‘Do you know it?’ said I.
‘Only a few words,’ said the jockey, ‘they were always chary in teaching me any.’
‘They were vary sherry to me too,’ said the Hungarian, speaking in broken English; ‘I only could learn from them half a dozen words, for example, gul eray, [250a] which, in the czigany of my country, means sweet gentleman; or edes ur in my own Magyar.’
‘Gudlo Rye, in the Romany of mine, means a sugar’d gentleman,’ said I; ‘then there are gypsies in your country?’
‘Plenty,’ said the Hungarian, speaking German, ‘and in Russia and Turkey too; and wherever they are found, they are alike in their ways and language. Oh, they are a strange race, and how little known! I know little of them, but enough to say, that one horse-load of nonsense has been written about them; there is one Valter Scott—’
‘Mind what you say about him,’ said I; ‘he is our grand authority in matters of philology and history.’
‘A pretty philologist,’ said the Hungarian, ‘who makes the gypsies speak Roth-Welsch, [250b] the dialect of thieves; a pretty historian, who couples together Thor and Tzernebock.’
‘Where does he do that?’ said I.
‘In his conceited romance of Ivanhoe he couples Thor and Tzernebock together, and calls them gods of the heathen Saxons.’
‘Well,’ said I, ‘Thur or Thor was certainly a god of the heathen Saxons.’