“Hic jacet ille qui unus fuit inter mille!”
The charm has worked. But the little sharp-eared children remember it, and sing it over, and the more meaningless it sounds in their ears, the more mysterious does it become. And they never talk about the bundle—which when opened was found to contain only stones, sticks, 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 gypsy 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 on the roads in England who on hearing it would not exclaim, “There’s a great deal of Romanes in that ere!” And if any one doubts it let him try it on any gypsy who has an average knowledge of Romany.
I should say that the word Na-Kelas, which means literally “Do not play,” or, “You do not play,” was explained to me by a gypsy as signifying not speaking, or keeping quiet. Nicholas John has really no meaning, but “You don’t play—go on,” fits exactly into a counting-out game.
The mystery of mysteries in the Romany tongue—of which I have spoken—is this: The hokkani bāro, or huckeny boro, or great trick, consists of three parts. Firstly, the getting into a house or into the confidence of its owner, which is effected in England by offering small wares for sale, or by begging for food, but chiefly by fortune-telling, the latter being the usual pretence in America. If the gypsy woman be at all prepared, she will have learned enough to amaze “the lady of the house,” who is thereby made ready to believe anything. The second part of the trick is the conveying away the property, which is, as I have said, to lel dūdikabin, or “take lightning,” possibly connected with the old canting term for conveyance of bien lightment. There is evidently a confusion of words here. And third is to “chiv o manzin apré lāti” to put the oath upon her—the victim—by which she binds herself not to speak of the affair for some weeks. When the deceived are all under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has a safe thing of it.
The hākkani boro, or great trick, or dūdikabin, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practised by them all over the world, and is still played every day somewhere. And I have read in the Press of Philadelphia 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 doubtless lingered until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is easily evaded in Pennsylvania, delivered her.
Yet it is not a good country on the whole for hākkani boro, since the people, especially in the rural districts, have a rough and ready way of inflicting justice, which sadly interferes with the profits of aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy woman robbed a farmer of all he was worth. Now it is no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee resemble Indians in several respects, and when I saw thousands of them during the Civil War, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied these dark brown faces, high cheek-bones, and long, straight, wiry hair, that the American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee farmer and his friends reverted to it at any rate with a vengeance, for they turned out altogether, hunted the gypsies down, and having secured the sorceress, burned her alive at the stake. Which has been, as I believe, “an almighty warning” to the Romany in that sad section of the world. And thus in a single crime, and its consequence, we have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offence, an European Middle Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the Red Indian.
In the United States there is often to be found in a gypsy camp a negro or two who has with no great trouble adopted a life of perfect laziness. I infer that these men and brothers have not improved much in their morals, since a few years ago a coloured sorcerer appeared in Philadelphia, who, as I was assured, “persuaded half the niggers in Lombard Street to dig up their cellars to find treasure—and carried off all the treasures they had.” He had been, like Matthew Arnold’s scholar, among the tents of the Romany, and had learned their peculiar wisdom, and turned it to profit.
In Germany the Great Sorcery is practised with variations, and indeed in England or America or anywhere it is modified in many ways to suit the victims. The following methods are described by Dr. Richard Liebich, in “Die Zigeuner in ihrem Wesen und in ihrer Sprache” (Leipzig, 1863):—