers, almost unknown in 1860, had in 1880 become marvelously common, and strange to say were nearly all Austrians of different kinds. And yet not quite all, and it was lucky for me they were not. For one morning, as I went into the large garden which lies around the house wherein I wone, I heard by the honeysuckle and grape-vine a familiar sound,—suggestive of the road and Romanys and London, and all that is most traveler-esque. It was the tap, tap, tap of a hammer and the clang of tin, and I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled at the end of the garden a tinker was near. And I advanced to him, and as he glanced up and
greeted, I read in his Irish face long rambles on the roads.
“Good-morning!”
“Good-mornin’, sorr!”
“You’re an old traveler?”
“I am, sorr.”
“Can you rakker Romanes?”
“I can, sorr!”
“Pen yer nav.” (Tell your name.)
“Owen ---, sorr.”
A brief conversation ensued, during which we ascertained that we had many friends in common in the puro tem or Ould Country. All at once a thought struck me, and I exclaimed,—
“Do you know any other languages?”
“Yes, sorr: Ould Irish an’ Welsh, an’ a little Gaelic.”
“That’s all?”
“Yes, sorr, all av thim.”
“All but one?”
“An’ what’s that wan, sorr?”
“Can you thari shelta, sublī?”
No tinker was ever yet astonished at anything. If he could be he would not be a tinker. If the coals in his stove were to turn to lumps of gold in a twinkle, he would proceed with leisurely action to rake them out and prepare them for sale, and never indicate by a word or a wink that anything remarkable had occurred. But Owen the tinker looked steadily at me for an instant, as if to see what manner of man I might be, and then said,—
“Shelta, is it? An’ I can talk it. An’ there’s not six min livin’ as can talk it as I do.”
“Do you know, I think it’s very remarkable that you can talk Shelta.”
“An’ begorra, I think it’s very remarkable, sorr, that ye should know there is such a language.”
“Will you give me a lesson?”
“Troth I will.”
I went into the house and brought out a note-book. One of the servants brought me a chair. Owen went on soldering a tin dish, and I proceeded to take down from him the following list of words in Shelta:
There you are, readers! Make good cheer of it, as Panurge said of what was beyond him. For what this language really is passeth me and mine. Of Celtic origin it surely is, for Owen gave me every syllable so garnished with gutturals that I, being even less of one of the Celtes than a Chinaman, have not succeeded in writing a single word according to his pronunciation of it. Thus even Minklers sounds more like minkias, or pikias, as he gave it.
To the foregoing I add the numerals and a few phrases:—
This was said within hearing of and in reference to a bevy of servants, of every hue save white, who were in full view in the kitchen, and who were manifestly deeply interested and delighted in our interview, as well as in the constant use of my note-book, and our conference in an unknown tongue, since Owen and I spoke frequently in Romany.
| That bhoghd out yer mailya | You let that fall from your hand. |
I also obtained a verse of a ballad, which I may not literally render into pure English:—
“Cosson kailyah corrum me morro sari,
Me gul ogalyach mir;
Rāhet mānent trasha moroch
Me tu sosti mo dīēle.”“Coming from Galway, tired and weary,
I met a woman;
I’ll go bail by this time to-morrow,
You’ll have had enough of me.”
Me tu sosti, “Thou shalt be (of) me,” is Romany, which is freely used in Shelta.
The question which I cannot solve is, On which of the Celtic languages is this jargon based? My informant declares that it is quite independent of Old
Irish, Welsh, or Gaelic. In pronunciation it appears to be almost identical with the latter; but while there are Gaelic words in it, it is certain that much examination and inquiry have failed to show that it is contained in that language. That it is “the talk of the ould Picts—thim that built the stone houses like beehives”—is, I confess, too conjectural for a philologist. I have no doubt that when the Picts were suppressed thousands of them must have become wandering outlaws, like the Romany, and that their language in time became a secret tongue of vagabonds on the roads. This is the history of many such lingoes; but unfortunately Owen’s opinion, even if it be legendary, will not prove that the Painted People spoke the Shelta tongue. I must call attention, however, to one or two curious points. I have spoken of Shelta as a jargon; but it is, in fact, a language, for it can be spoken grammatically and without using English or Romany. And again, there is a corrupt method of pronouncing it, according to English, while correctly enunciated it is purely Celtic in sound. More than this I have naught to say.
Shelta is perhaps the last Old British dialect as yet existing which has thus far remained undiscovered. There is no hint of it in John Camden Hotten’s Slang Dictionary, nor has it been recognized by the Dialect Society. Mr. Simson, had he known the “Tinklers” better, would have found that not Romany, but Shelta, was the really secret language which they employed, although Romany is also more or less familiar to them all. To me there is in it something very weird and strange. I cannot well say why; it seems as if it might be spoken by witches and talking toads, and uttered by the Druid stones, which are
fabled to come down by moonlight to the water-side to drink, and who will, if surprised during their walk, answer any questions. Anent which I would fain ask my Spiritualist friends one which I have long yearned to put. Since you, my dear ghost-raisers, can call spirits from the vasty deep of the outside-most beyond, will you not—having many millions from which to call—raise up one of the Pictish race, and, having brought it in from the Ewigkeit, take down a vocabulary of the language? Let it be a lady par préference,—the fair being by far the more fluent in words. Moreover, it is probable that as the Picts were a painted race, woman among them must have been very much to the fore, and that Madame Rachels occupied a high position with rouge, enamels, and other appliances to make them young and beautiful forever. According to Southey, the British blue-stocking is descended from these woad-stained ancestresses, which assertion dimly hints at their having been literary. In which case, voilà notre affaire! for then the business would be promptly done. Wizards of the secret spells, I adjure ye, raise me a Pictess for the sake of philology—and the picturesque!