No. 36.—Happy Boz’ll
Wonst upon a time there was a Romano, and his name was Happy Boz’ll, and he had a German-silver grinding-barrow, and he used to put his wife and his child on the top, [[130]]and he used to go that quick along the road he’d beat all the coaches. Then he thought this grinding-barrow was too heavy and clumsy to take about, and he cut it up and made tent-rods of it. And then his donkey got away, and he didn’t know where it was gone to; and one day he was going by the tent, and he said to himself, ‘Bless my soul, wherever’s that donkey got to?’ And there was a tree close by, and the donkey shouted out and said, ‘I’m here, my Happy, getting you a bit o’ stick to make a fire.’ Well, the donkey came down with a lot of sticks, and he had been up the tree a week, getting firewood. Well then, Happy had a dog, and he went out one day, the dog one side the hedge, and him the other. And then he saw two hares. The dog ran after the two; and as he was going across the field, he cut himself right through with a scythe; and then one half ran after one hare, and the other after the other. Then the two halves of the dog catched the two hares; and then the dog smacked together again; and he said, ‘Well, I’ve got ’em, my Happy’; and then the dog died. And Happy had a hole in the knee of his breeches, and he cut a piece of the dog’s skin, after it was dead, and sewed it in the knee of his breeches. And that day twelve months his breeches-knee burst open, and barked at him. And so that’s the end of Happy Boz’ll.
Also Münchausen-like; but I believe it was largely this story, which I printed on p. 160 of my In Gypsy Tents, that led the great Lazarus Petulengro to remark once to Mr. Sampson, ‘Isn’t it wonderful, sir, that a real gentleman could have wrote such a thing—nothing but low language and povertiness, and not a word of grammar or high-learned talk in it from beginning to end.’
We have a third Gypsy lying story, a Welsh-Gypsy one. Matthew Wood’s father had, like a good many Gypsies, a contempt for folk-tales, and, when called on for his turn, he always gave this, the very shortest one:—‘There were a naked man and a blind man and a lame man. The blind man saw a hare, and the lame man ran and caught it, and the naked man put it in his pocket.’ Cf. Grimm’s No. 159, ‘The Ditmarsch Tale of Wonders’ (ii. 230, 452). Indian lying stories occur in Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, Nos. 4, 8, 17.
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[1] See footnote 2 on p. 16. [↑]
[2] The meaning of these three words is obscure. According to Miklosich, they are a magic formula with which the boy summons the empress from her grave behind the door. Or, perhaps, at this point the boy shows his pearly teeth. [↑]
[3] Slov. Vah, Ger. Waag, a river of Northern Hungary. [↑]
[4] By rights this question should be put to the grand-parents. [↑]
[5] Zenele, a Roumanian loan-word, is rendered ‘zenæ’ in the Latin translation; ‘böse weibliche Genien,’ ‘evil feminine spirits,’ in the vocabulary. [↑]
[6] She says much worse in the original. [↑]
[7] This phrase occurs also in our No. 24, in a Wallachian story cited by Hahn (ii. 312), and, if I mistake not, in Ralston, but I have mislaid the exact reference. The Romani trúshul, cross, is from the Sanskrit trisula, the trident of Siva. [↑]
[9] Cf. the very curious ‘Story of Lelha’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 80:—Boots, the youngest brother, presses his three brothers ‘to attempt the removal of the stone, so they and others to the number of fifty tried their strength, but the stone remained immovable. Then Lelha said, “Stand by, and allow me to try.” So putting to his hand, he easily removed it, and revealed the entrance to the mansion of the Indarpuri Kuri.’ [↑]
[10] Cf. Hahn, i. 140, lines 4–7. [↑]
[12] Ruthenian mountaineers of the Carpathians. [↑]
[13] With this episode of the horse compare that of the pony in ‘Brave Seventee Bai’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 3, p. 30). [↑]
[14] That is, of course, the prince’s poor little blow had seemed to her like a caress. [↑]
[15] Cf. footnote on p. 80. [↑]
[16] This, it seems, is the comrade’s name. [↑]
[17] A very Gypsy touch this, for the fiddlers of course would be Gypsies, so the meanness of dispensing with their services would appeal to the Gypsy mind. [↑]
[18] Observe, he had become a seer already. [↑]
[19] Lit. they raised him on the hands. [↑]
[20] See footnotes on p. 16. [↑]
[21] No use is made of these. Was the ship to be made of them? [↑]
[22] Hahn has the selfsame story up to this point, only not so well told, ‘Von dem Schönen und vom Drakos’ (No. 3, i. 75–79, and ii. 178–86). [↑]
[23] As a kind of block evidently. I do not remember this elsewhere. [↑]
[24] It should be remembered that Austro-Hungarian Gypsies have all to serve in the army. [↑]
[25] The text runs, ‘So he, the king’s son,’ etc., but this makes nonsense. [↑]
[26] This inquiry as to the secret of the hero’s strength should by rights be made, not by the emperor, but by a former lover. [↑]
[27] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33, 35. [↑]
[28] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33. [↑]
[29] This suggests that the cat and the princess really were one. Cf. footnote on No. 46. [↑]
[30] Cf. footnote 2, p. 16. [↑]
[31] Cf. note on the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Brigands and the Miller’s Daughter,’ No 47, p. 171. [↑]