But now to turn to the renegade or housed gipsy. Still retaining the inherent desire for liberty so common to his race, he avails himself of his dwelling as a shelter only by night, traversing the streets by day, tricked out in dirty gaudy clothing, or seated with wife and family just without the threshold of his hut, there frittering the precious hours away. His children, if sent to school at all, are only despatched there to be out of the way, and his home is as devoid of furniture and well-nigh as comfortless as the ragged tent of his more Esau-like brother. Little by little he forgets his old language, but not his vicious habits, and very often ends by intermarrying with some poor Greek family whose members are as lazy and apathetic as himself.
Their language—descended from the old Sanscrit—has besides giving the only real clue to their origin, also shed some rays over the dark period between the first emigration of the gipsies from India and their appearance in Europe. Originally the distinct mode of speech of a single and special border tribe of Northern India, it has, during the many wanderings of the race, appropriated words from nearly every country through which they passed; while on the other hand it lost many of its own words, and still more of its own inherent power and elegance; and much also of its resemblance to the mother tongue. These adopted foreign words, their relative number, and their more or less corrupted state, point plainly to the gipsies having passed from India first into Persia, to their having remained there a considerable time, and to their having wended their way to some Greek country, perhaps Asia Minor, and to their descent thence into their present European homes.
It is worthy of further remark, as proof of their Indian origin, that the speech of the English gipsies has been found on comparison most marvellously akin to that of the natives of Bombay, though some of their words have, strangely enough, entirely changed the meaning they at first possessed.
The speech of the Tchingané is rude, sharp, strongly accentuated, and somewhat difficult to comprehend. Properly spoken it is harmonious enough, though rendered hoarse and almost distasteful by the wild tribes who employ it. ‘We speak,’ say they themselves, ‘as the birds sing, but we sing as the lions roar!’ With them papa signifies an apple, cat scissors, rat night, Devel God, whilst dad seems to be the only word exactly synonymous with any in our own language.
Heroic in suffering, the true Ottoman gipsy never sheds a tear. On his legs to the last, he only betakes himself to his couch when death is too surely nigh, and departs without a murmur from the life that has been so full of unhappiness and misery to him. Buried apart from the rest of humanity, and unwept even by his own, his low moral nature is apt to be forgotten in his sad end, though the unsuccessful efforts of more than one philanthropical European Society testify to the fact, that whatever else you may do with the Ottoman gipsy, you will never succeed in even partially civilising him.
HELENA, LADY HARROGATE.
CHAPTER XX.—AS GOVERNESS.
The establishment at High Tor was by no means on so sumptuous a scale as that which the much larger revenues of Sir Sykes Denzil maintained at Carbery Chase. Indeed, while for a baronet Sir Sykes was rich, for an earl Lord Wolverhampton was almost poor. There are poorer earls than he, no doubt, dwelling in cheap watering-places or in outlying London squares, and exhibiting their pearl-studded coronets on no more pretentious equipage than a brougham. But for a man of his degree, and a De Vere withal, the Earl was not wealthy. It was much to his credit that he was popular in spite of the comparative slenderness of his annual rent-roll, since a poor lord, like an impoverished government, is apt to be regarded with a sort of unreasoning contempt by those who are very likely worse off, but in a less conspicuous station.
To be rich is, after all, a very uncertain distinction; that which is opulence to the Squire implying mere substantial comfort when it belongs to Sir John, and but a moderate income when it has to meet the calls which charity, duty, and custom make on ‘my lord’s’ bank balance. Are there not nobles of princely rank who declare that they are stinted of pocket-money, of actual jingling sovereigns and rustling notes, by the prudent administrators of their vast nominal fortunes? And have we not heard of mighty financiers who feel a positive pang at any encroachment on the colossal capital on which is reared the fabric of a world-wide credit?