I would, in conclusion to this work, remark that numbers of Rommany words, which are set down by philologists as belonging to Greek, Slavonian, and other languages, were originally Hindu, and have only changed their form a little because the wanderers found a resemblance to the old word in a new one. I am also satisfied that much may be learned as to the origin of these words from a familiar acquaintance with the vulgar dialects of Persia, and such words as are not put down in dictionaries, owing to their provincial character. I have found, on questioning a Persian gentleman, that he knew the meaning of many Rommany words from their resemblance to vulgar Persian, though they were not in the Persian dictionary which I used.
ROMMANI GUDLI; OR, GIPSY STORIES AND FABLES.
The Gipsy to whom I was chiefly indebted for the material of this book frequently narrated to me the Gudli or small stories current among his people, and being a man of active, though child-like imagination, often invented others of a similar character. Sometimes an incident or saying would suggest to me the outline of a narrative, upon which he would eagerly take it up, and readily complete the tale. But if I helped him sometimes to evolve from a hint, a phrase, or a fact, something like a picture, it was always the Gipsy who gave it Rommany characteristics and conferred colour. It was often very difficult for him to distinctly recall an old story or clearly develop anything of the kind, whether it involved an effort of memory or of the imagination, and here he required aid. I have never in my life met with any man whose mind combined so much simplicity, cunning, and grotesque fancy, with such an entire incapacity to appreciate either humour or “poetry” as expressed in the ordinary language of culture. The metre and rhyme of the simplest ballad made it unintelligible to him, and I was obliged to repeat such poetry several times before he could comprehend it. Yet he would, while I was otherwise occupied than with him, address to his favourite wooden image of a little bear on the chimneypiece, grotesque soliloquies which would have delighted a Hoffman, or conduct with it dialogues which often startled me. With more education, he would have become a Rommany Bid-pai; and since India is the fatherland of the fable, he may have derived his peculiar faculty for turning morals and adorning tales legitimately from that source.
I may state that those stories, which were made entirely; as a few were; or in part, by my assistant and myself, were afterwards received with approbation by ordinary Gipsies as being thoroughly Rommany. As to the language of the stories, it is all literally and faithfully that of a Gipsy, word by word, written down as he uttered it, when, after we had got a gudlo into shape, he told it finally over, which he invariably did with great eagerness, ending with an improvised moral.
GUDLO I. HOW A GIPSY SAVED A CHILD’S LIFE BY BREAKING A WINDOW.
‘Pré yeck dívvus (or yéckorus) a Rommany chal was kairin’ pýass with the koshters, an’ he wussered a kosh ’pré the hev of a boro ker an’ poggered it. Welled the prastramengro and penned, “Tu must póoker (or péssur) for the glass.” But when they jawed adrée the ker, they lastered the kosh had mullered a divio júckal that was jawán’ to dant the chavo. So the rāni del the Rommany chal a sónnakai óra an’ a fíno gry.
But yeck koshter that poggers a hev doesn’t muller a juckal.
TRANSLATION.
On a day (or once) a Gipsy was playing at cockshy, and he threw a stick through the window of a great house and broke the glass. Came the policeman and said, “You must answer (or pay) for the glass.” But when they went into the house, they found the stick had killed a mad dog that was going to bite the child (boy). So the lady gave the Gipsy a gold watch and a good horse.
But every stick that breaks a window does not kill a dog.