“Bawris! The Hungarian Gipsies call it a bouro. But in Germany the Rommanis say stārgōli. I wonder why a snail should be a stārgōli.”
“I know,” cried the brother, eagerly. “When you put a snail on the fire it cries out and squeaks just like a little child. Stārgōli means ‘four cries.’”
I had my doubts as to the accuracy of this startling derivation, but said nothing. The same Gipsy on a subsequent occasion, being asked what he would call a roan horse in Rommany, replied promptly—
“A matchno grai”—a fish-horse.
“Why a matchno grai?”
“Because a fish has a roan (i.e., roe), hasn’t it? Leastways I can’t come no nearer to it, if it ain’t that.”
But he did better when I was puzzling my brain, as the learned Pott and Zippel had done before me, over the possible origin of churro or tchurro, “a ball, or anything round,” when he suggested—
“Ryá—I should say that as a churro is round, and a curro or cup is round, and they both sound alike and look alike, it must be all werry much the same thing.” [{33}]
“Can you tell me anything more about snails?” I asked, reverting to a topic which, by the way, I have observed is like that of the hedgehog, a favourite one with Gipsies.
“Yes; you can cure warts with the big black kind that have no shells.”