“Well, that is deep Romanes,” said the woman, admiringly. “It’s beautiful.”
“I should think it was,” remarked the violinist. “Why, I didn’t understand more than one half of it. But what I caught I understood.” Which, I reflected, as he uttered it, is perhaps exactly the case with far more than half the readers of all poetry. They run on in a semi-sensuous mental condition, soothed by cadence and lulled by rhyme, reading as they run for want of thought. Are there not poets of the present day who mean that you shall read them thus, and who cast their gold ornaments hollow, as jewelers do, lest they should be too heavy?
“My children,” said Meister Karl, “I could go on all day with Romany songs; and I can count up to a hundred in the black language. I know three words for a mouse, three for a monkey, and three for the shadow which falleth at noonday. And I know how to pen dukkerin, lel dūdikabin te chiv o manzin apré latti.” [270]
“Well, the man who knows that is up to drab [medicine], and hasn’t much more to learn,” said the young man. “When a rye’s a Rom he’s anywhere at home.”
“So kushto bak!” (Good luck!) I said, rising to go. “We will come again!”
“Yes, we will come again,” said Meister Karl. “Look for me with the roses at the races, and tell me the horse to bet on. You’ll find my patteran [a
mark or sign to show which way a gypsy has traveled] at the next church-door, or may be on the public-house step. Child of the old Egyptians, mother of all the witches, sister of the stars, daughter of darkness, farewell!”
This bewildering speech was received with admiring awe, and we departed. I should have liked to hear the comments on us which passed that evening among the gypsy denizens of Mammy Sauerkraut’s Row.
V. A GYPSY LETTER.
All the gypsies in the country are not upon the roads. Many of them live in houses, and that very respectably, nay, even aristocratically. Yea, and it may be, O reader, that thou hast met them and knowest them not, any more than thou knowest many other deep secrets of the hearts and lives of those who live around thee. Dark are the ways of the Romany, strange his paths, even when reclaimed from the tent and the van. It is, however, intelligible enough that the Rom converted to the true faith of broadcloth garments by Poole, or dresses by Worth, as well as to the holy gospel of daily baths and savon au violet, should say as little as possible of his origin. For the majority of the world being snobs, they continually insist that all blood unlike their own is base, and the child of the kālorat, knowing this, sayeth naught, and ever carefully keeps the lid of silence on the pot of his birth. And as no being that ever was, is, or will be ever enjoyed holding a secret, playing a part, or otherwise entering into the deepest mystery of life—which is to make a joke of it—so thoroughly as a gypsy, it follows that the being respectable has to him a raciness and drollery and pungency and point which passeth faith. It has often occurred to me, and the older I grow the more I find it true, that the real pleasure which bank presidents, moral politicians,