[6] Valentine and Oliver are both Welsh-Gypsy Christian names. [↑]
[7] See footnote on p. 212. [↑]
[8] This point is lost, of course, in my English rendering of the Rómani portions of this story. In the original MS. the youngest brother uses the broken dialect put by John Roberts in the mouths of all English Gypsies, while the two others speak in the very deepest Rómani. [↑]
[9] The Jacobite engraver, Sir Robert Strange, thus tethered his horse on the eve of Culloden (Life, i. 59). [↑]
[10] Presumably the royal arms of England would be engraved on his watch, and his princely initials embroidered on his pocket-handkerchief. [↑]
[11] In another Welsh-Gypsy story, ‘Jack the Robber,’ summarised on pp. 48–9, the master says, ‘If you can’t do that, Jack, I’ll be behead you.’ [↑]
[12] That story is of very wide and seemingly recent dispersion. It occurs in Norway (‘The Three Lemons,’ Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 158); Sicily (‘Die Schöne mit den sieben Schleiern,’ Laura Gonzenbach, No. 13, i. 73, which offers striking analogies to ‘An Old King’ and ‘The Accursed Garden’); Zacynthus (‘Die drei Citronen,’ Bernhard Schmidt, No. 5, p. 71), etc.; also in India (‘The Bel Princess,’ Maive Stokes, No. 21, p. 138). [↑]
[14] The next eight Welsh-Gypsy stories were told, like the last, in Rómani, by Matthew Wood to Mr. Sampson; and the English summaries of them given here are by Mr. Sampson. [↑]
[15] I am reminded of Poly Mace, the champion’s cousin. He was camping at Golden Acre near Granton, and told me one Sunday that he knew a sea-captain who had a familiar: would I care to see it? Of course I would; had he seen it? what was it like, then? ‘Well, it’s a very curious kind of a little, wee, teeny dragon, that is, Mr. Groome; changes colour, it does, according to where you puts it.’ I found Poly meant a chameleon. [↑]