“Did you ever read my Johnnykin?”
“Of course not.”
“I know you never did.” Here I repeated the verse. “But you remember what the Persian poet says:—
“‘And never since the vine-clad earth was young
Was some great crime committed on the earth,
But that some poet prophesied the deed.’”
“True, and also what the great Tsigane poet sang:—
“‘O manush te lela sossi choredó,
Wafodiro se te choramengró.’“He who takes the stolen ring,
Is worse than he who stole the thing.”
“And it would have been better for you, while you were dukkerin or prophesying, to have prophesied about something more valuable than a tile.”
And so it came to pass that the two Persian tiles, one given by a descendant of the Prophet, and the other the subject of a prophecy, rest in my cabinet side by side.
In Egypt, as in Austria, or Syria, or Persia, or India, the gypsies are the popular musicians. I had long
sought for the derivation of the word banjo, and one day I found that the Oriental gypsies called a gourd by that name. Walking one day with the Palmer in Cambridge, we saw in a window a very fine Hindu lute, or in fact a real banjo made of a gourd. We inquired, and found that it belonged to a mutual friend, Mr. Charles Brookfield, one of the best fellows living, and who, on being forthwith “requisitioned” by the unanimous voice of all who sympathized with me in my need, sent me the instrument. “He did not think it right,” he said, “to keep it, when Philology wanted it. If it had been any other party,—but he always had a particular respect and awe of her.” I do not assert that this discovery settles the origin of the word banjo, but the coincidence is, to say the least, remarkable.