His jaw fell; a glossy film came over his panther-eyes. For a long time he had spoken to me, had this good and virtuous man, of going to America. Suddenly he broke out with this vehement answer—
“I won’t go to that country—s’up mi duvel! I’ll never go to America.”
It is told of a certain mother, that on showing her darling boy a picture in the Bible representing Daniel in the lions’ den, she said, “And there is good Daniel, and there are those naughty lions, who are going to eat him all up.” Whereupon the dear boy cried out, “O mother, look at that poor little lion in the corner—he won’t get any.”
It is from this point of view that such affairs are naturally regarded by the Rommany.
There is a strange goblinesque charm in Gipsydom—something of nature, and green leaves, and silent nights—but it is ever strangely commingled with the forbidden; and as among the Greeks of old with Mercury amid the singing of leafy brooks, there is a tinkling of, at least, petty larceny. Witness the following, which came forth one day from a Gipsy, in my presence, as an entirely voluntary utterance. He meant it for something like poetry—it certainly was suggested by nothing, and as fast as he spoke I wrote it down:—
“It’s kushto in tattoben for the Rommany chals. Then they can jāl langs the drum, and hatch their tan acai and odoi pré the tem. We’ll lel moro habben acai, and jāl andūrer by-an’-byus, an’ then jāl by rātti, so’s the Gorgios won’t dick us. I jins a kūshti puv for the graias; we’ll hatch ’pré in the sala, before they latcher we’ve been odoi, an’ jāl an the drum an’ lel moro habben.”
“It is pleasant for the Gipsies in the summer-time. Then they can go along the road, and pitch their tent here and there in the land. We’ll take our food here, and go further on by-and-by, and then go by night, so that the Gorgios won’t see us. I know a fine field for the horses; we’ll stop there in the morning, before they find we have been there, and go on the road and eat our food.”
“I suppose that you often have had trouble with the gavengroes (police) when you wished to pitch your tent?”
Now it was characteristic of this Gipsy, as of many others, that when interested by a remark or a question, he would reply by bursting into some picture of travel, drawn from memory. So he answered by saying—
“They hunnelo’d the choro puro mush by pennin’ him he mustn’t hatch odoi. ‘What’s tute?’ he pens to the prastramengro; ‘I’ll del you thrin bar to lel your chuckko offus an’ koor mandy. You’re a ratfully jucko an’ a huckaben.’”