“Āvo, rya,” he cried, eagerly turning to me, as if delighted and astonished that I had found out the truth. “That’s just what they all pens of me, an’ just what I seen ’em a-doin’ every time.”
“You know all the police,” I remarked. “Do you know any turnkeys?”
He reflected an instant, and then replied, artlessly—
“I don’t jin many o’ them. But I can jist tell you a story. Once at Wimbledown, when the kooroo-mengroes were odoi (when the troopers were there), I used to get a pound a week carryin’ things. One day, when I had well on to two stun on my dumo (back), the chief of police sees me an’ says, ‘There’s that old scoundrel again! that villain gives the police more trouble than any other man in the country!’ ‘Thank you, sir,’ says I, wery respectable to him. ‘I’m glad to see you’re earnin’ a ’onest livin’ for once,’ says he. ‘How much do you get for carryin’ that there bundle?’ ‘A sixpence, rya!’ says I. ‘It’s twice as much as you ought to have,’ says he; ‘an’ I’d be glad to carry it myself for the money.’ ‘All right, sir,’ says I, touchin’ my hat and goin’ off, for he was a wery nice gentleman. Rya,” he exclaimed, with an air of placid triumph, “do you think the head-police his selfus would a spoke in them wery words to me if he hadn’t a thought I was a good man?”
“Well, let’s get to work, old Honesty. What is the Rommanis for to hide?”
“To gaverit is to hide anything, rya. Gaverit.” And to illustrate its application he continued—
“They penned mandy to gaver the gry, but I nashered to keravit, an’ the mush who lelled the gry welled alangus an’ dicked it.”
(“They told me to hide the horse, but I forgot to do it, and the man who owned the horse came by and saw it.”)
It is only a few hours since I heard of a gentleman who took incredible pains to induce the Gipsies to teach him their language, but never succeeded. I must confess that I do not understand this. When I have met strange Gipsies, it has often greatly grieved me to find that they spoke their ancient tongue very imperfectly, and were ignorant of certain Rommany words which I myself, albeit a stranger, knew very well, and would fain teach them. But instead of accepting my instructions in a docile spirit of ignorant humility, I have invariably found that they were eagerly anxious to prove that they were not so ignorant as I assumed, and in vindication of their intelligence proceeded to pour forth dozens of words, of which I must admit many were really new to me, and which I did not fail to remember.
The scouting, slippery night-life of the Gipsy; his familiarity with deep ravine and lonely wood-path, moonlight and field-lairs; his use of a secret language, and his constant habit of concealing everything from everybody; his private superstitions, and his inordinate love of humbugging and selling friend and foe, tend to produce in him that goblin, elfin, boyish-mischievous, out-of-the-age state of mind which is utterly indescribable to a prosaic modern-souled man, but which is delightfully piquant to others. Many a time among Gipsies I have felt, I confess with pleasure, all the subtlest spirit of fun combined with picture-memories of Hayraddin Maugrabin—witch-legends and the “Egyptians;” for in their ignorance they are still an unconscious race, and do not know what the world writes about them. They are not attractive from the outside to those who have no love for quaint scholarship, odd humours, and rare fancies. A lady who had been in a camp had nothing to say of them to me save that they were “dirty—dirty, and begged.” But I ever think, when I see them, of Tieck’s Elves, and of the Strange Valley, which was so grim and repulsive from without, but which, once entered, was the gay forecourt of goblin-land.