“A’ter my juva mullered, if I dicked a waver rakli with lakis’nav, an’ mandy was a rākkerin lāki, mandy’d pen ajaw a waver geeri’s nav, an rakker her by a waver nav:—dovo’s to pen I’d lel some bongonav sar’s Polly or Sukey. An’ it was the sār covva with my dādes nav—if I dicked a mush with a nav that simmed leskers, mandy’d rākker him by a waver nav. For ’twould kair any mush wafro to shoon the navyas of the mullas a’t ’were cāmmoben to him.”
Or in English, “After my wife died, if I saw another girl with her name, and I was talking to her, I’d speak another woman’s name, and call her by another name; that’s to say, I’d take some nick-name, such as Polly or Sukey. And it was the same thing with my father’s name—if I saw a man with a name that was the same as his (literally, ‘that samed his’), I’d call him by another name. For ’twould make any man grieve (lit. ‘bad’) to hear the names of the dead that were dear to him.”
I suppose that there are very few persons, not of Gipsy blood, in England, to whom the information will not be new, that there are to be found everywhere among us, people who mourn for their lost friends in this strange and touching manner.
Another form of respect for the departed among Gipsies, is shown by their frequently burying some object of value with the corpse, as is, however, done by most wild races. On questioning the same Gipsy last alluded to, he spoke as follows on this subject, I taking down his words:—
“When Job mullered and was chivved adrée the puv, there was a nevvi kushto-dickin dui chākkas pakkered adrée the mullo mokto. Dighton penned a mandy the waver divvus, that trin thousand bars was gavvered posh yeck o’ the Chilcotts. An I’ve shooned o’ some Stanleys were buried with sonnakai wongashees apré langis wastos. ‘Do sar the Rommany chals kair adovo?’ Kek. Some chivs covvas pāsh the mullos adrée the puv, and boot adusta don’t.”
In English: “When Job died and was buried, there was a new beautiful pair of shoes put in the coffin (lit. corpse-box). Dighton told me the other day, that three thousand pounds were hidden with one of the Chilcotts. And I have heard of some Stanleys who were buried with gold rings on their fingers. ‘Do all the Gipsies do that?’ No! some put things with the dead in the earth, and many do not.”
Mr Liebich further declares, that while there is really nothing in it to sustain the belief, this extraordinary reverence and regard for the dead is the only fact at all indicating an idea of the immortality of the soul which he has ever found among the Gipsies; but, as he admits, it proves nothing. To me, however, it is grimly grotesque, when I return to the disciples of Comte—the Positivists—the most highly cultivated scholars of the most refined form of philosophy in its latest stage, and find that their ultimate and practical manifestation of la religion, is quite the same as that of those unaffected and natural Positivists, the Gipsies. With these, as with the others, our fathers find their immortality in our short-lived memories, and if among either, some one moved by deep love—as Auguste was by the eyes of Clotilda—has yearned for immortality with the dear one, and cursed in agony Annihilation, he falls upon the faith founded in ancient India, that only that soul lives for ever which has done so much good on earth, as to leave behind it in humanity, ineffaceable traces of its elevation.
Verily, the poor Gipsies would seem, to a humourist, to have been created by the devil, whose name they almost use for God, a living parody and satanic burlesque of all that human faith, doubt, or wisdom, have ever accomplished in their highest forms. Even to the weakest minded and most uninformed manufacturers of “Grellmann-diluted” pamphlets, on the Gipsies, their parallel to the Jews is most apparent. All over the world this black and God-wanting shadow dances behind the solid Theism of “The People,” affording proof that if the latter can be preserved, even in the wildest wanderings, to illustrate Holy Writ—so can gipsydom—for no apparent purpose whatever. How often have we heard that the preservation of the Jews is a phenomenon without equal? And yet they both live—the sad and sober Jew, the gay and tipsy Gipsy, Shemite and Aryan—the one so ridiculously like and unlike the other, that we may almost wonder whether Humour does not enter into the Divine purpose and have its place in the Destiny of Man. For my own part, I shall always believe that the Heathen Mythology shows a superiority to any other, in one conception—that of Loki, who into the tremendous upturnings of the Universe always inspires a grim grotesqueness; a laughter either diabolic or divine.
Judaism, which is pre-eminently the principle of religious belief:—the metaphysical emancipation and enlightenment of Germany, and the materialistic positivism of France, are then, as I have indicated, nowhere so practically and yet laughably illustrated as by the Gipsy. Free from all the trammels of faith, and, to the last degree, indifferent and rationalistic, he satisfies the demands of Feuerbach; devoted to the positive and to the memory of the dead, he is the ideal of the greatest French philosophy, while as a wanderer on the face of the earth—not neglectful of picking up things en route—he is the rather blurred facsimile of the Hebrew, the main difference in the latter parallel being that while the Jews are God’s chosen people, the poor Gipsies seem to have been selected as favourites by that darker spirit, whose name they have naïvely substituted for divinity:—Nomen et omen.
I may add, however, in due fairness, that there are in England some true Gipsies of unmixed blood, who—it may be without much reflection—have certainly adopted ideas consonant with a genial faith in immortality, and certain phases of religion. The reader will find in another chapter a curious and beautiful Gipsy custom recorded, that of burning an ash fire on Christmas-day, in honour of our Saviour, because He was born and lived like a Gipsy; and one day I was startled by bearing a Rom say “Miduvel hatch for mandy an’ kair me kushto.”—My God stand up for me and make me well. “That” he added, in an explanatory tone, “is what you say when you’re sick.” These instances, however, indicate no deep-seated conviction, though they are certainly curious, and, in their extreme simplicity, affecting. That truly good man, the Rev. James Crabb, in his touching little book, “The Gipsies’ Advocate,” gave numbers of instances of Gipsy conversions to religion and of real piety among them, which occurred after their minds and feelings had been changed by his labours; indeed, it would seem as if their lively imaginations and warm hearts render them extremely susceptible to the sufferings of Jesus. But this does not in the least affect the extraordinary truth that in their nomadic and natural condition, the Gipsies, all the world over, present the spectacle, almost without a parallel, of total indifference to, and ignorance of, religion, and that I have found true old-fashioned specimens of it in England.