“And don’t you think, sir, that we’re of the children of the lost Ten Tribes?”
“I am quite sure that you never had a drop of blood in common with them. Tell me, do you know any Gipsy gilis—any songs?”
“Only a bit of a one, sir; most of it isn’t fit to sing, but it begins—”
And here he sang:
“Jal ’drée the ker my honey,
And you shall be my rom.”
And chanting this, after thanking me, he departed, gratified with his gratuity, rejoiced at his reception, and most undoubtedly benefited by the beer with which I had encouraged his palaver—a word, by the way, which is not inappropriate, since it contains in itself the very word of words, the lav, which means a word, and is most antiquely and excellently Gipsy. Pehlevi is old Persian, and to pen lavi is Rommany all the world over “to speak words.”
CHAPTER IV. GIPSY RESPECT FOR THE DEAD.
Gipsies and Comteists identical as to “Religion”—Singular Manner of Mourning for the Dead, as practised by Gipsies—Illustrations from Life—Gipsy Job and the Cigars—Oaths by the Dead—Universal Gipsy Custom of never Mentioning the Names of the Dead—Burying valuable Objects with the Dead—Gipsies, Comteists, Hegelians, and Jews—The Rev. James Crabbe.
Comte, the author of the Positivist philosophy, never felt the need of a religion until he had fallen in love; and at the present day his “faith” appears to consist in a worship of the great and wise and good among the dead. I have already spoken of many Gipsies reminding me, by their entirely unconscious ungodliness, of thorough Hegelians. I may now add, that, like the Positivists, they seem to correct their irreligion through the influence of love; and by a strange custom, which is, in spirit and fact, nothing less than adoring the departed and offering to the dead a singular sacrifice.
He who has no house finds a home in family and friends, whence it results that the Gipsy, despite his ferocious quarrels in the clan, and his sharp practice even with near relations, is—all things considered—perhaps the most devoted to kith and kin of any one in the world. His very name—rom, a husband—indicates it. His children, as almost every writer on him, from Grellmann down to the present day, has observed, are more thoroughly indulged and spoiled than any non-gipsy can conceive; and despite all the apparent contradictions caused by the selfishness born of poverty, irritable Eastern blood, and the eccentricity of semi-civilisation, I doubt if any man, on the whole, in the world, is more attached to his own.