Seven Dials has been heard to say he would “scarper with the feele of the donna of the cassey;” which means, run away with the daughter of the landlady of the house, and which, as the editor of the Slang Dictionary pens, is almost pure Italian,—scappare colla figlia della donna, della casa. Most costermongers call a penny a saltee, from soldo; a crown, a caroon; and one half, madza, from mezza. They count as follows:—

Italian.
Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo.
Dooey saltee, twopence Dui soldi.
Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi.
Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi.
Chinker saltee, fivepence Cinque soldi.
Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi.
Say oney saltee, or setter saltee, sevenpence Sette soldi.
Say dooee saltee, or otter saltee, eightpence Otto soldi.
Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, ninepence Nove soldi.
Say quarterer saltee, or dacha (datsha) saltee, tenpence Dieci soldi.
Say chinker saltee, or dacha one saltee, elevenpence Dieci uno soldi
Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco.
A beong say saltee, one shilling and sixpence Uno bianco sei soldi.
Madza caroon, half a crown Mezza corona.

Mr. Hotten says that he could never discover the derivation of beong, or beonk. It is very plainly the Italian bianco, white, which, like blanc in French and blank in German, is often applied slangily to a silver coin. It is as if one had said, “a shiner.” Apropos

of which word there is something curious to be noted. It came forth in evidence, a few years ago in England, that burglars or other thieves always carried with them a piece of coal; and on this disclosure, a certain writer, in his printed collection of curiosities, comments as if it were a superstition, remarking that the coal is carried for an amulet. But the truth is that the thief has no such idea. The coal is simply a sign for money; and when the bearer meets with a man whom he thinks may be a “fence,” or a purchaser of stolen goods, he shows the coal, which is as much as to say, Have you money? Money, in vulgar gypsy, is wongur, a corruption of the better word angar, which also means a hot coal; and braise, in French argôt, has the same double meaning. I may be wrong, but I suspect that rat, a dollar in Hebrew, or at least in Schmussen, has its root in common with ratzafim, coals, and possibly poschit, a farthing, with pecham, coal. In the six kinds of fire mentioned in the Talmud, [222] there is no identification of coals with money; but in the German legends of Rubezahl, there is a tale of a charcoal-burner who found them changed to gold. Coins are called shiners because they shine like glowing coals, and I dare say that the simile exists in many more languages.

One twilight we found in the public sitting-room of the lodging-house a couple whom I can never forget. It was an elderly gypsy and his wife. The husband was himself characteristic; the wife was more than merely picturesque. I have never met such a superb old Romany as she was; indeed, I doubt if I ever saw any woman of her age, in any land or any range of life, with a more magnificently proud

expression or such unaffected dignity. It was the whole poem of “Crescentius” living in modern time in other form.

When a scholar associates much with gypsies there is developed in him in due time a perception or intuition of certain kinds of men or minds, which it is as difficult to describe as it is wonderful. He who has read Matthew Arnold’s “Gipsy Scholar” may, however, find therein many apt words for it. I mean very seriously what I say; I mean that through the Romany the demon of Socrates acquires distinctness; I mean that a faculty is developed which is as strange as divination, and which is greatly akin to it. The gypsies themselves apply it directly to palmistry; were they well educated they would feel it in higher forms. It may be reached among other races and in other modes, and Nature is always offering it to us freely; but it seems to live, or at least to be most developed, among the Romany. It comes upon the possessor far more powerfully when in contact with certain lives than with others, and with the sympathetic it takes in at a glance that which may employ it at intervals for years to think out.

And by this dūk I read in a few words in the Romany woman an eagle soul, caged between the bars of poverty, ignorance, and custom; but a great soul for all that. Both she and her husband were of the old type of their race, now so rare in England, though commoner in America. They spoke Romany with inflection and conjugation; they remembered the old rhymes and old words, which I quoted freely, with the Palmer. Little by little, the old man seemed to be deeply impressed, indeed awed, by our utterly inexplicable

knowledge. I wore a velveteen coat, and had on a broad, soft felt hat.

“You talk as the old Romanys did,” said the old man. “I hear you use words which I once heard from old men who died when I was a boy. I thought those words were lying in graves which have long been green. I hear songs and sayings which I never expected to hear again. You talk like gypsies, and such gypsies as I never meet now; and you look like Gorgios. But when I was still young, a few of the oldest Romany chals still wore hats such as you have; and when I first looked at you, I thought of them. I don’t understand you. It is strange, very strange.”