I have never heard of the evil eye among the lower orders of English, but among Gipsies a belief in it is as common as among Hindus, and both indicate it by the same word, seer or sihr. In India sihr, it is true, is applied to enchantment or magic in general, but in this case the whole may very well stand for a part. I may add that my own communications on the subject of the jettatura, and the proper means of averting it by means of crab’s claws, horns, and the usual sign of the fore and little finger, were received by a Gipsy auditor with great faith and interest.
To show, teach, or learn, is expressed in Gipsy by the word sikker, sig, or seek. The reader may not be aware that the Sikhs of India derive their name from the same root, as appears from the following extract from Dr Paspati’s études: “Sikava, v. prim. 1 cl. 1 conj. part, siklo’, montrer, apprendre. Sanskrit, s’iks’, to learn, to acquire science; siksáka, adj., a learner, a teacher. Hindustani, seek’hna, v.a., to learn, to acquire; seek’h, s.f., admonition.” I next inquired why they were called Seeks, and they told me it was a word borrowed from one of the commandments of their founder, which signifies ‘learn thou,’ and that it was adopted to distinguish the sect soon after he disappeared. The word, as is well known, has the same import in the Hindoovee” (“Asiatic Researches,” vol. i. p. 293, and vol. ii. p. 200). This was a noble word to give a name to a body of followers supposed to be devoted to knowledge and truth.
The English Gipsy calls a mermaid a pintni; in Hindu it is bint ool buhr, a maid of the sea. Bero in Gipsy is the sea or a ship, but the Rommany had reduced the term to the original bint, by which a girl is known all over the East.
“Ya bint’ Eeskenderéyeh.”
Stan is a word confounded by Gipsies with both stand, a place at the races or a fair, and tan, a stopping-place, from which it was probably derived. But it agrees in sound and meaning with the Eastern stan, “a place, station,” and by application “country,” so familiar to the reader in Hindustan, Iranistan, Beloochistan, and many other names. It is curious to find in the Gipsy tan not only the root-word of a tent, but also the “Alabama,” or “here we rest,” applied by the world’s early travellers to so many places in the Morning Land.
Slang does not mean, as Mr Hotten asserts, the secret language of the Gipsies, but is applied by them to acting; to speaking theatrical language, as in a play; to being an acrobat, or taking part in a show. It is a very old Gipsy word, and indicates plainly enough the origin of the cant word “slang.” Using other men’s words, and adopting a conventional language, strikes a Gipsy as artificial; and many men not Gipsies express this feeling by speaking of conventional stage language as “theatrical slang.” Its antiquity and origin appear in the Hindu swángí, an actor; swang, mockery, disguise, sham; and swang lena, to imitate. As regards the sound of the words, most English Gipsies would call swang “slang” as faithfully as a Cockney would exchange hat with ’at.
Deepest among deep words in India is tat, an element, a principle, the essence of being; but it is almost amusing to hear an English Gipsy say “that’s the tátto (or tāt) of it,” meaning thereby “the thing itself,” the whole of it. And thus the ultimate point of Brahma, and the infinite depth of all transcendental philosophy, may reappear in a cheap, portable, and convenient form, as a declaration that the real meaning of some mysterious transaction was that it amounted to a sixpenny swindle at thimble-rig; for to such base uses have the Shaster and the Vedas come in England.
It is, however, pleasant to find the Persian bahar, a garden, recalling Bahar Danush, the garden of knowledge (Hindustani, bāgh), reappearing in the English Gipsy bar. “She pirryed adrée the bar lellin ruzhers.” “She walked in the garden plucking flowers.” And it is also like old times and the Arabian Nights at home, to know that bazaar is a Gipsy word, though it be now quite obsolete, and signifies no longer a public street for shops, but an open field.
But of all words which identify the Gipsies with the East, and which prove their Hindu origin, those by which they call themselves Rom and Romni are most conclusive. In India the Dom caste is one of the lowest, whose business it is for the men to remove carcasses, while the Domni, or female Dom, sings at weddings. Everything known of the Dom identifies them with Gipsies. As for the sound of the word, any one need only ask the first Gipsy whom he meets to pronounce the Hindu d or the word Dom, and he will find it at once converted into l or r. There are, it is true, other castes and classes in India, such as Nāts, the roving Banjaree, Thugs, &c., all of which have left unmistakable traces on the Gipsies, from which I conclude that at some time when these pariahs became too numerous and dangerous there was a general expulsion of them from India. [{124}]
I would call particular attention to my suggestion that the Corn of India is the true parent of the Rom, because all that is known of the former caste indicates an affinity between them. The Dom pariahs of India who carry out or touch dead bodies, also eat the bodies of animals that have died a natural death, as do the Gipsies of England. The occupation of the Domni and Romni, dancing and making music at festivals, are strikingly allied. I was reminded of this at the last opera which I witnessed at Covent Garden, on seeing stage Gipsies introduced as part of the fête in “La Traviata.”