natural affinity and attraction. “For gold, as you sees, my deari, draws gold, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher and leaves it, you’ll find it doubled. An’ wasn’t there the Squire’s lady, and didn’t she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where they’d laid in a old grave,—and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; an’ I hope you’ll do better by the poor old gypsy, my deari --- ---.”
The gold and all the spoons are tied up,—for, as the enchantress observes, there may be silver too,—and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles give the only light. The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her cloak he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again, and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the bundle must not be touched or spoken of for three weeks. “Every word you tell about it, my-deari will be a guinea gone away.” Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said.
Back to the farmer’s wife never again. After three weeks another Extraordinary instance of gross credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the school-master. There is wailing and shame in the house,—perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years have beer swept away. The charm has worked.
But the little sharp-eared children remember it and sing it, and the more meaningless it is in their ears the more mysterious does it sound. And they never talk about the bundle, which when opened was found to contain only sticks, stones, and rags, without repeating it. So it goes from mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it passes current for even worse nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however,—and the remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the language,—that there is a Romany turn to even the roughest corners of these rhymes. Kivi, stingli, stangli, are all gypsyish. But, as I have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses of the kind. There is nothing of it in
“Intery, mintery, cutery corn”—
or in anything else in Mother Goose. It is alone in its sounds and sense,—or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer of the roads who on hearing it would not explain, “Rya, there’s a great deal of Romanes in that ere.”
I should also say that the word na-kelas or né-kelas, which I here translate differently, was once explained to me at some length by a gypsy as signifying “not speaking,” or “keeping quiet.”
Now the mystery of mysteries of which I have spoken in the Romany tongue is this. The hokkani boro, or great trick, consists of three parts. Firstly, the telling of a fortune, and this is to pen dukkerin or pen durkerin. The second part is the conveying away of the property, which is to lel dūdikabin, or to take lightning, possibly connected with the very old English slang term of bien lightment. There is evidently a great confusion of words here. And the third is to
“chiv o manzin apré lati,” or to put the oath upon her, which explains itself. When all the deceived are under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has “a safe thing of it.”
The hokkani boro, or great trick, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practiced by them all over the world, it is still played every day somewhere. This chapter was written long ago in England. I am now in Philadelphia, and here I read in the “Press” of this city that a Mrs. Brown, whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine, who walks before the world in other names, was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the grand deception. And Mrs. Brown, good old Mrs. Brown, went to prison, where she will linger until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is evaded in Pennsylvania, delivers her.