“And where are you tannin kennā?” (tenting now), I inquired.
“We are not tenting at this time of year; we’re kairin,” i.e., houseing, or home-ing. It is a good verb, and might be introduced into English.
“And where is your house?”
“There, right by Mammy Sauerkraut’s Row. Come in and sit down.”
I need not give the Romany which was spoken, but will simply translate. The house was like all the others. We passed through a close, dark passage, in which lay canvas and poles, a kettle and a sarshta, or the iron which is stuck into the ground, and by which a kettle hangs. The old-fashioned tripod, popularly supposed to be used by gypsies, in all probability never existed, since the Roms of India to-day use the sarshta, as mine uncle tells me he learned from a ci-devant Indian gypsy Dacoit, or wandering thief, who was one of his intimates in London.
We entered an inner room, and I was at once struck by its general indescribable unlikeness to ordinary rooms. Architects declare that the type of the tent is to be distinctly found in all Chinese and Arab or Turkish architecture; it is also as marked in a gypsy’s house—when he gets one. This room, which was evidently the common home of a large family, suggested, in its arrangement of furniture and the manner in which its occupants sat around the tent and the wagon. There was a bed, it is true
but there was a roll of sail-cloth, which evidently did duty for sleeping on at night, but which now, rolled up, acted the part described by Goldsmith:—
“A thing contrived a double part to play,
A bed by night, a sofa during day.”
There was one chair and a saddle, a stove and a chest of drawers. I observed an engraving hanging up which I have several times seen in gypsy tents. It represents a very dark Italian youth. It is a favorite also with Roman Catholics, because the boy has a consecrated medal. The gypsies, however, believe that the boy stole the medal. The Catholics think the picture is that of a Roman boy, because the inscription says so; and the gypsies call it a Romany, so that all are satisfied. There were some eight or nine children in the room, and among them more than one whose resemblance to the dark-skinned saint might have given color enough to the theory that he was
“One whose blood
Had rolled through gypsies ever since the flood.”