[7] A sock, a brogue of untanned leather or skin, commonly worn with the hairy side outward; Lat. cothurnus, Welsh cwaran, French cothurne.—J. F. C. [↑]
[8] ‘Bolg seididh, bag of blowing. The bellows used for melting copper in the mint at Tangier in 1841 consisted of two sheepskins worked by two men. The neck of the hide was fastened to the end of an iron tube, and the legs sewed [[286]]up. The end of each bag opened with two flat sticks; and the workmen, by a skilful action of the hand, filled the bag with air as they raised it, and then squeezed it out by pressing downwards. By working the two bags turn-about, a constant steady blast was kept on a crucible in the furnace, and the copper was soon melted. The Gaelic word clearly points to the use of some such apparatus. I believe something of the kind is used in India; but I saw the Tangier mint at work.’—J. F. C.
Were Mr. Campbell still living I would call his attention to ‘something of the kind’ much nearer home than India or Tangiers, viz. the Scottish-Gypsy method of smelting iron in a furnace of stone, turf, and clay, three feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter: ‘the materials in the furnace are powerfully heated by the blasts of a large hand-bellows, generally wrought by females, admitted at a small hole a little from the ground’ (Walter Simson’s History of the Gipsies, 1865, p. 234). In the Gypsy Lore Journal for January 1892, pp. 134–142, is an article by Henri van Elven on ‘The Gypsies of Belgium,’ with excellent illustrations of a Hungarian-Gypsy furnace and bellows, corresponding to Simson’s description. And there are also illustrations and minute descriptions of the Gypsy furnace and bellows in Kopernicki’s masterly monograph on ‘Les Zlotars ou Dzvonkars, Tsiganes fondeurs en bronze dans la Galicie Orientale et la Bukovine,’ communicated by Bataillard to the Société d’Anthropologie (Paris, 1878). From a footnote here on p. 519 we learn that ‘the Calderari often use two of these bellows at once, making them work turn-about to right and to left, so as to produce a constant blast.’ One is tempted to conclude that the mint at Tangiers in 1841 was worked by Gypsies, that here we get an explanation of those mysterious visits of the Hungarian Calderari to Northern Africa, referred to in the Introduction. It sounds surprising, but Mr. Campbell, I doubt not, would have been quite as surprised to learn that the church bell of Edzell in Forfarshire was cast in the woods by Gypsies in 1726; that about 1740 the Border Gypsies practised engraving on pewter, lead, and copper, as well as rude drawing and painting; that about the beginning of this century the Gypsies had a small foundry near St. Andrews, which the country-folk called ‘Little Carron’; that Killin in 1748 had its tinker silversmith, whose secret of enamel inlaying died with him; or that the silver Celtic Lochbuy Brooch, a pound in weight, was made by a Mull tinker ‘in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, about the year 1600’ (Strand Magazine, January 1897, p. 115). I myself have sat and watched a Gypsy lad, a Boswell, fashion a pretty silver finger-ring out of a shilling I had given him, and have thought of the hoard of a travelling silversmith which in 1858 was unearthed on Skaill Links in Orkney. It comprised brooches, neck-rings, arm-rings, silver ingots, and Cufic coins, struck at Bagdad between 887 and 945. ‘It seems most unlikely,’ says Mr. Lang, ‘that tales which originated in India could have reached the Hebrides within the historic period.’ Perhaps; but where coins could come, so surely also could folk-tales.—A desperate footnote this, but nothing to what has some day to be written on the subject of Gypsy metallurgy. [↑]
[9] I have furnished a name to this nameless story, a long one, which Campbell got from ‘Old MacDonald, travelling tinker.’ Else I give it just as he gives it. [↑]
APPENDIX
P. 249.—The following nigger folk-tale, first printed by me in the Athenæum for 20th August 1887, p. 245, was taken down by an American acquaintance, Mr. J. P. Suverkrop, C.E., in 1871, at Sand Mountain, Alabama, from the recitation of his negro servant, Dick Brown, a ‘boy’ about thirty years old, who was a native of Petersburg, Virginia, and there had got it from his granny. It seems to be clearly a variant of ‘The Master Smith’ (Clouston, ii. 409) and of Grimm’s No. 147, ‘The Old Man made Young Again’ (ii. 215, 444). If so, it must be a comparatively recent transmission from one race (Aryan) to another (non-Aryan), yet it is as thoroughly localised as folk-tale well could be.
DE NEW HAN’.
Wunst dar wer a sawmill on de aige of a wood not a thousan mili from heah, wid a branch a-runnin by a-turnin de wheel. An ole colored man, he kep de mill an wer a very fine kine of man; but he son Sam, what help him, didn’ take arter de ole man, but wer a triflin, no account sort o’ young nigger; an de ole man had to wuk right sharp to git along. One day ’long come a poor-lookin sort o’ man, sayin he wanted to larn de saw-millin, an he wuk fur a yeah fur nuffin. De ole man wer glad to git his help, an de young ’un ’lowed he could shif some o’ his wuk on to de New Han’. So de New Han’ he went to totin boads and doin chores round de mill. De ole man he like de New Han’ fus class, an allus gin he jes as good as he git hisself; but de son he make hisself big to de New Han’ behind de ole man back, an order him roun to do dis an dat. De New Han’ he never say nuffin, but jes go ’long ’bout he own bisness. De ole man he cotch Sam ’busin an a-bossin de New Han’ aroun, and he club he good fur hit more’n a few times. One day an ole man come fur a load o’ plank, and he war a-groanin wid de misery in de back, an a-wishin he were young an spry like as he used to.