‘Why, perhaps where they got their names, brother. A gentleman, who had travelled much, once told me that he had seen the sister of it about the neck of an Indian queen.’
‘Some of your names, Jasper, appear to be church names; your own, for example, and Ambrose, and Sylvester; perhaps you got them from the Papists, in the times of Popery; but where did you get such a name as Piramus, a name of Grecian romance? Then some of them appear to be Slavonian; for example, Mikailia and Pakomovna. I don’t know much of Slavonian; but—’
‘What is Slavonian, brother?’
‘The family name of certain nations, the principal of which is the Russian, and from which the word slave is originally derived. You have heard of the Russians, Jasper?’
‘Yes, brother, and seen some. I saw their crallis at the time of the peace; he was not a bad-looking man for a Russian.’
‘By-the-bye, Jasper, I’m half-inclined to think that crallis is a Slavish word. I saw something like it in a lil called Voltaire’s Life of Charles. How you should have come by such names and words is to me incomprehensible.’
* * * * *
‘What is your opinion of death, Mr. Petulengro?’ said I, as I sat down beside him.
‘My opinion of death, brother, is much the same as that in the old song of Pharaoh, which I have heard my grandam sing:—
‘“Cana marel o manus chivios andé puv,
Ta rovel pa leste o chavo ta romi.”