GYPSY FOLK-TALES
GYPSY FOLK-TALES
BY
FRANCIS HINDES GROOME
AUTHOR OF ‘IN GYPSY TENTS’ ‘TWO SUFFOLK FRIENDS’ ‘KRIEGSPIEL,’ ETC.
LONDON
HURST AND BLACKETT, LIMITED
13 GREAT MARLBOROUGH STREET
1899
All rights reserved
Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty [[v]]
‘PAZORRHUS’
I am no folklorist; I have merely dabbled in folklore as a branch of the great Egyptian Question, which includes also intricate problems of philology, ethnology, craniology, archæology, history, music, and what not besides. But for twenty years I have been trying to interest folklorists in Gypsy folk-tales. Vainly so far; and during those twenty years there have died Dr. Paspati, Dr. Barbu Constantinescu, Dr. Franz von Miklosich, Dr. Isidore Kopernicki, M. Paul Bataillard, and John Roberts, the Welsh-Gypsy harper: with them much has perished that folklorists should not have willingly let go. Meanwhile, however, a Rómani Grimm has arisen in Mr. John Sampson, the librarian of University College, Liverpool. With unparalleled generosity he has placed his collections at my free disposal—I trust I have not made too lavish use of them,—and has read, moreover, every page of the proofs of this volume, enriching it from the depths of his knowledge of ‘matters of Egypt.’ Another, a very old friend, to whom my debt is great, is the Rev. Thomas Davidson, author of the admirable folklore articles in Chamber’s Encyclopædia; he has lent me scores of scarce works from his unrivalled folklore library. Others to whom I owe acknowledgments are: Mr. Tom Taylor, Mr. W. R. S. Ralston, Mr. W. A. Clouston, Dr. Hyde Clarke, Professor Bensly (all five also dead), Mrs. Gomme, Mr. H. Browne of Bucharest, Mr. Robert Burns, Lord Archibald Campbell, Mr. Archibald Constable, Mr. H. T. Crofton, [[vi]]Professor Dobschütz of Jena, Mr. Fitzedward Hall, Dean Kitchin, Mr. William Larminie, Mr. David MacRitchie, M. Omont of the Bibliothèque Nationale, Dr. David Patrick, Dr. Fearon Ranking, Mr. Rufus B. Richardson of Athens, Professor Sayce, and Dr. Rudolf von Sowa of Brünn. And, finally, I would thank in advance whoever may send me corrections, additions, or suggestions on the subject of Gypsy folk-tales.
FRANCIS HINDES GROOME.
137 Warrender Park Road,
Edinburgh. [[vii]]
TO
MM. COSQUIN, CLODD, JACOBS, AND LANG
AND THEIR FELLOW-FOLKLORISTS
THIS BOOK IS
RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED [[ix]]
INTRODUCTION
Distribution of Gypsies.
No race is more widely scattered over the earth’s surface than the Gypsies; the very Jews are less ubiquitous. Go where one will in Europe, one comes upon Gypsies everywhere—from Finland to Sicily, from the shores of the Bosporus to the Atlantic seaboard. Something under a million is their probable number in Europe; of these Hungary claims 275,000, Roumania 200,000, Servia 38,000, and Bulgaria 52,000. How many Gypsies there are in Great Britain I have not the vaguest notion, for there are no statistics of the slightest value to go by.[1] But I have never lived for any length of time in any place—and I have stayed in most parts of both England and Scotland—without lighting sooner or later on nomadic or house-dwelling Gypsies. London and all round London, the whole Thames valley as high at least as Oxford, the Black Country, Bristol, Manchester, Liverpool, and Yarmouth, it is here I should chiefly look for settled Gypsies. Whilst from study of parish registers, local histories, and suchlike, and from my own knowledge, I doubt if there is the parish between Land’s End and John o’ Groats where Gypsies have not pitched their camp some time or other in the course of the last four centuries.
Asia has untold thousands of these wanderers, in Anatolia, Syria, Armenia, Persia, Turkestan, and Siberia, perhaps also India and China; so, too, has Africa, in Egypt, Algeria, Darfûr, and Kordofan. We find them in both the Americas, from Pictou in Canada to Rio in Brazil; nor are New Zealand and Australia without at least their isolated bands.
To-day at any rate the sedentary Gypsies must greatly outnumber the nomadic: in Hungary only 9000, or less than one-thirtieth of the entire number, are returned as ‘constantly on the move.’ Still the race has always been largely a migratory race; its wide distribution is due to bygone migrations. Of these the most important known to us is that of the first half of the fifteenth century, whose movements have been so lovingly and laboriously traced by the late [[x]]M. Paul Bataillard in his De l’Apparition et de la Dispersion des Bohémiens en Europe (1844), Nouvelles Recherches (1849), and ‘Immigration of the Gypsies into Western Europe in the Fifteenth Century’ (Gypsy Lore Journal, April 1889 to January 1890, 101 pages[2]).
Appearance in West.
Late in 1417 a band of ‘Secani’ or Tsigans, 300 in number, besides children and infants, arrived in Germany ‘from Eastern parts’ or ‘from Tartary.’ Their presence is first recorded at Lüneburg; and thence they passed on to Hamburg, Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, Stralsund, and Greifswald. At their head rode a duke and a count, richly dressed, with silver belts, and leading like nobles dogs of chase; next came a motley crew afoot; and women and children brought up the rear in waggons. They bore letters of safe-conduct from princes, one of which from the Emperor Sigismund they had probably procured that same year at Lindau on Lake Constance; and they gave out that they were on a seven years’ pilgrimage, imposed by their own bishops as a penance for apostasy from the Christian faith. They encamped in the fields by night outside the city walls, and were great thieves, especially the women, ‘wherefore several were taken and slain.’ In 1418 they are heard of at Leipzig, at Frankfort-on-Main, and in Switzerland at Zurich, Basel, Berne, and Soleure: the contemporary Swiss chronicler, Conrad Justinger, speaks of them as ‘more than two hundred baptized Heathens from Egypt, pitiful, black, miserable, and unbearable on account of their thefts, for they stole all they could.’ At Augsburg they passed for exiles from ‘Lesser Egypt’; at Macon in August 1419 they practised palmistry and necromancy; and at Sisteron in Provence as ‘Saracens’ they got large rations from the terrified townsfolk. In 1420 Lord Andreas, Duke of Little Egypt, and a hundred men, women, and children, came to Deventer in the Low Countries; and the aldermen had to pay 19 florins 10 placks for their bread, beer, herrings, and straw, as well as for cleaning out the barn in which they lay. At Tournay in 1421 ‘Sir Miquiel, Prince of Latinghem in Egypt,’ received twelve gold pieces, with bread and a barrel of beer.
At Bologna.
Next the Chronica di Bologna tells how ‘the 18th of July 1422 a duke of Egypt, Duke Andrew, arrived at Bologna, with women, [[xi]]children, and men from his own country. There might be a hundred. This duke having denied the Christian faith, the King of Hungary [the Emperor Sigismund] had taken possession of his lands and person. Then he told the King that he wished to return to Christianity, and he had been baptized with about four thousand men; those who refused baptism were put to death. After the King of Hungary had thus taken and rebaptized them, he commanded them to travel about the world for seven years, to go to Rome to see the pope, and then to return to their own country. When they arrived at Bologna, they had been journeying for five years, and more than half of them were dead. They had a mandate from the King of Hungary, the Emperor, permitting them during these seven years to thieve, wherever they might go, without being amenable to justice.
‘When they arrived at Bologna, they lodged themselves inside and outside the Gate of Galiera, and settled themselves under the porticoes, except the duke, who lodged at the King’s Inn (Albergo del Re). They remained a fortnight at Bologna. During this time many people went to see them, on account of the duke’s wife, who, it was said, could foretell what would happen to a person during his lifetime, as well as what was interesting in the present, how many children would be born, and other things. Concerning all which she told truly. And of those who wished to have their fortunes told, few went to consult without getting their purse stolen, and the women had pieces of their dress cut off. The women of the band wandered about the town, seven or eight together; they entered the houses of the inhabitants, and whilst they were telling idle tales, some of them laid hold of what was within their reach. In the same way they visited the shops under the pretext of buying something, but really to steal. Many thefts were thus committed at Bologna. So it was cried through the town that no one should go to see them under a penalty of fifty pounds and excommunication, for they were the most cunning thieves in all the world. It was even permitted those who had been robbed by them to rob them in return to the amount of their losses. In consequence of which several of the inhabitants of Bologna slipped during the night into a stable where some of their horses were shut up, and stole the best of them. The others, wishing to get back their horses, agreed to restore a great number of the stolen articles. But seeing that there was nothing more to gain there, they left Bologna and went off towards Rome.
‘Observe that they were the ugliest brood ever seen in this country. They were lean and black, and they ate like swine. Their [[xii]]women went in smocks, and wore a pilgrim’s cloak across the shoulder, rings in their ears, and a long veil on their head. One of them gave birth to a child in the market-place, and at the end of three days went on to rejoin her people.’
On 7th August the same band, now swelled to two hundred, arrived at Forli, where, writes the city chronicler, ‘some[3] said they were from India.’ The Vatican archives may contain some record of the audience granted to these strange penitents by Pope Martin v.; all that we know is that later in the same year the ‘cunning and lazy strange people called Zigeiner,’ led by Duke Michael, were back in Switzerland with papal as well as imperial safe-conducts. And next, after a gap of nearly five years, in the August of 1427 there appeared outside Paris, then held by the English, a hundred men, women, and children, ‘good Christians from Lower Egypt, who were headed by a duke, an earl, and ten other horsemen. They told how the pope, after hearing their confession, gave them as penance to wander seven years without sleeping in a bed, and letters enjoining every bishop and mitred abbot to make them one payment of ten livres tournois.’
At Paris.
The Bourgeois of Paris, whose Journal records this visit with a Pepys-like fidelity, describes how multitudes ‘came from Paris, from Sainct Denis, and from the neighbourhood of Paris to see them. And it is true that the children, boys and girls, were as clever as could be. And most or nearly all had both ears pierced, and in each ear a silver ring, or two in each, and they said it was a sign of nobility in their own country. Item, the men were very black, their hair was frizzled; the women, the ugliest that could be seen, and the blackest. All had their faces covered with wounds (toutes avoient le visage deplaié), hair black as a horse’s tail, for sole dress an old blanket, very coarse, and fastened on the shoulder by a band of cloth or a cord, and underneath a shift, for all covering. In short, they were the poorest creatures ever seen in France in the memory of man. Yet, in spite of their poverty, there were witches among them who looked into people’s hands, and told what had happened to them, or would happen, and sowed discord in several marriages by saying to the husband, “Your wife has played you false,” or to the wife, “Your husband has played you false.” And what was worse, whilst they were speaking to folks, by magic or otherwise, or by [[xiii]]the Enemy in Hell, or by dexterity and skill, it was said they emptied people’s purses and transferred the coin to their own. But in truth I went there three or four times to speak with them, yet never perceived that I lost a penny, nor did I ever see them look into a hand. But people said so everywhere, and it came to the ears of the Bishop of Paris, who went there, and took with him a Minorite friar called Little Jacobin. And he, by command of the bishop, made a fine preaching, excommunicating all who had believed them and shown them their hands. And they were obliged to depart, and departed on the day of Our Lady of September, and went away towards Pontoise.’
Three weeks later, at Amiens, Thomas, Earl of Little Egypt, with forty followers, received pious alms from the mayor and aldermen after exhibition of the papal letters; and during the next seven years we find similar scattered bands of Egyptians, Saracens from Egypt, or Heidens, at Tournai, Utrecht, Arnhem, Bommel, Middelburg, Metz, Leyden, Frankfort, etc. These, according to M. Bataillard, all belonged to the original band, some four hundred strong, which split up or reunited as occasion required, and which had probably started from the Balkan peninsula. The thirty tented Cingari or Cigäwnär, who encamped near Ratisbon in 1424 and 1426, seem on the other hand to have belonged to Hungary. Their leader had also a safe-conduct granted him at Zips on 23rd April 1423 by the Emperor Sigismund, and styling him ‘our faithful Ladislas, Woiwode of the Cigani’; and they gave out quite a different reason for their exile, that it was ‘in remembrance of the flight of our Lord into Egypt.’ The four hundred would-be pioneers, then, sent forward to spy out the lands of promise on behalf of vast hordes behind, who in 1438 began to pour over Germany, Italy, and France by thousands instead of by hundreds, and headed this time by King Zindl. Spain the Gypsies reached in 1447, Sweden by 1512, and Poland and Russia about 1501.
In England.
The earliest certain mention of their presence in England is this chance allusion in A Dyalog of Syr Thomas More, knyght (1529), bk. iii. ch. xv. In 1514 the king sent the lords to inquire into the death of Richard Hunne in the Lollards’ Tower, and a witness appeared who owned to having said ‘that he knew one who could tell who killed Hunne. “Well,” quoth the Lords, “at the last, yet with much work, we come to somewhat. But whereby think you that he can tell?” “Nay, forsooth, my Lord,” quoth he, “it is a woman. I would she were here with your Lordships now.” “Well,” quoth my Lord, “woman [[xiv]]or man is all one. She shall be had wheresoever she be.” “By my faith, my Lord,” quoth he, “an’ she were with you, she could tell you wonders, by God. I have wist her tell many marvellous things ere now.” “Why,” quoth the Lords, “what have ye heard her tell?” “Forsooth, my Lords,” quoth he, “if a thing had been stolen, she would have told who had it. And therefore I think she could as well tell who killed Hunne as who stole a horse.” “Surely,” said the Lords, “so think we all, I trow. But how could she tell it—by the Devil?” “Nay, by my troth, I trow,” quoth he, “for I could never see her use any worse way than looking into one’s hand.” Therewith the Lords laughed, and asked, “What is she?” “Forsooth, my Lords,” quoth he, “an Egypcyan, and she was lodged here at Lambeth, but she is gone over sea now. Howbeit, I trow she be not in her own country yet, for they say it is a great way hence, and she went over little more than a month ago.” ’
It is quite Shakespearian, this scrap of dialogue; well, that is our earliest evidence for the presence of Gypsies in England. Eight years later, in 1522, the churchwardens of Stratton in Cornwall received twenty pence from the ‘Egypcions’ for the use of the church house; and some time between 1513 and 1524 Thomas, Earl of Surrey, entertained ‘Gypsions’ at his Suffolk seat, Tendring Hall. For all which, and eighty more similar notes of much interest, see Mr. H. T. Crofton’s ‘Early Annals of the Gypsies in England’ (Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 5–24).
In Scotland.
In Scotland the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer yield this entry: ‘1505, April 22. Item to the Egyptianis be the Kingis command, vij lib.’; and Gypsies probably were the overliers and masterful beggars whom an Act of 1449 describes as going about the country with ‘horses, hunds, and other goods.’ In no other country were the Gypsies better received than in Scotland, where, on 3rd July 1505, James IV. gave Anthonius Gagino, Earl of Little Egypt, a letter of commendation to the King of Denmark; where in 1530 the ‘Egyptianis that dansit before the king in Halyrudhous’ received forty shillings, and where that same king, James V., subscribed a writ (February 15, 1540) in favour of ‘oure louit Johnne Faw, lord and erle of Litill Egipt,’ to whose son and successor, Johnne Wanne, he granted authority to hang and punish all Egyptians within the realme (May 26, 1540). Exactly when cannot be fixed, but about or soon after 1559, Sir William Sinclair, the Lord Justice-General, ‘delivered ane Egyptian from the gibbet in the Burrow Moore, ready to be strangled, returning from Edinburgh to Roslin, upon which accoumpt the whole [[xv]]body of gypsies were of old accustomed to gather in the stanks [marshes] of Roslin every year, where they acted severall plays, dureing the moneth of May and June. There are two towers,’ adds Father Richard Augustine Hay in his Genealogie of the Sainteclaires of Roslin (written 1700; ed. by Maidment, 1835, p. 136), ‘which were allowed them for their residence, the one called Robin Hood, the other Little John.’ Roslin seems to have been a Patmos of the race for upwards of fifty years, but in 1623–24 they were hunted out, and eight of their leaders hanged on the Burgh Muir. Six of those leaders were Faas; and eleven years before, on 21st August 1612, four other Egyptians of the same well-known surname had been put on trial as far north as Scalloway in Shetland. These were ‘Johne Fawe, elder, callit mekill Johne Faw, Johne Faw, younger, calit Littill Johne Faw, Katherin Faw, spous to umquhill Murdo Broun, and Agnes Faw, sister to the said Litill Johne.’ They were indicted for the murder of the said Murdo Brown, and for theft, sorcery, and fortune-telling, ‘and that they can help or hinder in the proffeit of the milk of bestiale.’ Three of them were acquitted; but Katherine, pleading guilty to having slain her husband with a ‘lang braid knyff,’ was sentenced to be ‘tane to the Bulwark and cassen over the same in the sey to be drownit to the death, and dome given thairupone.’ For all which, and a multitude more of most curious and recondite information, I refer my readers to Mr. David MacRitchie’s Scottish Gypsies under the Stewarts (Edinb. 1894, 120 pages), which has done for our northern tribes what Mr. Crofton had done for the southern. Its one omission is this, the earliest mention of Gypsies in the Highlands, contained in a news-letter from Dundee of January 1, 1651:—‘There are about an hundred people of severall nations, call’d heere by the name of Egyptians, which doe att this day ramble uppe and downe the North Highlands, the cheifest of which are one Hause and Browne: they are of the same nature with the English Gypsies, and doe after the same manner cheate and cosen the country’ (C. H. Firth’s Scotland and the Commonwealth, Edinb., Scottish Hist. Society, 1895, p. 29).
In North America.
As to America it was till recently supposed that there were not, had never been, any Gypsies there. In ‘The Fortune-teller,’ a story reprinted in Chambers’s Journal for November 25, 1843, from The Lady’s Book, an American publication, a Mrs. Somers is made to exclaim, ‘An English gipsy! Alice, you must be deceived. There never has been a gipsy in America.’ And, sure enough, the fortune-teller turns out to be no Gypsy. Nay, in a work so well-informed as Appleton’s [[xvi]]American Cyclopædia (1874), the writer of the article ‘Gipsies’ pronounces it ‘questionable whether a band of genuine Gipsies has ever been in America.’ Yet in 1665 at Edinburgh the Privy Council gave warrant and power to George Hutcheson, merchant, and his co-partners to transport to Jamaica and Barbadoes Egyptians and other loose and dissolute persons; and on 1st January 1715 nine Border Gypsies, men and women, of the names of Faa, Stirling, Yorstoun, Finnick (Fenwick), Lindsey, Ross, and Robertson, were transported by the magistrates of Glasgow to the Virginia plantations at a cost of thirteen pounds sterling (Gypsy Lore Journal, ii. 60–62). That is all, or practically all, we know of the coming of the Gypsies to North America, where, at New York, there were house-dwelling Gypsies as far back as 1850, and where to-day there must be hundreds or thousands of the race from England, Scotland, Hungary, Spain, one knows not whence else besides. Some day somebody will study them and write about them; meanwhile we have merely stray jottings by Simson and Leland.
In South America.
For South America our information was, quite recently, even more meagre. Twenty years ago I just knew from Henry Koster’s Travels in Brazil (Lond. 1816, p. 399) of the presence of Ciganos there, whom he described as ‘a people of a brownish cast, with features which resemble those of white persons, and tall and handsome. They wander from place to place in parties of men, women, and children, exchanging, buying, and selling horses, and gold and silver trinkets.… They are said to be unmindful of all religious observances, and never to hear Mass or confess their sins. It is likewise said that they never marry out of their own nation.’ Since then, however, Mello Moraes has published Os Ciganos no Brazil (Rio de Janeiro, 1886), which, besides a Rómani glossary, gives a good historical and statistical account of the Brazilian Gypsies. They seem to be the descendants of Ciganos transported from Portugal towards the close of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. Thus, by a decree of 27th August 1685, the Gypsies were henceforth to be transported to Maranhão, instead of to Africa; and in 1718, by a decree of 11th April, the Gypsies were banished from the kingdom to the city of Bahia, special orders being given to the governor to be diligent in the prohibition of the language and ‘cant’ (giria), not permitting them to teach it to their children, that so it might die out. It was about this time, according to ‘Sr. Pinto Noites, an estimable and venerable Gypsy of eighty-nine years,’ that his ancestors and kinsfolk arrived at Rio de Janeiro—nine families transported hither by reason of a robbery imputed to the Gypsies. [[xvii]]The heads of these nine families were João da Costa Ramos, called João do Reino, with his son, Fernando da Costa Ramos, and his wife, Dona Eugenia; Luis Rabello de Aragão; one Ricardo Frago, who went to Minas; Antonio Laço, with his wife, Jacintha Laço; the Count of Cantanhede; Manoel Cabral and Antonio Curto, who settled in Bahia, accompanied by daughters-in-law, sons-in-law, and grandchildren, as well as by wife and sons. They applied themselves to metallurgy—were tinkers, farriers, braziers, and goldsmiths; the women told fortunes and gave charms to avert the evil eye. In the first half of the nineteenth century the Brazilian Gypsies seem to have been great slave-dealers, just as their brethren on this side of the Atlantic have always been great dealers in horses and asses. We read on p. 40 of ‘M …, afterwards Marquis of B …, belonging to the Bohemian race, whose immense fortune proceeded from his acting as middleman in the purchase of slaves for Minas.’ And there are several more indications, scattered through the book, that the Brazilian nation, from highest to lowest, must be strongly tinctured with Rómani blood. We know far too little about the Chinganéros or Montanéros, wandering minstrels of Venezuela, to identify them more or less vaguely with Gypsies (Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 306, 373); and a like remark applies, even more strongly, to the Lowbeys of Gambia, who have been described as the ‘Gypsies of North-West Africa,’ who never intermarry with another race, and who confine themselves almost exclusively to the making of the various wooden utensils in use by natives generally (ib. i. 54). Still, these Lowbeys may be the descendants of Gypsies transported from Portugal, or of the Basque Gypsies, whole bands of whom so lately as 1802 were caught by night as in a net, huddled on shipboard, and landed on the coast of Africa (Michel’s Pays Basque, p. 137).
In Australia.
To transportation Australia certainly owed its earliest Gypsies. In 1880, a few months before his death, Tom Taylor wrote to me:—‘The only Gypsy I ever knew who had travelled among “the people” was one Jones, who used to drive a knife-grinding wheel at Cambridge. Having “left his country for his country’s good” in the old transportation days, he had made his escape from Australia, and, the ship aboard which he had stowed himself putting into a Spanish port, had landed, met with some of the Zincali, and travelled with them for some time. He was looked on as a master of “deep Rommany” among the Gypsies round Cambridge.’ Mr. MacRitchie has a letter containing a longish list of wealthy Australian Gypsies, whose grandsires were bitchadé párdel (‘sent over’); yet, according to the Orange Guardian of May 1866:—‘The first Gypsies seen in Australia passed through [[xviii]]Orange the other day en route for Mudgee. Although they can scarcely be reckoned new arrivals, as they have been nearly two years in the colony, they bear about them all the marks of the Gypsy. The women stick to the old dress, and are still as anxious as ever to tell fortunes; but they say that this game does not pay in Australia, as the people are not so credulous here as they are at home. Old “Brown Joe” is a native of Northumberland, and has made a good deal of money even during his short sojourn here. They do not offer themselves generally as fortune-tellers, but, if required and paid, they will at once “read your palm.” At present they obtain a livelihood by tinkering and making sealing-wax. Their time during the last week has been principally taken up in hunting out bees’ nests, which are very profitable, as they not only sell the honey, but, after purifying and refining the wax, manufacture it into beautiful toys, so rich in colour and transparency that it would be almost impossible to guess the material’ (quoted in Notes and Queries, 28th July 1866, p. 65).
Transportation.
Banishment and transportation have been important factors in the dispersion of the Gypsies. They were banished from Germany in 1497, Spain in 1499, France in 1504, England in 1531, Denmark in 1536, Moravia in 1538, Scotland in 1541, Poland in 1557, Venetia in 1549, 1558, and 1588, etc.; to such banishment is probably due the fact that in 1564 we find in the Netherlands a Gypsy woman, Katarine Mosroesse, who had been born in Scotland. Besides the transportation, already noticed, of Scottish Gypsies to Jamaica, Barbadoes, and Virginia, of Portuguese Gypsies to Africa and Brazil, of Basque Gypsies to Africa, and of English Gypsies to Botany Bay, we know that some time prior to 1800 Gitanos were transported from Spain to Louisiana; whilst in 1544 we find one large band of Egyptians being sentenced at Huntingdon to be taken to Calais, the nearest English port on the Continent, and another being shipped at Boston in Lincolnshire and landed somewhere in Norway.
In Crete.
From the preceding it may be safely deduced that, with our present knowledge, or rather lack of knowledge, we can seldom, if ever, fix the precise date when the Gypsies first set foot in any country. Till 1849 it was almost universally accepted that 1417, the year of their appearance at the Hanse cities of the Baltic, was also the date of their first arrival in Europe. But since then Bataillard, Hopf, and Miklosich have collected a number of passages which prove incontestably that long before then there must have been Gypsies in south-eastern Europe. Symon Simeonis, a Minorite friar, who made pilgrimage from [[xix]]Ireland to the Holy Land, tells in his Itinerarium (Camb. 1778, p. 17), how in 1322 near Candia in Crete: ‘There also we saw a race outside the city, following the Greeks’ rite, and asserting themselves to be of the family of Chaym [Ham]. They rarely or never stop in one place beyond thirty days, but always wandering and fugitive, as though accursed by God, after the thirtieth day remove from field to field with their oblong tents, black and low, like the Arabs’, and from cave to cave. For after that period any place in which they have dwelt becomes full of worms and other nastinesses, with which it is impossible to dwell.’[4]
In Corfu.
The Empress Catherine de Courtenay-Valois (1301–46), granted to the suzerains of Corfu authority to receive as vassals certain ‘homines vageniti,’ coming from the Greek mainland, and using the Greek rite. By the close of the fourteenth century these vageniti were all of them subject to a single baron, Gianuli de Abitabulo, and formed the nucleus of a fief called the fief of Abitabulo or feudum Acinganorum, which lasted under various superiors until the abolition of feudal tenures in the beginning of the present century. One of those superiors, [[xx]]about 1540, was the learned Antonio Eparco, Melanchthon’s correspondent; another, the tyrannical Count Teodoro Michele, who died in 1787. This little Gypsy colony, numbering about a hundred adults, besides children, had a tax to pay twice a year to their superior, as also such fines as two gold pieces and a couple of fat hens for permission to marry. They were mechanics, smiths, tinkers, and husbandmen; celebrated a great yearly festival on the first of May; and were amenable only to the jurisdiction of their lord. Carl Hopf, in Die Einwanderung der Zigeuner in Europa (Gotha, 1870, pp. 17–23), tells us much about them, collected from the papers of Count Teodoro Trivoli, who succeeded to the property in 1863. Still we would fain know much more, especially something as to their language. One point to be noticed is that Italians must in Corfu have come early in contact with Gypsies, for the island belonged to Venice from 1401 to 1797.
In the Peloponnesus.
From a Venetian viceroy, moreover, Ottaviano Buono, the Acingani of Nauplion in the Peloponnesus received about 1398 a confirmation of the privileges granted them by his predecessors; and Hopf from two facts infers that Gypsies must have been early settled in the peninsula—one, the frequency of ruins called Gyphtokastron (‘Gypsy fortress’); the other, that in 1414 the Byzantine rhetorician Mazaris[5] reckoned Egyptians as one of the seven races dwelling there. Nauplion is on the east coast, Modone on the west; and at Modone the Cologne patrician, Arnold von Harff, who went on pilgrimage 1496–99, found a whole suburb of ‘poor naked people in little reed-thatched houses, well on to three hundred families, called Suyginer, the same as those whom we call Heiden (Heathen) from Egypt, and who wander about in our lands. Here the race plies all sorts of handiwork—shoemaking, cobbling, and also the smith’s craft, which is right curious to behold. The anvil stands on the ground, the man sat in front of it, like a tailor with us; near him sat his wife, also on the earth, and span. Between them was the fire. Near it were two little leather bags, like a bagpipe’s, half in the ground and pointing towards the fire. So the wife, as she sat and span, sometimes lifted up one of the bags and then pressed it down again; this sent wind through the earth to the fire, so that the man could get on with his tinkering.’ Harff then says that the race originates from a [[xxi]]country called Gyppe, some forty miles distant from Modone. ‘Sixty years ago’ [i.e. about 1436] ‘the Turkish emperor seized this territory, whereupon some counts and lords, who would not submit to his authority, fled to Rome to our spiritual father, and demanded his comfort and succour. So he gave them commendatory letters to the Roman emperor and to all princes of the empire, to render them conduct and assistance as exiles for the Christian faith. But though they showed the letters to all princes, they found nowhere assistance. So they died in wretchedness, but the letters passed to their servants and children, who still wander about in our lands, and call themselves from Little Egypt. But that is a lie, for their parents came from the territory of Gyppe, called also Suginia, which is not so far from our city of Cologne as it is from Egypt. But these vagabonds are rascals and spy out the lands.’ This passage, modernised from Harff’s narrative by Hopf (pp. 14–17), is of high interest, though there was no Turkish occupation of the Morea about 1436, and though we know of no territory there called Gyppe or Suginia.
In Roumania.
In 1387 Mircea I., woiwode of Wallachia, by a charter still preserved in the archives of Bucharest, renewed a grant made about 1370 by his uncle Vladislav to the monastery of St Anthony at Voditza of forty salaschi (‘tents’ or families) of Atsegane. Which shows that already the Roumanian Gypsies were serfs; and serfs they continued till 1856. To the Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society (vol. i., Lond., 1857, pp. 37–41) Mr. Samuel Gardner, H.M. Consul at Jassy, contributed some interesting ‘Notes on the Condition of the Gypsy Population of Moldavia.’ ‘The Tzigans,’ he says, ‘are an intelligent and industrious race, and in their general condition of prædial slavery (for few are in reality emancipated) are a reproach to the country and to the Government. Many of them are taught arts. They are the blacksmiths, locksmiths, bricklayers, masons, farriers, musicians, and cooks especially, of the whole country.… They dwell in winter in subterranean excavations, the roof alone appearing above ground, and in summer in brown serge tents of their own fabric.… The children, to the age of ten or twelve, are in a complete state of nudity; but the men and women, the latter offering frequently the most symmetrical form and feminine beauty, have a rude clothing. Their implements and carriages, of a peculiar construction, display much ingenuity. They are in fact very able artisans and labourers, industrious and active, but are cruelly and barbarously treated. In the houses of their masters they are employed in the lowest offices, live in the cellars, have the lash continually applied to them, and are still subjected to the iron collar and a kind of spiked iron mask or [[xxii]]helmet, which they are obliged to wear as a mark of punishment and degradation for every petty offence.’ The Gypsies of Wallachia and Moldavia are referred to in eleven original documents of the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries. Every one of these documents speaks of them as serfs, but we get never a hint of when they were first reduced to serfdom.
The Chaltsmide.
In a free metrical paraphrase of Genesis, made in German about or before the year 1122 by an Austrian monk, and cited by Freytag in Bilder aus der deutschen Vergangenheit (1859, ii. 226), occurs this passage:—‘So she [Hagar] had this child, they named him Ishmael. From him are descended the Ishmaelitish folk. They journey far through the world. We call them chaltsmide [mod. Ger. Kaltschmiede, ‘workers in cold metal’]. Out upon their life and their manners! For whatever they have to sell is never without a defect; whenever he buys anything, good or bad, he always wants something in; he never abates on what he sells himself. They have neither house nor country; every place is the same to them. They roam about the land, and abuse the people by their knaveries. It is thus they deceive folk, robbing no one openly.’ That here, by chaltsmide, Ishmaelites, and descendants of Hagar Gypsies were meant, can scarcely admit of doubt. The smith’s is still the Gypsies’ leading handicraft; Lusignan in 1573 says of the Gypsies of Cyprus,[6] ‘Les Cinquanes sont peuple d’Egypte dits autrement Agariens’; Agareni is one of the numberless names applied to the Gypsies by Fritschius in 1664; and in German and in Danish thieves’ slang Geshmeilim and Smaelem (Ishmaelites) are terms for Gypsies at the present day. One fancies that Austrian monk had somehow been ‘done’ by the Chaltsmide.
Athingani.
From whatever cause, it seems certain that a confusion did exist between the Ἀτσίγκανοι, or Gypsies, and the Ἀθίγγανοι, or heretics forming a branch of the Manichæan sect of the Paulicians, which renders it sometimes extremely difficult to determine whom the Byzantine historians are speaking of in seven passages collected by Dr. Franz von Miklosich in his great work, Ueber die Mundarten und die Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa’s (part vi., 1876, Vienna, pp. 57–64). It appears from these that the Athingani, described as magicians, soothsayers, and serpent-charmers, first emerge in Byzantine history under Nicephorus I. [[xxiii]](802–11), were banished by Michael I. (811–13), and were restored to favour by Michael II. (820–29). But Miklosich’s grounds for absolutely identifying them with Gypsies, and positively asserting the latter to have appeared at Byzantium in 810 under Nicephorus, are hard to recognise.
Atsincan.
Far less dubious seems an extract from the Georgian Life of Giorgi Mtharsmindel of Mount Athos (St. Petersburg, 1846, p. 241), which was demonstrably composed in the year 1100. We have two French translations of that extract—one published by Otto Boehtlingk (Bulletin historico-philol. de l’Académie de St. Petersbourg, ii. 1853, p. 4), and the other by Miklosich (loc. cit., part vi. p. 60). Both translations agree closely; I follow Miklosich’s:—‘Whilst the pious king, Bagrat IV. [c. 1048], was in the imperial city of Constantinople, he learnt—a thing marvellous and quite incredible—that there were certain descendants there of the Samaritan race of Simon Magus, called Atsincan, wizards and famous rogues. Now there were wild beasts that used to come and devour the animals kept, for the monarch’s chase, in the imperial park. The great emperor Monomachus, learning of this, bade summon the Atsincan, to destroy by their magic art the beasts devouring his game. They, in obedience to the imperial behest, killed a quantity of wild beasts. King Bagrat heard of it, and summoning the Atsincan, said, “How have you killed these beasts?” “Sire,” said they, “our art teaches us to poison meat, which we put in a place frequented by these beasts; then climbing a tree, we attract them by imitating the cry of the animals; they assemble, eat the meat, and drop down dead. Only beasts born on Holy Saturday obey us not. Instead of eating the poisoned meat, they say to us, ‘Eat it yourselves’; then off they go unharmed.” The monarch, wishing to see it with his own eyes, bade them summon a beast of this sort, but they could find nothing but a dog which they knew had not been born upon that day. The monk, who was present with the king, was moved with the same natural sentiment as we have spoken of above, on the subject of the icons and of the divine representation. He was moved, not with pity only, but with the fear of God, and would have no such doings among Christians, above all before the king, in a place where he was himself. He made the sign of the cross on the poisoned meat, and the animal had no sooner swallowed it than it brought it up, and so did not drop dead. The dog having taken no harm, the baffled wizards begged the king to have the monk, Giorgi, taken into the inner apartments, and to order another dog to be brought. The holy monk gone, they brought another dog, and gave him the [[xxiv]]poisoned meat: he fell dead instantly. At sight of this King Bagrat and his lords rejoiced exceedingly, and told the marvel to the pious emperor, Constantine Monomachus [1042–54], who shared their satisfaction and thanked God. As to King Bagrat, he said, “With this holy man near me, I fear neither wizards nor their deadly poisons.” ’ That things fell out precisely as here reported is questionable, but Gypsies are clearly meant by the Atsincan; the passage attests their existence in Europe in the eleventh century. The poisoning of pigs—for which compare Borrow’s Romany Rye—has become a lost Gypsy art. But twenty-five years ago I knew English Gypsies who had a most unpleasant knowledge of whence to get natural arsenic. One of them dropped down dead, and the policeman who examined his body found a quantity of it in his pocket. ‘Oh! yes,’ explained the survivors, ‘he used it, you know, sir, in his tinkering.’[7]
Komodromoi.
What it was first directed my attention to the Komodromoi of Byzantine writers I cannot be positive, but I am pretty sure it was something somewhere in Pott. Not in any of the 1034 pages of his Zigeuner in Europa und Asien (2 vols., Halle, 1844–45), for I have once more gone through that stupendous work, but perhaps in a letter, perhaps in a conversation, or perhaps in one of his contributions to the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft. Anyhow, I am sure no work hitherto on the Gypsies has cited this extract from Du Cange’s Glossarium ad Scriptores Mediæ et Infimæ Græcitatis (Paris, 1688):—
‘κωμοδρόμοι, interdum κομοδρόμοι, Circulatores, atque adeò Fabri ærarij qui per pagos cursitant: ut hodie passim apud nos, quos Chaudroniers dicimus. Lexicon MS. ad Schedographiam:
Βαβαὶ, θαυμαστικόν ἐστι, Βάναυσος, ὁ χαλκεύς τε,
Καὶ χρυσοχόος, λέγεται, ἀλλὰ καὶ κωμοδρόμος.
Glossæ Græcobarb. Ἀκμὼν, σίδηρον ἐφ’ ᾧ χαλκεὺς χαλκεύει, ἤγουν ἀκμόνιν ὁπου κομοδρομεύει ὁ κομοδρόμος. Alibi, Ἀκροφύσια, τὰ ἄκρα τῶν ἀσκῶν, ἐν οἷς οἰ χαλκεῖς τὸ πῦρ ἐκφυσῶσιν· αἱ ἄκραι, ἤγουν ἡ ἄκρες τῶν ἀσκῶν ἤ ἀσκιῶν, μεθ’ αἷς ὁποίαις φυσοῦσιν οἱ κομοδρόμοι τὴν φωτίαν. Theophanes, an. 17 Justiniani: τὶς ἐκ τῶν Ἰταλῶν χῶρας κομοδρόμος,—ἔχων μεθ’ ἑαυτο͂υ κύνα ξανθὸν καὶ τυφλὸν, etc. Constantinus de Adm. Imp. c. 50, p. 182, καὶ ἀπὸ τοῦ θέματος τῶν Ἀρμενιακῶν εἰς τὸ τοῦ Χαρσιανοῦ θέμα μετέθησαν ταῦτα τὰ βάνδα, ἤτοι ἡ τοῦ κομοδρόμου τοποτηρεσία Ταβίας, καὶ εἰς τὴν τούρμαν τοῦ Χαρσιανοῦ τὴν εἰρημένην προσετέθησαν. Anonymus de Passione Domini: [[xxv]]καὶ ὅτε φθάσωσιν εἰς τὸν τόπον, ἐλθὼν ὁ κομοδρόμος ἀς σταυρώσει αὐτὸν, etc. Occurrit præterea in Annalib. Glycæ.’
Dictionaries are not as a rule lively reading; but every line almost in this extract has its interest. Komodromos, ‘village-roamer,’ is certainly a vague term, but no vaguer than landlooper, which does in Dutch stand for ‘Gypsy,’ as landlouper does for ‘vagrant’ in Lowland Scotch. Du Cange’s own definition of komodromoi as roamers (circulatores) and coppersmiths who rove about the country, like those in our midst whom we call Chaudronniers, must have been meant by him to apply to Gypsies, and to Gypsies only. The modern Roumanian and Hungarian Gypsies are divided into certain classes—Caldarari (chaudronniers or caldron-smiths), Aurari (gold-workers), etc.; and Bataillard’s note prefixed to most of his monographs runs—‘L’auteur recevrait avec reconnaissance toute communication relative aux Bohémiens hongrois voyageant hors de leur pays (vrais nomades pourvus de tentes et de chariots, la plupart chaudronniers).’ Next, the six passages quoted by Du Cange show that the komodromos was variously or conjointly a coppersmith (chalkeus) and a gold-worker (chrysochoos, defined by Du Cange as ‘aurifer, aurarius’). The Gypsy Aurari have practised gold-washing in Wallachia and Transylvania from time immemorial (Grellmann, Die Zigeuner, 2nd ed. 1787, pp. 105–112); but we have also many indications of the Gypsies as actual goldsmiths. Captain Newbold says that the Persian Gypsies ‘sometimes practise the art of the gold and silver smith, and are known to be forgers of the current coin of Persia. These are the zergars (lit. “workers in gold”) of the tribe’ (Jour. Roy. Asiatic Soc., vol. xvi. 1856, p. 310). The Egyptian Gypsies, he tells us, at Cairo ‘carry on the business of tinkers and blacksmiths, and vend ear-rings, amulets, bracelets, and instruments of iron and brass’ (ib. p. 292). The Gypsy bronze and brass founders of Western Galicia and the Bukowina—the only Gypsy metallurgists of whom, thanks to Kopernicki, we possess really full information—are called Zlotars and Dzvonkars, Ruthenian words meaning ‘goldsmiths’ and ‘bell-makers.’ They are no longer workers in gold, but they do make rings, crosses, clasps, ear-rings, etc., of brass and German silver (Bataillard, Les Zlotars, 1878, 70 pages). Henri van Elven, in ‘The Gypsies in Belgium’ (Gypsy Lore Journal, ii. 139), says: ‘The women wear bracelets and large earrings of gold, copper, or bronze, seldom of silver; while all the Gypsies wear earrings [cf. supra, p. xii.]. It appears to me that the Gypsy jewels and the metal-work of their pipes have not yet been sufficiently studied. In the fabrication of these objects they [[xxvi]]must have preserved something typical and antique, which would contribute to the comparative study of their ancient industries. I remember seeing some rings, cast in bronze, of which the setting was ornamented with a double or a single cross, and whose ornamentation recalled the motifs of the Middle Ages, the style being evidently Oriental. Their walking-sticks are topped with copper or bronze hatchets, but more frequently with round knobs, which are hollow, and which hold their money, the lid being screwed off and on. These Gypsies were tin-workers, repairing metal utensils, and also basket-makers.’ The Gypsies, says Dr. R. W. Felkin, ‘appear to be on friendly terms with the natives of the country, and curiously enough they are said to have introduced the art of filigree work and gold-beating into Darfûr’ (‘Central African Gypsies,’ Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 221). Even the Brazilian Gypsies of 1816, as we have seen from Koster’s Travels, sold gold and silver trinkets.
The reference to the anvil and to the bellows of skins with which the komodromoi blew up their furnace recalls the passage cited from Arnold von Harff on p. xx., where, about 1497, he described the anvil and the bellows of the Modone Gypsies. Gypsy bellows are figured in Bataillard’s Les Zlotars, in Van Elven’s article, and in Die Metalle bei den Naturvölkern of Richard Andree (Leip. 1884, p. 83). Arthur J. Patterson in The Magyars: their Country and Institutions (1869, ii. 198) writes: ‘A curious consequence of their practising the art of the smith is that a Gypsy boy is in Hungary called purde, which is generally supposed to be the equivalent in the Gypsy language for “boy.” It is really the imperative mood of the verb “to blow,” for, while the Gypsy father is handling the hammer and the tongs, he makes his son manage the bellows.’ Small points enough these, but they must be viewed in relation to the metallurgical monopoly still largely enjoyed by the Gypsies in south-east Europe and in Asia Minor. So exclusively was the smith’s a Gypsy (and therefore a degrading) craft in Montenegro that, when in 1872 the Government established an arsenal at Rieka, no natives could be found to fill its well-paid posts. And in a very long letter of 21st January 1880, the late Mr. Hyde Clarke wrote to me that ‘over more than one sanják of the Aidin viceroyalty the Gypsies have still a like monopoly of iron-working; the naalband, or shoeing-smith, being no smith in our sense at all. He is supplied with shoes of various sizes by the Gypsies, and only hammers them on.’ It is most unlikely that, if recent comers to the Levant, the Gypsies should have acquired such a monopoly; it is obvious that, if they possessed that monopoly a thousand years ago, these komodromoi must have been Gypsies. [[xxvii]]
For Du Cange’s first three quotations I can assign no dates, but Theophanes Isaurus was born in 758 and died in 818; the seventeenth year of Justinian would be 544 A.D.—a very early date at which to find a Gypsy from Italy, ‘having with him a blind yellow dog.’ The dates of the Emperor Constantinus Porphyrogenitus are 905–959; I own I can make little of this passage from his Liber de administrando Imperio, but thema, bandon, topoteresia, and tourma seem all to be words for administrative divisions.
Nails of Crucifixion.
Du Cange’s last passage is by far the most interesting:—‘Anonymus de Passione Domini: “And when they arrive at the place, the komodromos coming to crucify him,” etc.’ ‘Why so interesting? there does not seem much in that,’ my readers may exclaim. Why? because there is a widely-spread superstition that a Gypsy forged the nails for the crucifixion, and that henceforth his race has been accursed of heaven. That superstition was first recorded in an article by Dr. B. Bogisic on ‘Die slavisirten Zigeuner in Montenegro’ (Das Ausland, 25th May 1874); and in Le Folklore de Lesbos, by G. Georgeakis and Léon Pineau (Paris, 1891, pp. 273–8), is this ‘Chant du Vendredi Saint,’ this plaint of Our Lady:—
‘Our Lady was in a grotto
And made her prayer.
She hears rolling of thunder,
She sees lightnings,
She hears a great noise.
She goes to the window:
She sees the heaven all black
And the stars veiled:
The bright moon was bathed in blood.
She looks to right, she looks to left:
She perceives St. John;
She sees John coming
In tears and dejection:
He holds a handkerchief spotted with blood.
“Good-day, John. Wherefore
These tears and this dejection?
Has thy Master beaten thee,
Or hast thou lost the Psalter?”
“The Master has not beaten me,
And I have not lost the Psalter.
I have no mouth to tell it thee,
Nor tongue to speak to thee:
And thine heart will be unable to hear me.
These miserable Jews have arrested my Master,
They have arrested him like a thief,
And they are leading him away like a murderer.” [[xxviii]]
Our Lady, when she heard it,
Fell and swooned.
They sprinkle her from a pitcher of water,
From three bottles of musk,
And from four bottles of rose-water,
Until she comes to herself.
When she was come to herself, she says,
“All you who love Christ and adore him,
Come with me to find him,
Before they kill him,
And before they nail him,
And before they put him to death.
Let Martha, Magdalene, and Mary come,
And the mother of the Forerunner.”
These words were still on her lips,
Lo! five thousand marching in front,
And four thousand following after.
They take the road, the path of the Jews.
No one went near the Jews except the unhappy mother.
The path led them in front of the door of a nail-maker.
She finds the nail-maker with his children,
The nail-maker with his wife.
“Good-day, workman, what art making there?”
“The Jews have ordered nails of me;
They have ordered four of me;
But I, I am making them five.”
“Tell me, tell me, workman,
What they will do with them.”
“They will put two nails in his feet,
Two others in his hands;
And the other, the sharpest,
Will pierce his lung.”
Our Lady, when she heard it,
Fell and swooned.
They sprinkle her from a pitcher of water
From three bottles of musk,
And from four bottles of rose;
Until she comes to herself.
When she had come to herself she says:
“Be accursed, O Tziganes!
May there never be a cinder in your forges,
May there never be bread on your bread-pans,
Nor buttons to your shirts!”
They take the road,’ etc.
And M. Georgeakis adds in a footnote, ‘The Tziganes whom one sees in the island of Mitylene are all smiths.’ It is a far cry from the Greek Archipelago to the Highlands of Scotland, but in the [[xxix]]Gypsy Lore Journal (iii. 1892, p. 190), is this brief unsigned note: ‘I should be pleased to know if you have the tradition in the South [of Scotland], that the tinkers are descendants of the one who made the nails for the Cross, and are condemned to wander continually without rest.’ No answer appeared; and I know of no other hint of the currency of this belief in Western Europe, unless it be the couplet:—
‘A whistling maid and a crowing hen
Are hateful alike to God and men,’
‘because,’ according to Lieut.-Col. A. Fergusson (Notes and Queries, August 1879, p. 93), though he gives no authorities, ‘a woman stood by and whistled while she watched the nails for the Cross being forged.’[8]
On the other hand, the Gypsies of Alsace have a legend of their own, opposed to, and probably devised expressly to refute, the gaújo or Gentile version. How there were two Jew brothers, Schmul and Rom-Schmul. The first of them exulted at the Crucifixion; the other would gladly have saved Our Lord from death, and, finding that impossible, did what he could—pilfered one of the four nails. So it came about that Christ’s feet must be placed one over the other, and fastened with a single nail. And Schmul remained a Jew, but Rom-Schmul turned Christian, and was the founder of the Rómani race (‘Die Zigeuner in Elsass und in Deutschlothringen,’ by Dr. G. Mühl, in Der Salon, 1874). In a letter of 16th December 1880, M. Bataillard wrote: ‘An Alsatian Gypsy woman, one of the Reinhart family, has been at me for some time past to procure a remission of sentence for one of her relations who has been in gaol since 2d October. “The Manousch” [Gypsies], she urges, “are not bad; they do not murder.” And on my answering with a smile that unluckily they are only too prone to take what doesn’t belong to them, and that the judges, knowing this, are extra severe towards them, her answer is, “It is true, it’s in the blood. Besides, you surely know, you who know all about the Manousch, they have leave to steal once in seven years.” “How so?” “It’s a story you surely must know. They were just going to crucify Jesus. One of our women passed by, and she whipped up one of the nails they were going to use. She would have liked to steal all four nails, but couldn’t. Anyhow, it was always one, and that’s why Jesus was crucified with only three nails, a single one for the two feet. And that’s why Jesus [[xxx]]gave the Manousch leave to steal once every seven years.” ’[9] The Lithuanian Gypsies say, likewise, that ‘stealing has been permitted in their favour by the crucified Jesus, because the Gypsies, being present at the Crucifixion, stole one of the four nails. Hence when the hands had been nailed, there was but one nail left for the feet; and therefore God allowed them to steal, and it is not accounted a sin to them.’ (‘The Lithuanian Gypsies and their Language,’ by Mieczyslaw Dowojno-Sylwestrowicz, in Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 1889, p. 253.)
This Gypsy counter-legend offers a possible explanation of the hitherto-unexplained transition from four nails to three in crucifixes during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The change must at first have been hardly less startling than a crucifix now would be in which both hands should be pierced with one nail. Dr. R. Morris discusses it in his Introduction to Legends of the Holy Rood (Early Eng. Text Soc., 1871). There it appears that while St. Gregory Nazianzen, Nonnus, and the author of the Ancren Riwle speak of three nails only, SS. Cyprian, Augustine, and Gregory of Tours, Pope Innocent III., Rufinus, Theodoret, and Ælfric speak of four; and that the earliest known crucifix with three nails only is a copper one, of probably Byzantine workmanship, dating from the end of the twelfth century. Now, if the Byzantine Gypsies possessed at that date a metallurgical monopoly, this crucifix must of course have been fashioned by Gypsy hands, when the three nails would be an easily intelligible protest against the calumny that those nails were forged by the founder of the Gypsy race.
I give the suggestion just for what it is worth; but the occurrence of the legend and the counter-legend in regions so far apart as Lesbos and Scotland, Alsace and Lithuania, strongly argues their antiquity, and corroborates the idea that the komodromos was a Gypsy who figures in ‘Anonymus de Passione Domini.’ One would like to know the date of that Greek manuscript; but Professor R. Bensly, in a long letter of 28th May 1879, could only conjecturally identify it with ‘S. Joannis Theologi Commentarius Apocryphus MS. de J. C.’ (? No. 929 or 1001, Colbert Coll. Paris Cat. MSS.[10]). Probably there are many allusions to komodromoi in Byzantine writers, if one had leisure and scholarship to hunt them up; certainly it is strange that of Du Cange’s six quotations for komodromoi four should seem unmistakably to point to Gypsies. I myself have [[xxxi]]little doubt of their identity. From which it would follow that more than a thousand years ago south-eastern Europe had its Gypsies, and that not as new-comers, but as recognised strollers, like the Boswells and Stanleys of our old grassy lanes. The verb kōmodromein occurs in Pollux Archæologus (flo. 183 A.D.); and the classic authors present many hints of the possible presence of Gypsies in their midst. Rómani Chals, or Gypsies, would often fit admirably for Chaldæi; and the fact that the water-wagtail is the ‘Gypsy bird’ of both German and English Gypsies reminds one that the Greeks had a saying, as old at least as the fifth century B.C., ‘Poorer than a kinklos’ (κίγκλος = water-wagtail), and that peasants in the third century A.D. called homeless wanderers kinkloi. One need not, with Erasmus and Pierius, derive Cingarus (Zingaro, Tchinghiané, Zigeuner, etc.) from kinklos; the words in all likelihood were as distinct originally as Gypsies (Egyptians) and vipseys or gipseys (eruptions of water in the East Riding of Yorkshire; cf. William of Newburgh’s twelfth century Chronicle). But the Gypsies may have been led, by the resemblance of its name to theirs, to adopt the water-wagtail as their bird; and Theognis and Menander may have applied to the water-wagtail the epithets ‘much-wandering’ and ‘poor,’ because the bird was associated in their minds with some poor wandering race.
I do not build on this guesswork, as neither even on the ingenious theories of M. Bataillard, according to which prehistoric Europe gained from the Gypsies its knowledge of metallurgy, and which may be studied in his L’Ancienneté des Tsiganes (1877) and other monographs, or in my summaries of them in the articles ‘Gipsies’ (Encycl. Britannica, vol. x. 1879, p. 618), and ‘Gypsies’ (Chambers’s Encycl., vol. v. 1890, p. 487). All that I hold for certain is our absolute uncertainty at present whether Gypsies first set foot in Europe a thousand years after or a thousand years before the Christian era. We have no certitude even for western Europe. In 1866 a large band of English ball-giving Gypsies paid a visit to Edinburgh; Scottish newspapers of that date wrote as though Gypsies had never till then been seen to the north of the Border. That was ridiculous: a similar mistake may have been made by the German, Swiss, Italian, and French chroniclers of 1417–34. As it is, M. Bataillard has established the presence, before 1400, of ‘foreigners called Bemische’ in the bishopric of Würzburg, who may have been Gypsies, as almost indubitably were certain Bemische at Frankfort-on-Main in 1495 (Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 207–10).[11] [[xxxii]]Then ‘A Charter of Edward III. confirming the Privileges of St. Giles’ Fair, Winchester, A.D. 1349’ (ed. by Dean Kitchin, 1886), contains this passage:—‘And the Justiciaries and the Treasurer of the Bishop of Wolvesey for the time being, and the Clerk of the Pleas, shall yearly receive four basons and ewers, by way of fee (as they have received them of old time) from those traders from foreign parts, called Dynamitters, who sell brazen vessels in the fair.’ On which passage Dean Kitchin has this note: ‘These foreigners were sellers, we are told, of brazen vessels of all kinds. The word may be connected with Dinant near Namur, where there was a great manufacture of Dinanderie, i.e. metal-work (chiefly in copper). A friend suggests Dinant-batteurs as the origin. Batteur was the proper title of these workers in metal. See Commines, II. i., “une marchandise de ces œuvres de cuivre, qu’on appelle Dinanderie, qui sont en effet pots et pesles.” ’
Gypsy Language.
It is a relief to turn from the thousand and one appellations under which Gypsies have been known at different times and in different countries, to the sure and unerring light that their language throws on their history. Though never a chronicler or traveller had written, we yet could feel confident from Rómani that the forefathers of our English Gypsies must for a long period have sojourned in a Greek-speaking country. Among the Greek loan-words in the Anglo-Rómani dialect are drom, road, (δρόμος), chírus, time (καιρός), éfta, seven (ἑπτά), énnea, nine (ἐννέα), fóros, market-town (φόρος), fílisin, mansion (φυλακτήριον), kekávi, kettle (κακκάβη), kókalo, bone (κόκαλον), kóli, anger (χολή), kúriki, Sunday (κυριακή), misáli, table (μενσάλι), óchto, eight (ὀκτώ), pápin, goose (πάππια), pápus, grandfather (πάππος), sápin, soap (σαποῦνι), shámba, frog (ζάμπα), síma, to pawn (σημάδι), skámin, chair (σκαμνί), soliváris, reins (σολιβάρι), stádi, hat (σκιάδι), wagóra, fair (ἀγορά), wálin, bottle (ὑαλί), and zímin, soup (ζουμί). The total number of Greek loan-words in the different Gypsy dialects may be about one hundred; and the same loan-words occur in dialects as widely separate as those of Roumania, Hungary, Bohemia, Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Scandinavia, Germany, Italy, the Basque Country, Spain, and Brazil. This is important as indicating that the modern Gypsies of Europe are descended not from successive waves of Oriental immigration, but all from the self-same European-Gypsy stock, whenever that stock may have first been transplanted to Europe. It conclusively negatives the Kounavine theory that the Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, [[xxxiii]]Basque, and French Gypsies arrived at their present habitats by way of Africa, and the Scandinavian Gypsies by way of the Ural Mountains.[12]
Slavonic loan-words come next to the Greek: English Rómani has some thirty of the former, against fifty of the latter. There are also a few words of Persian, Armenian, Roumanian, Magyar, and German origin; but the question of the presence or the absence of Arabic words in European Rómani is hardly yet determined. According to Professor De Goeje (1875; trans. in MacRitchie’s Gypsies of India, 1886, pp. 54–5), there are at least ten such words; according to Miklosich (Ueber die Mundarten, etc., part vi. 1876, pp. 63–64), there are none. Kótor, a piece, for instance, by De Goeje is derived from the Arabic kot’a, by Miklosich from the Armenian kotor. Neither, however, of the two scholars seems to have recognised the possible importance of the presence or the absence (especially the absence) of Arabic elements. Rómani contains Persian words, e.g. ambról, a pear; would it not have certainly contained also Arabic words if the ancestors of our modern European Gypsies had sojourned in Persia, or even passed through Persia, at a date later than the Arab conquest of Persia? If Miklosich is right in his contention that there are no Arabic words in European Rómani, it follows almost inevitably that the Gypsies must have passed through Persia on their way to Europe at some date prior to the middle of the seventh century A.D.
Important as are the borrowings of Rómani for helping us to trace the Gypsies’ wanderings, they can barely amount to a twentieth of the total vocabulary (five thousand words rich, perhaps). The words of that vocabulary for ‘water’ and ‘knife’ are in Persia páni, cheri (1823); in Siberia, panji, tschuri (1878); in Armenia, pani, churi (1864); in Egypt, páni, chúri (1856); in Norway, pani, tjuri (1858); in England pani, churi (1830); in, probably, Belgium, [[xxxiv]]panin, chouri (1597); in Brazil, panin, churin (1886)—where spelling and dates are those of the works whence these words have been taken. Over and above the identity in every Rómani dialect of these two selected words—and there are hundreds more like them—they are also identical with the Hindustani pani and churi, familiar to all Anglo-Indians. And to cite but a few more instances, ‘nose,’ ‘hair,’ ‘eye,’ ‘ear’ are in Turkish Rómani nak, bal, akh, kann; in Hindustani, nak, bal, akh, kan: whilst ‘Go, see who knocks at the door’ in the one language is Jâ, dik kon chalavéla o vudár, and in the other Jâ, dekh kon chaláya dvár ko. This discovery was not made till long after specimens of Rómani had been published—by Andrew Boorde (1542), whose twenty-six words, jotted down seemingly in a Sussex alehouse, were intended to illustrate the ‘speche of Egipt’; by Bonaventura Vulcanius (1597), whose vocabulary of seventy-one words, collected apparently in Belgium, fills up some blank pages in a Latin work on the Goths; and by Ludolphus (1691), whose thirty-eight words are embedded in his huge Commentarius ad Historiam Æthiopicam. In 1777 Rüdiger first compared with Hindustani some specimens of Rómani got from a Gypsy woman at Halle, and in 1782 he published the result of the comparison in his Neuester Zuwachs der Sprachkunde. In 1783 Grellmann’s Historischer Versuch über die Zigeuner reaped all the fruits of Rüdiger’s research; and William Marsden the same year was independently led to a like discovery (Archæologia, 1785, pp. 382–6). Grellmann, whose work has still a high value, leapt naturally enough to the conclusion that the Gypsies who showed themselves in western Europe in 1417 had newly come also to south-eastern Europe, and were a low-caste Indian tribe expelled from their native country about 1409 by Tamerlane. In 1783 the older languages of India were a sealed book to Europeans; and Grellmann’s opinion found almost universal approval for upwards of sixty years. Now, however, thanks to the linguistic labours of Pott, Ascoli, and Miklosich, combined with the historical researches of Bataillard and Hopf, the question has assumed a new aspect. For while on the one hand it has been demonstrated that south-east Europe had its Gypsies long before 1417, so on the other Rómani has been shown to be a sister, not a daughter—and it may be an elder sister—of the seven principal New Indian dialects. Not a few of its forms are more primitive than theirs, or even than those of Pali and the Prakrits—e.g. the Turkish Rómani vast, hand (Sansk. hasta, Pali hattha), and vusht, lip (Sansk. ostha, Pali ottha). In his Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Zigeunermundarten (iv. 1878, pages 45–54) Miklosich collected a number of such forms; but [[xxxv]]Miklosich it was who also pointed out there that many of the seeming archaisms of Rómani may be matched from the less-known dialects of India, especially north-west India—that we find, for example, in Dardu both hast and usht. I have not the faintest notion what was Professor Sayce’s authority for his statement that ‘the grammar and dictionary of the Romany prove that they started from their kindred, the Jats, on the north-western coast of India, near the mouth of the Indus, not earlier than the tenth century of the Christian era’ (The Science of Language, ii. 325). So far as I know, the only attempted comparison between Rómani and Játáki was made by myself (‘Gipsies,’ Enc. Brit., x. 618); and its results seemed wholly unfavourable to the Jat theory of the Gypsies’ origin.
Gypsies as Nomads.
No; language, like history, has yielded important results, but on many points we still have almost everything to learn. We do not know within a thousand years when the Gypsies left India, or when they arrived in Persia, Armenia, Africa, Asia Minor, and South-eastern Europe. But we do know that India was their original home, that they must have sojourned long in a Greek-speaking region, and that in western and northern Europe their present dispersion dates mainly if not entirely from after the year 1417. These three facts will have to be borne in mind for understanding what follows; a fourth fact is that a portion, if a small portion, of the Gypsy race is still intensely nomadic. Nothing is commoner than for the English Gypsies of our novels and plays to speak familiarly of ‘sunny Spain’; those of a little anonymous story, The Gipsies (1842), go backwards and forwards to Norway. But as a rule English Gypsies never stir out of Great Britain, or, if they do leave it, leave it only for another English-speaking country—Canada, the United States, or New Zealand.[13] So far, too, as we know, our present Gypsies are all descendants of early Gypsy immigrants; their surnames—Lee, Faa, Baillie, Stanley, Gray, Smith, Heron, Boswell, etc.—date back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. And our sole hint, until a quite recent date, as to visits to England by Continental Gypsies is a Bartholomew Fair handbill of 1689 about some German Gypsies, rope-dancers. [[xxxvi]]
Caldarari.
Mutatis mutandis, the same seems to hold good of the Gypsies of Germany, Poland, Norway, etc.; they are apparently the descendants of early immigrants into those different countries. But the case is quite otherwise with the Caldarari, or coppersmiths, of Hungary, for they will wander forth north, south, east, west, and sometimes stay away a whole seven years. Myself I have met with Caldarari but once, at Halle, in 1875; I described that brief meeting thus in my Gypsy Tents (1880, pp. 43–44):—
‘I had been paying my first call to Professor Pott, who had told me that only once had he spoken with living Gypsies, somewhere near London. So I asked him did they never come to Halle, and he answered, No; and presently I came away. I was not two hundred yards from his doorstep, when I saw a curious sort of skeleton waggon, drawn by two little horses, with their forelegs shackled together. On the top of this waggon sat a woman smoking a big black pipe; and round it three or four children were playing, stark-naked. The waggon was standing outside an inn; and entering the inn, I found two Gypsy men seated at the table, eating soup and drinking beer. I greeted them with “Látcho dívvus” (Good-day), and they seemed not the least bit surprised, for these were travelled gentlemen. Three years they had been away from Hungary, in France and Germany; and they could both speak French and German fluently. We talked of many things, and compared, I remember, passports: mine they pronounced an exceeding shúkar lil (fine document), the lion and unicorn seeming to take their fancy. Every place they came to, they had to go first thing to the head policeman and show their passes, and then he told them where they were to stop. They were allowed three days in every place, and no one could meddle with them all that time.… The women came in, two of them, and some of the children. There was one, a little fellow of nine or ten, as brown and pretty a thing as ever I saw, but wild as a fox-cub. His father gave him a plate of soup to finish, and he lapped it up just as a fox-cub would, looking out at me now and again from behind his mother. Then they paid their reckoning, the women climbed up on the waggon, the children shouted, and the men cracked their whips. “God go with thee, brother”; and so we parted.’
There is not much in that, but one cannot learn much in half an hour’s chance interview. Nor, indeed, is there very much in all the scattered notes that I have been able thus far to collect respecting the Caldarari; some of those notes relate to them only conjecturally. Du Cange’s definition of komodromoi proves that [[xxxvii]]coppersmiths roamed through France in 1688; and it is at least highly probable that to this caste belonged the band of forty Gypsies with whom, in the spring of 1604, Jacques Callot, a boy of twelve, wandered from Nancy to Florence. Of the journey itself we know nothing, but he has left an imperishable record of it in his three matchless engravings of the ‘Bohémiens,’ which show them on the march, in their bivouac, and spoiling the Gentiles. Charles Reade worked a clever description of Callot’s engravings into his Cloister and the Hearth, and they were admirably reproduced in the Gypsy Lore Journal for January 1890, with a long article on them by Mr. David MacRitchie.
In his Travels (1763, ii. 157–8), under the date 1721, John Bell of Antermony has the following passage:—‘During our stay at Tobolsky, I was informed, that a large troop of gipsies had been lately at that place, to the number of sixty and upwards, consisting of men, women, and children. The Russians call these vagabonds tziggany. Their sorry baggage was carried on horses and asses. The arrival of so many strangers being reported to Mr. Petroff Solovoy, the vice-governor, he sent for some of the chief of the gang, and demanded whither they were going? they answered him, to China; upon which he told them he could not permit them to proceed any farther eastward, as they had no passport; and ordered them to return to the place whence they came. It seems these people had roamed, in small parties, during the summer season, cross the vast countries between Poland and this place; subsisting themselves on what they could find, and on selling trinkets, and telling fortunes to the country people. But Tobolsky, being the place of rendezvous, was the end of their long journey eastwards; and they, with no small regret, were obliged to turn their faces to the west again.’ I fancy these Gypsies also must have been Caldarari. But whether they were or no, the passage remains one of the most curious that we have relating to Gypsy migrations. Taken in its most limited sense, it shows that the band had wandered in small detachments from Poland to Tobolsk, a distance of two thousand miles or upwards. But it suggests a great deal more than this. There seems no reason to question the statement that China was really the ultimate goal of their wanderings. If so, it is probable that they were following in the track of former migrations, that Gypsies had been in the habit of passing backwards and forwards between Europe and China, which opens up a vista of a possible connection between the West and the farthest East undreamed of by all our geographers. But without further evidence this must be mere conjecture. Of Gypsies in China I know nothing [[xxxviii]]whatever, except that a Russian noble, Prince Galitzin, whom I met three years since in Edinburgh, assured me he had seen a number of them there. Physique, outward appearance, seemed his only test; and his statement, though interesting, needs corroboration.
The Weserzeitung of 25th April 1851 announced that one hundred Gypsies had passed through Frankfort, on their way from Hungary to Algeria; and in the Revue de l’Orient for 20th January 1889 Madame Marlet thus described her meeting with a Hungarian Gypsy in North Africa:—‘I shall ever remember a scene which I witnessed in Africa. It was one evening at the base of the superb mountains of Mustapha Supérieur, just as the setting sun flooded the plain with his last rays of golden and crimson light—the gold and purple of the incomparable majesty of the Eastern sky. I observed a caravan of nomads encamped in the plain beneath their tents. I drew near, and saw that they were Gypsies, but Gypsies who had dwelt under other skies. Some were Spanish Gitanos, with garments of many hues, their shears hanging by their sides, at the end of a silvered chain wound around their blades; the others came from Morocco, and wore the simple white attire of the Children of the Desert. They received me with indifference. By means of my knowledge of Italian I managed at length to make the Gitanos understand that I came from Hungary. They were at once alive with interest. “Hungaria!” I heard them whisper into one another’s ears; and finally an old Gypsy man informed me, “There is one of us who comes straight from that very country.” They ran all at once to seek him out. But the young Gypsy—a superb, swarthy figure—quite unmoved, maintained a proud and gloomy silence. Did he suspect me of untruth in telling him that I knew that Hungary, so far away beyond the wide stretch of sea? He may have thought so. However, I saw that the old Gitano had told the truth. The dress of the young nomad was entirely Hungarian, from his shining boots up to his little Magyar calpate. His attire generally was rather rich than poor. Had I conversed with him in Hungarian, perhaps his heart would have softened. But he remained thus, sombre and mistrustful, and only the Gitanos, who, in their fantastic rags, stood around us, repeated vivaciously in Spanish, as they pointed towards him, “Patria Hungaria!” ’
Ciboure.
Ciboure, a suburb of St. Jean de Luz, is a sort of Basque Yetholm. Like Yetholm it has largely lost its Gypsy character. Its ‘Cascarrotac’ are supposed to be the descendants of Gypsies who came from Spain two centuries ago, but they are now quite mixed up with the Basques of the neighbourhood, and have lost the last remnants of Rómani, though at the [[xxxix]]beginning of the century they retained a few words, as debla, the sun, mambrun, bread, and puro, old man. But Ciboure is still a regular halting-place of Hungarian Gypsies, as appears from this passage in a very valuable article on ‘The Cascarrots of Ciboure,’ by the Rev. Wentworth Webster (Gypsy Lore Journal, October 1888, pp. 76–84):—‘My own observations are that the passage of the Hungarian Gypsies, or Gypsies from Eastern Europe, alluded to in 1868 and 1874 by the former mayor of Ciboure, M. Darramboure, is a recurring fact every two or three years. I left St. Jean de Luz in 1881, but for some time before that I had been ill, and a band may easily have passed without my being aware of it; but there were at least two other bands between 1870 and 1880—one, I believe, in 1872.[14] Their route seems to be, as far as I have been able to trace it, viâ Paris, Bordeaux, Bayonne, St. Jean de Luz, Hendaye, through Spain quite to the south, and returning by the eastern extremity of the Pyrenees, by Barcelona and Perpignan. M. de Rochas appears to have met one of these bands at Perpignan in July 1875 (Les Parias de France et d’Espagne, by V. de Rochas; Hachette, Paris, 1876, p. 259). These bands follow always the same route, and encamp on the same spots. When at St. Jean de Luz they make an apparently useless visit to Ascain, a village about five miles off their road, returning to St. Jean de Luz. They are evidently well-off, with good carts, wagons, horses, and utensils; many of them wear silver ear-rings and ornaments. Their trade, mending the copper vessels in the neighbourhood, seems to me to be a mere pretence; it cannot pay the expenses of the journey. What is the reason of this migration? Once I was standing with a Basque fisherman, watching their arrival, when the chief of the band addressed him in Basque, and the conversation went on between them in that language. When it had ceased, I asked the fisherman, whom I knew well, how the man spoke Basque. The reply was curt:—“He speaks it as well as I do.” Afterwards I tried to draw out the Gypsy, but he evaded my questions. “We pick up languages along the road. I was never in the neighbourhood before,” etc. These I believe to have been falsehoods. I must, however, add, that I have known Basque scholars learn Magyar, and Hungarians Basque, with unusual facility. Still the question remains: What is the object of these journeys?—a question for your Society to answer.’
Alas! the Gypsy Lore Society is dead; after four years’ most [[xl]]excellent work it died of want of support in 1892. And that question remains still unanswered. In the passage itself, however, there is a good deal to be noticed. Ciboure at present has little or nothing to draw foreign Gypsies to it; but a hundred, two hundred years ago, it was probably a genuine Gypsy quarter: then there would be every reason why Caldarari should make it a regular halting-place. This conjecture, if valid, suggests the antiquity of these strange peregrinations; and Gypsies assuredly are the very staunchest conservatives. Another guess is that at Ascain Gypsies very likely are buried; that would fully account for their descendants turning aside thus. Mr. Webster’s remark as to the ease with which Basque scholars acquire Magyar, and Hungarians Basque, was well worth making; still the fact remains—and it is an important one for our theory—that the unlettered Gypsies as a race are marvellous linguists. The immigrants of 1417–34 must, to tell fortunes as they did, have been able to speak German, French, and Italian; and I could, if necessary, adduce many testimonies as to the Gypsies’ faculty for picking up foreign languages. I have myself known an English Gypsy family remove (for family reasons) into Wales, and in three years’ time become thoroughly Cymricised.
M. Paul Bataillard was for years collecting materials about the Caldarari, but he died without publishing his promised monograph on the subject, so we must content ourselves with these stray notes from his writings:—‘The Gypsy Caldarari (as they are called in the districts of Roumania where they are accustomed to journey), have recommenced in our own days, throughout the whole of the west, circuits which have led them sometimes as far as England, as far as Norway, and sometimes, by way of France and Spain, as far as Corsica and Algeria. France was during a certain time “infested” by them, to quote the newspapers of the day, whilst I was rejoicing in the good luck which had thrown them in my way.… These exotic Gypsy blacksmiths generally return to the country whence they came.… They travel sometimes in rather large numbers in waggons which have no resemblance to the houses upon wheels of our Gypsies; and wherever they stop they set up large tents, where each waggon finds its place. The men have generally long hair, and clothes more or less foreign, often ornamented with very large silver buttons; and the chiefs carry a large stick with a silver head. It is easy to recognise them at a glance by these signs, and by their trade.… The journeys of these Gypsy blacksmiths had already been noticed in Germany and Italy[15] long before 1866. On [[xli]]the other hand, the edict of Ferdinand and Isabella, published at Medina del Campo in 1499, mentions the “Calderos estrangeros,” who might well be Gypsies (“Immigration of the Gypsies into Western Europe,” Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 202–3).… The Caldarari, if I am rightly informed, form a corporation, strictly organised, and having its hierarchical chiefs. They always travel in groups, commanded by chiefs of different degrees; and the work is done always in common. They even say it is the head chief who procures at Temesvar all the copper used by the corporation, and supplies the wandering bands with it.… There was certainly an intermission in the circular journeys pushed as far as France and farther, since I know of none that date from earlier than 1866; but they may have gone back to a long way beyond that date; and, as a matter of fact, before 1866 the Caldarari made excursions in Germany and Italy’ (Les Zlotars, p. 549).… ‘A fact still stranger is that Algeria has recently received a visit from Hungarian Gypsies, forming part of the numerous bands of Danubian Tsigans (for the most part chaudronniers), who, for some years (especially since 1866) have been traversing the West. I know for a fact that at Algiers a band of twenty to twenty-five persons was seen towards the middle of 1871, and that the same persons, or others like them, reappeared six months later. I have myself seen at Paris Hungarian Gypsies who had a vague idea of visiting Algeria’ (Les Bohémiens en Algérie, 1874, p. 3, note). Cf. also his L’origine des Tsiganes, pp. 54–58.
In an article on the Lithuanian Gypsies (Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 252) M. Mieczyslaw Dowojno-Sylwestrowicz says: ‘Sometimes we are visited also by Hungarian, Servian, and Roumanian Gypsies. These last consider themselves to belong to the Orthodox (i.e. the Russian) Church. They are mostly tinkers, repairing copper cooking utensils; but of these they are very apt to steal the copper bottoms, substituting an imitation of papier-mâché. They differ greatly from our own Gypsies, whom they excel in an incredible amount of obtrusiveness; moreover, they attack and rob wayfarers, and when asked what they are, they say, “We are not Gypsies, sir, we are Magyars.” ’
In an article, already quoted, on the Gypsies of Belgium (ib. iii. 138) Professor Henri van Elven writes of the Caldarari:—‘They usually travelled in little two-wheeled carts covered over with tilts [[xlii]]of grey cloth, and containing straw, baggage, and tinworkers’ tools. They have a great love for their horses, who are far from being in the miserable condition of horses of wandering mountebanks. I have seen the children share their bread with the horses. They buy and sell—sometimes steal—their horses. They have also dogs, large and well set-up. Their clothes are for the most part of Hungarian style, but also often like ours; notably, of gaudy colours, red and blue. All have long, black, curly hair, well furnished with inhabitants, which renders scratching a habit.[16] The complexion is swarthy; the features are fine and strongly accentuated, both among the men and the women. The nose is fairly long, and aquiline; the teeth are yellow, through the use of tobacco in all forms among women as well as men, unless in the case of some young girls.… These Gypsies were tin-workers, repairing metal utensils, and also basket-makers. The women went from door to door, asking work and begging. The women and children usually go barefoot and bare-headed, even in bad weather, displaying an astonishing endurance. We have not observed any smelters among the Gypsies, but many exhibitors of animals, jugglers, and female fortune-tellers. With regard to the young girls given over to vice, they are better attired, wearing clothes of the Italian and Hungarian modes of bright colours. They go about in the evening especially, looking about them, or carrying playing-cards, or again with small articles of basket-work for sale.’
In 1879 Sir Henry Howorth encountered in Sweden fez-wearing Gypsies, natives presumably of the Balkan peninsula; and in July 1881 a band of Gypsy blacksmiths from Corfu landed in Corsica, after having travelled over Italy (Gypsy Lore Journal, i. 204, note). Late in the sixties a company of Caldarari visited England, and encamped at several points round London. I know no mention of this visit in print, and I never met them myself, but I have talked with English Gypsies who did, and who were full of their little horses, their big copper vessels, and curious Rómani. Some of the Taylors on Rushmere Heath in 1873 told me these foreign Gypsies ‘came from the Langári country, and were called Langarians.’
‘Greek Gypsies.’
In July 1886 ninety-nine Gypsies arrived by train at Liverpool. They were called the ‘Greek Gypsies,’ and had started from Corfu, but according to their passports came from all parts of Greece and European Turkey, as also from Servia, Bulgaria, Roumania, even Smyrna. Three hundred napoleons their [[xliii]]journey had cost them thus far, and they meant to take shipping to New York. But America being closed to ‘pauper’ immigrants, no steamboat company would accept them, and they had perforce to encamp at Liverpool. Their encampment was visited by Mr. David MacRitchie and Mr. H. T. Crofton, the joint author with Dr. Bath Smart of the admirable Dialect of the English Gipsies (1875); the former wrote an excellent article about them in Chambers’s Journal for September 1886. These Gypsies were not Caldarari, though some of them were coppersmiths (designated as ‘chaudronniers’); others were builders, bricklayers, and agriculturists. They were typical Gypsies in physique, but not in apparel, ‘absolutely free from the vice of drunkenness,’ but most inveterate beggars. Their chief spokesman ‘was quite an accomplished linguist, and could speak Greek, Russian, Roumanian, and two or three other dialects of south-eastern Europe. The curious thing was, that he never once included in his list his own mother tongue, the speech of the Gypsy race. Neither would he admit that he was a Ziganka, not for a long time, at anyrate; but subsequently both he and his comrades answered to the name of Roum, and the cigar was no longer bōn’ but lásho.’ After stopping some time at Liverpool, these Gypsies crossed over to Hull, but neither there could they get passage to America; about a year later, so an English Gypsy informed me, a showman was exhibiting them, or some of them, through Yorkshire. Their subsequent fate is unknown to me; perhaps they are in process of absorption into English Gypsydom.
Eastern Gypsies in Galloway.
I thought at first it must have been some of this band whom my friend Mr. Robert Burns, the Edinburgh artist, met in Galloway in 1895; but his account of that meeting, written at my request, dispels that notion:—‘Two years ago, while walking with my wife near Kirkcudbright, I met a large troop of Gypsies, of a type quite different from any I had formerly seen. The first to appear round a corner was a tall, swarthy man leading a brown bear. My dog, a big powerful beast, immediately made a rush for the bear, but I managed to catch him in time. On seeing me holding the dog, the man came up, and, in very broken English, said that the bear would not hurt the dog. I explained that my fears were not for the dog but for the bear, an undersized, emaciated beast, and strongly muzzled. By this time we were surrounded by the whole troop, numbering, I should think, sixteen or seventeen, all begging from the “pretty lady” and “kind gentleman,” which seemed to be about all the English they knew. A good-looking young woman, with a baby on her back, asked me in French if I understood that language. I said I did, and asked her where they [[xliv]]came from. “From Spain.” Then she spoke Spanish also? “Oh! yes, and German, and other languages as well.” I tried her with a few sentences in German and Spanish, and found that she spoke both languages fluently, although with an accent which made it difficult to understand her. While we were talking, the men, not having stopped, were a considerable distance off. So I gave the woman some silver, while my wife distributed pennies among the children, and with many smiles and thanks they started off to join the others. They were very dark in colour, like Hindoos; the men and the older women very aquiline in feature, some of the younger girls really beautiful, with lithe graceful figures; and all without exception had splendid teeth. Their dress, though ragged and dirty, suggested Eastern Europe rather than Spain; some cheap brass and silver ornaments seemed to point in the same direction. They had two ponies with panniers, full of babies, cabbages, empty strawberry baskets, and other odds and ends; one of the ponies had a headstall of plaited cord similar to those used in Hungary. I saw them several times about Kirkcudbright and Gatehouse-on-Fleet; and from mental studies painted the head exhibited in the R.S.A. Exhibition of 1896.’
These must have been Ursári, or bear-wards, and recent arrivals in Britain; but what were they doing in that remote corner of Galloway, in Billy Marshall’s old kingdom? Frampton Boswell, an English Gypsy of my acquaintance, met the very same band, I fancy, near Glasgow in 1896; and they were perhaps the foreign Gypsies encamped at Dunfermline in the autumn of 1897—I was lying ill at the time in Edinburgh. Almost certainly they were identical with ‘a little band of Roumanian Ursári’ whom Mr. Sampson met in Lancashire in the latter half of 1897, and who were ‘travelling in English-Gypsy vans which they had bought in this country. They stopped for a month or more at Wavertree, quite close to us, and I saw a good deal of them. The first time, crossing a field by night and expecting to meet with some of the English breed, I stumbled among the six unmuzzled bears, chained to the wheels of the vans, and took them for large dogs till their grunts undeceived me; fortunately I got off with whole legs. They spoke a jumble of tongues—some Slavonic dialect (brat = brother), bad French, Italian, no German, and little English; but with the help of Rómani and scraps of other tongues we held some instructive conversations. Their young girls were beautiful, half-clad, savage, but the older women ugly as sin. When I first spoke to them, they replied to a question in Rómani with an Italian denial:—‘We are not Gypsies, we are (✠) Christianos.’ [[xlv]]
Oh for three years of health, a thousand pounds sterling, say, and a good capacity for wine and languages! I would pass those three years at Temesvar and Ciboure, and also perhaps in Morocco; at their close I should hold the key to Mr. Wentworth Webster’s problem. Fifty years hence, very likely, there will no longer be any problem left to solve; the ancient corporation of the Caldarari will have undergone dissolution.
Gypsy Folk-tales.
Given then this wandering race, from time immemorial established in Europe, but emigrants originally from India: the interest of their folk-tales, if folk-tales indeed they have, will surely at once be apparent to every student of Indo-European folklore. Yet folklorists as a body seem strangely ignorant of the existence of Rómani folk-tales, of the fact that not a few Gypsies are even professional story-tellers.
Campbell of Islay.
In the Saturday Review for 22nd August 1856 was an article by, I fancy, Grenville Murray, the ‘Roving Englishman,’ on Alexandri’s Ballades et Chants Populaires de la Roumanie, where allusion is made to ‘the long-haired Gypsies who wander about in their snowy tunics and bright sashes, the ῥαψῷδοι of Moldo-Wallachia, as in Russia their brethren are the popular musicians.’ But our earliest account of actual Gypsy folk-tales occurs in vol. iv. p. 431 of Popular Tales of the West Highlands, by J. F. Campbell of Islay (4 vols. Edinburgh, 1860–62). That eminent collector ‘picked up two gipsy tinkers in London—William and Soloman Johns.[17] They came to the office after hours, and were treated to beer and tobacco. Present, the author of Norse Tales [Sir George Dasent]. They were rather hard to start, but, when once set agoing, they were fluent. One brother was very proud of the other, who plays the fiddle by ear, and is commonly sent for to wakes, where he entertains the company with stories. He gave us: (1) A ghost, which appeared to himself. Finding that he was on the wrong track, told him a popular tale which I had got from another tinker in London, “The Cutler and Tinker.” Got (2) “The Lad and the Dancing Pigs.” This is the same as the “Mouse and Bee,” and has something of “Hacon Grizzlebeard.” A version of it was told to me by Donald MacPhie in South Uist. It is one of the few indecent stories which I have heard in the Highlands. There are adventures with a horse, a lion, and a fox, which the London tinker had not got. It savours of the wit which is to be found in Straparola. (No. 3) A sailor and others by the help of a magic blackthorn stick, go to three underground castles [[xlvi]]of copper, silver, and gold, and win three princesses. Same as “The King of Lochlin’s Daughters” [i. 236] and “The Knight of Grianaig” [iii. 1], and several stories in Norse Tales and Grimm. (No. 4) “The Five Hunchbacks.” This story was quite new to both of us, but a version of it was subsequently found in a book of Cruikshank’s. The tinker’s version was much better. (No. 5) A long and very well told story of a Jew, in which there figured a magic strap, hat, etc. Same as “Big and Little Peter,” “Eoghan Tuarach” [ii. 235], a story in Straparola, etc. [cf. my No. 68]. (No. 6) “The Art of Doctoring”—dirty wit. (No. 7) Poor student and black man travel, dig up dead woman, make fire in church, steal sheep, clerk and parson take black man for fiend and bolt. Very well told. See “Goosey Grizzle” and several Gaelic versions. (No. 8) Poor student, parson, and man with cat, which was the fiend in disguise. Well told; new to both of us. The men said that they knew a great many more; that they could neither read nor write; that they picked these up at wakes and other meetings, where such tales are commonly told in England now.’
I hoped that the Campbell MSS. in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh, might yield some further notes on these eight folk-tales; but a search, instituted in 1888 through the kindness of Mr. Clark, the librarian, proved ineffectual. Of all unlikely places in the world for a professional story-teller, London seems the unlikeliest; the heroine, it may be remembered, of Mr. Hardy’s Hand of Ethelberta prides herself on the absolute novelty of the notion. What is almost more surprising is that two folklorists like Campbell and Dasent should have struck so precious a vein, and not followed it up. Whatever the source of these stories, Gypsy, Irish, or English, they were distinctly valuable, and their value was enhanced by the meagreness forty years ago of the folk-tales collected in England.[18] But it is quite possible that one or other of the two brothers may still be living (he need not be seventy). At least any folklorist could probably find this out at the Potteries, Notting Hill, on Mitcham Common, or in some other of the Gypsyries in or round London.
Again in vol. i. p. xlvii., Campbell tells how in February 1860 he [[xlvii]]‘met two tinkers in St James’s Street, with black faces and a pan of burning coals each. They were followed by a wife, and preceded by a mangy terrier with a stiff tail. I joined the party, and one told me a version of “The Man who travelled to learn what Shivering meant,” while we walked together through the park to Westminster. It was clearly the popular tale which exists in Norse, and German, and Gaelic, and it bore the stamp of the class, and of the man, who told it in his own peculiar dialect, and who dressed the actors in his own ideas. A cutler and a tinker travel together, and sleep in an empty house for a reward. They are beset by ghosts and spirits of murdered ladies and gentlemen; and the inferior, the tinker, shows most courage, and is the hero. “He went into the cellar to draw beer, and there he found a little chap a-sittin’ on a barrel with a red cap on ’is ’ed; and sez he, sez he, ‘Buzz.’ ‘Wot’s buzz?’ sez the tinker. ‘Never you mind wot’s buzz,’ sez he. ‘That’s mine; don’t you go for to touch it,’ ” etc. etc. etc.’ [Cf. my No. 57, ‘Ashypelt,’ and No. 74, ‘The Tale of the Soldier.’[19]] In vol. ii. p. 285, Campbell adds that he was never able again to find this London tinker, who ‘could not read the card which I gave him, with a promise of payment if he would come and repeat his stock of stories. His female companion, indeed, could both read the card and speak French. The whole lot seemed to suspect some evil design on my part; and I have never seen the one who told the story or the woman since, though I met their comrade afterwards.’
In enumerating the sources of his Gaelic stories (i. p. xxiv.), Campbell gives (a) a West Country fisherman; (b) an old dame of seventy; (c) a pretty lass; or (d) ‘it is an old wandering vagabond of a tinker who has no roof but the tattered covering of his tent.… There he lies, an old man past eighty, who has been a soldier, and “has never seen a school”; too proud to beg, too old to work; surrounded by boxes and horn spoons; with shaggy hair and naked feet, as perfect a nomad as the wildest Lapp or Arab in the whole world.’ etc. Campbell gives four stories of tinker origin, our Nos. 73–76. To them and to their tellers I shall revert in my Introduction.
Dr. F. Müller.
In Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Rom-Sprache (Vienna, 1869), Dr. Friedrich Müller, the ‘leading representative of linguistic ethnology,’ published five Hungarian-Gypsy stories in the original Rómani, with an interlinear German translation. [[xlviii]]Taken down by Herr Fialowski from the recitation of a Hungarian-Gypsy soldier, Šipoš Janoš, quartered at Vienna, these stories are wholly void of literary merit. They are rambling and disconnected, sometimes all but unintelligible, and often excessively gross. At the same time they are genuine folk-tales; the soldier was trying to remember stories he had heard, not weaving them out of his own imagination. Four of them offer variants of Gypsy stories in other collections; and of these four I give summaries on pp. 19, 34, 48, 174, and 208. The fifth, ‘The Wallachian Gypsy,’ after six most Rabelaisian pages, passes on to a Tannhäuser episode. For the Gypsy, having murdered his father, plants on his grave the stick he killed him with. ‘And that stick began to blossom. That son went about on his knees for four-and-twenty years, and carried water in his mouth. And every evening the tree blossomed, and every evening grew a red apple.… And once the king came that way,… and as he went to pluck an apple, “Stay,” said the Gypsy, “don’t seize it so, but shake the tree, and then they will all turn into doves.” The king shook the tree, and all the apples then turned into doves. Up they flew, and the poor son’s father arose.’ The Gypsy then goes in quest of the Otter King (Vídrisko Kírāli). A king gives him a filly that can speak. On the way he is fed by a swineherd (one pail of wine and a whole swine) and a neatherd (an ox and two pails); he then meets a shepherd, overcomes a wether, and stabs the shepherd at his own request. Come to the Otter King, he eats his grapes, empties the biggest barrel of wine, wrestles with the Otter King on the Golden Bridge, and turns him into stone. He inquires of the king’s daughter, ‘Where is thy father’s strength?’ ‘My father’s strength is underneath the bridge. There is a besom; draw out a twig; and if thou with this, if thou with this wilt strike all the stones, then they will all turn into men.’ After trying once vainly to destroy him, the maiden pushes him into a fountain. But he ups with the fountain, and puts it and a tree under the window of a king, to whom he becomes turkey-keeper. A lady falls with child by him. He is caught, and there is a trial. She has had other lovers, and she is adjudged to him to whom she shall throw a red apple. She throws it to the Gypsy. So they marry and have children.—A nightmare kind of story this, which I can match from no other collection; still it offers numerous analogies, e.g. for the apple-tree, to Hahn, i. 70 and my No. 17; for turning men into stone, to Hahn, i. 172 and ii. 47; for the besom, to Hahn, ii. 294; and for throwing the apple, to Hahn, i. 94, 104, and ii. 56; also Bernhard Schmidt’s Griechische Märchen, pp. 85, 228, and Reinhold Köhler in Orient und Occident, ii. 304–6. [[xlix]]
Dr. Paspati.
Alexander G. Paspati, M.D., who died at Athens in the Christmas week of 1891, practised long as a doctor at Constantinople, and was an eminent Byzantine antiquary. His Études sur les Tchinghianés ou Bohémiens de l’Empire Ottoman (Cont. 1870, 652 pp.), is one of the very best works that we have on the Rómani language. It is largely based on Turkish-Gypsy folk-tales, of which Dr. Paspati seems to have made a huge collection, but six only of which are published by him as an appendix (pp. 594–629), in the original Rómani with a French translation. Two of these six stories—‘Baldpate,’ No. 2, and ‘The Riddle,’ No. 3—he got from a sedentary Gypsy, ‘Léon Zafiri, middle-aged, by profession mower, musician, and story-teller. Gifted with a prodigious memory, this man has repeated to me a great number of folk-tales (contes fabuleux), portions of which I have inserted in the text of my vocabulary. To test his memory I have made him repeat some of these stories, and he has retold them word for word, making only very slight changes. During the long nights of winter his brother Gypsies invite him to tell his tales, which he also translates into Turkish with extreme facility. I have one whose recital would occupy two hours. These stories are very old. He has heard them from various members of his race, and has been able to retain them in his marvellous memory. I have written these stories at his dictation. I have several volumes of them among my papers. Several were told by his grandfather, long since dead, who was also a story-teller. In these stories, with their mixture of truth and fable, I have not hitherto met any token either of their Indian origin or of an ancient faith. I say that these stories are old, for one finds in them words such as manghín, shéhi, etc., which to-day are quite forgotten by the Tchinghianés. This illiterate man is not only familiar with the dialect of the Sedentary Gypsies, but he knows also that of the Nomads, in whose midst he sings his songs and tells his stories. One is sorry to see a man of such intelligence, so superior to the mass of his race, dragging out a pitiful existence and clad in rags’ (pp. 34–35).
Paspati was, obviously, no folklorist; the folk-tales to him were valuable solely as so much linguistic material. But every word almost of the above deserves the closest consideration. I have tried, but in vain hitherto, to recover some trace of those ‘several volumes’; their destruction would be a grievous loss to the science of folklore.[20] [[l]]Still, from passages cited in the vocabulary, one can guess at in some cases, and in others actually identify, a portion of their contents. Thus, when one finds, ‘The Sun said to her, “Thou art pretty, and thou art good; thou art not as pretty as Maklítcha” ’ (p. 580), one may feel sure that the Tchinghianés must possess some such version of Grimm’s ‘Little Snow-white’ (No. 53) as ‘Marietta et la Sorcière, sa Marâtre,’ in Carnoy and Nicolaides’ Traditions Populaires de l’Asie Mineure (p. 91), where the stepmother asks, not a mirror, but the Sun, ‘Hast thou seen any woman fairer than I?’ and the Sun answers, ‘I am fair, thou art fair, but not so fair as Marietta.’ Three passages point as clearly to Bernhard Schmidt’s ‘Die Schönste’ (Griechische Märchen, p. 88), or some other version of ‘Beauty and the Beast’:—‘In those days there was a man with three daughters. He said, “I am going to the city, I ask you what your souls desire me to bring you” ’ (p. 394); ‘The eldest daughter said, “O father, bring me a thousand pieces of linen, to make dresses of” ’ (p. 410); and ‘The middle daughter came, and she said, “Bring me, O father, the heaven with the stars, the sea with the fishes, the forest with the flowers” ’ (p. 535). ‘My daughter, if your husband goes home, and one of his people kisses him, he will forget you, and you will remain in the forest’ (p. 555) must be an excerpt from a ‘Forsaken Bride’ tale; and in ‘He became a church, and the girl turned into a priest’ (p. 580) one recognises a widespread episode, which recurs in our No. 34, ‘Made over to the Devil,’ and No. 50, ‘The Witch.’ Similarly, our No. 21, ‘The Deluded Dragon,’ a Bukowina-Gypsy version of ‘The Valiant Little Tailor,’ is foreshadowed by—‘I am looking for the biggest mountain, to seize you, and fling you there, that not a bone of you may remain whole,’ on which Paspati observes that ‘this story relates the combat of a young man with a dragon, and the speaker here is the young man’ (p. 576). ‘She stuck a pin in her head; as soon as she had done so, the young girl turned into a pretty and beautiful bird’ (p. 514), may be matched from India (infra, p. 271); and ‘He gave the old man a feather, and said to the old man, “Take it and carry it to the maiden. I will come when she burns it,” ’ is discussed on our p. 167. The ‘Beauty of the World’ (pp. 347, 511, 569) is familiar through Hahn; and with Hahn i. p. 90, compare ‘The mare was pregnant, and his wife, the queen, also was pregnant’ (p. 195). ‘The king said, “Come, my brother, and restore her to human shape” (a story of a woman punished by being turned into an ass),’ on p. 351, must belong to a variant of our No. 25, ‘The Hen that laid Diamonds’; and our No. 7, ‘The Snake who became the King’s Son-in-law,’ is suggested by two passages on pp. 262, 266: [[li]]‘He said to his mother, “I want the king’s daughter to wife” ’ and ‘ “How am I to plant trees, and make them grow up, and gather their fruits?” (from a story in which, as the price of his daughter’s hand, the father requires the suitor to plant trees in the morning and gather their fruits in the evening).’ One can almost reconstruct a story out of ‘We are forty cats; three are black, one is white’ (p. 411), … ‘ “Very early we go to the bath, and we strip ourselves naked, we take off our skins, and we become human beings” (a story of forty pretty women turned into cats),’ (p. 367), and ‘ “When we are in the bath take the skins and fling them in the fire” ’ (p. 368; cf. also p. 537). That story should belong to the husk-myth or swan-maiden type, as should also perhaps this passage on p. 381—‘ “Why did you go off?” “There was a man.” “There was no man: a stick fell from the tree” (a story in which a man surprises three maidens at the bath. Two go off, but the third, whom the man is in love with, remains behind, and she holds this discourse with her sisters as they go home).’ Cats are pretty often referred to—e.g. ‘The cat found a shop where they sold honey. She dipped her tail in it, and then rolled it in the ashes’ (p. 344); ‘The cat sat down near them; she sees they are flinging away the precious stone with the guts of the fish that had swallowed it’ (p. 189); ‘The queen said to the lame cat’ (p. 195); and ‘The lame cat said to the lad, “I’ll give you a bit of advice” ’ (p. 245). To the same story—perhaps a version of the well-known ‘Silly Women’—certainly belong ‘His wife said, “Wait a bit till they put him in the coffin” ’ (p. 295) and ‘They put him in the coffin; he rose up in the coffin; and his wife said, “Hold! my husband who was in the coffin, is alive” ’ (p. 227); and to the same story (? ‘Ali Baba’) doubtfully, these two passages: ‘He packed the riches on his horses, and brought them at midnight to his house, and he became a rich man’ (p. 349) and ‘He sat down and sewed up the belly of his brother, whom the robbers had killed’ (p. 422). Finally, some passages picked almost at random, to illustrate the wealth of Paspati’s collections, are, on p. 472, ‘He is the son of the King of the Serpents’; on p. 582, ‘I pray you earnestly, O my wise king, have all the doors shut, and let no man come in, and none go out’ (? ‘Master Thief’); on p. 195, ‘The King of India said, “I have no son” ’; on p. 564, ‘She went into the forest, she found a shepherd, and she changed clothes with the shepherd, and took the road: she went walking on a whole month’; on p. 505, ‘One taper burnt at her head, the other at her feet’ (? a ‘Sleeping Beauty’ story); on p. 170, ‘I heard him, and I became a devil’; on p. 302, ‘She took a sword and an arrow, and set off. She did [[lii]]not wish any one, even her sisters, to know of her departure’; on p. 250, ‘The girl dressed herself, mounted her horse, and took her sword’; on p. 251, ‘I become a bird for thee, O apple of my eyes’; on p. 291, ‘I shall become a swallow, I shall sit on thy neck, to kiss the freckle upon thy cheek’; on p. 259, ‘Said the lad, “Who has taken my black bird?” ’; on p. 356, ‘They lay down: the lad placed the sword between himself and the maiden’ (cf. Grimm’s No. 60, i. 262); on p. 421, ‘The old man said, “I give you forty days to find me” ’; on p. 310, ‘The ass said, “All these years we have been with you, and to me you give bones to eat, and the dog has had to eat straw” ’[21]; and on p. 362, ‘The dead man goes last, the khodja goes in front.’
They are not very lively reading, these little scraps; still, they considerably extend our knowledge of Tchinghiané folk-tales. Of the six stories given in full by Paspati I have had to omit two. One of these, told by Christian nomads in the mixed style, is mixed indeed, more incoherent than the tale of the Great Panjandrum, as witness this sample:—‘The godfather sees her with flowers on her head. Song, “The wolf will eat the lamb; The wolf will eat the turkey; The cat hit the bear; A stranger was alarmed.” ’ The other story, told by one of the wild Zapáris, opens with a boon granted by an old man to the youngest of a king’s five sons, to possess all the holes in the country. ‘He went; in the forest he went; he found a hole. He stooped down over the hole. “Come out of the hole, whoever is inside.” A woman came out; he asked her, “What are you doing down there?” “There are two wolves; I feed them.” “Feed them well; God be with you.” “And with you also.” Again he went and went; he found a hole, and stooped down over that hole. “Come out of the hole.” Out came a blackamoor,’ etc. It is not a bad opening, but the story wanders off into drivel and obscenity. Even of the four tales I do give, one, the ‘Story of the Bridge,’ is valuable solely for its theme, of the master-builder Manóli and his wife; if it is as old as it is corrupt, it should be of hoary antiquity. But the three others are really good folk-tales, versions of ‘The Grateful Dead,’ ‘Faithful John,’ and Campbell of Islay’s ‘Knight of Riddles.’ As always wherever possible, my translations are made direct from the original Rómani.
Dr. Barbu Constantinescu.
Probe de Limba si Literatura Tiganilor din România, by Dr. Barbu Constantinescu (Bucharest, 1878; 112 pp.), is an admirable [[liii]]collection of seventy-five Roumanian-Gypsy songs and thirteen folk-tales, in the original Rómani, with a Roumanian translation. The thirteen tales were got from thirteen different Gypsies, and naturally they vary in merit, the best to my thinking being ‘The Red King and the Witch,’ ‘The Vampire,’ and ‘The Prince and the Wizard.’ I have given eleven of them, with full annotations; of ‘The Stolen Ox’ and ‘The Prince who ate Men’ there are summaries on pp. 66 and 219. Dr. Barbu Constantinescu, who was latterly a professor at Crajova, is, I learn, dead; he must have known Rómani thoroughly, and may have left large collections.
Miklosich.
In part iv. of his great work, Ueber die Mundarten und die Wanderungen der Zigeuner Europa’s (Vienna, 1874), Dr. Franz von Miklosich published fifteen Gypsy folk-tales and nine songs from the Bukowina, in the original Rómani, with an interlinear Latin translation. They were collected by Professor Leo Kirilowicz, of Czernowicz, but when, where, or from whom is not told; and they, alone of Gypsy folk-tales, have been utilised by M. Emmanuel Cosquin to illustrate his admirable Contes de Lorraine (2 vols. 1886). I have given them all in full, except ‘The Rivals,’ part only of which is cited under No. 48, p. 181. ‘Tropsyn,’ ‘The Enchanted City,’ and ‘The Jealous Husband’ are perhaps the best; the last has a special interest through its relation to Cymbeline. In his Beiträge zur Kenntniss der Zigeunermundarten (part iv., Vienna 1878), Miklosich published three more folk-tales, communicated by Professor Kirilowicz, Herr J. Kluch, and Dr. M. Gaster—the first a Lying Story from the Bukowina (No. 35), the second, ‘The Three Brothers,’ from the Hungarian Carpathians (No. 31), and the third, a mere fragment, from Roumania. This fragment is on the familiar theme of an emperor who till old age has had no heir; then his empress bears him a son; but just as the child is being shown to the people, two eagles carry it off. ‘Men,’ cries the empress, ‘if you will find my boy, I will become your servant, to wait on you, to wash your feet, to drink the water they are washed in, to quit my greatness, to make you king in my stead, if only you will find my boy.’ After which the story becomes hopeless nonsense, then suddenly stops—I fancy the Gypsy story-teller had got too drunk to continue.
Wlislocki.
Märchen und Sagen der Transilvanischen Zigeuner (Berlin, 1886, 157 pages), by Dr. Heinrich von Wlislocki, differs from all other Continental collections of Rómani folk-tales in this, that its sixty-three stories are published for their intrinsic interest, not solely as linguistic curiosities. They are [[liv]]given in German only, not in the original. Hence they are open to a suspicion of having been here and there touched up, a suspicion somewhat confirmed in the rare cases where the original is appended in a footnote, as on p. 88. They are interesting, but only as a ‘restored’ building may be interesting; one doubts, one can never feel quite sure of anything. At the same time, I believe that such ‘improvements’ apply solely to the language, not to the subject-matter, of these stories. Their general genuineness is attested by their occasional lacunæ, as in ‘Godfather Death,’ which is closely identical with Grimm’s No. 44, but lacks the entire episode of the sick princess. Besides, except that his work is dedicated to Liebrecht, Dr. von Wlislocki gives no indication of acquaintance with the subject of folk-tales, whilst he has approved himself a master of Rómani by his Grammar of the Dialect of the Transylvanian Gypsies (Leipzig, 1884). He tells us in the preface to his Märchen that for several months of the summer of 1883 he wandered with a band of tented Gypsies through Transylvania and south-east Hungary, and that during his wanderings he collected these sixty-three stories, every one of which he was careful to verify from the lips of a second member of the race. His little work is easily accessible to every folklorist, so to the folklorists I leave the task of analysing its stories in detail, premising merely that, like their predecessors, they offer numerous analogies to non-Gypsy folk-tales, but that fourteen of them bear a distinctively Gypsy character, especially Nos. 15, 24, 31, 36, 51, 55. Haltrich also gives some Transylvanian-Gypsy stories (Zur Volkskunde der siebenbürgischen Sachsen, Vienna, 1885); and Vladislav Kornel, Ritter von Zielinski, contributed four Hungarian-Gypsy ones to the Gypsy Lore Journal for April 1890, pp. 65–73.
Dr. R. von Sowa.
Die Mundart der Slovakischen Zigeuner (Göttingen, 1887), by Dr. Rudolf von Sowa, of Brünn, is based on nineteen Slovak-Gypsy stories which he collected at Teplicz in 1884–85, and nine of which are given in the original Rómani without a translation. Dr. von Sowa also contributed four Gypsy folk-tales—Slovak and Moravian—to the Gypsy Lore Journal; and the Bohemian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ he sent me in manuscript. His stories have a high value for the purposes of comparison, but are inferior as stories to those of several other collections. I have given eight of them—Nos. 12, 19, 22, 41, 42, 43, 44, 60.
Dr. Kopernicki.
Isidore Kopernicki, M.D. (1825–91), published in 1872 a German monograph on Gypsy craniology, and, called from Bucharest to Cracow in 1870, collected thirty Polish-Gypsy folk-tales in 1875–77. A year or two before his death he [[lv]]put out a prospectus of a projected work on Rómani stories and songs, with a French translation; but the work never found a publisher. Six, however, of his stories appeared in the Gypsy Lore Journal, and are reproduced here, Nos. 45–50. They are one and all so admirable as stories and valuable as folklore that I cannot but hope some folklore society or some individual folklorist may purchase and publish the entire collection—Madame Kopernicki, I believe, is still a resident of Cracow.
John Roberts.
Twenty to thirty years ago I knew hundreds of Gypsies in most parts of England and Wales. But the Rómani dialect was in those days my all-in-all; I would walk or ride thirty miles, and feel richly rewarded if I came back with two or three new words, such as mormússi, midwife, or taltoráiro, crow. I knew little or nothing about folklore, and cared less; the few stray odds and ends of it that I picked up among the people are scattered mostly through my In Gypsy Tents (Edinb. 1880). At Virginia Water, in 1872, I remember old Matty Cooper telling me how the plaice went about calling out, ‘I’m the King of the Fishes,’ which was why her mouth was made crooked (cf. Grimm’s No. 172, ‘The Sole’); and from a Boswell in, I think, 1875, I got the lying story of ‘Happy Boz’ll,’ which I give here, No. 36. But my one great find was my lighting on the Welsh-Gypsy harper, John Roberts (1815–94), of Newtown in Montgomeryshire. In Gypsy Tents contains a great deal about him and by him (pp. 78–81, 94–99, 149–158, 197–216, 269–278, 290–294, 299–319, 372–377); here, then, it may suffice to say that, though not a full-blooded Gypsy, he could speak Rómani, yes, and write Rómani, as no other Gypsy I have ever met at home or on the Continent. I know, indeed, of no other instance where the teller of folk-tales has also been able himself to transcribe them. He wrote out for me the two long folk-tales reprinted here (Nos. 54 and 55), and he had a wealth of others: I fear that many of them have perished with him. He was one of the finest of Welsh harpers; he spoke Welsh, English, and Rómani with equal fluency; and he was a man besides of rare intelligence. His tales, he would have it, were all derived from the Arabian Nights, ‘leastwise if it was not from my poor old mother, or else from my grandmother, and she was a wonderful woman for telling stories.’
Mr. John Sampson.
I may regret my own missed opportunities the less, as English and Welsh Gypsy folk-tales have found at length an ideal collector in my friend, Mr. John Sampson, the librarian of University College, Liverpool. No man could be better equipped for the task than he, as the nineteen stories here of [[lvi]]his collecting will amply prove. Long a master of English Rómani, he has also during the last few years been making a profound study of the ‘deep’ Welsh dialect, the best-preserved of all the Gypsy dialects with the doubtful exception of that of the Turkish Tchinghiané. His promised work on the subject is anxiously looked for. But, more than this, he possesses the rare gift of being able to take down a story in the very words, the very accents even, of its teller. Hundreds of times have I listened to Gypsies’ talk, and in these stories of his I seem to hear it again: a phonograph could not reproduce it more faithfully. His ‘Tales in a Tent’ (Gypsy Lore Journal, April 1892, pp. 199–211) contained in a charming setting, from which, indeed, it has seemed a sin to wrench them, the three English-Gypsy stories of ‘Bobby Rag,’ ‘De Little Fox,’ and ‘De Little Bull-calf,’ given here as Nos. 51, 52, 53. They were got near Liverpool—the middle one from Wasti Gray, and the two others from her husband, Johnny Gray, who also told Mr. Sampson the story of ‘The Horse that coined Golden Guineas.’[22] Then in 1896 from Matthew Wood, felling trees upon Cader Idris, and in 1897 from Cornelius Price in Lancashire, Mr. Sampson heard twenty-seven Welsh-Gypsy stories, about which he writes thus in letters:—
‘On the slopes of Cader I have laboured for days together taking down these things in a sort of phrenzy. No work could be more exhausting. To note every accent, to follow the story, and to keep the wandering wits of my Rómani raconteur to the point, all helped to make it trying work. For days together I have heard no English spoken, the Woods always talking Rómani, and the Gentiles Welsh. It is as well I did so at the time, for Matthew Wood has cleared his mountain of trees, and departed, God knows whither. Three journeys into Wales, and many letters to post-offices and police-stations, have failed to find him. Nor can I chance upon his mother again. Matthew got these stories from his grandmother, Black Ellen, who, he says, knew two hundred stories, many of them so long that their narration occupied four or five hours. In listening to these tales, I think what struck me most was the severity of their style, reminiscent of Paspati’s and other Continental collections. A single word serves often as a sentence—”Chalé,” they ate; “Ratí,” it was night. [[lvii]]The latter beats for compression the Virgilian “Nox erat.” … I have added lately to my tales to the number of five or six, taken down chiefly in English from a South Welsh Gypsy named Cornelius Price.… I have Cornelius’s pedigree somewhere among my papers. The Prices are a South Wales family, not of the purest descent, who entered Wales from Hereford some generations ago. Some of them intermarried with the Ingrams. Cornelius is a son of Amos Price, from whom my old tinker Murray got most of his Rómani lore, including the version of the old ballad ‘Lord Barnard and Little Musgrave’ which I sent to MacRitchie, and which he sent to Professor Child. It has beautiful lines, like—
“She lifted up his dying head,
And kissed his cheek and chin,”
side by side with others like—
“And when he came to his brother dear,
He was in a hell of a fright.”
It is printed in Child’s collection. Cornelius got his stories from Nebuchadnēzar Price, his uncle. I met him at Wavertree, near Liverpool, but he has since left for Chester way, returning south. He is a man of middle age, or rather younger, perhaps, say thirty-five, a pleasant, harum-scarum fellow. His younger brother, he tells me, knows many more tales than he himself.… Some of the best tales Price forgets, or only remembers interesting fragments. Such as a story of a bull who fights a —— query, what? If he conquers, he tells the hero, the stream will flow down to him blood one side only, but, if he is defeated, blood each side. The bull is defeated, and, following his instructions, the hero cuts a thong from his tail upwards, finds in his body a “Sword of Swiftness,” and makes a belt of the hide. Of what tale is this a fragment? Cornelius assures me that his youngest brother knows thirty to fifty very long tales.… Had I time, I believe I could collect hundreds of such tales from English and Welsh Gypsies.’
(Three or four years ago I found myself in a library—I would not for worlds say where—alone with a complete set of the forty Reports of the Challenger Expedition. I drew out a volume reverently—its pages had never been opened. Tastes differ, and I own that myself I should be quite as much interested by the discovery (say) of a Welsh-Gypsy version of the ‘Grateful Dead,’ as by eight hundred and odd pages on the ‘Abdominal Secretions of the Lower Gasteropoda.’ Nay, I would even venture to suggest that a fraction, a very small fraction, of the money yearly devoted to the Endowment of Research by government, by our colleges, and by individual [[lviii]]generosity, might well be apportioned to the collecting and preserving of English and Welsh Gypsy folk-tales. Every year will make the task harder; but, as it is, I believe Mr. Sampson could bag the whole lot in a couple of three months’ summer holidays. Holidays, quotha! I wonder what Mr. Sampson would say to my notion of holidays.)
Campbell of Islay.
Of the four stories which I cite (No. 73–76) from J. F. Campbell’s Popular Tales of the West Highlands (4 vols. 1860–62), three were told by John MacDonald, travelling tinker, and the fourth by his old father. ‘John,’ Hector Urquhart writes, ‘wanders all over the Highlands, and lives in a tent with his family. He can neither read nor write. He repeats some of his stories by heart fluently, and almost in the same words. I have followed his recitation as closely as possible, but it was exceedingly difficult to keep him stationary for any length of time.’ To which Campbell himself adds:—‘The tinker’s comments on “The Brown Bear of the Green Glen” I got from the transcriber. John himself is a character. He is about fifty years of age. His father, an old soldier, is alive and about eighty; and there are numerous younger branches; and they were all encamped under the root of a tree in a quarry close to Inverary, at Easter 1859. The father tells many stories, but his memory is failing. The son told me several, and I have a good many of them written down. They both recite; they do not simply tell the story, but act it with changing voice and gesture, as if they took an interest in it, and entered into the spirit and fun of the tale. They belong to the race of “Cairds,” and are as much nomads as the gipsies are. The father, to use the son’s expression, “never saw a school.” He served in the 42d in his youth. One son makes horn spoons, and does not know a single story; the other is a sporting character, a famous fisherman, who knows all the lochs and rivers in the Highlands, makes flies, and earns money in summer by teaching Southerns to fish. His ambition is to become an under-keeper’ (i. 174–5).
There are three points to be specially noticed here. First, if I mistake not, these two tinkers, father and son, are the only Gaelic story-tellers whom Campbell describes as reciting and acting their stories; he repeats the same of the son in a passage which I quote on p. 288. Secondly, the father told ‘many stories,’ but one does not learn what they were, except that Campbell got from him a version of ‘Osean after the Feen’ (ii. 106), that the son ‘argued points’ in the story of ‘Conal Crovi’ (i. 142), and that he knew the story of the ‘Shifty Lad,’ though not well enough to repeat it (i. 353). ‘Many stories’ should mean more than these three and the [[lix]]four of our text. Lastly, these MacDonalds are said to ‘belong to the race of “Cairds,” and to be as much nomads as the gipsies are.’ But the question arises, Are they not Gypsies, or half-breed Gypsies, or quarter-breed Gypsies at any rate? To the Gypsy Lore Journal for January 1891, pp. 319–20, D. Fearon Ranking, LL.D., contributed this paper:—
Boat-dwelling Tinkers.
‘I spent the month of August this year (1890) at Crinan Harbour, in Argyllshire, and there came for a few moments across a family of “Tinklers,” who are, I fancy, worth following up for the sake of getting from them a stock of words. I was one morning on my way to the post-office at Crinan, and, lying at the slip in front of the office, I saw a good-sized boat, which I knew did not belong to the place. I crossed the road, and went down to see who the owners were. To my surprise, I found they were a party of “Tinklers.” On questioning them they told me that they always went about in this manner, sailing from place to place on the West Coast and among the Islands, and making and mending pots and pans. They had just put in for provisions, and were on the point of sailing for Scarba. The boat was a good-sized fishing smack, three-quarter decked, rigged, if I remember rightly, with a big lug-sail and jib, and a small lug aft, but on this point I am not quite certain. The party consisted of three men and two women, with two or three children. They were stunted in appearance, and quite young; the women reddish-haired, the men rather darker.
‘On a venture, I asked whether they spoke “Shelta,”[23] as I was anxious to learn something of this language, of which I knew nothing. One of the men said that they did speak it, and, on being questioned, gave the names of several common objects mentioned by me. Unfortunately, I had neither pencil nor paper with me, and was therefore unable to make any notes, and, the words being entirely strange to me, I could not retain them. The only word I can remember is yergan = “tin.”
‘One of the men suddenly said, “But we have another language, which I do not think any one knows but ourselves; it is not in any books.” “What do you call a ‘boat’ in your language?” I said. To my great astonishment, he replied, “Bero.” On my then asking for the words for “man,” “woman,” and “child,” he gave mush or gairo, monisha, and chavo. Feeling now tolerably sure of my ground, I said, “Kushto bero se duvo.” He stared at me as if I had been a ghost, and, on my continuing with a few more words, he called to [[lx]]one of the women in the boat and said, “Come here, I never saw anything like this. Here is a gentleman who knows our language as well as we know it ourselves.” I continued asking the names of various common objects, such as “fire,” “water,” the names of animals, parts of the body, etc., and soon noticed that for each they had two or three names, one being always good “Rommanis,” the other, I presume, “Shelta.” But my surprise was greatest when, on asking the name for a “hen,” the answer was “moorghee,” and then, as an afterthought, “kanni.” Now, can any one tell me where they got this word “moorghee” from? I have never met with it among any “Rommani foki” of my acquaintance, but know it only as the common Hindustani name for a fowl. Is it an old word which has been lost by others, but retained by this family? Or have they picked it up from some one of their number who has been in India soldiering?
‘Another surprise was in store for me. On asking them where they got this language from, one of the men said, “We got it from our grandfather. He could speak it much better than we can,” and then volunteered the information that this grandfather was a keeper to the Duke of Argyll, and had supplied Campbell of Islay with many of the Sgeulachdan in his Highland Tales. This must be either the John M’Donald, travelling tinker, referred to by Mr. MacRitchie in his article on the “Irish Tinkers and their Language” (Oct. 1889, p. 354), or a relation of his. An account of this family will be found in the notes to the tale of the “Brown Bear of the Green Glen” (Popular Tales, vol. i. pp. 174–175). It mentions that the father had served in the Forty-Second. Had he brought back this word moorghee with him from India? One of the sons is mentioned as being a keen sportsman. No hint is given, however, of their knowing any language but Gaelic. It would probably have astonished Campbell of Islay to find that they were masters of four tongues—Gaelic, Shelta, English, and Rommanis. It may be noticed that the accounts of occupation do not quite tally, as these tinklers distinctly stated that their grandfather was one of Argyll’s keepers. I should like to know whether any of the sons did actually hold such a post. This is all I could learn in an interview of, at the most, twenty minutes.’
Dr. Ranking, my friend for a quarter of a century, has a thorough knowledge of Rómani; I would trust his judgment as I would trust my own. I have never myself come across any Tinklers of the West Coast, but I have met scores in the Lothians and in the Border Country, and my observations on these tally closely with Dr. Ranking’s. The Lowland Tinklers have little or nothing of the [[lxi]]Gypsy type, though they have a marked type of their own—a bleached, washed-out, mongrel type; their language has sunk to a mere gibberish, without the least trace of inflection, as different from the Welsh-Gypsy dialect as Pidgin-English from the English of Tennyson. None the less, side by side with such thieves’ cant as mort, woman, dell, girl, beenlightment, daylight, ruffie, devil, and patri, clergyman, that gibberish contains two or three hundred good enough Rómani words, as chúri, knife, drom, road, paúni, water, gad, shirt, and dústa lóvo, plenty money. Nay, a curious point is that it retains a few Rómani words which have been almost or wholly lost in the English and Welsh Gypsy dialects—shúkar, beautiful, háro, sword, klísti, soldier, kálshes, breeches, and pówiski, gun. On the other hand, Scottish thieves’ cant shows a much larger admixture of words of Rómani origin than does the English. We possess no early specimens of Scottish Rómani, but Scotland two centuries since would seem to have had as true Gypsies as any Stanleys or Boswells or Herons south of the Border. But the persecution of the race as a race lasted a hundred years longer in Scotland than in England, and it is probable that, whilst many of its chief members were hanged or drowned or transported to America, others fled southward—one finds to-day the Gaelic Gilderoy (‘red lad’) a Christian name among English Gypsies, and such surnames as Baillie, Gregory, and Marshall. Those who remained behind must have intermarried largely with Scottish vagrants, Irish vagrants, gangrel bodies generally: the Gypsy stream broadened out, and became correspondingly shallow. Nowadays, then, it is difficult to say of the Faa-Blyths, Taits, Norrises, Baillies, Douglases, or any other of the Tinklers I have met, whether they are more Gypsies or Gentiles; English Gypsies assuredly would not regard them as Gypsies. Still, they have all a dash of the Gypsy, stronger or weaker; and with these boat-dwelling Tinklers, whom Dr. Ranking describes, the dash was decidedly stronger. There can hardly be any doubt that the grandfather whom they spoke of as a keeper to the Duke of Argyll, was John MacDonald the younger, who at Inverary in 1859 had an ambition to become an underkeeper.[24] [[lxii]]
Kounavine.
Lastly, in the Gypsy Lore Journal for April and July 1890, were two long articles by Dr. A. B. Elysseeff—‘Kounavine’s Materials for the Study of the Gypsies.’ According to these, Michael Ivanovitch Kounavine (1820–81) studied medicine at Moscow, and then having passed as doctor, for the thirty-five years 1841–76 wandered from Gypsy camp to Gypsy camp in Europe, Northern Africa, and Asia. Eight of those years were passed amongst the Gypsies of Germany, Austria, Southern France, Italy, England, and Spain; twelve amongst those of Asia Minor, Armenia, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Iran, Hindustan, and the Deccan; ten amongst Russian Gypsies; and then from the Caucasus ‘the indefatigable traveller followed the transition of the European Gypsies into those of Kurdistan, and all along the Ural Mountains into those of Central Asia and Turan, on this occasion revisiting India and the ranges of Tian-Shan and the Himalayas.’ Meanwhile he collected an ‘immense store of materials, consisting of 123 tales, 80 traditions and legends, 62 ritual songs, and 120 smaller products of Gypsy poetry.… In the ancient legends the mythological elements assert themselves most strongly, and the characteristic features of the Hindu mythology are there so evident, that even the names in these tales recall the analogous divinities of the Hindu theology. These are Baramy, the proto-divinity, Jandra, the sun-god, Laki, Matta, Anromori, and others, in which one cannot fail to recognise the Hindu Brama, Indra, Lakshmi, Máta (Prithik, earth-mother), as well as the Zendic name of Ariman.… In the traditions and historical narratives one meets with classic names of towns known to the Greek geographers, such as Batala, Pourini, Espadi, Rikoi, Bikin, and Babili, in which it is not difficult to recognise the ancient towns Pattala, Poura, Aspadana (Ispahan), Rhagæ, Beikind, and Babylon, cited by Arrian and other historians and geographers.’
These are the merest pickings from Dr. Kounavine’s ‘colossal’ collections, which perished, alas! with him somewhere in Siberia, and are known to us only through an elaborate abstract drawn up in 1878 by Dr. Elysseeff, since himself also dead. First printed in the Transactions of the Russian Geographical Society (1882), that abstract, thanks to Dr. Kopernicki, appeared in English in the Gypsy Lore Journal, where it occupied twenty-five pages. It was quite right it should appear there; still, I cannot feel absolutely certain that there ever was any Dr. Kounavine at all. If there was, I am certain that nine-tenths of the discoveries claimed for him are the merest moonshine. To maintain that the Gypsies of England, France, Spain, and Italy arrived at their present habitats from [[lxiii]]Africa by way of Sicily, is, as has been shown, to evince a crass ignorance of the Rómani language. Equally absurd is it to maintain that ‘every Gypsy dialect contains a large number of words of non-Aryan origin: Aramaic, Semitic, and even Mongol words form 25 per cent. of the Gypsy vocabulary taken in its largest sense.’ For this implies that Aramaic is non-Semitic, as though one should speak of Gaelic and Celtic, or of German and Teutonic. Again, what of the sketch-map, according to which Dr. Kounavine seems to have found ‘fragmentary and confused traces of a primitive mythology’ somewhere about Newtown in Montgomeryshire and round the Cambridgeshire Wash? Newtown is a Welsh-Gypsy centre (I had shown it be such in 1880); but unquestionably its Gypsies would have retained some recollection of a visit from a mysterious Rómani-speaking foreigner, even after the lapse of thirty or forty years.
Theory as to Gypsy Folk-tales.
So there the folklorists have all that is essential—or rather all that I can give of the essential—for the right understanding of the following seventy-six folk-tales. And there I should have been quite content to leave them, did I not wish to disavow the theory imputed to me mistakenly by my friend, Mr. Joseph Jacobs. In his More English Fairy Tales (1894), p. 232, he speaks of ‘Mr. Hindes Groome’s contention (in Transactions Folk-Lore Congress) for the diffusion of all folk-tales by means of Gypsies as colporteurs.’ The paper I read before the Folklore Congress of 1891 was not on folk-tales at all, but on English popular superstitions; I certainly never contended that their diffusion was solely due to the Gypsies. Whilst as to Gypsy folk-tales, the first thing I ever wrote about them was forty-three lines in the Encyclopædia Britannica (vol. x. 1879, p. 615), which, with but forty stories to go by, concluded:—‘At present our information is far too scanty to warrant any definite conclusion; but, could it once be shown that the Asiatic possess the same stories as the European Gypsies, it might be necessary to admit that Europe owes a portion of its folklore to the Gypsies.’ And the last thing I wrote on the subject was twenty-seven lines in Chambers’s Encyclopædia (vol. v. 1892, p. 489), and they wound up:—‘According to Benfey, Reinhold Köhler, Ralston, Cosquin, Clouston, and other folklorists, most of the popular stories of Europe are traceable to Indian sources. But how? by what channels? One channel, perhaps, was the Gypsies.’
Gypsy Variants.
That seven years ago was my theory, if it may be dignified with so high-sounding a title; and that is my theory still. And it seems to me even now, that, though now we possess 160 Gypsy folk-tales, [[lxiv]]our store is still far too scanty to warrant any definite conclusion. We want the unpublished materials of Paspati and Kopernicki; we want Dr. von Sowa and Mr. Sampson to complete their collections; and we want, too, the Gypsy folk-tales, if such there be, of Spain, Portugal, Brazil, the Basque Country, Italy, Alsace, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and Greece—above all, of Africa and Asia.[25] If a word like páni, water, is found in every Gypsy dialect from Persia to South America, from Finland to Egypt, one reasonably regards it as a true Rómani word, as one that the Gypsies have brought from their eastern home. Similarly, if a folk-tale could be shown to have an equally wide distribution among the Gypsies, we might reasonably believe that the Gypsies had brought it with them. But at present we know of no such wide distribution. We have five Gypsy versions of ‘The Master Thief’ (Nos. 11, 12), one from Roumania, two from Hungary, and two from Wales; and two of the cognate story, ‘Tropsyn’ (Nos. 27, 28), from the Bukowina and Wales. We have two of ‘The Vampire’ (No. 5), Roumanian and Hungarian; three of ‘The Bad Mother’ (Nos. 8, 9), Roumanian, Bukowinian, and Hungarian; two of ‘Mare’s Son’ (Nos. 20, 58), Bukowinian and Welsh; three of ‘It all comes to Light’ (Nos. 17, 18, 19), Bukowinian, Roumanian, and Slovak; two of ‘The Rich and the Poor Brother’ (Nos. 30, 31), Bukowinian and Hungarian; three of ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ (No. 47), Polish, Hungarian, and Welsh; three of ‘The Master Smith’ (Nos. 59, 60), Welsh, Catalonian, and Slovak; two of ‘The Golden Bush and the Good Hare’ (Nos. 49, 75), Polish and Scotch; and four of ‘The Deluded Dragon’ (Nos. 21, 22), Bukowinian, Slovak, Transylvanian, and Turkish. It is something to have established this much; and it will be seen how [[lxv]]enormously Mr. Sampson has extended the area of Gypsy folk-tales since 1896. But it still needs much greater extension.
Unique Features.
An absolutely unique story or incident is a very rare find in folklore. A few stories in the present collection I have not been able to match, e.g. ‘The Three Princesses and the Unclean Spirit’ (No. 10), ‘The Red King and the Witch’ (14), ‘The Prince and the Wizard’ (15), ‘Pretty-face’ (29), ‘A Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (46), and ‘The Black Dog of the Wild Forest’ (72). Then as to incidents, I have met with no non-Gypsy parallel to the somersault that in Gypsy stories almost invariably precedes a transformation (cf. footnote 2 on p. 16). I have met with none to the striking ordeal in ‘Mare’s Son’ (No. 20):—
‘He went to his brothers. “Good-day to you, brothers. You fancied I should perish. If you acted fairly by me, toss your arrows up in the air, and they will fall before you; but if unfairly, then they will fall on your heads.” All four tossed up their arrows, and they stood in a row. His fell right before him, and theirs fell on their heads, and they died.’
‘The Seer’ (No. 23) offers a variant:—
‘And he said, “Good-day to you, brothers. You fancied I had perished. You have pronounced your own doom. Come out with me, and toss your swords up in the air. If you acted fairly by me, it will fall before you; but if unfairly, it will fall on your head.” The three of them tossed up their swords, and that of the youngest fell before him, but theirs fell on their head, and they died.’
Then there is the fine conception, of frequent occurrence in Wlislocki’s Transylvanian-Gypsy stories, that the sun in the morning sets forth as a little child, by noon has grown to a man, and comes home at eventide weary, old, and grey.[26] And this again, from ‘The Hen that laid Diamonds’ (No. 25):—
‘The emperor there was dead, and they took his crown and put it in the church; whosever head the crown falls on, he shall be emperor. And men of all ranks came into the church; and the three boys came. And the eldest went before, and slipped into the church; and the crown floated on to his head “We have a new emperor.” They raised him shoulder-high, and clad him in royal robes.’
The episode is reminiscent of ‘Excalibur’ in the old Arthurian legend. The story in which it occurs is identical with Hahn’s No. 36, but there the episode is wholly wanting. The multiplication of such seemingly unique Gypsy stories and incidents would certainly favour a belief in the originality of the Gypsies, would suggest that [[lxvi]]some at least of their stories are at first-hand, and not derived from Greeks, Roumans, Slavs, Teutons, or Celts.
Still, nothing would surprise me less than to come on non-Gypsy versions of one or all of these stories or incidents. The great mass of the collection can be paralleled from Grimm, Asbjörnsen, Hahn, Campbell, Cosquin, etc. Thus my No. 63 is Grimm’s ‘Our Lady’s Child’ (No. 3); No. 57 his ‘Youth who went forth to learn what Fear was’ (No. 4); No. 2 his ‘Faithful John’ (No. 6); No. 21 his ‘Valiant Little Tailor’ (No. 20); No. 38 his ‘Devil with the Three Golden Hairs’ (No. 29); No. 47 his ‘Robber Bridegroom’ (No. 40); No. 70 his ‘Frederick and Catherine’ (No. 59); No. 25 his ‘Two Brothers’ (No. 60); No. 68 his ‘Little Peasant’ (No. 61); No. 59 his ‘Brother Lustig’ (No. 81) and ‘Old Man made Young again’ (No. 147); No. 32 his ‘King of the Golden Mountains’ (No. 92); No. 17 his ‘Three Little Birds’ (No. 96); Nos. 55 and 73 his ‘Water of Life’ (No. 97); No. 43 his ‘Skilful Huntsman’ (No. 111); No. 25 his ‘Ferdinand the Faithful’ (No. 126); No. 41 his ‘Shoes that were danced to Pieces’ (No. 133); Nos. 20 and 58 his ‘Strong Hans’ (No. 166); and Nos. 11 and 12 his ‘Master Thief’ (No. 192); besides which his ‘Cinderella’ (No. 21), ‘Godfather Death’ (No. 44), and ‘The Sole’ (No. 172) are known to be current among the Gypsies. The Gypsies, then, by the showing even of our present meagre store of Gypsy folk-tales, have over ten per cent. of Grimm’s entire collection.
Which are the better, the Gypsy versions, or the non-Gypsy versions, can only be definitely determined when we can feel pretty sure of possessing the best Gypsy versions procurable. Take, for example, our story of ‘The Vampire’ (No. 5). The wretched Hungarian-Gypsy version of Dr. Friedrich Müller (1869) could not for a moment compare with Ralston’s fine Russian story of ‘The Fiend,’ but the Roumanian-Gypsy version of Barbu Constantinescu (1878) quite well can. The standard of Gypsy folk-tales should clearly be taken from the best, not the poorest, specimens; and the standard by that rule is high. Indeed, ‘The Red King and the Witch’ to me appears as good as anything in the whole field of folklore; and ‘Ashypelt,’ ‘The Jealous Husband,’ and half a dozen more of my collection seem only less good than it. But, of course, one’s own geese are all swans.
Literary Sources.
A curious point about these Gypsy stories is that in three or four of them one recognises an incident or a whole plot which, unless it be Gypsy, the Gypsies would seem to have derived from books. Here, for instance, are two parallel passages from No. 120 of the Gesta Romanorum and from the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Seer’ (No. 23):— [[lxvii]]
| Gesta. | Gypsy Tale. |
| Where to bend his steps he knew not, but arising, and fortifying himself with the sign of the Cross, he walked along a certain path until he reached a deep river, over which he must pass. But he found it so bitter and hot, that it even separated the flesh from the bones. Full of grief, he conveyed away a small quantity of that water, and when he had proceeded a little further, felt hungry. A tree, upon which hung the most tempting food, incited him to eat; he did so, and immediately became a leper. He gathered also a little of the fruit, and conveyed it with him. After travelling for some time, he arrived at another stream, whose virtue was such that it restored the flesh to his feet; and eating of a second tree, he was cleansed of his leprosy. | The youngest went into the woods, and he was hungry, and he found an apple-tree with apples, and he ate an apple, and two stag’s horns grew. And he said, ‘What God has given me I will bear.’ And he went onward, and crossed a stream, and the flesh fell away from him. And he kept saying, ‘What God has given me I will bear. Thanks be to God.’ And he went further, and found another apple-tree. And he said, ‘I will eat one more apple, even though two more horns shall grow.’ When he ate it, the horns dropped off. And he went further, and again found a stream. And he said, ‘God, the flesh has fallen from me, now my bones will waste away; but even though they do, yet will I go.’ And he crossed the stream; his flesh grew fairer than ever. |
Which is the better here, the nearer the original—the Geste of the Romans, or that of the Romanies? It is hard to determine; but of this I feel pretty sure, that, if any one were asked to say which of these two passages was monkish and which Gypsy, he would decide wrongly: there is such a tone of pious fortitude about ‘The Seer.’ The Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Wishes’ (No. 65) looks as though it were taken straight from Giambattista Basile’s tale of ‘Peruonto,’ i. 3, in the Pentamerone (1637)—a none too accessible work, one would fancy, and a tale that has not passed into popular folklore. Then there is the fine Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Jealous Husband’ (No. 33), derived apparently from the novella ii. 9 of Boccaccio’s Decamerone (1358), the prototype of Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Except that the Gypsy story is localised on the Danube, the plot is almost identical—the wager, the chest, the theft of the ring, the mole. It sounds unlikely that Gypsies, the most illiterate race in Europe, should have enriched their stock of folk-tales from Boccaccio. Still, that is how folklorists would probably account for the identity of the two stories, if those stories stood alone. But they do not; there are also four folk-tales at least to account for—Roumanian, German, Scottish Gaelic, and Irish Gaelic. And Campbell’s Gaelic story of ‘The Chest,’ whilst [[lxviii]]like Boccaccio’s, is in some points still liker that of the Bukowina Gypsies. On the whole, it seems easier to suppose that Boccaccio got his story directly or indirectly from the Gypsies, than that they got theirs from Boccaccio. But Gypsies, it will be urged, were unknown in Italy in Boccaccio’s day. That is by no means so certain. There was the komodromos with the blind yellow dog, who came from Italy in 544 A.D.; and there was the Neapolitan painter, Antonio Solario, ‘lo Zingaro,’ who was born about 1382.[27] And even though Boccaccio himself could never have seen Gypsies, many of his countrymen must have come across them outside of Italy—in Greece, in Corfu, in Crete, and in other parts of the Levant.
Questions of Date.
Sometimes, however, a date does seem to preclude the notion that the dissemination of this or that folk-tale can have been due to Gypsies. The ‘Grateful Dead,’ the first of our collection, is a case in point. The Turkish-Gypsy version is excellent—as good, indeed, as any known to me; but the story seems to have been current in England as early, at any rate, as 1420—the date assigned to the metrical romance of ‘Sir Amadas.’ Again, according to Mr. Jacobs’ More Celtic Fairy Tales, p. 229, ‘the most curious and instructive parallel to Campbell’s West Highland tale of “Mac Iain Direach” [= our No. 75] is that afforded by the Arthurian romance of Walewein or Gawain, now only extant in Dutch, which, as Professor W. P. Ker has pointed out in Folk-Lore, v. 121, exactly corresponds to the popular tale, and thus carries it back in Celtdom to the early twelfth century at the latest.’ Only, how from Celtdom has the story wandered to the Polish Gypsies of Galicia, whose tale of ‘The Golden Bush and the Good Hare’ (No. 49) is clearly identical?
Indian Parallels.
I raise these objections myself, knowing that, if I did not, some one else would certainly do so, with the gleeful remark, ‘Down goes the silly theory of the dispersion of folk-tales by Gypsies.’ By no means, necessarily. The theory [[lxix]]may be inapplicable in these and in other cases; but what will the folklorists make of another Polish-Gypsy story, the ‘Tale of a Foolish Brother and of a Wonderful Bush’ (No. 45)? Of it we find a variant in the Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Dragon’ (No. 61), and a most unmistakable version in the Indian fairy-tale of ‘The Monkey Prince’ (Maive Stokes, No. 10, p. 41). The connection, indeed, between the Gypsy and the Indian folk-tale seems scarcely less obvious than that between páni, water, in Rómani, and páni, water, in Hindustani. This, I think, must be granted; but what, then, of the non-Gypsy versions, cited on p. 161, from Russia, Norway, and Sicily? Or take the Turkish-Gypsy story of ‘Baldpate’ (No. 2). It is identical, on the one hand, with Grimm’s ‘Faithful John’ (No. 6) and many more European versions, and, on the other hand, with the latter half of ‘Phakir Chand’ (Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, pp. 39–52). Is it not possibly the link between them? And may not similar links be discernible in these eight parallels, where the notes on the Gypsy tales will supply the exact references:—
| Indian. | Gypsy. | European. | |||
| 1. | The Son of Seven Mothers, etc. | = | The Bad Mother (No. 8), etc. | = | The Blue Belt (Norse), etc. |
| 2. | The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead, etc. | = | It all comes to Light (No. 17), etc. | = | Grimm’s Three Little Birds, etc. |
| 3. | Prince Lionheart, etc. | = | Mare’s Son (No. 20), etc. | = | Grimm’s Strong Hans, etc. |
| 4. | Valiant Vicky, the Brave Weaver, etc. | = | The Deluded Dragon (No. 21), etc. | = | Grimm’s Valiant Little Tailor, etc. |
| 5. | The Two Brothers, etc. | = | The Hen that laid Diamonds (No. 25). | = | Grimm’s Two Brothers, etc. |
| 6. | The Weaver as Vishnu (Sansk.). | = | The Winged Hero (No. 26). | = | Andersen’s Flying Trunk, etc. |
| 7. | The Two Bhûts, etc. | = | The Rich and the Poor Brother (No. 30), etc. | = | Grimm’s Two Travellers, etc. |
| 8. | Story cited by Ralston. | = | The Witch (No. 50), etc. | = | Cosquin’s Chatte Blanche, etc. |
There is also a frequent identity of incident in Gypsy and Indian folk-tales. Thus, in the Hungarian-Gypsy version of ‘The Vampire’ (No. 5), the king sends his coachman to pluck the flower that has grown from the maiden’s grave; the coachman cannot, but the king himself can, and takes the flower home. Just so the Bel-Princess, thrown into a well, turns into a lotus-flower, which recedes from the villager who tries to pluck it, but floats into the prince’s hand [[lxx]](Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 145; also p. 10). Fruits causing pregnancy are common in Gypsy as in Indian folk-tales (cf. Notes to No. 16); and God sends St. Peter with them in the former just as Mahádeo does an old fakír in the latter. The sleeping beauty in ‘The Winged Hero’ (No. 26) lies lifeless on the bed, and is awakened only by the removal of the candle from her head; in ‘The Boy with the Moon on his Forehead’ (Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 251) it is two little sticks of gold and silver that revive the suspended animation of the young lady sleeping on the golden bedstead. The rescue of the eaglets from the dragon in ‘Mare’s Son’ (No. 20) exactly matches the rescue of the two birds from the huge serpent in the Bengal ‘Story of Prince Sobur’ (p. 134); and the princess in the tree in that same Bengal story (p. 126) comes very near the wife in the oak in the Polish-Gypsy ‘Tale of a Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (No. 46). The robbers in a Moravian-Gypsy story (No. 43) break through the wall of a castle like the robbers of Scripture and of Indian folk-tales; and one very curious feature, which we can trace across two continents, is the feather, hair, or wing of a bird, beast, or insect, the burning of which, or sometimes the mere thinking on which, summons its former possessor to the hero’s aid. It occurs in this passage from an unpublished Turkish-Gypsy story (Paspati, p. 523):—‘He gave the old man a feather, and he said to the old man, “Take it and carry it to your daughter, and if she puts it in the fire I will come.” ’ It occurs, too, in the Roumanian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Princesses and the Unclean Spirit’ (No. 10), in the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Enchanted City’ (No. 32), and in the Polish-Gypsy ‘Tale of a Girl who was sold to the Devil’ (No. 46). It is by no means a common feature in Western folklore, but it occurs in Basile’s Pentamerone, iv. 3, and in the Irish story of ‘The Weaver’s Son and the Giant of the White Hill’ (Curtin, pp. 64–77) the hero gets a bit of wool from the ram, a bit of fin from the salmon, and a feather from the eagle, with injunctions to take them out when in any difficulty, and so summon all the rams, salmon, or eagles of the world to his assistance. As I show in the notes to No. 46, the idea is of frequent occurrence in the folk-tales of the Levant[28] and of India. In Mrs. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, p. 32, the demon says to the Faithful Prince, ‘Take this hair with you, and, when you need help, burn it, [[lxxi]]then I will come immediately to your assistance.’ And in the Arabian Nights (‘Conclusion of the Story of the Ladies of Baghdad’) the Jinneeyeh gives the first lady a lock of her hair, and says, ‘When thou desirest my presence, burn a few of these hairs, and I will be with thee quickly, though I should be beyond Mount Kaf.’
The list, I expect, of identical plots and incidents could be largely extended even from my collection by M. Cosquin or any one else well versed in Indian folklore. Yet, as it stands, that list goes some way to corroborate my theory. One obvious objection may be anticipated. A folk-tale, as told to-day in India, need not be more primitive, more faithful to the original, than the same folk-tale as told to-day in Greece or Germany. The same wear and tear may have affected the story that stayed at home as has affected the story that wandered westward a thousand or two thousand years ago; it may have affected it in a very much greater degree. That is just what we find in language; the Rómani vast, hand, comes much nearer the Sanskrit hasta than does the Hindustani hāth. Another point may also be illustrated from language. The same word, or two kindred words, may have reached the same destination by different routes and at widely different periods. The Gypsies brought with them páni, water, to England, whither centuries after came the ‘brandy-pawnee’ of Anglo-Indians; páni is a far-away cousin of ae, aqueous, aquarium, etc. Brother and fraternal,[29] foot and pedestrian, are two out of hundreds of similar instances. In much the same way, it need not be any positive objection to the late transmission of a folk-tale to Norway or England, that an earlier form of that folk-tale already existed there. Because in the Nibelungenlied one finds a striking parallel to an episode in the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Prince, his Comrade, and Nastasa the Fair’ (No. 24), it does not follow that that story is necessarily derived from the Nibelungenlied. Still, the difficulty of discriminating between the earlier and the more recent forms of a folk-tale must be enormous—it may be, insuperable.
Tokens of Recent Diffusion.
Sometimes, however, it seems to me, we get sure tokens of recent diffusion. Thus in the folk-tales to which Sir George Cox, Professor de Gubernatis, and their fellow-mythologists assign a prehistoric antiquity, one of the commonest incidents is where the hero and heroine, flying from a demon, magician, or ogre (the heroine’s father often), transform themselves into a church and priest. We find the incident in Lorraine, Brittany, Picardy, many parts of both Germany and Italy, the Tyrol, Transylvania, Hungary, Croatia, Russia, Spain, Portugal, and [[lxxii]]Brazil, as well as among the Gypsies of Turkey, the Bukowina, and Galicia (cf. Cosquin, i. 106; and my own pp. 127, 196). What was the prehistoric form of the church? Was it a tope, a stone circle, something of the kind? That well may be. But how comes it that the development of the prehistoric form has in all these widely-separated countries reached exactly the same stage, and there stopped? Why has not the stone circle become in one case a stone-heap with a stone-breaker, in another a pound with a horse in it, in a third a field with a rubbing-post? Why always the modern Christian notion of a church? But the difficulty vanishes if one may suppose that the Gypsies, starting from the Balkan Peninsula at a date when churches were familiar objects, which a pursuer would naturally pass, carried with them the modern version of the story to Russia, Spain, and the other countries in which it is told to-day. Similarly, in Gypsy stories, and in stories current in countries wide apart, one finds such incidents as the hero falling in love through a portrait, the hero playing cards with the devil, the hero carrying a Bellerophon letter, the hero looking through an all-seeing telescope. Such stories in their original form may be of indefinable antiquity; but the recurrence of their developed form amongst Slavs and Teutons and Celts would seem to be due to recent transmission, unless one is prepared to maintain that our primæval Aryan ancestors were acquainted with portrait-painting, with playing-cards, with the art of writing, and with telescopes.
The Anthropological Theory.
In his Introduction to Mrs. Hunt’s admirable translation of Grimm, Mr. Andrew Lang thus expounded his ‘Anthropological’ theory of folk-tales:—
‘As to the origin of the wild incidents in Household Tales, let any one ask himself this question: Is there anything in the frequent appearance of cannibals, in kinship with animals, in magic, in abominable cruelty, that would seem unnatural to a savage? Certainly not; all these things are familiar to his world. Do all these things occur on almost every page of Grimm? Certainly they do. Have they been natural and familiar incidents to the educated German mind during the historic age? No one will venture to say so. These notions, then, have survived in peasant tales from the time when the ancestors of the Germans were like Zulus or Maoris or Australians.’
Gypsy Savagery.
It is an interesting, the most interesting theory; still I cannot forbear pointing out that many of Mr. Lang’s survivals of dead Teutonic savagery are living realities in Gypsy tents. Matty Cooper, discoursing to his ‘dear little wooden bear,’ and offering it beer to drink; ‘Gypsy Mary,’ who ‘washed herself away from God Almighty’; Riley Smith and Emily Pinfold, [[lxxiii]]who both ‘sold their blood to the Devil’; Mrs. Draper, who vowed that, sooner than touch beer or spirits, she would go to Loughton churchyard, and drink the blood of her dead son lying there; Riley Bosville with his two wives, and old Charles Pinfold with his three; Lementina Lovell, who heard the fairy music; her grandson, Dimiti, who lay awake once in Snaky Lane, and watched the little fairies in the oak-tree; and Ernest Smith (1871–98), who one July night in the grounds of the Edinburgh Electrical Exhibition of 1890 saw ‘two dear little teeny people, about two feet high, and he upp’d and flung stones at ’em’—I myself have known eight of these Gypsies, and kinsfolk of the two others. It is not sixteen years since an English Gypsy girl, to work her vengeance on her false Gentile lover, cut the heart out of a living white pigeon, and flung the poor bird, yet struggling, on the fire. It is barely fifty years since old Mrs. Smith was buried at Troston, near Ixworth, after travelling East Anglia for half a century with a sparrow, which, like the raven in Grimm’s story, told her all manner of secrets. (Cf. Mr. Lang’s ‘4. Savage idea.—Animals help favoured men and women.’) Then, there is the Gypsy system of tabu, by which wife and child renounce for ever the favourite food or drink of the dead husband or father, or the name of the deceased is dropped clean out of use, any survivors who happen to bear it adopting another. There is the belief in the evil eye; there are caste-like rules of ceremonial purity; and on the Continent there is, or was lately, actual idolatry—tree-worship among German Gypsies, and the worship of the moon-god, Alako, among their brethren of Scandinavia. Cannibalism. Nor even for cannibalism need Mr. Lang go far back or far afield. In 1782 in Hungary, next door to Germany, forty-five Gypsies, men and women, were beheaded, broken on the wheel, quartered alive, or hanged, for cannibalism. Arrested first by way of wise precaution, they were racked till they confessed to theft and murder, then were brought to the spot where they said their victims should be buried, and, no victims forthcoming, were promptly racked again. ‘We ate them,’ at last was their despairing cry, and straightway the Gypsies were hurried to the scaffold; straightway the newspapers all over Europe rang with blood-curdling narratives of ‘Gypsy cannibalism.’ Then, when it all was over, the Emperor Joseph sent a commission down, the outcome of whose investigations was that nobody was missing, that no one had been murdered—but the Gypsies. That was in Hungary, a century ago; but even in England, in 1859, a judge seems to have entertained a similar suspicion. In that year, at the York assizes, a Gypsy lad, Guilliers Heron, was tried for a robbery, of which, by [[lxxiv]]the bye, he was innocent. ‘One of the prisoner’s brothers’ (I quote from the Times of Thursday, 10th March, p. 11), ‘said they were all at tea with the prisoner at five o’clock in their tent, and, when asked what they had to eat, he said they had a “hodgun” cooked, which is the provincial name for a hedgehog. His Lordship (Mr. Justice Byles): “What do you say you had—cooked urchin?” Gypsy: “Yes, cooked hodgun. I’m very fond of cooked hodgun” (with a grin). His Lordship’s mind seemed to be filled with horrible misgivings, when the meaning of the provincialism was explained amid much laughter.’ Cannibalism is a common feature of Gypsy folk-tales, as this collection will show; but it is far commoner, and on a far grander scale, in the folk-tales of India, where a rakshasi makes nothing of polishing off the entire population of a city, plus the goats and sheep, horses and elephants. How does Mr. Lang account for this, for Germany remained savage long ages after India? I rather fancy, though I cannot be certain, that cannibalism in folk-tales tapers off pretty regularly westward from India.[30]
Gypsy Migrations.
In the Academy for 11th June 1887 Mr. Lang objected: ‘Can M. Cosquin show that South Siberia and Zanzibar got their contes by oral transmission from India within the historical period? This is doubtful; but it seems still more unlikely that tales which originated in India could have reached Barra and Uist in the Hebrides, and Zululand, and the Samoyeds—not to mention America—by oral transmission, and all within the historical period.’ My pp. xv–xviii and xxxv–xlv furnish a fairly good answer to much of this objection, for they show that during the last three centuries recent immigrants from India, possessed of folk-tales, have been passing to and fro between Lorraine and Italy, Scotland and North America, Portugal and Africa and Brazil, Poland and Siberia, Spain and Louisiana, the Basque Country and Africa, Hungary and Italy, Germany, Belgium, France, Spain, and Algeria, the Balkan Peninsula and Scandinavia, Italy and Asia Minor, Corfu and Corsica, the Levant and Liverpool, Hungary and Scotland. But, indeed, Mr. Lang’s objection was, in part at least, answered already, by the discovery in Scandinavia, Orkney, and Lancashire of thousands of Cufic coins of the ninth and tenth centuries. For where coins could journey from Bagdad, so also of course could folk-tales.
I remember once in an English parsonage being shown a ‘cannibal fork.’ I do not think I rushed to the conclusion that the parson’s grandmother had been a ghoul; no, I rather fancy there was talk of [[lxxv]]a son or a brother who was a missionary somewhere, perhaps in the South Sea Islands. And I remember also how a Suffolk vicar unearthed a Romano-British cemetery. One of his most treasured finds was a pair of brass compasses: ‘Marvellous,’ he would point out, ‘how like they are to our own.’ ‘As well they may be,’ old Mrs. C—— remarked to me (she was the daughter of a former vicar), ‘for I can quite well remember my poor brother John losing them.’
Gypsy Originality.
Sometimes, I scarce know why, the eloquence and the ingenuity of folklorists suggest these reminiscences; anyhow, I doubt if to folklorists my theory is likely to commend itself. From solar myths, savage philosophy, archæan survivals, polyonymy, relics of Druidism, polygamous frameworks, and such-like high-sounding themes, it is a terrible come-down to Gypsies=gipsies=tramps.[31] So I look for most folklorists to scout my theory, and to maintain that the Turkish Gypsies picked up their folk-tales from Turks or Greeks, the Roumanian Gypsies theirs from Roumans, the Hungarian Gypsies theirs from Magyars, the English and Welsh Gypsies theirs from the English and Welsh, the —— Hold! hold! pray where are the English or Welsh originals of our Gypsy versions of ‘The Master Thief,’ ‘The Little Peasant,’ ‘Frederick and Catherine,’ ‘Ferdinand the Faithful,’ ‘The Master Smith,’ ‘The Robber Bridegroom,’ or ‘Strong Hans’? where those of such English and Welsh Gypsy stories as ‘The Black Dog of the Wild Forest,’ ‘De Little Bull-calf,’ ‘Jack and his Golden Snuff-box,’ or ‘An Old King and his Three Sons in England’? It may be answered that the last three are in Mr. Joseph Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales (2 vols. 1890–94). I know those stories are there; they form nearly ten per cent. of Mr. Jacobs’ entire collection; but have they any business to be there? I have John Roberts’ manuscript of ‘An Old King’ before me now; it opens—‘Adoi ses yecker porro koreelish, ta ses les trin chavay.’ You may render that, as I rendered it, into English, ‘There was once an old king, and he had three sons’; but that does not make the story an English one. No; so far as our present information goes, ‘An Old King’ is a Welsh-Gypsy folk-tale.[32] [[lxxvi]]
There is at least one other story in Mr. Jacobs’ collection that may be Gypsy, not English. This is ‘The Three Feathers,’ which, Mrs. Gomme tells me, was collected from some Deptford hop-pickers by a lady now in America. Not all hop-pickers are Gypsies, but a goodly proportion are, as I know from old walks among Kentish and Surrey hop-gardens. ‘The Three Feathers’ is a variant of Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicilian story of ‘Feledico and Epomata’ (No. 55, i. 251), of an incident in Campbell’s Gaelic story of ‘The Battle of the Birds’ (No. 2, i. 36, 50), of one in Kennedy’s Irish story of ‘The Brown Bear of Norway’ (p. 63), and of one in the Norse story of ‘The Master-maid.’
Gaelic and Welsh-Gypsy Stories.
Now, of ‘The Battle of the Birds’ we have a Welsh-Gypsy version, ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land’ (No. 62), lacking, it is true, this episode, which may be an interpolation in the Gaelic story, but unmistakably identical with the Gaelic story, of which, however, it forms only a fragment. In the Gaelic version the hero is set four tasks by the heroine’s father, in the Gypsy version five tasks, as follows:—
| Gaelic. | Welsh-Gypsy. |
| To cleanse a byre, uncleansed for seven years. Heroine does it. Father taxes him with having been helped. | To clean a stable. Heroine does it. Father accuses him of receiving help. He denies it. |
| Wanting. | To fell a forest before mid-day (cf. Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Witch,’ p. 188). Heroine does it. Same denial. |
| To thatch byre with birds’ down—birds with no two feathers of one colour. Heroine does it. He denies help. | To thatch barn with one feather only of each bird. Heroine does it. |
| To climb a very lofty fir-tree beside a loch, and fetch down magpie’s five eggs. He climbs it on a ladder of heroine’s fingers, but in his haste her little finger is left on top of tree. | To climb glass mountain in middle of lake, and fetch egg of bird that lays one only. He wishes heroine’s shoe a boat, and they reach mountain. He wishes her finger a ladder, but steps over the last rung, and her finger is broken. She warns him to deny help. [[lxxvii]] |
| To select at the dance the youngest of the three sisters all dressed alike. He knows her by the absence of the little finger. | To guess which of the three daughters is which, as they fly three times over castle in form of birds. Forewarned by heroine, he names them correctly. |
The story, of course, is a very widespread one. We have a Sanskrit version of it on the one hand, and on the other an African Negro version from Jamaica, with many more referred to in the notes on two other Gypsy versions—one from the Bukowina, ‘Made over to the Devil’ (No. 34), and the other from Galicia, ‘The Witch’ (No. 50). But in the Gaelic and in the Gypsy version there are two special points to be noted. The first is that the almost absolute identity of the tasks imposed seems to preclude the idea that the likeness between the two versions can be explained by their being derived from a common original, three or four thousand years old. The second point is that in some respects the Gypsy version is decidedly the better of the two: the fir-tree beside a loch cannot compare with the glass mountain in the middle of the lake; and the selection of the youngest daughter at the dance is inferior to the selection of her as she flies in bird-shape over the castle.
Other Parallels.
Resemblances only less strongly marked are observable between Campbell’s two stories of ‘The Shifty Lad’ and ‘The Three Widows’ and the Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘Jack the Robber’ (No. 68), between his ‘Tale of the Soldier’ (given here as a tinker story, No. 74), and my ‘Ashypelt’ (No. 57), and between his ‘Brown Bear of the Green Glen’ (No. 73 here) and my ‘Old King his Three Sons’ (No. 55). There is also sometimes a striking similarity of phrase and idea in Gaelic and Welsh-Gypsy stories. Thus, in Campbell we get: ‘The dun steed would catch the swift March wind that would be before, and the swift March wind could not catch her’; ‘He went much further than I can tell or you can think’; and ‘Whether dost thou like the big half of the bannock and my curse, or the little half and my blessing?’ For which John Roberts gives: ‘Off he went as fast as the wind, which the wind behind could not catch the wind before’; ‘Now poor Jack goes … further than I can tell you to-night or ever intend to tell you’; and ‘Which would you like best for me to make you—a little cake and to bless you, or a big cake and to curse you?’ This last feature—of the big cake and curse, or the little cake and blessing—is found, to the best of my knowledge, in no folk-tale outside the British Isles; but it occurs also in the Aberdeenshire story of ‘The Red Etin’ (Chambers’s Popular Rhymes of Scotland, p. 90), and in Kennedy’s [[lxxviii]]‘Jack and his Comrades’ and ‘The Corpse-Watchers’ (Fictions of the Irish Celts, pp. 5, 54).
Irish and Gypsy Folk-tales.
It is hard to conceive how stories told by Welsh Gypsies should have been derived from West Highland folk-tales; of the alternative notion that the West Highland folk-tales may have originally been derived from Gypsies we get one pretty strong confirmation—the identity of Campbell’s ‘Knight of Riddles’ (No. 22) and the Turkish-Gypsy story of ‘The Riddle’ (No. 3). Reinhold Köhler, in Orient und Occident, ii. 320, failed to find in all Europe’s folklore any parallel to the latter, the essential, half of the Gaelic story; but the knight’s daughter’s plaid there is clearly the Highland version of the princess’s chemise in the Gypsy story. Campbell, too, is sore put to it how the Rhampsinitus story can have found its way to Dumbartonshire (i. 352), or a tale from Boccaccio to Islay (ii. 14), or one from Straparola to Barra (ii. 238). But all three stories are known to the Gypsies; there, then, is a solution of Campbell’s perplexities. So that if Campbell’s stories and the Welsh-Gypsy stories had stood alone, I should, I believe, have urged that alternative notion. But they do not, for in several cases the Welsh-Gypsy stories resemble Irish Gaelic versions a great deal more closely than they do the Scottish ones. Thus, in Mr. Curtin’s Myths and Folklore of Ireland[33] (1890) is ‘The Son of the King of Erin and the Giant of Loch Lein,’ pp. 32–49, a variant of Campbell’s ‘Battle of the Birds’; the following brief abstract of it will show how exactly it tallies with our ‘Green Man of Noman’s Land’ (No. 62):—Prince plays cards with giant, and wins two estates. Plays again, and wins golden-horned cattle. Plays again, and loses his head, so has to give himself up to giant in a year and a day. On his way to giant’s he lodges with three old women, sisters, each of whom gives him a ball of thread for guide. Near the giant’s castle he comes on a lake, in which giant’s three daughters are bathing. He seizes the clothes of the youngest one, and to get them back she promises to save him from danger. The giant sets him tasks—to clean stable, to thatch stable with birds’ feathers (no two alike), and to bring down crow’s one egg from a tree covered with glass, nine hundred feet high. The youngest daughter helps him in all three tasks, for the third task making him strip the flesh from her bones, and use the bones as steps for [[lxxix]]climbing. Coming down, he misses the last bone, and she loses her little toe. The prince goes home, and is to be married to the daughter of the King of Lochlin [Denmark], but the giant and his daughter are invited to the wedding. Then, as in Campbell’s tale, the giant’s daughter ‘threw two grains of wheat in the air, and there came down on the table two pigeons. The cock pigeon pecked at the hen and pushed her off the table. Then the hen called out to him in a human voice, “You wouldn’t do that to me the day I cleaned the stable for you.” ’ So, too, the hen reminds the cock of the second and third tasks[34]; and, awakened at last to remembrance, the prince weds the giant’s daughter.
Clearly, the readiest explanation of the likeness between ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land’ and the Scottish and Irish stories would be that these last are both derived from Gypsies; but then of Gypsies in Ireland our knowledge is almost nil. In a letter of 8th February 1898, Mr. William Larminie, of Bray, Co. Wicklow, the author of West Irish Folk-tales (1893), writes:—‘I have never heard of Irish Gypsies proper. They seem never to have settled in the country for some reason.’ On the other hand, three or four English-Gypsy families of my acquaintance have certainly travelled Ireland during the last thirty years; Simson’s History of the Gipsies (1865) contains allusions on pp. 325–8, 356–8, etc., to visits of ‘Irish Gipsies’ to Scotland; and, according to a note by Mr. Ffrench of Donegal in the Gypsy Lore Journal for April 1890, p. 127, ‘there are two tribes of Gypsy-folk in Ireland. The first are real Gypsies; the second are what are called “Gilly Goolies,” and are only touched on the Gypsies, i.e. have a strain of Gypsy blood in their veins, and follow the mode of life followed by the Gypsies.’ Moreover, the Irish novelist, William Carleton (1794–1869), in his Autobiography (1896), i. 212, shows that ‘Scottish gipsies’ did visit mid-Ireland about 1814 and earlier. ‘My eldest married sister, Mary,’ he writes, ‘lived (about the period when I, having been set apart for the Church, commenced my Latin) in the townland of a place called Ballagh, Co. Roscommon, remarkable for the beauty of its lough. It was during the Easter holidays, and I was on a visit to her. At that time it was not unusual for a small encampment of the Scottish gipsies to pass over to the north of Ireland, and indeed I am not surprised at it, considering the [[lxxx]]extraordinary curiosity, not to say enthusiasm, with which they were received by the people. The men were all tinkers, and the women thieves and fortune-tellers—but in their case the thief was always sunk in the fortune-teller.’ And he goes on to describe how he had his own fortune told with a pack of cards by one of the women, ‘a sallow old pythoness.’
One may not build upon so slight a superstructure, though at the same time it should be borne in mind that nothing, absolutely nothing, was known of the Welsh Gypsies till 1875. Where, however, as in England, Gypsies have certainly been roaming to and fro for centuries, nothing seems to me likelier than the transmission by them of folk-tales. For I know by frequent journeyings with them how the Gypsy camp is the favourite nightly rendezvous of the lads and lasses from the neighbouring village. All the amusement they can give their guests, the Gypsies give gladly; and stories and songs are among their best stock-in-trade.
Gypsy Story-tellers.
Campbell of Islay has shown us a Gypsy professional story-teller in London, and Paspati has shown us a Gypsy professional story-teller, the grandson of one at Constantinople. That is not much, perhaps; but there are several more indications of the transmission of folk-tales by Gypsies. Bakht, the Rómani word for ‘luck’ or ‘fortune,’ has passed, not merely into Albanian folk-tales, but into the Greek and Turkish languages, as I show in a footnote on p. 53; and a good many of the following seventy-six stories seem to show unmistakable tokens of the practised raconteur’s art. ‘Let us leave the dogs, and return to the girl,’ in No. 47; ‘Now we’ll leave the master to stand a bit, and go back to the mother,’ in No. 68; ‘And I came away, told the story,’ in Nos. 6, 7, 8, and 15; ‘And I left them there, and came and told my story to your lordships,’ in No. 10; ‘I was there, and heard everything that happened,’ in No. 12; ‘Away I came, the tale have told,’ in No. 18; ‘Now you’ve got it,’ in No. 28; ‘If they are not dead, they are still alive,’ in Nos. 41 and 42, and also in Hungarian-Gypsy stories; ‘The floor there was made of paper, and I came away here,’ in No. 43; ‘So if they are not dead, they are living together,’ in No. 44; ‘Excuse me for saying it,’ in No. 55; ‘She was delivered (pray, excuse me) of a boy,’ in No. 46; ‘And the last time I was there I played my harp for them, and got to go again,’ in No. 54—these all sound like tags or formulas of the professional story-teller. Léon Zafiri’s usual wind-up, says Paspati (p. 421), ran: ‘And I too, I was there, and I ate, and I drank, and I have come to tell you the story.’
Story-telling a living Gypsy art.
A tree can never be quite dead as long as it puts forth shoots; I fancy the very latest shoot in the whole Yggdrasil of European folk-tales [[lxxxi]]is the episode in ‘The Tinker and his Wife’ (No. 70), where the tinker buys a barrel of beer, and says, ‘Now, my wench, you make the biggest penny out of it as ever you can,’ and she goes and sells the whole barrel to a packman for one of the old big pennies. That episode cannot be earlier than the introduction of the new bronze coinage in 1861; it looks as though it must itself be a recent coinage of Cornelius Price, or of Nebuchadnēzar, his uncle. But, there, I have known a Gypsy girl dash off what was almost a folk-tale impromptu. She had been to a pic-nic in a four-in-hand, with ‘a lot o’ real tip-top gentry’; and ‘Reía,’ she said to me afterwards, ‘I’ll tell you the comicalest thing as ever was. We’d pulled up, to put the brake on; and there was a púro hotchiwítchi (old hedgehog) come and looked at us through the hedge, looked at me hard. I could see he’d his eye upon me. And home he’d go, that old hedgehog, to his wife, and “Missus,” he’d say, “what d’ ye think? I seen a little Gypsy gal just now in a coach and four hosses”; and “Dábla!” she’d say, “sawkúmni ’as vardé kenáw” ’ (Bless us! every one now keeps a carriage).
Possible Gypsy influences.
I have told English Gypsies Grimm’s tale of ‘The Hare and the Hedgehog,’ and they always pronounce that it must be a Rómani story (‘Who else would have gone for to make up a tale about hedgehogs?’)[35] But the question whether in many non-Gypsy collections there are not a number of folk-tales that present strong internal evidence of their Gypsy origin is a difficult question; it would take us too far afield, and could lead to no really definite results. Still, I must say a word or two. In Hahn’s fine variant (ii. 267) of our ‘Mare’s Son’ from the island of Syra a vizier travels from town to town, seeking a lad as handsome as the prince. At last he is passing through a Gypsy quarter,[36] when he hears a boy singing: ‘his voice was beautiful as any nightingale’s.’ He looks through a door, and sees a boy, who is every whit as handsome as the prince, so he purchases this boy, and the boy plays a leading part in the story. The abject contempt in which Gypsies are held throughout the whole of south-eastern Europe renders it probable that none but a Gypsy would thus have described a member of the race. The story, too, from its opening clause, a greeting to the ‘goodly company,’ would seem to have been told by [[lxxxii]]a professional story-teller—a kinsman, possibly, of Léon Zafiri. Krauss’s Croatian story (No. 98) of ‘The Gypsy and the Nine Franciscans’ is just ‘Les Trois Bossus’ of the trouvère Durant (Liebrecht’s Dunlop, p. 209); yet it has, to my thinking, a thoroughly Rómani ring. In Campbell’s Gaelic story of ‘The Young King of Easaidh Ruadh’ (No. 1) the hero’s young wife is carried off by a giant, and, following their track, he comes thrice on the site of a fire. If I were telling that story to Gypsies, I should say, not site of a fire, but fireplace: I fancy I can hear the Gypsies’ exclamations—‘Dere! my blessed! following de fireplaces. Course he’d know den which way de giant had gone.’ I could cite a good score of similar instances; but I will content myself with this footnote from Scott’s Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border (ed. 1873, iv. 102):—‘Besides the prophetic powers ascribed to the Gypsies in most European countries, the Scottish peasants believe them possessed of the power of throwing upon bystanders a spell, and causing them to see the thing that is not.… The receipt to prevent the operation of these deceptions was to use a sprig of four-leaved clover. I remember to have heard (certainly very long ago, for at that time I believed the legend), that a Gypsy exercised his glamour over a number of persons at Haddington, to whom he exhibited a common dunghill cock, trailing what appeared to the spectators a massy oaken trunk. An old man passed with a cart of clover; he stopped, and picked out a four-leaved blade; the eyes of the spectators were opened,—and the oaken trunk appeared to be a bulrush.’ But that is just Grimm’s No. 149, ‘The Beam’: what folklorist has ever associated ‘The Beam’ with the Gypsies?
Theory.
To recapitulate, my theory, then, is this:—The Gypsies quitted India at an unknown date, probably taking with them some scores of Indian folk-tales, as they certainly took with them many hundreds of Indian words. By way of Persia and Armenia, they arrived in the Greek-speaking Balkan Peninsula, and tarried there for several centuries, probably disseminating their Indian folk-tales, and themselves picking up Greek folk-tales, as they certainly gave Greek the Rómani word bakht, ‘fortune,’ and borrowed from it paramísi, ‘story,’ and about a hundred more terms. From the Balkan Peninsula they have spread since 1417, or possibly earlier, to Siberia, Norway, Scotland, Wales, Spain, Brazil, and the countries between, everywhere probably disseminating the folk-tales they started with and those they picked up by the way, and everywhere probably adding to their store. Thus, I take it, they picked up the complete Rhampsinitus story in the Balkan Peninsula, and carried it thence to Roumania and Scotland; in [[lxxxiii]]Scotland, if John MacDonald was any sort of a Gypsy, they seem to have picked up ‘Osean after the Feen.’
It is not so smooth and rounded a theory as I hoped to be able to present to folklorists, or as I might easily have made it by suppressing a little here and filling out somewhat there. But at least I have pointed out a few fresh parallels; I have, thanks to Mr. Sampson’s generosity, enriched our stock, not of English folk-tales, but of folk-tales collected in England and Wales;[37] and I have, I hope, stimulated a measure of curiosity in the strange, likeable, uncanny race, whom ‘Hans Breitmann’ has happily designated ‘the Colporteurs of Folklore.’ I let my little theory go reluctantly, but invite the fullest argument and discussion. There is nothing like argument. I was once at a meeting of a Learned Society, where a friend of mine read a most admirable paper. Then uprose another member of that Learned Society, and challenged his every contention. In a rich, sonorous voice he thus began: ‘Max Müller has said (and I agree with Max Müller), that Sanskrit in dying left twins—Chinese and Semitic.’ [[1]]
[1] According to the Spectator (24th December 1897) ten thousand Gypsies wintered in Surrey in 1896–97! [↑]
[2] I shall have frequent occasion to refer to the Gypsy Lore Journal (3 vols. 1888–92), which should in time be one of the libri rarissimi, as the issue was limited to 150 copies, many of which are sure to have perished. There are complete sets, however, at the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Edinburgh Advocates’ Library, Leyden, Berlin, Munich, Cracow, Rome, Madrid, Harvard, and twelve other public libraries. [↑]
[3] Aliqui in the Latin may stand for either some of the Gypsies or some of the townsfolk, more probably the latter. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.) speaks, a very few years after this, of the Northumbrian women staring at him ‘as in Italy the people stare at an Ethiopian or an Indian.’ [↑]
[4] This passage was cited as far back as 1785 by Jacob Bryant in Archæologia, vii. 393; but another on p. 57 of the Itinerarium has hitherto escaped Gypsiologists. I give it in the original Latin:—‘Item sciendum est, quod in sæpedictis civitatibus [Alexandria and Cairo] de omni secta alia ab illorum viri mulieres lactantes juvenes et cani pravæ venditioni exponuntur ad instar bestiarum; et signanter indiani schismatici et danubiani, qui omnes utriusque sexus in colore cum corvis et carbonibus multum participant; quia hii cum arabis et danubianis semper guerram continuant, atque cum capiuntur redemptione vel venditione evadunt.… Prædicti autem Danubiani, quamvis ab Indianis non sunt figura et colore distincti, tamen ab eis distinguuntur per cicatrices longas quas habent in facie et cognoscuntur; comburunt enim sibi cum ferro ignito facies illas vilissimas terribiliter in longum, credentes se sic flamine [? flammis] baptizari ut dicitur, et a peccatorum sordibus igne purgari. Qui postquam ad legem Machometi fuerunt conversi christianis deteriores sunt Saracenis, sicut et sunt Radiani renegati, et plures molestias inferunt.… Item sciendum, quod in præfatis civitatibus tanta est eorum multitudo, quod nequaquam numerari possunt.’ There is much in this passage that remains obscure; but it seems clear from it that in 1322 there were in Egypt large numbers of captives, male and female, old and young, from the Danubian territories. They were black as crows and coal, and in complexion and features differed little from Indians, except that their faces bore long scars produced by burning (? a kind of tattooing, like that of the Gypsy women in 1427 at Paris on p. xii.). On conversion to Mohammedanism these Danubians were worse to the Christians than the Saracens. Were these Danubians, or some at least of them, Gypsies, prisoners of war, from the Danubian territories? and did some of them buy back their freedom and return to Europe? If so, perhaps one has here an explanation of the hitherto unexplained names ‘Egyptian,’ ‘Gypsy,’ ‘Gitano,’ etc., and of the story told by the western immigrants of 1417–34 of renegacy from the Christian faith. [↑]
[5] E. A. Sophocles in the Introduction to his Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Boston, U.S., 1870, p. 32) regards Mazaris as probably an imaginary character of an anonymous writer of the fourteenth century, according to whom ‘Peloponnesus was at that time inhabited by a mongrel population, the principal elements being Lacedæmonians, Italians, Peloponnesians, Slavs, Illyrians, Egyptians (Αἰγύπτιοι), and Jews.’ [↑]
[6] Of the Gypsies of Cyprus, as indeed those of Crete, Modern Greece, Lesbos, etc., we know practically nil. A writer in the Saturday Review for 12th January 1878, p. 52, quoted, without giving date or source, these words of a Cretan poet:—‘Franks and Saracens, Corsairs and Germans, Turks and Atzingani, they have tried them all, and cannot say who were better, who worse.’ [↑]
[7] According to Captain Newbold, the Gypsies of Syria and Palestine ‘vend charms, philtres, poisons, and drugs of vaunted efficacy’; in 1590 Katherene Roiss, Lady Fowlis, was ‘accusit for sending to the Egyptianis, to haif knawledge of thame how to poysoun the young Laird of Fowlis and the young Lady Balnagoune.’ [↑]
[8] It is just worth noting that St. Columbanus (543–615) was accustomed to celebrate the Eucharist in vessels of bronze (aeris), alleging as a reason for so doing that Our Lord was affixed to the cross by brazen nails.—Smith’s Dict. Christ. Antiqs., s.v. Chalice. [↑]
[9] Cf. supra, p. xi., line 13. [↑]
[10] Information supplied by M. Omont of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and by Prof. von Dobschütz of Jena, shows that the komodromos passage is to be found in neither of these two MSS. It has still to be sought for, then. [↑]
[11] In his Beiträge zur Kenntniss der deutschen Zigeuner (Halle, 1894, pp. 5–6), Herr Richard Pischel maintains, as it seems to me, successfully, that the ‘Bemische [[xxxii]]lute’ (Boehmische Leute) at Würzburg between 1372 and 1400 were real Bohemians and not Gypsies. [↑]
[12] No Greek loan-word has more interest for us than paramísi or paramísa, a story (Mod. Gk. παραμύθι). It occurs in the dialects of the Roumanian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, German, and English Gypsies. I heard it myself first in 1872 near Oxford, from old Lolli Buckland, in the curious sense of stars:—‘As you kistas kérri ke-ráti, réia, túti’ll dik the paramíshis vellin’ avri adré the leeline’ (As you ride home this evening, sir, you’ll see the stars coming out in the darkness). How she came to apply the word thus, I cannot say, perhaps from the mere jingle of stars and stories, perhaps from the notion of the stars foretelling the future. Again, in 1879, from one of the Boswells, I heard the verb páramis, ‘to talk scandal, tell tales.’ And lastly, Mr. Sampson got paramissa in its proper sense of ‘story’ from the old tinker Philip Murray, who, though no Gypsy himself, had an unrivalled knowledge of Gypsydom and Rómani (Gyp. Lore Jour., iii. 77). [↑]
[13] In Chronicles of a Virgin Fortress (1896), Mr. W. V. Herbert gives an extraordinary story of one of the Stanleys, who, forced to fly Hampshire for some offence, found his way to Bulgaria, and as ‘Istanli’ became a Gypsy chieftain and public executioner of Widdin about 1874. Tom Taylor’s returned ‘lag’ of p. xvii recurs also to memory, and John Lee, the Gypsy recruit of ‘John Company,’ from whom on the outward voyage in 1805 Lieut. Francis Irvine of the Bengal Native Infantry took down a Rómani vocabulary of 138 words (Trans. Lit. Soc. Bombay, 1819). [↑]
[14] In 1894 there was a small band of Bosnian Gypsies at St. Jean de Luz on their way to Spain. They were evidently well-off. [↑]
[15] The tented Gypsies in Calabria in May 1777, described in Henry Swinburne’s Travels in the Two Sicilies (2nd ed. ii. 168–172), were almost certainly [[xli]]not Italian Gypsies, but Caldarari. Borrow speaks of the foreign excursions of the Hungarian Gypsies, which frequently endure for three or four years, and extend to France, even to Rome (The Zincali, 1841, i. 13); and Adriano Colocci tells in Gli Zingari (Turin, 1889), p. 181, how in the Apennines of Fossato he encountered Hungarian Gypsies who seemed quite at home there, as also how at Kadi Köi in Asia Minor he had discourse with a band of Neapolitan Gypsies. [↑]
[16] Against this statement I must set what was quite a typical remark of an English Gypsy, a Boswell:—‘That’s a thing, sir, I should be disdainful of, to be júvalo’ (verminous). [↑]
[17] Query, Solomon Jones? Jones I know for a real Gypsy surname. [↑]
[18] I take some little pride in having myself been a means of preserving two of our best—I had almost said, our only two really good—English folk-tales. These are ‘Cap o’ Rushes’ and ‘Tom Tit Tot,’ which were told by an old Suffolk servant to Miss Lois Fison when a child, and which she communicated to Nos. 23 and 43 of a series of ‘Suffolk Notes and Queries,’ edited by me for the Ipswich Journal in 1876–77. Thence my friend, Mr. Clodd, unearthed them a dozen years afterwards; and on the latter he has just issued a masterly monograph. [↑]
[19] The London tinker’s story, however, seems more closely to resemble ‘The Claricaune’ in Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (ed. by Thos. Wright, N.D. pp. 98–112). [↑]
[20] Since writing this, I have learned, through the kindness of Mr. Rufus B. Richardson of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, that ‘nothing remains of Paspati’s collections except a few notes, which will be brought out in a new edition of his works.’ [↑]
[21] Cf. the Indian story of ‘Prince Lionheart and his Three Friends’ (F. A. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, p. 59):—‘In front of the horse lies a heap of bones, and in front of the dog a heap of grass,’ etc. [↑]
[22] The notes of that story are unfortunately lost, but it is a version of Grimm’s No. 36, ‘The Wishing-table, the Gold-ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack,’ Basile’s first tale in the Pentamerone (1637), etc. No European folk-tale is more widely spread than this in India, where we find ‘The Story of Foolish Sachuli’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy-tales, p. 27), ‘The Indigent Brahman’ (Rev. Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 53), and ‘The Jackal, the Barber, and the Brahman’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, p. 174). A fragment of the story comes into our Slovak-Gypsy one of ‘The Old Soldier’ (No. 60). [↑]
[23] See for this Celtic secret jargon the article ‘Shelta,’ by Mr. J. Sampson, in vol. ix. of Chambers’s Encyclopædia (1892), p. 389. [↑]
[24] So I had written when I learned, through the kindness of Lord Archibald Campbell, that John MacDonald the younger, known variously as ‘John Fyne,’ ‘Long John,’ and ‘Baboon,’ got a cottage on the Argyll estate, but was never either a keeper or an under-keeper in the Duke’s employ. He was, however, a keeper for a short while on the neighbouring estate of Ardkinlas. ‘Long John,’ writes Lord Archibald, ‘as far as I know, had no Rómani. His daughters still tramp the country.’ I may add here that Mr. Arthur Morgan, of the Crofters’ Commission, who knows the Highlands as few, is strongly of opinion that the tinkers are not Celts: ‘the Highlanders never regard them as such.’ This though they speak Gaelic, but much intermixed with odd words. [↑]
[25] Kounavine apart, we have but one hint of story-telling by Gypsies in Asia. In Blackwood’s for March 1891, pp. 388–9, the late Mr. Theodore Bent had an article on an archæological tour in ‘Cilicia Aspera,’ a district lying on the southern slopes of the Taurus Mountains, in which was this passage: ‘Periodically a travelling tinker comes among them [the mountain tribes], the great newsmonger of the mountain. He chooses a central spot to pitch his tent, and the most wonderful collection of decrepit copper utensils is soon brought from the neighbouring tents and piled around. He usually brings with him a young assistant to look after the mule and blow the bellows; and with nitre heated at his fire he mends the damaged articles, gossiping the while, and filling the minds of the simple Yourouks who stand around with wonderful tales, not always within the bounds of veracity. When his work is done, he removes to another central point, and after he has amassed as many fees as his mule can carry, for they usually pay in cheese and butter, he returns to his town, and realises a handsome profit.’ I have not seen a small work on the Yourouks by M. Tsakyroglou (Athens, 1891), giving their popular songs, etc. [↑]
[26] Not unique; occurs also in Wratislaw’s Bohemian story, No. 2, p. 21. But I let the lines stand for a warning against the vanity of dogmatising. [↑]
[27] According to the Archduke Josef’s great Czigány Nyelvatan (1888), p. 342, ‘chronological reasons force us to the conclusion that Solario was not a Gypsy. He came by the name of Zingaro as being the son of a travelling smith (farrier), and as having himself first engaged in that calling.… Since the Gypsies only made their appearance in Italy in 1422, it is clear that Solario could not be of Gypsy parentage.’ If it could be proved that Italy in 1382 had its travelling smiths, called Zingari, it would be clear that then there were Italian Gypsies. A similar instance of arguing from a foregone conclusion occurs in the remark of a German lexicographer of 1749, that, ‘the common people gave the name Zihegan to land-tramps before Gypsies ever were heard of.’ The said Zihegan could not of course be Gypsies, because Gypsies were then non-existent. [↑]
[28] Some one will be sure to point out, if I do not, that most or all of these incidents occur also in non-Gypsy European folk-tales, and that therefore they are not peculiar to the Gypsies. Precisely: that is a possible confirmation of my theory. [↑]
[29] To which add the slang pal, a comrade, from the Rómani, pral, brother. [↑]
[30] I have discussed the subject-matter of the last two pages more fully in my paper, ‘The Influence of the Gypsies on the Superstitions of the English Folk’ (Trans. Internat. Folklore Congress, 1891, pp. 292–308). [↑]
[31] That, however, is a vulgar error; the Gypsies are one of the purest races in Europe. [↑]
[32] I have sometimes wondered, what if a folklorist, making a little tour in Wales, in a Welsh inn-garden had come on a venerable Welsh harper, playing ancient Welsh airs, and speaking Welsh more fluently than English? He would have drawn him, of course, for folk-tales, and lo! a perfect mine of them—long, unpublished stories, all about magic snuff-boxes and magic balls of yarn, the kings of the mice and the frogs and the fowls of the air, griffins of the greenwood, [[lxxvi]]golden apples and golden castles, sleeping princesses, and all the rest of it. ‘Eureka!’ that folklorist would have shouted, and straightway meditated a new Welsh Mabinogion. Welsh—Celtic—not at all necessarily; his old Welsh bard might have been just John Roberts the Gypsy. [↑]
[33] It is a great pity Mr. Curtin has not specified when, where, and from whom he got his stories; all we are told is that they were collected by him ‘personally in the West of Ireland, in Kerry, Galway, and Donegal, during the year 1887.’ It is almost incomprehensible that he never alludes once to Campbell’s collection. [↑]
[34] These two birds, which recur also in Norse, Swedish, and German versions of the story (Orient und Occ. ii. 108–9), at once recall the parrot and the mainá in ‘The Bél-Princess’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 149–150) whose discourse revives the prince’s recollections. See also p. 412 of Mrs. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories. [↑]
[35] For an excursus, of true German erudition, on Gypsies and hedgehogs, see R. Pischel’s Beiträge zur Kenntniss der deutschen Zigeuner (Halle, 1894, pp. 26–30). He shows that hedgehogs are a Gypsy delicacy from Wales to Odessa, and that the Gypsies probably brought the taste from the foothills of the Himalayas, where hedgehogs are plentiful. [↑]
[36] ‘Γυφτικά,’ says Hahn in a footnote. ‘The sedentary Gypsies as a rule are smiths, therefore Gypsy and Locksmith are synonymous in the towns.’ [↑]
[37] Only four years ago Mr. Joseph Jacobs wrote: ‘It is at any rate clear, that the only considerable addition to our folklore knowledge in these isles must come from the Gaelic area.’ And since then a folklorist has expressed himself in the Athenæum as ‘pretty certain that as to complete stories of any length there are none such to be found in Wales at the present day.’ [↑]
GYPSY FOLK-TALES
CHAPTER I
TURKISH-GYPSY STORIES
No. 1.—The Dead Man’s Gratitude[1]
A king had three sons. He gave the youngest a hundred thousand piastres; he gave the same to the eldest son and to the middle one. The youngest arose, he took the road; wherever he found poor folk he gave money; here, there, he gave it away; he spent the money. His eldest brother went, had ships built to make money. And the middle one went, had shops built. They came to their father.
‘What have you done, my son?’
‘I have built ships.’
To the youngest, ‘You, what have you done?’
‘I? every poor man I found, I gave him money; and for poor girls I paid the cost of their marriage.’
The king said, ‘My youngest son will care well for the poor. Take another hundred thousand piastres.’
The lad departed. Here, there, he spent his money; twelve piastres remained to him. Some Jews dug up a corpse and beat it.
‘What do you want of him, that you are beating him?’
‘Twelve piastres we want of him.’
‘I’ll give you them if you will let him be.’
He gave the money, they let the dead man be. He arose and departed. As the lad goes the dead man followed him. ‘Where go you?’ the dead man asked.
‘I am going for a walk.’
‘I’ll come too; we’ll go together; we will be partners.’ [[2]]
‘So be it.’
‘Come, I will bring you to a certain place.’
He took and brought him to a village. There was a girl, takes a husband, lies with him; by dawn next day the husbands are dead.
‘I will hide you somewhere; I will get you a girl; but we shall always be partners.’
He found the girl (a dragon came out of her mouth).
‘And this night when you go to bed, I too will lie there.’
He took his sword, he went near them. The lad said, ‘That will never do. If you want her, do you take the girl.’
‘Are we not partners? You, do you sleep with her; I also, I will sleep here.’
At midnight he sees the girl open her mouth; the dragon came forth; he drew his sword; he cut off its three heads; he put the heads in his bosom; he lay down; he fell asleep. Next morning the girl arose, and sees the man her husband living by her side. They told the girl’s father. ‘To-day your daughter has seen dawn break with her husband.’
‘That will be the son-in-law,’ said the father.
The lad took the girl; he is going to his father.
‘Come,’ said the dead man, ‘let’s divide the money.’
They fell to dividing it.
‘We have divided the money; let us also divide your wife.’
The lad said, ‘How divide her? If you want her, take her.’
‘I won’t take her; we’ll divide.’
‘How divide?’ said the lad.
The dead man said, ‘I, I will divide.’
The dead man seized her; he bound her knees. ‘Do you catch hold of one foot, I’ll take the other.’
He raised his sword to strike the girl. In her fright the girl opened her mouth, and cried, and out of her mouth fell a dragon. The dead man said to the lad, ‘I am not for a wife, I am not for any money. These dragon’s heads are what devoured the men. Take her; the girl shall be yours, the money shall be yours. You did me a kindness; I also have done you one.’
‘What kindness did I do you?’ asked the lad.
‘You took me from the hands of the Jews.’ [[3]]
The dead man departed to his place, and the lad took his wife, went to his father.
In his introduction to the Pantschatantra (Leip. 1859), i. 219–221, Benfey cites an Armenian version of this story that is practically identical. Compare also the English ‘Sir Amadas’ (c. 1420), first printed in Weber’s Metrical Romances (Edinb. 1810, iii. 243–275); Straparola (1550) XI. 2 (‘The Simpleton,’ summarised in Grimm, ii. 480); ‘The Follower’ or ‘The Companion’ of Asbjörnsen (Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 68), on which Andersen founded his ‘Travelling Companion’; ‘The Barra Widow’s Son’ (Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands, No. 32, ii. 110); Hahn, ii. 320; Cosquin, i. 208, 214; Hinton Knowles’ Folk-tales of Kashmir, pp. 39–40; Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, No. 18 (Polish); and especially Reinhold Köhler in Orient und Occident (1864, ii. 322–9, and iii. 93–103). What should be of special interest to English folklorists, is that Asbjörnsen’s ‘Follower’ forms an episode in our earliest version (Newcastle-on-Tyne, 1711) of ‘Jack the Giant-killer.’ Cf. pp. 67–71 of J. O. Halliwell’s Popular Rhymes and Nursery Tales (1849), where we get the redemption of a dead debtor (who is not grateful), a witch-lady who visits an evil spirit, and the cutting off of that evil spirit’s head by a comrade clad in a coat of darkness. The resemblance has never been noticed between the folk-tale and the Book of Tobit, where Tobit shows his charity by burying the dead; the archangel Raphael plays the part of the ‘Follower’ (in both ‘Sir Amadas’ and the Russian version the Grateful Dead returns as an angel); Sara, Tobias’s bride, has had seven husbands slain by Asmodeus, the evil spirit, before they had lain with her; Raguel, Sara’s father, learns of Tobias’s safety on the morning after their marriage; Tobias offers half his goods to Raphael; and Raphael then disappears. The story of Tobit has certainly passed into Sicilian folklore, borrowed straight, it would seem, from the Apocrypha, as ‘The History of Tobià and Tobiòla’ (Laura Gonzenbach’s Sicil. Märchen, No. 89, ii. 177); but the Apocryphal book itself is plainly a corrupt version of the original folk-tale.
Madame Darmesteter’s Life of Renan (1897), contains at p. 251 the following passage:—‘That night he told us the story of the Babylonian Tobias. Rash and young, this Chaldæan brother of our Tobit, discouraged by the difficult approaches of prosperity, had entered into partnership with a demi-god or Demon, who made all his schemes succeed and pocketed fifty per cent. upon the profits. The remaining fifty sufficed to make Tobias as rich as Oriental fancy can imagine. The young man fell in love, married his bride, and brought her home. On the threshold stood the Demon: “How about my fifty per cent?” The Venus d’Ille, you see, was not born yesterday. From the dimmest dawn of time sages have taught us not to trust the gods too far.’
Unluckily there seems to be no authority whatever for this alleged Chaldæan version, which should obviously come closer to the folk-tale than to the Book of Tobit. At least, Professor Sayce writes word:—‘The passage in Madame Darmesteter’s Life of Renan must be based [[4]]on an error, for no such story—so far as I know—has ever been found on a cuneiform tablet. It may have originated in a mistranslation of one of the contract-tablets; but if so, the mistranslation must have appeared in some obscure French publication, perhaps a newspaper, which I have not seen.’ Alack! and yet our folk-tale remains perhaps the oldest current folk-tale in the world.
No. 2.—Baldpate
In those days there was a man built a galleon; he manned her; he would go from the White Sea to the Black Sea. He landed at a village to take in water; there he saw four or five boys playing. One of them was bald. He called him. ‘Where’s the water?’ he asked. Baldpate showed him; he took in water.
‘Wilt come with me?’
‘I will, but I’ve a mother.’
‘Let’s go to your mother.’ They went to her.
‘Will you give me this boy?’
‘I will.’
The captain paid a month’s wages; he took the lad. They weighed anchor; they came to a large village; they landed to take in water.
The king’s son went out for a walk, and he sees a dervish with a girl’s portrait for sale. The king’s son bought it; it was very lovely. The girl’s father had been working at it for seven years. The king’s son set it on the fountain, thinking, Some one of those who come to drink the water will say, ‘I’ve seen that girl.’ The captain came ashore; he took in water; he lifted up his eyes, and saw the portrait. ‘What a beauty!’ He went aboard, and said to his crew, ‘There’s a beauty yonder, I’ve never seen her like.’
Baldpate said, ‘I’m going to see.’
Baldpate went. The moment he saw the portrait, he burst out laughing. ‘It’s the dervish’s daughter. How do they come by her?’
Hardly had he said it when they seized him and brought him to the palace. Baldpate lost his head the moment they seized him. But two days later they came to him: ‘This girl, do you know her?’
‘Know her? why, we were brought up together. Her mother is dead; she suckled both her and me.’ [[5]]
‘If they bring you before the king, fear not.’
He came before the king.
‘This girl, do you know her, my lad?’
‘I do, we grew up together.’
‘Will you bring her here?’
‘I will. Build me a gilded galleon; give me twenty musicians; let me take your son with me; and let no one gainsay whatever I do. Then I will go. I shall take seven years to go and come.’
They took their bread, their water for seven years; they set out. They went to the maiden’s country. At break of day Baldpate brought the galleon near the maiden’s house; the maiden’s house was close to the sea. Baldpate said, ‘I’ll go upon deck for a turn; don’t any of you show yourselves.’ He went up; he paced the deck.
The dervish’s daughter arose from her sleep. The sun struck on the galleon; it struck, too, on the house. The girl went out, rubs her eyes. A man pacing up and down. She bowed forward and saw our Baldpate. She knew him: ‘What wants he here?’
‘What seek you here?’
‘I’ve come for you, come to see you; it is so many years since I’ve seen you. Come aboard. Your father, where’s he gone to?’
‘Don’t you know that my father has been painting my portrait? He’s gone to sell it; I’m expecting him these last few days.’
‘Come here, and let’s have a little talk.’
The girl went to dress. Baldpate went to his crew. ‘Hide yourselves; don’t let a soul be seen; but the moment I get her into the cabin, do you cut the ropes; I shall be talking with her.’
She came into the cabin; they seated themselves; they talk; the galleon gets under weigh. He privily brought in the king’s son.
‘Who is this?’ said the girl. ‘I am off.’
‘Are you daft, my sister? Let’s have some sweetmeats.’
He gave her some; they intoxicated the girl.
‘A little music to play to you,’ said Baldpate.
He went, brought the musicians; they began to play. The girl said, ‘I’m up, I’m off; my father’s coming.’ [[6]]
‘Sit down a bit, and let them play to you.’ They play their music; she hears not the departure of the galleon.
‘I’m off,’ said the girl to Baldpate.
She went on deck and saw where her home was. ‘Ah! my brother, what have you done to me?’
‘Done to you! he who sits by you is the son of the king, and I’m come to fetch you for him.’
She wept and said, ‘What shall I do? shall I fling myself into the sea?’ No, she went and sat down by the king’s son. Plenty of music and victuals and drink. Baldpate is sitting up aloft by himself; he is captain. They eat, they drink; he stirred not from his post.
Two or three days remained ere they landed. At break of dawn three birds perched on the galleon; no one was near him. The birds began talking: ‘O bird, O bird, what is it, O bird? The dervish’s daughter eats, drinks with the son of the king; she knows not what will befall them.’
‘What will?’ the other birds asked.
‘As soon as he arrives, a little boat will come to take them off. The boat will upset, and the dervish’s daughter and the king’s son will be drowned; and whoever hears it and tells will be turned into stone to his knees.’
Baldpate listens; he is alone.
Early next morning the birds came back again. They began talking together: ‘O bird, O bird, what is it, O bird? The dervish’s daughter and the king’s son eat, drink; they know not what will befall them. As soon as they land, as soon as they enter the gate, the gate will tumble down, it will crush them and kill them; and whoever hears it and tells will be turned into stone to the back.’
Day broke; the birds came back. ‘O bird, O bird, what is it, O bird? The dervish’s daughter eats, drinks; she knows not what will befall her.’
‘What will?’ the other birds asked.
‘The marriage night a seven-headed dragon will come forth, and he will devour the king’s son and the dervish’s daughter; and whoever hears it and tells them will be turned into stone to the head.’
Baldpate says, all to himself, ‘I shan’t let any boats come.’ He arose; he came opposite the palace; some boats came to take off the maiden. [[7]]
‘I want no boats.’ Instead he spread his sails. The galleon backed, the galleon went ahead. One and all looked: ‘Why, he will strand the galleon!’
‘Let him be,’ said the king, ‘let him strand her.’
He stranded the galleon.
Baldpate said to the king, ‘When I started to fetch this girl, did I not tell you you must let me do as I would? No one must interfere.’
He took the girl and the prince; he came to the gate. ‘Pull it down.’
‘Pull it down, why?’ they asked.
‘Did I not tell you no one must interfere?’
They set to and pulled it down. They went up, sat down, ate, drank, laugh, and talk.
The worm gnaws Baldpate within.
Night fell; they will bed the pair. Baldpate said, ‘Where you sleep I also will sleep there.’
‘The bridegroom and bride will sleep there; you can’t.’
‘What’s our bargain?’
‘Thou knowest.’
They went, they lay down; Baldpate took his sword, he lay down, he covered his head. At midnight he hears a dragon coming. He draws his sword; he cuts off its heads; he puts them beneath his pillow. The king’s son awoke, and sees his sword in his hands. He cried, ‘Baldpate will kill us.’
The father came and asked, ‘What made you call out, my son?’
‘Baldpate will kill us,’ he answered.
They took and bound Baldpate’s arms.
Day broke; the king summoned him. ‘Why have you acted thus? Seven years you have gone, you have journeyed, and brought the maiden; and now you have risen to slay them.’
‘What could I do?’
‘You would kill my son, then will I kill you.’
‘Thou knowest.’
They bind his arms, they lead him to cut off his head. As he went, Baldpate said to himself, ‘They will cut off my head. If I tell, I shall be turned into stone. Come, bring me to the king; I have a couple of words to say to him.’ [[8]]
They brought him to the king.
‘Why have you brought him here?’
‘He has a couple of words to say to you.’
‘Say them, my lad.’
‘I, when I went to fetch the dervish’s daughter, I was sitting alone on the galleon; your son was eating, drinking with the maiden. One morning three birds came; they began talking: “O bird, O bird, what is it, O bird? The dervish’s daughter eats, drinks with the son of the king; she knows not what will befall her. And whoever hears it and tells will be turned into stone to his knees.” No one but I was there; I heard it.’
As soon as Baldpate had said it, he was turned into stone to his knees. The king, seeing he was turned into stone, said, ‘Prithee, my lad, say no more.’
‘But I will,’ Baldpate answered, and went on to tell of the gate; he was turned into stone to his back.
‘The third time the birds came and talked together again, and I heard (that was why I wished to sleep with them): “A seven-headed dragon will come forth; he will devour them.” And if you believe it not, look under the pillow.’
They went there; they saw the heads.
‘It was I who killed him. Your son saw the sword in my hands, and he thought I would kill them. I could not tell him the truth.’
He was turned into stone to his head. They made a tomb for him.
The king’s son arose; he took the road; he departed. ‘Seven years has he wandered for me, I am going to wander seven years for him.’
The king’s son went walking, walking. In a certain place there was water; he drank of it; he lay down. Baldpate came to him in a dream: ‘Take a little earth from here, and go and sprinkle it on the tomb. He will rise from the stone.’
The king’s son slept and slept. He arose; he takes some of the earth; he went to the tomb; he sprinkled the earth on it. Baldpate arose. ‘How sound I’ve been sleeping!’ he said.
‘Seven years hast thou wandered for me, and seven years I have wandered for thee.’ [[9]]
He takes him, he brings him to the palace, he makes him a great one.
Miklosich’s Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘The Prince, his Comrade, and Nastasa the Fair’ (No. 24) presents analogies; but ‘Baldpate’ is identical with Grimm’s No. 6, ‘Faithful John,’ i. pp. 23 and 348, where in the variant the third peril is a seven-headed dragon. Cf. also Wolf’s Hausmärchen (Gött. 1851), p. 383; Basile’s Pentamerone (1637), iv. 9; Hahn, i. 201–208, and ii. 267–277; and especially the Rev. Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal (London, 1883), pp. 39–52, the latter half of ‘Phakir Chand.’ Here two immortal birds warn the minister’s son of four perils threatening the king’s son:—(1) riding an elephant; (2) from fall of gate; (3) choking by fish-head; (4) cobra. Penalty of telling, to be turned into statue. Another Indian version is ‘Rama and Luxman; or, the Learned Owl,’ in Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 5, pp. 66–78, whose ending is very feeble. See also Reinhold Köhler’s Aufsätze über Märchen und Volkslieder (Berlin, 1894), pp. 24–35.
No. 3.—The Riddle
In those days there was a rich man. He had an only son, and the mother and the father loved him dearly. He went to school; all that there is in the world, he learned it. One day he arose; took four, five purses of money. Here, there he squandered it. Early next morning he arose again and went to his father. ‘Give me more money.’ He got more money, arose, went; by night he had spent it. Little by little he spent all the money.
And early once more he arose, and says to his father and mother, ‘I want some money.’
‘My child, there is no money left. Would you like the stew-pans? take them, go, sell them, and eat.’
He took and sold them: in a day or two he had spent it.
‘I want some money.’
‘My son, we have no money. Take the clothes, go, sell them.’
In a day or two he had spent that money. He arose, and went to his father, ‘I want some money.’
‘My son, there is no money left us. If you like, sell the house.’
The lad took and sold the house. In a month he had spent the money; no money remained. ‘Father I want some money.’ [[10]]
‘My son, no riches remain to us, no house remains to us. If you like, take us to the slave-market, sell us.’
The lad took and sold them. His mother and his father said, ‘Come this way, that we may see you.’ The king bought the mother and father.
With the money for his mother the lad bought himself clothes, and with the money for his father got a horse.
One day, two days the father, the mother looked for the son that comes not; they fell a-weeping. The king’s servants saw them weeping; they went, told it to the king. ‘Those whom you bought weep loudly.’
‘Call them to me.’ The king called them. ‘Why are you weeping.’
‘We had a son; for him it is we weep.’
‘Who are you, then?’ asked the king.
‘We were not thus, my king; we had a son. He sold us, and we were weeping at his not coming to see us.’
Just as they were talking with the king, the lad arrived. The king set-to, wrote a letter, gave it him into his hand. ‘Carry this letter to such and such a place.’ In it the king wrote, ‘The lad bearing this letter, cut his throat the minute you get it.’
The lad put on his new clothes, mounted his horse, put the letter in his bosom, took the road. He rode a long way; he was dying of thirst; and he sees a well. ‘How am I to get water to drink? I will fasten this letter, and lower it into the well, and moisten my mouth a bit.’ He lowered it, drew it up, squeezed it into his mouth.
‘Let’s see what this letter contains.’
See what it contains—‘The minute he delivers the letter, cut his throat.’ The lad stood there fair mesmerised.[2]
In a certain place there was a king’s daughter. They go to propound a riddle to her. If she guesses it, she will cut off his head; and if she cannot, he will marry the maiden.
The lad arose, went to the king’s palace.
‘What are you come for, my lad?’
‘I would speak with the king’s daughter.’
‘Speak with her you shall. If she guesses your riddle, [[11]]she will cut off your head; and if she cannot, you will get the maiden.’
‘That’s what I’m come for.’
He sat down in front of the maiden. The maiden said, ‘Tell your riddle.’
The lad said, ‘My mother I wore her, my father I rode him, from my death I drank water.’
The maiden looked in her book, could not find it. ‘Grant me a three days’ respite.’
‘I grant it you,’ said the lad. The lad arose, went to an inn, goes to sleep there.
The maiden saw she cannot find it out. The maiden set-to, had an underground passage made to the place where the lad lies sleeping. At midnight the maid arose, went to him, took the lad in her arms.
‘I am thine, thou art mine, only tell me the riddle.’
‘Not likely I should tell you. Strip yourself,’ said the lad to the maiden. The maiden stripped herself.
‘Tell me it.’ Then he told her.
The maiden clapped her hands; her servants came, took the maiden, and let her go. The maiden was wearing the lad’s sark, and the lad was wearing the maiden’s.
Day broke. They summoned the lad. The lad mounted his horse, and rides to the palace. The people see the lad. ‘’Tis a pity; they’ll kill him.’
He went up, and stood face to face with the king.
‘My daughter has guessed your riddle,’ said the king.
‘How did she guess it, my king? At night when I was asleep, there came a bird to my breast. I caught it, I killed it, I cooked it. Just as I was going to eat it, it flew away.’
The king says, ‘Kill him; he’s wandering.’
‘I am not wandering, my king. I told your daughter the riddle. Your daughter had an underground passage made, and she came to where I was sleeping, came to my arms. I caught her, I stripped her, I took her to my bosom, I told her the riddle. She clapped her hands; her servants came and took her. And if you don’t believe, I am wearing her sark, and she is wearing mine.’
The king saw it was true.
Forty days, forty nights they made a marriage. He took the maiden, went, bought back his father, his mother. [[12]]
When I translated this story, I deemed it unique, though the Bellerophon letter is a familiar feature in Indian and European folk-tales, and so too is the princess who guesses or propounds riddles for the wager of her hand to the suitors’ heads. She occurs in ‘The Companion’ of Asbjörnsen (Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 68, and so in our ‘Jack the Giant-killer,’ cf. p. 3), and in Ralston’s ‘The Blind Man and the Cripple’ (p. 241), of both of which there are Gypsy versions, our Nos. 1 and 24. In Ralston’s story, as here, the princess takes her magic book, her grimoire, and turns over the leaves to find out the answer (cf. also the Welsh-Gypsy tale of ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land,’ No. 62). Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales has a story, ‘Rájá Harichand’s Punishment,’ No. 29, p. 225, where a ráni is ‘very wise and clever, for she had a book, which she read continually, called the Kop shástra; and this book told her everything.’ I know myself of a Gypsy woman who told fortunes splendidly out of her ‘magic book’—it was really a Treatise on Navigation, with diagrams. Fortune-tellers with ‘sacred book’ occur in Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, p. 261. Now, since translating this story, I find it is largely identical with Campbell’s West Highland tale, ‘The Knight of Riddles,’ No. 22 (ii. p. 36), with which cf. Grimm’s ‘The Riddle,’ No. 22 (i. 100, 368). See also Reinhold Köhler in Orient und Occident (ii. 1864), p. 320.
No. 4.—Story of the Bridge
In olden days there were twelve brothers. And the eldest brother, the carpenter Manoli, was making the long bridge. One side he makes; one side falls. The twelve brothers had one mistress, and they all had to do with her. They called her to them, ‘Dear bride.’ On her head was the tray; in her hands was a child. Whoseso wife came first, she will come to the twelve brothers. Manoli’s wife, Lénga, will come to the twelve brothers. Said his wife, ‘Thou hast not eaten bread with me. What has befallen thee that thou eatest not bread with me? My ring has fallen into the water. Go and fetch my ring.’ Her husband said, ‘I will fetch thy ring out of the water.’ Up to his two breasts came the water in the depth of the bridge there. He came into the fountain, he was drowned. Beneath he became a talisman, the innermost foundation of the bridge. Manoli’s eyes became the great open arch of the bridge. ‘God send a wind to blow, that the tray may fall from the head of her who bears it in front of Lénga.’ A snake crept out before Lénga, and she feared, and said, ‘Now have I fear at sight of the snake, and am sick. Now is it not bad for my [[13]]children?’ Another man seized her, and sought to drown her, Manoli’s wife. She said, ‘Drown me not in the water. I have little children.’ She bowed herself over the sea, where the carpenter Manoli made the bridge. Another man called Manoli’s wife; with him she went on the road. There, when they went on the road, he went to the tavern, he was weary; the man went, drank the juice of the grape, got drunk. Before getting home, he killed Manoli’s wife, Lénga.
I hesitated whether to give this story; it is so hopelessly corrupt, it seems such absolute nonsense. Yet it enshrines beyond question, however confusedly, the widespread and ancient belief that to ensure one’s foundation one should wall up a human victim. So St. Columba buried St. Oran alive in the foundation of his monastery; in Western folklore, however, the victim is usually an infant—a bastard sometimes, in one case (near Göttingen) a deaf-mute. But in south-eastern Europe it is almost always a woman—the wife of the master-builder, whose name, as here, is Manoli. Reinhold Köhler has treated the subject admirably in his Aufsätze über Märchen und Volkslieder (Berlin, 1894, pp. 36–47); there one finds much to enlighten the darkness of our original. ‘God send a wind,’ etc., is the husband’s prayer as he sees his wife coming towards him, and hopes to avert her doom; ‘My ring has fallen into the water,’ etc., must also be his utterance, when he finds that it is hopeless, that she has to die. The Gypsy story is probably of high antiquity, for two at least of the words in it were quite or almost meaningless to the nomade Gypsy who told it (Paspati, p. 190). The masons of south-eastern Europe are, it should be noticed, largely Gypsies; and a striking Indian parallel may be pointed out in the Santal story of ‘Seven Brothers and their Sister’ (Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, pp. 106–110). Here seven brothers set to work to dig a tank, but find no water, so, by the advice of a yogi, give their only sister to the spirit of the tank. ‘The tank was soon full to the brim, and the girl was drowned.’ And then comes a curious mention of a Dom, or Indian vagrant musician, whose name is probably identical with Doum, Lom, or Rom, the Gypsy of Syria, Asia Minor, and Europe.
[[14]]
[1] Told by an old sedentary Gypsy woman of Adrianople. [↑]
[2] Lit. ‘the lad there became dry’; but that is how an English Gypsy would put it. [↑]
CHAPTER II
ROUMANIAN-GYPSY STORIES
No. 5.—The Vampire
There was an old woman in a village. And grown-up maidens met and span, and made a ‘bee.’[1] And the young sparks came and laid hold of the girls, and pulled them about and kissed them. But one girl had no sweetheart to lay hold of her and kiss her. And she was a strapping lass, the daughter of wealthy peasants; but three whole days no one came near her. And she looked at the big girls, her comrades. And no one troubled himself with her. Yet she was a pretty girl, a prettier was not to be found. Then came a fine young spark, and took her in his arms and kissed her, and stayed with her until cock-crow. And when the cock crowed at dawn he departed. The old woman saw he had cock’s feet.[2] And she kept looking at the lad’s feet, and she said, ‘Nita, my lass, did you see anything?’
‘I didn’t notice.’
‘Then didn’t I see he had cock’s feet?’
‘Let be, mother, I didn’t see it.’
And the girl went home and slept; and she arose and went off to the spinning, where many more girls were holding a ‘bee.’ And the young sparks came, and took each one his sweetheart. And they kissed them, and stayed a while, and went home. And the girl’s handsome young [[15]]spark came and took her in his arms and kissed her and pulled her about, and stayed with her till midnight. And the cock began to crow. The young spark heard the cock crowing, and departed. What said the old woman who was in the hut, ‘Nita, did you notice that he had horse’s hoofs?’
‘And if he had, I didn’t see.’
Then the girl departed to her home. And she slept and arose in the morning, and did her work that she had to do. And night came, and she took her spindle and went to the old woman in the hut. And the other girls came, and the young sparks came, and each laid hold of his sweetheart. But the pretty girl looks at them. Then the young sparks gave over and departed home. And only the girl remained neither a long time nor a short time. Then came the girl’s young spark. Then what will the girl do? She took heed, and stuck a needle and thread in his back. And he departed when the cock crew, and she knew not where he had gone to. Then the girl arose in the morning and took the thread, and followed up the thread, and saw him in a grave where he was sitting. Then the girl trembled and went back home. At night the young spark that was in the grave came to the old woman’s house and saw that the girl was not there. He asked the old woman, ‘Where’s Nita?’
‘She has not come.’
Then he went to Nita’s house, where she lived, and called, ‘Nita, are you at home?’
Nita answered, [‘I am’].
‘Tell me what you saw when you came to the church. For if you don’t tell me I will kill your father.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
Then he looked,[3] and he killed her father, and departed to his grave.
Next night he came back. ‘Nita, tell me what you saw.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘Tell me, or I will kill your mother, as I killed your father. Tell me what you saw.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
Then he killed her mother, and departed to his grave.
Then the girl arose in the morning. And she had twelve [[16]]servants. And she said to them, ‘See, I have much money and many oxen and many sheep; and they shall come to the twelve of you as a gift, for I shall die to-night. And it will fare ill with you if you bury me not in the forest at the foot of an apple-tree.’
At night came the young spark from the grave and asked, ‘Nita, are you at home?’
‘I am.’
‘Tell me, Nita, what you saw three days ago, or I will kill you, as I killed your parents.’
‘I have nothing to tell you.’
Then he took and killed her. Then, casting a look, he departed to his grave.
So the servants, when they arose in the morning, found Nita dead. The servants took her and laid her out decently. They sat and made a hole in the wall and passed her through the hole, and carried her, as she had bidden, and buried her in the forest by the apple-tree.
And half a year passed by, and a prince went to go and course hares with greyhounds and other dogs. And he went to hunt, and the hounds ranged the forest and came to the maiden’s grave. And a flower grew out of it, the like of which for beauty there was not in the whole kingdom.[4] So the hounds came on her monument, where she was buried, and they began to bark and scratched at the maiden’s grave. Then the prince took and called the dogs with his horn, and the dogs came not. The prince said, ‘Go quickly thither.’
Four huntsmen arose and came and saw the flower burning like a candle. They returned to the prince, and he asked them, ‘What is it?’
‘It is a flower, the like was never seen.’
Then the lad heard, and came to the maiden’s grave, and saw the flower and plucked it. And he came home and showed it to his father and mother. Then he took and put it in a vase at his bed-head where he slept. Then the flower arose from the vase and turned a somersault,[5] and became [[17]]a full-grown maiden. And she took the lad and kissed him, and bit him and pulled him about, and slept with him in her arms, and put her hand under his head. And he knew it not. When the dawn came she became a flower again.
In the morning the lad rose up sick, and complained to his father and mother, ‘Mammy, my shoulders hurt me, and my head hurts me.’
His mother went and brought a wise woman and tended him. He asked for something to eat and drink. And he waited a bit, and then went to his business that he had to do. And he went home again at night. And he ate and drank and lay down on his couch, and sleep seized him. Then the flower arose and again became a full-grown maiden. And she took him again in her arms, and slept with him, and sat with him in her arms. And he slept. And she went back to the vase. And he arose, and his bones hurt him, and he told his mother and his father. Then his father said to his wife, ‘It began with the coming of the flower. Something must be the matter, for the boy is quite ill. Let us watch to-night, and post ourselves on one side, and see who comes to our son.’
Night came, and the prince laid himself in his bed to sleep. Then the maiden arose from the vase, and became there was never anything more fair—as burns the flame of a candle. And his mother and his father, the king, saw the maiden, and laid hands on her. Then the prince arose out of his sleep, and saw the maiden that she was fair. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her, and lay down in his bed, slept till day.
And they made a marriage and ate and drank. The folk marvelled, for a being so fair as that maiden was not to be found in all the realm. And he dwelt with her half a year, and she bore a golden boy, two apples in his hand.[6] And it pleased the prince well.
Then her old sweetheart heard it, the vampire who had made love to her, and had killed her. He arose and came to her and asked her, ‘Nita, tell me, what did you see me doing?’ [[18]]
‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘Tell me truly, or I will kill your child, your little boy, as I killed your father and mother. Tell me truly.’
‘I have nothing to tell you.’
And he killed her boy. And she arose and carried him to the church and buried him.
At night the vampire came again and asked her, ‘Tell me, Nita, what you saw.’
‘I didn’t see anything.’
‘Tell me, or I will kill the lord whom you have wedded.’
Then Nita arose and said, ‘It shall not happen that you kill my lord. God send you burst.’[7]
The vampire heard what Nita said, and burst. Ay, he died, and burst for very rage. In the morning Nita arose and saw the floor swimming two hand’s-breadth deep in blood. Then Nita bade her father-in-law take out the vampire’s heart with all speed. Her father-in-law, the king, hearkened, and opened him and took out his heart, and gave it into Nita’s hand. And she went to the grave of her boy and dug the boy up, applied the heart, and the boy arose. And Nita went to her father and to her mother, and anointed them with the blood, and they arose. Then, looking on them, Nita told all the troubles she had borne, and what she had suffered at the hands of the vampire.
The word cĭohanó, which throughout I have rendered ‘vampire,’ is of course identical with Paspati’s Turkish-Romani tchovekhano, a ‘revenant’ or spectre, which, according to Miklosich, is an Armenian loan-word, and in other Gypsy dialects of Europe means ‘wizard, witch.’ This vampire story is a connecting link between the two meanings[8]; but whether the story itself is of Gypsy or of non-Gypsy origin is a difficult question. We have four versions of it—two of them Gypsy, viz., this from Roumania, and one in Friedrich Müller’s Beiträge; and two non-Gypsy, viz., Ralston’s ‘The Fiend’ (Russian Folk-tales, pp. 10–17), and one from Croatia (Krauss’s Sagen und Märchen der Südslaven, i. 293). Hahn’s ‘Lemonitza’ (ii. 27) also offers analogies. Krauss’s and Müller’s are both much inferior to Ralston’s and our Roumanian-Gypsy one; and of them, although Ralston’s opens best, yet its close is immeasurably inferior. For in it, as in the Hungarian-Gypsy variant, the flower transforms itself merely to eat and drink. But Ralston’s story, it will [[19]]probably be urged, is a typical Russian story, so must needs be of Russian origin. To which I answer, Irish-wise, with the question, How then did it travel to Croatia, to the Gypsies of Hungary and Roumania? That the Gypsies, with never a church, should make church bells might seem unlikely, did we not know that at Edzell, in Forfarshire, there is a church bell that was cast by Gypsies in 1726. So Gypsy story-tellers may well have devised some domestic narratives for their auditors, not for themselves. And this story is possibly theirs who tell it best.
The merest glance at Ralston or Krauss will suffice to show that the Gypsy and Gentile stories are identical, that the likeness between them is no chance one, but that there has been transmission—either the Gypsies have borrowed from the Gentiles, or the Gentiles have borrowed from the Gypsies. Ralston and Krauss are readily accessible to the general folklorist; of Friedrich Müller’s version I append this brief résumé. It is compounded of the first half of his No. 4, which drifts off into quite another story about a dove and a soldier, and of the second half of his number No. 2, which opens with a variant of Grimm’s ‘Robber Bridegroom’ (cf. infra, No. 47, notes):—
The Holy Maid will not marry. The devil creeps in at window. ‘ “Now, thou fair maiden, wilt thou come to me or no?” “No”—this said the maiden—“to a dead one say I it, but to a living one No.” ’ Devil kills first her father, next her mother; lastly threatens herself. She tells the gravedigger, ‘Bear me not over the door [this supplies a lacuna in the Roumanian-Gypsy version], but bury me in a grave under the threshold, and take me not out from there.’ The girl then dies and is buried. Flower grows out of grave. King sees it and sends coachman to pluck it. He cannot [supplies lacuna], but king does, and takes it home. At night the flower turns into a girl and eats. Servant sees and tells. King watches next night. The girl bids him pluck the flower with a clean white cloth with the left hand,[9] then she will never change back into a rose, but remain a maiden [supplies lacuna]. King does so, and she marries him on condition he will never force her to go to church [supplies lacuna]. He rues his promise when he sees the other kings going to church with their wives. She consents: ‘But now, as thou wilt, I go. Thy God shall be also my God.’ When she comes into church, there are the twelve robbers [story reverts here to the first half of No. 2]. The robber cuts her throat and she dies. ‘If she is not dead, she is still alive.’
It will be seen that, rude and corrupt as these two fragments are, they supply some details wanting in the Roumanian-Gypsy version. They cannot, then, be borrowed from it, but it and they are clearly alike derived from some older, more perfect original.
[[20]]
No. 6.—God’s Godson
There was a queen. From youth to old age that queen never bore but one son. That son was a hero. So soon as he was born, he said to his father, ‘Father, have you no sword or club?’
‘No, my child, but I will order one to be made for you.’
The son said, ‘Don’t order one, father: I will go just as I am.’
So the son took and departed, and journeyed a long while, and took no heed, till he came into a great forest. So in that forest he stretched himself beneath a tree to rest a bit, for he was weary. And he sat there a while. Then the holy God and St. Peter came on the lad; and he was unbaptized. So the holy God asked him, ‘Where are you going, my lad?’
‘I am going in quest of heroic achievements, old fellow.’
Then the holy God thought and thought, and made a church. And he caused sleep to fall on that lad, and bade St. Peter lift him, and went with him to the church, and gave him the name Handak. And the holy God said to him, ‘Godson, a hero like you there shall never be any other; and do you take my god-daughter.’
For there was a maiden equally heroic, and equally baptized by God. And she was his god-daughter, and he told his godson to take her. And he gave him a wand of good fortune and a sword. And he endowed him with strength, and set him down. And his godfather departed to heaven, like the holy God that he was.
And Handak perceived that God had endowed him with strength, and he set out in quest of heroic achievements, and journeyed a long while, and took no heed. So he came into a great forest. And there was a dragon three hundred years old. And his eyelashes reached down to the ground, and likewise his hair. And the lad went to him and said, ‘All hail.’
‘You are welcome.’
Soon as that hero [the dragon] heard his voice, he knew that it was God’s godson.
And the lad, Handak, asked him, ‘Does God’s god-daughter dwell far hence?’
‘She dwells not far; it is but a three days’ journey.’ [[21]]
And the lad took and departed, and journeyed three days until he came to the maiden’s. Soon as the maiden saw him, she recognised him for her godfather’s godson. And she let him into her house, and served up food to him, and ate with him and asked him, ‘What seek you here, Handak?’
He said, ‘I have come on purpose to marry you.’
‘With whom?’
‘With myself an you will.’
She said, ‘I will not have it so without a fight.’
And the lad said, ‘Come let us fight.’
And they fell to fighting, and fought three days; and the lad vanquished her. And he took her, and went to their godfather. And he crowned them and made a marriage. And they became rulers over all lands. And I came away, and told the story.
This story, though poor as a story, is yet sufficiently curious. Tweedledum and Tweedledee, in Alice in Wonderland, are suggested by the ‘not without a fight’; but I can offer no real variant or analogue of ‘God’s Godson.’ It is noteworthy, however, that the holy God and St. Peter occur in another of Barbu Constantinescu’s Roumanian-Gypsy stories, ‘The Apples of Pregnancy,’ No. 16, and baptize another boy in Miklosich’s Gypsy story from the Bukowina, No. 9, ‘The Mother’s Chastisement’; whilst we get Christ and St. Peter in a Catalonian-Gypsy story (cited under No. 60). For the nuptial crown in the last line but two, cf. Ralston’s Songs of the Russian People, pp. 198, 270, 306. See also the Roumanian-Gypsy story of ‘The Prince and the Wizard,’ No. 15, for an heroic hero, nought-heeding, who sets out in quest of heroic achievements.
No. 7.—The Snake who became the King’s Son-in-law
There were an old man and an old woman. From their youth up to their old age they had never had any children (lit. ‘made any children of their bones’). So the old woman was always scolding with the old man—what can they do, for there they are old, old people? The old woman said, ‘Who will look after us when we grow older still?’
‘Well, what am I to do, old woman?’
‘Go you, old man, and find a son for us.’
So the old man arose in the morning, and took his axe in [[22]]his hand, and departed and journeyed till mid-day, and came into a forest, and sought three days and found nothing. Then the old man could do no more for hunger. He set out to return home. So as he was coming back, he found a little snake and put it in a handkerchief, and carried it home. And he brought up the snake on sweet milk. The snake grew a week and two days, and he put it in a jar. The time came when the snake grew as big as the jar. The snake talked with his father, ‘My time has come to marry me. Go, father, to the king, and ask his daughter for me.’
When the old man heard that the snake wants the king’s daughter, he smote himself with his hands. ‘Woe is me, darling! How can I go to the king? For the king will kill me.’
What said he? ‘Go, father, and fear not. For what he wants of you, that will I give him.’
The old man went to the king. ‘All hail, O king!’
‘Thank you, old man.’
‘King, I am come to form an alliance by marriage.’
‘An alliance by marriage!’ said the king. ‘You are a peasant, and I am a king.’
‘That matters not, O king. If you will give me your daughter, I will give you whatever you want.’
What said the king? ‘Old man, if that be so, see this great forest. Fell it all, and make it a level field; and plough it for me, and break up all the earth; and sow it with millet by to-morrow. And mark well what I tell you: you must bring me a cake made with sweet milk. Then will I give you the maiden.’
Said the old man, ‘All right, O king.’
The old man went weeping to the snake. When the snake saw his father weeping he said, ‘Why weepest thou, father?’
‘How should I not weep, darling? For see what the king said, that I must fell this great forest, and sow millet; and it must grow up by to-morrow, and be ripe. And I must make a cake with sweet milk and give it him. Then he will give me his daughter.’
What said the snake? ‘Father, don’t fear for that, for I will do what you have told me.’
The old man: ‘All right, darling, if you can manage it.’ [[23]]
The old man went off to bed.
What did the snake? He arose and made the forest a level plain, and sowed millet, and thought and thought, and it was grown up by daybreak. When the old man got up, he finds a sack of millet, and he made a cake with sweet milk. The old man took the cake and went to the king.
‘Here, O king, I have done your bidding.’
When the king saw that, he marvelled. ‘My old fellow, hearken to me. I have one thing more for you to do. Make me a golden bridge from my palace to your house, and let golden apple-trees and pear-trees grow on the side of this bridge. Then will I give you my daughter.’
When the old man heard that, he began to weep, and went home.
What said the snake? ‘Why weepest thou, father?’
The old man said, ‘I am weeping, darling, for the miseries which God sends me. The king wants a golden bridge from his palace to our house, and apple and pear-trees on the side of this bridge.’
The snake said, ‘Fear not, father, for I will do as the king said.’ Then the snake thought and thought, and the golden bridge was made as the king had said. The snake did that in the night-time. The king arose at midnight; he thought the sun was at meat [i.e. it was noon]. He scolded the servants for not having called him in the morning.
The servants said, ‘King, it is night, not day’; and, seeing that, the king marvelled.
In the morning the old man came. ‘Good-day, father-in-law.’
‘Thank you, father-in-law. Go, father-in-law, and bring your son, that we may hold the wedding.’
He, when he went, said, ‘Hearken, what says the king? You are to go there for the king to see you.’
What said the snake? ‘My father, if that be so, fetch the cart, and put in the horses, and I will get into it to go to the king.’
No sooner said, no sooner done. He got into the cart and drove to the king. When the king saw him, he trembled with all his lords. One lord older than the rest, said, ‘Fly not, O king, it were not well of you. For he did what you told him; and shall not you do what you promised? He [[24]]will kill us all. Give him your daughter, and hold the marriage as you promised.’
What said the king? ‘My old man, here is the maiden whom you demand. Take her to you.’
And he gave him also a house by itself for her to live in with her husband. She, the bride, trembled at him.
The snake said, ‘Fear not, my wife, for I am no snake as you see me. Behold me as I am.’
He turned a somersault, and became a golden youth, in armour clad; he had but to wish to get anything. The maiden, when she saw that, took him in her arms and kissed him, and said, ‘Live, my king, many years. I thought you would eat me.’
The king sent a man to see how it fares with his daughter. When the king’s servant came, what does he see? The maiden fairer, lovelier than before. He went back to the king. ‘O king, your daughter is safe and sound.’
‘As God wills with her,’ said the king. Then he called many people and held the marriage; and they kept it up three days and three nights, and the marriage was consummated. And I came away and told the story.
Cf. Hahn’s No. 31, ‘Schlangenkind’ (i. 212) and notes, but the stories are not identical; and his No. 100, especially the note (ii. 313) for Indian version. Wratislaw’s Croatian story, No. 54, ‘The Wonder-3working Lock,’ p. 284 (see under No. 54), offers striking analogies. Cf. too for cobra palace, Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, p. 21.
No. 8.—The Bad Mother
There was an emperor. He had been married ten years, but had no children. And God granted that his empress conceived and bore a son. Now that son was heroic; there was none other found like him. And the father lived half a year longer, and died. Then what is the lad to do? He took and departed in quest of heroic achievements. And he journeyed a long while, and took no heed, and came into a great forest. In that forest there was a certain house, and in that house were twelve dragons. Then the lad went straight thither, and saw that there was no one. He opened the door and went in, and he saw a sabre on a nail and took it, and posted himself behind the door, and waited for the [[25]]coming of the dragons. They, when they came, did not go in all at once, but went in one by one. The lad waited, sabre in hand; and as each one went in, he cut off his head, flung it on the floor. So the lad killed eleven dragons, and the youngest dragon remained. And the lad went out to him, and took and fought with him, and fought half a day. And the lad vanquished the dragon, and took him and put him in a jar, and fastened it securely.
And the lad went to walk, and came on another house, where there was only a maiden. And when he saw the maiden, how did she please his heart. As for the maiden, the lad pleased her just as well. And the maiden was yet more heroic than the lad. And they formed a strong love. And the lad told the maiden how he had killed eleven dragons, and one he had left alive and put in a jar.
The maiden said, ‘You did ill not to kill it; but now let it be.’
And the lad said to the maiden, ‘I will go and fetch my mother, for she is alone at home.’
Then the maiden said, ‘Fetch her, but you will rue it. But go and fetch her, and dwell with her.’
So the lad departed to fetch his mother. He took his mother, and brought her into the house of the dragons whom he had slain. And he said to his mother, ‘Go into every room; only into this chamber do not go.’
His mother said, ‘I will not, darling.’
And the lad departed into the forest to hunt.
And his mother went into the room where he had told her not to go. And when she opened the door, the dragon saw her and said to her, ‘Empress, give me a little water, and I will do you much good.’
She went and gave him water and he said to her, ‘Dost love me, then will I take thee, and thou shalt be mine empress.’
‘I love thee,’ she said.
Then the dragon said to her, ‘What will you do, to get rid of your son, that we may be left to ourselves? Make yourself ill,[10] and say you have seen a dream, that he must bring you a porker of the sow in the other world; that, if he does not [[26]]bring it you, you will die; but that, if he brings it you, you will recover.’
Then she went into the house, and tied up her head, and made herself ill. And when the lad came home and saw her head tied up, he asked her, ‘What’s the matter, mother?’
She said, ‘I am ill, darling. I shall die. But I have seen a dream, to eat a porker of the sow in the other world.’
Then the lad began to weep, for his mother will die. And he took[11] and departed. Then he went to his sweetheart, and told her. ‘Maiden, my mother will die. And she has seen a dream, that I must bring her a porker from the other world.’
The maiden said, ‘Go, and be prudent; and come to me as you return. Take my horse with the twelve wings, and mind the sow does not seize you, else she’ll eat both you and the horse.’
So the lad took the horse and departed. He came there, and when the sun was midway in his course he went to the little pigs, and took one, and fled. Then the sow heard him, and hurried after him to devour him. And at the very brink (of the other world), just as he was leaping out, the sow bit off half of the horse’s tail. So the lad went to the maiden. And the maiden came out, and took the little pig, and hid it, and put another in its stead. Then he went home to his mother, and gave her that little pig, and she dressed it and ate, and said that she was well.
Three or four days later she made herself ill again, as the dragon had shown her.
When the lad came, he asked her, ‘What’s the matter now, mother?’
‘I am ill again, darling, and I have seen a dream that you must bring me an apple from the golden apple-tree in the other world.’
So the lad took and departed to the maiden; and when the maiden saw him so troubled, she asked him, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’
‘What’s the matter! my mother is ill again. And she has seen a dream that I am to bring her an apple from the apple-tree in the other world.’
Then the maiden knew that his mother was compassing [[27]]his destruction (lit. ‘was walking to eat his head’), and she said to the lad, ‘Take my horse and go, but be careful the apple-tree does not seize you there. Come to me, as you return.’
And the lad took and departed, and came to the brink of the world. And he let himself in, and went to the apple-tree at mid-day when the apples were resting. And he took an apple and ran away. Then the leaves perceived it and began to scream; and the apple-tree took itself after him to lay its hand on him and kill him. And the lad came out from the brink, and arrived in our world, and went to the maiden. Then the maiden took the apple, stole it from him, and hid it, and put another in its stead. And the lad stayed a little longer with her, and departed to his mother. Then his mother, when she saw him, asked him, ‘Have you brought it, darling?’
‘I’ve brought it, mother.’
So she took the apple and ate, and said there was nothing more the matter with her.
In a week’s time the dragon told her to make herself ill again, and to ask for water from the great mountains. So she made herself ill.
When the lad saw her ill, he began to weep and said, ‘My mother will die, God. She’s always ill.’ Then he went to her and asked her, ‘What’s the matter, mother?’
‘I am like to die, darling. But I shall recover if you will bring me water from the great mountains.’
Then the lad tarried no longer. He went to the maiden and said to her, ‘My mother is ill again; and she has seen a dream that I must fetch her water from the great mountains.’
The maiden said, ‘Go, lad; but I fear the clouds will catch you, and the mountains there, and will kill you. But do you take my horse with twenty-and-four wings; and when you get there, wait afar off till mid-day, for at mid-day the mountains and the clouds set themselves at table and eat. Then do you go with the pitcher, and draw water quickly, and fly.’
Then the lad took the pitcher, and departed thither to the mountains, and waited till the sun had reached the middle of his course. And he went and drew water and fled. And [[28]]the clouds and the mountains perceived him, and took themselves after him, but they could not catch him. And the lad came to the maiden. Then the maiden went and took the pitcher with the water, and put another in its stead without his knowing it. And the lad arose and went home, and gave water to his mother, and she recovered.
Then the lad departed into the forest to hunt. His mother went to the dragon and told him, ‘He has brought me the water. What am I to do now with him?’
‘What are you to do! why, take and play cards with him. You must say, “For a wager, as I used to play with your father.” ’
So the lad came home and found his mother merry: it pleased him well. And she said to him at table, as they were eating, ‘Darling, when your father was alive, what did we do? When we had eaten and risen up, we took and played cards for a wager.’
Then the lad: ‘If you like, play with me, mother.’
So they took and played cards; and his mother beat him. And she took silken cords, and bound his two hands so tight that the cord cut into his hands.
And the lad began to weep, and said to his mother, ‘Mother, release me or I die.’
She said, ‘That is just what I was wanting to do to you.’ And she called the dragon, ‘Come forth, dragon, come and kill him.’
Then the dragon came forth, and took him, and cut him in pieces, and put him in the saddle-bags, and placed him on his horse, and let him go, and said to the horse, ‘Carry him, horse, dead, whence thou didst carry him alive.’
Then the horse hurried to the lad’s sweetheart, and went straight to her there. Then, when the maiden saw him, she began to weep, and she took him and put piece to piece; where one was missing, she cut the porker, and supplied flesh from the porker. So she put all the pieces of him in their place. And she took the water and poured it on him, and he became whole. And she squeezed the apple in his mouth, and brought him to life.
So when the lad arose, he went home to his mother, and drove a stake into the earth, and placed both her and the dragon on one great pile of straw. And he set it alight, and [[29]]they were consumed. And he departed thence, and took the maiden, and made a marriage, and kept up the marriage three months day and night. And I came away and told the story.
Of this Roumanian-Gypsy story Miklosich furnishes a Gypsy variant from the Bukowina, which I will give in full at the risk of seeming repetition, italicising such words and phrases as show the most marked correspondence:—
No. 9.—The Mother’s Chastisement
There was an emperor’s son, and he went to hunt. And he departed from the hunters by himself. And by a certain stack there was a maiden. He passed near the stack, and heard her lamenting. He took that maiden, and brought her home.
‘See, mother, what I’ve found.’
His mother took her to the kitchen to the cook to bring her up. She brought her up twelve years. The empress dressed her nicely, and put her in the palace to lay the table. The prince loved her, for she was so fair that in all the world there was none so fair as she. The prince loved her three years, and the empress knew it not.
Once he said, ‘I will take a wife, mother.’
‘From what imperial family?’
‘I wish to marry her who lays the table.’
‘Not her, mother’s darling!’
‘If I don’t take her, I shall die.’
‘Take her.’
And he took her; he married her. And an order came for him to go to battle. He left her big with child.
The empress called two servants. ‘Take her into the forest and kill her, and bring me her heart and little finger.’
They put her in the carriage, and drove her into the forest; after them ran a whelp. And they brought her into the forest, and were going to kill her, and she said, ‘Kill me not, for I have used you well.’
‘How are we to take her the heart, then?’
‘Kill the whelp, for its heart is just like a human one, and cut off my little finger.’ [[30]]
They killed the whelp, and cut off her little finger, and took out the whelp’s heart.
And she cried, ‘Gather wood for me, and make me a fire; and strip off bark for me, and build me a hut.’
They built her a hut, and made her a fire, and went away home, bringing the heart and the little finger.
She brought forth a son. God and St. Peter came and baptized him;[12] and God gave him a gun that he should become a hunter. Whatever he saw he would kill with the gun. And God gave him the name Silvester. And God made a house of the hut, and the fire no longer died. And God gave them a certain loaf; they were always eating, and it was never finished.
The boy grew big, and he took his gun in his hand, and went into the forest. And what he saw he killed, carried to his mother, and they ate. Walking in the forest, he came upon the dragons’ palace, and sat before the door. At mid-day the dragons were coming home. He saw them from afar, eleven (sic) in number; and eleven he shot with his gun, and one he merely stunned. And he took them, and carried them into the palace, and shut them up in a room; and he went to his mother, and said, ‘Come with me, mother.’
‘Where am I to go to, mother’s darling?’
‘Come with me, where I take you to.’
He went with her to the palace. ‘Take to thee, mother, twelve keys. Go into any room you choose, but into this room do not go.’
He went into the forest to hunt.
She said, ‘Why did my son tell me not to go in here? But I will go to see what is there.’
She opened the door.
The dragon asked her, ‘If thou art a virgin, be my sister; but if thou art a wife, be my wife.’
‘I am a wife.’
‘Then be my wife.’
‘I will; but will you do the right thing by me?’
‘I will.’
‘Swear, then.’
‘I swear.’ [[31]]
The dragon swore. The dragon said to her, ‘Swear also thou.’
She also swore. They kissed one another on the mouth. She brought him to her into the house; they drank and ate, and loved one another.
Her son came from the forest. She saw him. She said, ‘My son is coming; go back into the room.’
He went back, and she shut him in.
In the morning her son went again into the forest to hunt. She admitted the dragon again to her. They drank and ate. He said to her, ‘How shall we kill your son? Then we’ll live finely. Make yourself ill, and say that you have seen a dream, that he must bring milk from the she-bear for you to drink. Then you’ll have nothing to trouble you, for the she-bear will devour him.’
He came home from the forest. ‘What’s the matter with you, mother?’
‘I shall die, but I saw a dream. Bring me milk from the she-bear.’
‘I’ll bring it you, mother.’
He went into the forest, and found the she-bear. He was going to shoot her.
She cried, ‘Stop, man. What do you want?’
‘You to give me milk.’
She said, ‘I will give it you. Have you a pail?’
‘I have.’
‘Come and milk.’
He milked her, and brought it to his mother.
‘Here, mother.’
She pretended to drink, but poured it forth.
In the morning he went again into the forest, and met the Moon. ‘Who art thou?’
‘I am the Moon.’
‘Be a sister to me.’
‘But who art thou?’
‘I am Silvester.’
‘Then thou art God’s godson, for God takes care of thee. I also am God’s.’
‘Be a sister to me.’
‘I will be a sister to thee.’
He went further; he met Friday. ‘Who art thou?’ [[32]]
‘I am Friday, but who art thou?’
‘I am Silvester.’
‘Thou art God’s godson; I also am God’s.’
‘Be a sister to me.’
He went home. His mother saw him. ‘My son is coming.’
‘Send him to the wild sow to bring thee milk, for she will devour him.’
‘Always sick, mother?’
‘I am. I have seen a dream. Bring me milk from the wild sow.’
‘I know not whether or no I shall bring it, but I will try.’
He went; he found the sow; he was going to shoot her with his gun. She cried, ‘Don’t, don’t shoot me. What do you want?’
‘Give me milk.’
‘Have you a pail? come and milk.’
He brought it to his mother. She pretended to drink, but poured it forth. He went again into the forest.
She admitted the dragon to her. ‘In vain, for the sow has not devoured him.’
‘Then send him to the Mountains of Blood, that butt at one another like rams, to bring thee water, the water of life and the water of healing. If he does not die there, he never will.’
‘I have seen a dream, that you bring me water from the Mountains of Blood, which butt at one another like rams, for then there will be nothing the matter with me.’
He went to the Moon.
‘Whither away, brother?’
‘I am going to the mountains to fetch water for my mother.’
‘Don’t go, brother; you will die there.’
‘Bah! I will go there.’
‘Take thee my horse when thou goest, for my horse will carry thee thither. And take thee a watch, for they butt at one another from morning till noon, and at noon they rest for two hours. So when you come there at the twelfth hour, draw water in two pails from the two wells.’
He came thither at mid-day, and dismounted, and drew water in two pails, the water of life and the water of healing. And he came back to the Moon; and the Moon said, ‘Lie down and sleep, and rest, for you are worn out.’ [[33]]
She hid that water, and poured in other.
He arose. ‘Come, sister, I will depart home.’
‘Take my horse, and go riding. Take the saddle-bags.’
He went home to his mother. His mother saw him coming on horseback, and said to the dragon, ‘My son is coming on horseback.’
‘Tell him that you have seen a dream, that you bind his fingers behind his back with a silken cord; and that if he can burst it he will become a hero, and you will grow strong.’
‘Bind away, mother.’
She made a thick silken cord, and bound his fingers behind his back. He tugged, and grew red in the face; he tugged again, he grew blue; he tugged the third time, he grew black.
And she cried, ‘Come, dragon, and cut his throat.’
The dragon came to him. ‘Well, what shall I do to you now?’
‘Cut me all in bits, and put me in the saddle-bags, and place me on my horse. Thither, whence he carried me living, let him carry me dead.’
He cut him in pieces, put him in the saddle-bags, and placed him on the horse. ‘Go, whence thou didst carry him living, carry him dead.’
The horse went straight to the Moon. The Moon came out, and saw him, and took him in, and called Wednesday, and called Friday; and they laid him in a big trough, and washed him brawly, and placed him on a table, and put him all together, bit by bit; and they took the water of healing, and sprinkled him, and he became whole; and they took the water of life, and sprinkled him, and he came to life.
‘Ah! I was sleeping soundly.’[13]
‘You would have slept for ever if I had not come.’
‘I will go, sister, to my mother.’
‘Go not, brother.’
‘Bah! I will.’
‘Well, go, and God be with thee. Take thee my sword.’
He went to his mother. His mother was singing and dancing with the dragon. He went in to the dragon. ‘Good day to you both.’ [[34]]
‘Thanks.’
‘Come, what shall I do to you, dragon?’
‘Cut me in little pieces, and put me in the saddle-bags, and place me on my horse. Whence he carried me living, let him carry me also dead.’
He cut him in little pieces, put him in the saddle-bags, placed him on his horse, and dug out the horse’s eyes. ‘Go whither thou wilt.’
Away went the horse, and kept knocking his head against the trees; and the pieces of flesh kept falling from the saddle-bags. The crows kept eating the flesh.
Silvester shot a hare, and skinned it, and spitted it, and roasted it at the fire. And he said to his mother, ‘Mother, look straight at me.’
His mother looked at him. He struck her in the eyes, and her eyes leapt out of her head. And he took her by the hand, led her to a jar, said to her, ‘Mother, when thou hast filled this jar with tears, then God pardon thee; and when thou hast eaten a bundle of hay, and filled the jar with tears, then God pardon thee, and restore thee thine eyes.’
And he bound her there, and departed, and left her three years. In three years she came back to his recollection. ‘I will go to my mother, and see what she is doing.’
Now she has filled the jar, and eaten the bundle of hay.
‘Now may God pardon thee; now I also pardon thee. Depart, and God be with thee.’
A third Gypsy version, from Hungary, the first half of Friedrich Müller’s No. 5, may be summarised thus:—Two children, driven from home by mother, wander thirty-five years, and come to a forest so dense the birds cannot fly through it. They come to a castle so high they cannot see the top of it. Twelve robbers dwell here. Lad kills eleven as they come home, but only wounds the twelfth. He goes forth to hunt, spares lives of twelve wild animals, and brings them home. The sister meanwhile has restored the twelve robbers to life. She suggests that her brother shall have a warm bath (cf. De Gubernatis’ Zool. Myth. i. 213), saying that thereby their father had been so healthy. In the bath she binds his hands and feet. She summons twelve robbers. They permit him to play his father’s air on his pipe; it calls up the twelve animals. They rend the robbers, and loose the lad, who packs his sister into the great empty jar (here first mentioned), and leaves her to die of hunger. [[35]]
This last is a poorly-told story; still, not without its features of interest. It will be noticed that in it, as in many non-Gypsy variants, the dragons are rationalised into robbers (sometimes blackamoors). Of the Roumanian and the Bukowina-Gypsy versions the former seems to me the better on the whole. The opening of the Bukowina version cannot properly belong to the story, for it arouses an interest in the mother, who yet turns out a bad lot.[14] Its close, however, is decidedly superior. What a picture is that of the mother and the dragon singing and dancing, and what a one that of the blinded horse and the crows! In both versions there is the same omission—the inquiry into the seat of the hero’s strength; and in the Bukowina one no use is made of the milk from the she-bear and the wild sow, nor are we told of the hero’s first meeting with Wednesday. Plainly the Roumanian version is not derived from the Bukowina one, nor the Bukowina one from the Roumanian; but they point to an unknown, more perfect original. Even as they stand, however, both are better than any of the non-Gypsy variants known to me. These include five from Hahn’s Greek collection (i. 176, 215; ii. 234, 279, 283); one in Roumanian Fairy Tales, by E. B. M. (Lond. 1884, pp. 81–89), resembling the Hungarian-Gypsy version; three German and one Lithuanian, cited by Hahn (ii. 236); one Russian, summarised by Ralston (p. 235); the well-known ‘Blue Belt’ in Dasent’s Tales from the Norse (p. 178); and Laura Gonzenbach’s No. 26, ‘Vom tapfern Königssohn’ (Sicil. Mär, i. 158–167), where the hero is cut in pieces by his supposed stepfather, the robber-chieftain, packed into a saddle-bag, and carried by his ass to a hermit, who revives him, after which the story drifts off into our No. 45.
I have annotated the Gypsy stories very fully; my notes cover several pages. Here, however, it must suffice to indicate some of the more striking parallels from non-Gypsy sources. In Hahn, i. 267, God gives a house to a woman abandoned in a forest (cf. also i. 73; ii. 26). For the heart and little finger, a very common incident, compare the English-Gypsy story of ‘Bobby Rag’ (No. 51), and Hahn, i. 258 and ii. 231. In Grimm, No. 111, a hunter gives the hero a gun which never misses. For the formula, ‘If thou art a virgin,’ etc., cf. Ralston, pp. 75–76. For the mountains that butt together, cf. Ralston, p. 236; Tylor’s Primitive Culture, pp. 313–316; Hahn, ii. 46–47; and Grimm, No. 97. For the water of healing and the water of life, cf. Ralston, pp. 17, 91, 230, 255. For ‘Ah! I was sleeping soundly,’ cf. Ralston, pp. 91–92; Hahn, ii. 274; and our No. 29. In Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 92, a father, restored to life, says, ‘O my son, what a lengthened sleep [[36]]I have had!’ For the sow biting off half of the horse’s tail, cf. Hahn, i. 312; Krauss, ii. 94; Ralston, p. 235; and Burns’s ‘Tam o’ Shanter.’ For the leaves beginning to scream, cf. Hahn, i. 270 and ii. 171. In a variant from Afanasief, vi. 52, cited by De Gubernatis (Z.M., i. 215), the sister for punishment is placed near some hay and some water, and a vessel which she is to fill with her tears. It is just worth noting that Silvester is a common English-Gypsy name.
No. 10.—The Three Princesses and the Unclean Spirit
There was a king; and from youth to old age he had no son. In his old age three daughters were born to him. And the very morning of their birth the Unclean Spirit came and took them, the three maidens. And he fought to win a woman, the Serpent-Maiden; and half his moustache turned white, and half all the hair on his head, for the sake of the Serpent-Maiden. Time passed by, and he had no son; and his daughters the Unclean Spirit had carried away.
Then he took and thought. ‘What am I to do, wife? I will go for three years (sic); and, when I return, let me find a son born of you. If in a year’s time I find not one, I will kill you.’
He went and journeyed a year and a day. His wife took and thought. As she was a-thinking, a man went by with apples: whoso eats one of his apples shall conceive. Then she went, and took an apple, and ate the apple, and she conceived. The time came that she should bring forth. And she brought forth a son, and called his name Cosmas. So her king came that night, and sent a messenger to ask his wife.
She said, ‘Your bidding is fulfilled.’
Then he went in, and, when he saw the lad, his heart was full.
And the time came when the lad grew big, and he looked the very picture of his father. The time came that his father died. By that time he felt himself a man, and he put forth his little finger, and lifted the palace up. Then he came back from hunting, and he lifted the foundation of the palace, and told his mother to place her breast beneath it. Then his mother placed her breast beneath the foundation, and he left it pressing upon her. Then she cried aloud. [[37]]
The lad said to her, ‘Mother, tell me, why was my father’s moustache half white?’
Then she said to him, ‘Why, darling, your father fought nine years to win the Serpent-Maiden, and never won her.’
Then he asked, ‘And have I no brother?’
‘No,’ she said; ‘but you have three sisters, and the Unclean Spirit carried them away.’
And he asked, ‘Whither did he carry them?’
Then she said he had carried them to the Land of the Setting Sun.
Then he took his father’s saddle and his bridle and likewise his father’s colt, and set out in quest of his sisters, and arrived at his sister’s house, and hurled his mace, and smashed the plum-trees.
Then his sister came out and said to him, ‘Why have you smashed the plum-trees? For the Unclean Spirit will come and kill you.’
Then he said, ‘I would not have you think ill of me; but kindly come and give me a draught of wine and a morsel of bread.’
Then she brought bread and wine. As she was handing him the bread and wine, she noticed her father’s colt, and recognised it. Then she said, ‘This must be my father’s horse.’
‘Take notice then that I also am his.’
Then she fell on his neck, and he on hers.
Then she said to him, ‘My brother, the Unclean Spirit will come from the Twelfth Region. And he will come and destroy you.’
Then the Unclean Spirit came, and hurled his mace; and it opened twelve doors, and hung itself on its peg. Then Cosmas took it, and hurled it twelve regions away from him. Then the Unclean Spirit took it, and came home with it in his hand, and asked, ‘Wife, I smell mortal man?’
(Meanwhile she had turned her brother into an ear-ring, and put him in her ear.)
Then she said, ‘You’re for ever eating corpses, and are meaning to eat me, too, for I also am mortal.’
Then he said to her, ‘Don’t tell lies; my brother-in-law has come.’ [[38]]
‘Well, then, and if your brother-in-law has come, will you eat him?’
Then he said, ‘I will not.’
‘Swear it on your sword that you will not eat him.’
Then she took him out of her ear, and set him at table. He ate at table with the Unclean Spirit.
Then the lad went outside,[15] and creeps into the fetlock of his colt, and hid himself there. Then the Unclean Spirit arose, and hunted everywhere, and failed to light on him. And he set his bugle to his mouth, and blew a blast, and summoned all the birds upon the horse, and they searched every hair of the horse. And just as he was coming to the fetlock, then the cocks crowed, and he fell.
Cosmas came forth, and went to him. ‘Good day, brother-in-law.’
Then he asked him, ‘Where were you?’
‘Why, I was in the hay, before the horse.’
Then Cosmas took leave of them, and went to his other sisters, and did with them just as with this one.
Then his little sister asked him, ‘Where are you going, my brother?’
‘I am going to tend the white mare, and get one of her colts, and I am going to win the Serpent-Maiden.’
Then she said to him, ‘Go, my brother, and if you get the colt, come to me.’
He went.
Now some peasants were hunting a wolf to slay it. The wolf said, ‘Cosmas, don’t abandon me. Send the peasants the wrong way, that they may not kill me; and take one of my hairs,[16] and put it in your pocket. And whenever you think of me, there I am, wherever you may be.’
Going further, he came on a crow that had broken its wing, and it said, ‘Don’t pass me by, Cosmas; bind my wing up; and I will give you a feather to put in your pocket, and whenever you are in any difficulty, I’ll be with you.’
Going still further, he came on a fish, which said, ‘Cosmas, don’t pass me by. Tie me to your horse’s tail, and put me in the water, for I will do you much good.’ [[39]]
He did so, and put it in the water.
Then he came to the old woman who owned the white mare; and she sat before her door; and he said to her, ‘Will you give me a colt of the white mare, old one?’
The old wife said, ‘If you can find her three days running, one of her colts is yours. But if you can’t find her, I will cut off your head, and stick it on yonder stake.’
‘I’ll find her,’ he said.
And she gave him the white mare, and away he went with her to try and find her. So the mare ran in among the sheep, and took and hid herself in the earth. And the lad arose and searched for the mare, and failed to light on her. And the wolf came into his mind; and he thought of him.
And the wolf came and asked him, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’
He said, ‘I can’t find the white mare.’
The wolf said, ‘Do you see this one, the biggest of the sheep? that is she. Go, and give her a taste of the stick.’
So the lad took and called her, and she became a horse. And he went with her to the old woman.
And the old woman said, ‘You have two more days.’
‘All right, old lady,’ said the lad.
So next day also he took and went off with the mare, to try and find her. (The old woman had thrashed the mare for not hiding herself properly, so that he could not have found her. And the white mare had said, ‘Forgive me, old woman. This time I will hide in the clouds, and he never will find me.’)
So the lad went off with her, to try and find her; and she went into the clouds. So the lad set to work, and searched from morning till noon. And the crow came into his mind; and, as he thought of it, the crow came and asked him, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’
‘Why, I have lost the white mare, and cannot light on her.’
So the crow summoned all the crows, and they searched upon every side, till they lighted on her. So they took her in their beaks, and brought her to the lad. So the lad took her, and led her to the old woman.
‘You have one day more,’ said the old woman. [[40]]
So the day came when the lad had to find the mare once more. (That night the old woman had thrashed the white mare and pretty nigh killed it. And the mare had said to the old woman, ‘If he lights on me this time, old woman, you may know I have burst, for I will go right into the sea.’)
So when the lad departed with her, she went into the sea. And the lad searched for her, and it wanted but little of night. And the fish came into his mind. So the fish emerged before him and said, ‘What’s the matter, lad?’
‘I don’t know where the white mare has gone to.’
And the fish went and summoned all the fishes; and they gave up the white mare with her colt behind her. And the lad took her. He went with her to the old wife, and she said to him, ‘Take, deary, whichever pleases you.’
The lad chose the youngest colt.
And the old wife said, ‘Don’t take that one, my lad; it isn’t a good one. Take a handsomer.’
And the lad said, ‘Let be.’
And the lad went further; and the colt turned a somersault,[17] and became golden, with twenty-and-four wings. And the Serpent had none like his. And he went to his sisters, and took the three of them, and took too the Serpent-Maiden, and went with them home. Neither the Unclean Spirit nor the dragon could catch him. And he went home. So he made a marriage; and they ate and drank. And I left them there, and came and told my tale to your lordships.
A valuable story, but confused and imperfect. Who the dragon was is left to conjecture; and the serpent-maiden—she must have been a real old (serpent) maid—is barely mentioned. In no collection can I find any exact parallel to this story; but it offers many analogies, e.g. to ‘Childe Rowland’ (J. Jacobs’ English Fairy Tales, i. 117–124, 238–245); and to Von Sowa’s Bohemian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ (infra. No. 44). The ‘Apples of Pregnancy’ form the theme of another Roumanian-Gypsy story (No. 16). The hurling the mace occurs in Miklosich’s Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Pretty-face’ (No. 29), and in ‘Sir Peppercorn’ (Denton’s Serbian Folklore, p. 124). For ‘the cocks crowed, and he fell,’ cf. Ralston, p. 316; and for blowing a blast and summoning all the birds, the Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land’ (No. 62). For the latter part of the story [[41]]reference should be made to Ralston, pp. 92, 98, 103–4; Krauss, i. 362; and especially the close of the Bulgarian story of ‘The Golden Apples and the Nine Peahens’ (Wratislaw’s Sixty Slavonic Folk-tales, pp. 193–198), where we get the watching of a mare for three successive days, and the finding of her by the help of a grateful fish, fox, and crow. Cf. too, Wratislaw’s Croatian story, ‘The Daughter of the King of the Vilas’ (No. 53, pp. 278–283).
No. 11.—The Two Thieves
There was a time when there was. There were two thieves. One was a country thief, and one a town thief. So the time came that the two met, and they asked one another whence they are and what they are.
Then the country thief said to the town one, ‘Well, if you’re such a clever thief as to be able to steal the eggs from under a crow, then I shall know that you are a thief.’
He said, ‘See me, how I’ll steal them.’
And he climbed lightly up the tree, and put his hand under the crow, and stole the eggs from her, and the crow never felt it. Whilst he is stealing the crow’s eggs, the country thief stole his breeches, and the town thief never felt him. And when he came down and saw that he was naked, he said, ‘Brother, I never felt you stealing my breeches; let’s become brothers.’
So they became brothers.
Then what are they to do? They went into the city, and took one wife between them. And the town thief said, ‘Brother, it is a sin for two brothers to have one wife. It were better for her to be yours.’
He said, ‘Mine be she.’
‘But, come now, where I shall take you, that we may get money.’
‘Come on, brother, since you know.’
So they took and departed. Then they came to the king’s, and considered how to get into his palace. And what did they devise?
Said the town thief, ‘Come, brother, and let us break into the palace, and let ourselves down one after the other.’
‘Come on.’
So they got on the palace, and broke through the roof; [[42]]and the country thief lowered himself, and took two hundred purses of money, and came out. And they went home.
Then the king arose in the morning, and looked at his money, and saw that two hundred purses of money were missing. Straightway he arose and went to the prison, where was an old thief. And when he came to him, he asked him, ‘Old thief, I know not who has come into my palace, and stolen from me two hundred purses of money. And I know not where they went out by, for there is no hole anywhere in the palace.’
The old thief said, ‘There must be one, O king, only you don’t see it. But go and make a fire in the palace, and come out and watch the palace; and where you see smoke issuing, that was where the thieves entered. And do you put a cask of molasses just there at that hole, for the thief will come again who stole the money.’
Then the king went and made a fire, and saw the hole where the smoke issues in the roof of the palace. And he went and got a cask of molasses, and put it there at the hole. Then the thieves came again there at night to that hole. And the thief from the country let himself down again; and as he did so he fell into the cask of molasses. And he said to his brother, ‘Brother, it is all over with me. But, not to do the king’s pleasure, come and cut off my head, for I am as good as dead.’
So his comrade lowered himself down, and cut off his head, and went and buried it in a wood.
So, when the king arose, he arose early, and went there, where the thief had fallen, and sees the thief there in the cask of molasses, and with no head. Then what is he to do? He took and went to the old thief, and told him, ‘Look you, old thief, I caught the thief, and he has no head.’
Then the old thief said, ‘There! O king, this is a cunning thief. But what are you to do? Why, take the corpse, and hang it up outside at the city gate. And he who stole his head will come to steal him too. And do you set soldiers to watch him.’
So the king went and took the corpse, and hung it up, and set soldiers to watch it.
Then the thief took and bought a white mare and a cart, and took a jar of twenty measures of wine. And he put it [[43]]in the cart, and drove straight to the place where his comrade was hanging. He made himself very old, and pretended the cart had broken down, and the jar had fallen out. And he began to weep and tear his hair, and he made himself to cry aloud, that he was a poor man, and his master would kill him. The soldiers guarding the corpse said one to another, ‘Let’s help to put this old fellow’s jar in the cart, mates, for it’s a pity to hear him.’
So they went to help him, and said to him, ‘Hullo! old chap, we’ll put your jar in the cart; will you give us a drop to drink?’
‘That I will, deary.’
So they went and put the jar in the cart. And the old fellow took and said to them, ‘Take a pull, deary, for I have nothing to give it you in.’
So the soldiers took and drank till they could drink no more. And the old fellow made himself to ask, ‘And who is this?’
The soldiers said, ‘That is a thief.’
Then the old man said, ‘Hullo! deary, I shan’t spend the night here, else that thief will steal my mare.’
Then the soldiers said, ‘What a silly you are, old fellow! How will he come and steal your mare?’
‘He will, though, deary. Isn’t he a thief?’
‘Shut up, old fellow. He won’t steal your mare; and if he does, we’ll pay you for her.’
‘He will steal her, deary; he’s a thief.’
‘Why, old boy, he’s dead. We’ll give you our written word that if he steals your mare we will pay you three hundred groats for her.’
Then the old man said, ‘All right, deary, if that’s the case.’
So he stayed there. He placed himself near the fire, and a drowsy fit took him, and he pretended to sleep. The soldiers kept going to the jar of wine, and drank every drop of the wine, and got drunk. And where they fell there they slept, and took no thought. The old chap, the thief, who pretended to sleep, arose and stole the corpse from the gallows, and put it on his mare, and carried it into the forest and buried it. And he left his mare there and went back to the fire, and pretended to sleep. [[44]]
And when the soldiers arose, and saw that neither the corpse was there nor the old man’s mare, they marvelled, and said, ‘There! my comrades, the old man said rightly the thief would steal his mare. Let’s make it up to him.’
So by the time the old man arose they gave him four hundred groats, and begged him to say no more about it.
Then when the king arose, and saw there was no thief on the gallows, he went to the old thief in the prison, and said to him, ‘There! they have stolen the thief from the gallows, old thief. What am I to do?’
‘Did not I tell you, O king, that this is a cunning thief? But do you go and buy up all the joints of meat in the city. And charge a ducat the two pounds, so that no one will care to buy any, unless he has come into a lot of money. But that thief won’t be able to hold out three days.’
Then the king went and bought up all the joints, and left one joint; and that one he priced at a ducat the pound. So nobody came to buy that day. Next day the thief would stay no longer. He took a cart and put a horse in it, and drove to the meat-market. And he pretended he had damaged his cart, and lamented he had not an axe to repair it with. Then a butcher said to him, ‘Here, take my axe, and mend your cart.’ The axe was close to the meat. As he passed to take the axe, he picked up a big piece of meat, and stuck it under his coat. And he handed the axe back to the butcher, and departed home.
The same day comes the king, and asks the butchers, ‘Have you sold any meat to any one?’ They said, ‘We have not sold to any one.’
So the king weighed the meat, and found it twenty pounds short. And he went to the old thief in prison, and said to him, ‘He has stolen twenty pounds of meat, and no one saw him.’
‘Didn’t I tell you, O king, that this is a cunning thief?’
‘Well, what am I to do, old thief?’
‘What are you to do? Why, make a proclamation, and offer in it all the money you possess, and say he shall become king in your stead, merely to tell who he is.’
Then the king went and wrote the proclamation, just as the old thief had told him. And he posted it outside by the gate. And the thief comes and reads it, and thought [[45]]how he should act. And he took his heart in his teeth and went to the king, and said, ‘O king, I am the thief.’
‘You are?’
‘I am.’
Then the king said, ‘If you it be, that I may believe you are really the man, do you see this peasant coming? Well, you must steal the ox from under the yoke without his seeing you.’
Then the thief said, ‘I’ll steal it, O king; watch me.’ And he went before the peasant, and began to cry aloud, ‘Comedy of Comedies!’
Then the peasant said, ‘See there, God! Many a time have I been in the city, and have often heard “Comedy of Comedies,” and have never gone to see what it is like.’
And he left his cart, and went off to the other end of the city; and the thief kept crying out till he had got the peasant some distance from the oxen. Then the thief returns, and takes the ox, and cuts off its tail, and sticks it in the mouth of the other ox, and came away with the first ox to the king. Then the king laughed fit to kill himself. The peasant, when he came back, began to weep; and the king called him and asked, ‘What are you weeping for, my man?’
‘Why, O king, whilst I was away to see the play, one of the oxen has gone and eaten up the other.’
When the king heard that, he laughed fit to kill himself, and he told his servant to give him two good oxen. And he gave him also his own ox, and asked him, ‘Do you recognise your ox, my man?’
‘I do, O king.’
‘Well, away you go home.’
And he went to the thief. ‘Well, my fine fellow, I will give you my daughter, and you shall become king in my stead, if you will steal the priest for me out of the church.’
Then the thief went into the town, and got three hundred crabs and three hundred candles, and went to the church, and stood up on the pavement. And as the priest chanted, the thief let out the crabs one by one, each with a candle fastened to its claw; he let it out.
And the priest said, ‘So righteous am I in the sight of God that He sends His saints for me.’ [[46]]
The thief let out all the crabs, each with a candle fastened to its claw, and he said, ‘Come, O priest, for God calls thee by His messengers to Himself, for thou art righteous.’
The priest said, ‘And how am I to go?’
‘Get into this sack.’
And he let down the sack; and the priest got in; and he lifted him up, and dragged him down the steps. And the priest’s head went tronk, tronk. And he took him on his back, and carried him to the king, and tumbled him down. And the king burst out laughing. And straightway he gave his daughter to the thief, and made him king in his stead.
Good as this version is, the last episode is much better told in the Slovak-Gypsy variant from Dr. Rudolf von Sowa’s Mundart der Slovakischen Zigeuner (Gött. 1887), No. 8, p. 174:—
No. 12.—The Gypsy and the Priest
There was a very poor Gypsy, and he had many little children. And his wife went to the town, begged herself a few potatoes and a little flour. And she had no fat.
‘All right,’ she thought; ‘wait a bit. The priest has killed a pig; I’ll go and beg myself a bit of fat.’
When she got there, the priest came out, took his whip, thrashed her soundly. She came home, said to her husband, ‘O my God, I did just get a thrashing!’
And the Gypsy is at work. Straightway the hammer fell from his hand. ‘Now, wait a bit till I show him a trick, and teach him a lesson.’
The Gypsy went to the church, and took a look at the door, how to make the key to the tower. He came home, sat down at his anvil, set to work at once on the key. When he had made it, he went back to try to open the door. It opened it as though it had been made for it.
‘Wait a bit, now,’ he thinks to himself; ‘what shall I need next?’
He went straight off to the shop, and bought himself some fine paper, just like the fine clothes the priests wear for high mass. When he had bought it, he went to the tailor, told him to make him clothes like an angel’s; he looked in them [[47]]just like a priest. He came home, told his son (he was twenty years old), ‘Hark’ee, mate, come along with me, and bring the pot. Catch about a hundred crabs. Ha! they shall see what I’ll do this night; the priest won’t escape with his life.’
All right!
Midnight came. The Gypsy went to the church, lit all the lights that were in the church. The cook goes to look out. ‘My God! what’s the matter? the whole church is lighted up.’
She goes to the priest, wakes him up. ‘Get up! Let’s go and see what it is. The whole church is blazing inside. What ever is it?’
The priest was in a great fright. He pulled on his vestment, and went to the church to see. The Gypsy chants like a priest performing service in the great church where the greatest folks go to service. ‘Oh!’ the Gypsy was chanting, ‘O God, he who is a sinful man, for him am I come; him who takes so much money with him will I fetch to Paradise, and there it shall be well with him.’
When the gentleman heard that, he went home, and got all the money he had in the house.
All right!
The priest came back to the church. The Gypsy chants to him to make haste, for sooner or later the end of all things approaches. Straightway the Gypsy opened the sack, and the priest got into it. The Gypsy took all the priest’s money, and hid it in his pocket.
‘Good! now you are mine.’
When he closed the sack, the priest was in a great fright. ‘My God! what will become of me? I know not what sort of a being that is, whether God Himself or an angel.’
The Gypsy straightway drags the priest down the steps. The priest cries that it hurts him, that he should go gently with him, for he is all broken already; that half an hour of that will kill him, for his bones are all broken already.
Well, he dragged him along the nave of the church, and pitched him down before the door; and he put a lot of thorns there to run into the priest’s flesh. He dragged him backwards and forwards through the thorns, and the thorns stuck into him. When the Gypsy saw that the priest was [[48]]more dead than alive, he opened the sack, and left him there.
The Gypsy went home, and threw off his disguise, and put it on the fire, that no one might say he had done the deed. The Gypsy had more than eight hundred silver pieces. So he and his wife and his children were glad that they had such a lot of money; and if the Gypsy has not died with his wife and his children, perhaps he is living still.
In the morning when the sexton comes to ring the bell, he sees a sack in front of the church. The priest was quite dead. When he opened it and saw the priest, he was in a great fright. ‘What on earth took our priest in there?’ He runs into the town, made a great outcry, that so and so has happened. The poor folks came and the gentry to see what was up: all the candles in the church were burning. So they buried the parson decently. If he is not rotten he is whole. May the devils still be eating him. I was there, and heard everything that happened.
The briefest epitome will serve of our third Gypsy version, from Hungary, Dr. Friedrich Müller’s No. 1, which is very coarse and very disconnected:—‘Somewhere was, somewhere was not, lucky, Golden God! somewhere was, somewhere was not, a poor Gypsy.’ An old woman tells him, ‘Go into yonder castle, and there is the lady; and take from her the ring, and put it on thine own hand, and turn it thrice, then so much meal and bread will be to thee that thou wilt not know what to do with it.’… He wins twenty-four wagon-loads of money for seducing the nobleman’s wife, which he achieves by luring away the nobleman with a corpse. The Gypsy then kills his children and his wife; cheats an old woman of her money; cures and marries the king’s daughter; leaves her, because she will not go and sell the nails he manufactures; and finally marries a Gypsy girl, who pleases him much better.
Our next version, ‘Jack the Robber,’ is from South Wales, told to Mr. Sampson by Cornelius Price. It is as good as the last one is bad, but like it somewhat Rabelaisian. The following is a summary of the first half, the latter (our No. 68) being a variant of Dasent’s ‘Big Peter and Little Peter’:—A poor widow has a son, Jack, who ‘took to smoking when he was twelve, and got to robbing the master’s plough-socks to take ’em to the blacksmith’s to sell ’em to rise bacca.’ So the farmer makes the mother send Jack away from home; and Jack comes to a big gentleman’s hall. This gentleman is the head of eleven robbers, and Jack, after cunningly relieving [[49]]one of them of £11, joins the band, and in six months ‘got a cleverer robber than what the master hisself was.’ So, with the money he has made, he sets off for his mother’s, meets the farmer, tells him he has been prentice to a robber, and, to test his skill, is set to steal two sheep in succession. He does so by the familiar expedients of, first, a boot here and a boot there, and, next, baaing like a lost sheep. Then Jack is set to take the middlemost sheet from underneath the farmer and his missus, and achieves it by ‘loosing a dead body down the chimley,’ which the farmer shoots dead, as he fancies, and goes off to bury.
The fifth and last version, ‘The Great Thief,’ is from North Wales, told by Matthew Wood, and is thus summarised by Mr. Sampson:—‘Hard by a parson lived a thief. The parson told the thief, “To-morrow my man goes to the butcher with a sheep. Steal it, and you shall have such and such money.” Thief gets a pair of new boots, and places one on one stile, the other on another further on. Man sees first boot and leaves it, finds other, ties up sheep, and goes back for the first. Thief steals sheep. The parson says again, “I want you to steal my wife’s ring from her finger and the sheet from under her. If you can’t, I shall behead you.” Thief makes dummy man, and props it against wall. Parson shoots it, comes out, and buries it in well. Meanwhile thief visits wife, pretending to be parson, and takes her ring and sheet for safety. Parson returns and discovers the trick.’
Though not, at least but very conjecturally, a Gypsy version, the following version is still worth citing. It is from Henry Mayhew’s London Labour and the London Poor, vol. iii. (1861), pp. 388–390:—‘An intelligent-looking boy, aged 16, a native of Wisbech in Cambridgeshire; at 13 apprenticed to a tailor; in three months’ time ran away; went home again for seven months, then ran away again, and since a vagrant. Had read Windsor Castle, Tower of London, etc. He gives account of amusements in casual wards:—
‘ “We told stories sometimes, romantic tales some; others blackguard kind of tales, about bad women; and others about thieving and roguery; not so much about what they’d done themselves, as about some big thief that was very clever and could trick anybody. Not stories such as Dick Turpin or Jack Sheppard, or things that’s in history, but inventions. I used to say when I was telling a story—for I’ve told one story that I invented till I learnt it. [I give this story to show what are the objects of admiration with these vagrants[18]]:—
[[50]]
‘ “You see, mates, it was once upon a time, and a very good time it was, a young man, and he runned away, and got along with a gang of thieves, and he went to a gentleman’s house, and got in because one of his mates sweethearted the servant, and got her away, and she left the door open. And the door being left open, the young man got in, and robbed the house of a lot of money, £1000, and he took it to their gang at the cave. Next day there was a reward out to find the robber. Nobody found him. So the gentleman put two men and a horse in a field, and the men were hidden in the field, and the gentleman put out a notice that anybody that could catch the horse should have him for his cleverness, and a reward as well; for he thought the man that got the £1000 was sure to try to catch that there horse, because he was so bold and clever, and then the two men hid would nab him. This here Jack (that’s the young man) was watching, and he saw the two men, and he went and caught two live hares. Then he hid himself behind a hedge, and let one hare go, and one man said to the other, ‘There goes a hare,’ and they both ran after it, not thinking Jack’s there. And while they were running he let go t’other one, and they said, ‘There’s another hare,’ and they ran different ways, and so Jack went and got the horse, and took it to the man that offered the reward, and got the reward; it was £100; and the gentleman said, ‘D—— it, Jack’s done me this time.’ The gentleman then wanted to serve out the parson, and he said to Jack, ‘I’ll give you another £100 if you’ll do something to the parson as bad as you’ve done to me.’ Jack said, ‘Well, I will’; and Jack went to the church and lighted up the lamps and rang the bells, and the parson he got up to see what was up. Jack was standing in one of the pews like an angel; when the parson got to the church, Jack said, ‘Go and put your plate in a bag; I’m an angel come to take you up to heaven.’ And the parson did so, and it was as much as he could drag to church from his house in a bag; for he was very rich. And when he got to church Jack put the parson in one bag, and the money stayed in the other; and he tied them both together, and put them across his horse, and took them up hill and through water to the gentleman’s, and then he took the parson out of the bag, and the parson was wringing wet. Jack fetched the gentleman, and the gentleman gave the parson a horsewhipping, and the parson cut away, and Jack got all the parson’s money and the second £100, and gave it all to the poor. And the parson brought an action against the gentleman for horsewhipping him, and they were both ruined. That’s the end of it. That’s the sort of story that’s liked best, sir.” ’
Dasent, ‘The Master Thief’ (Tales from the Norse, p. 255). He [[51]]takes service with robbers. Steals three oxen, the first one by a shoe here and a shoe there, the third by imitating lost ox. He steals the squire’s roast, first catching three hares alive. He steals Father Laurence in a sack, but not out of church, posing as an angel, and bidding him lay out all his gold and silver. N.B. No crabs, no lighting of candles.
Grimm, No. 192, ‘The Master Thief’ (ii. 324). He steals horse from under rider. Steals sheet from under count’s wife, first luring count away by means of corpse. Disguised like monk, he steals parson and clerk out of church in sack, bumping them against steps, and dragging them through puddles—‘mountains’ and ‘clouds.’ No mention of plate or money. Neither of these two versions can be the original of Mayhew’s English vagrant one.
Straparola (Venice, 1550), No. 2, ‘The Knave.’ First, he steals from the provost the bed on which he is lying; next, horse on which stable-boy is sitting; and thirdly, an ecclesiastical personage in sack.
De Gubernatis (Zool. Myth., i. 204) alludes to the famous robber Klimka, in Afanasief, v. 6, who, by means of a drum (in Indian tales a trumpet) terrifies his accomplices, the robbers, and then steals from a gentleman his horse, his jewel-casket, even his wife.
‘Les Deux Voleurs’ (Dozon’s Contes Albanais, p. 169) has two thieves with the same mistress, as in Barbu Constantinescu. One of them, posing as the angel Gabriel, steals the cadi in a chest at the instigation of a pasha whom the cadi has ridiculed.
Much more striking are the analogies offered by ‘Voleur par Nature’ (Legrand’s Contes Grecs, p. 205) from Cyprus. Here we get the stealing of two sheep, first by a boot here and a boot there, and next by baaing like a lost sheep. Then we have the stealing of one of a yoke of oxen, the robbery of the king’s treasure-house, the consulting a robber in prison, a caldron of pitch, the headless robber, the exposure of his corpse, and, lastly, the marriage of the surviving thief and the princess.
For heroic form of ‘The Master Thief’ see Hahn’s No. 3, ‘Von dem Schönen und vom Drakos.’ Hero has to steal winged horse of the dragon, coverlet of dragon’s bed, and the dragon himself. He steals him in a box, and marries the king’s daughter. In Laura Gonzenbach’s most curious Sicilian story, No. 83, ‘Die Geschichte von Caruseddu’ (ii. 142–145), the hero steals the horse of the ‘dragu’ (? dragon, rather than cannibal), next his bed-cover, and lastly the ‘dragu’ himself; with which compare the Bukowina-Gypsy story, ‘Tropsyn,’ No. 27. In Hahn, ii. p. 182, we have mention of sack, in variant 4 of ring of the dragon. Cf. infra, p. 109.
Finally, three little points connecting the Gypsies and the ‘Master Thief’ may be noted. Mrs. Carlyle’s ‘mother’s mother was a grand-niece of Matthew Baillie,’ a famous Scottish Gypsy, who, as she said, ‘could steal a horse from under the owner, if he liked, but left always the saddle and bridle.’ John MacDonald, travelling tinker, ‘knew the story of the “Shifty Lad,” though not well enough to repeat it’ (Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands, i. 142, 356). An English Gypsy once said [[52]]to me, ‘The folks hereabouts are a lot of rátfalo heathens; they all think they’re going to heaven in a sack.’
Dr. Barbu Constantinescu’s ‘Two Thieves’ is so curious a combination of the ‘Rhampsinitus’ story in Herodotus and of Grimm’s ‘Master Thief,’ that I am more than inclined to regard it as the lost original which, according to Campbell of Islay, ‘it were vain to look for in any modern work or in any modern age.’ The ‘Rhampsinitus’ story and the ‘Master Thief’ have both been made special subjects of study—the former by Reinhold Köhler in Orient und Occident, 1864, pp. 303–316, by Clouston in his Popular Tales and Fictions (1887, ii. 115–165), and by Sir George Cox in Fraser’s Magazine (July 1880, pp. 96–111); the latter by M. Cosquin in Contes Populaires de Lorraine (1887; ii. 271–281, 364–5). With their help and that of the above jottings, we can analyse the Gypsy story of the ‘Two Thieves’ detail by detail, and see in how many and how widely-separated non-Gypsy versions some of those details have to be sought:—
(1) A town thief meets a country thief, and is challenged by him to steal the eggs of a magpie without her noticing it.—Grimm, No. 129, and Kashmir and Kabyle versions. (2) Whilst doing so, he is himself robbed unawares of his breeches by the country thief. The stealing of the labourer’s paijámas in Kashmir version is analogous. (3) They enter into partnership, and have one wife.—Albanian version. (4) They go to the king’s palace, and, making a hole in the roof, descend and steal money. The king, discovering his loss, takes counsel with an old robber in prison.—So in Dolopathos, modern Greek, and Cypriote versions. (5) By his advice the king finds out hole by lighting a fire in the treasure-house, and noticing where the smoke escapes.—Dolopathos, Pecorone, old French, Breton, old Dutch, Danish, Kabyle. (6) Under the hole he sets a cask of molasses.—Snare in ‘Rhampsinitus,’ Tyrolese, Kabyle; pitch in old English, modern Greek, Cypriote, old French, Gaelic, old Dutch, Danish. (7) The country thief is caught, and his comrade cuts off his head.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Pecorone, old English, old French, Breton, Gaelic, Tyrolese, Danish, Kabyle, Tibetan, Cinghalese. (8) The headless trunk is exposed, and the comrade steals it by intoxicating the guards.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Sicilian, Breton, Gaelic, old Dutch, Russian. (9) He further cheats them of 400 groats as payment for his horse, which he pretends the dead thief has stolen.—Wanting elsewhere. (10) The king then puts a prohibitive price on all the meat in the city, thinking the thief will betray himself by alone being able to pay it; but the thief steals a joint.—Italian (Pecorone, 1378, ix. 1; and Prof. Crane’s Italian Popular Tales, p. 166). (11) The king finally makes a proclamation, offering his daughter to the thief, who plucks up courage and reveals himself.—‘Rhampsinitus,’ Pecorone, Sicilian, modern Greek, Tyrolese, Kabyle. (12) To exhibit his skill, he steals one of a yoke of oxen.—Russian (De Gubernatis, Zoological Mythology, i. 186, from Afanasief). (13) As a further test he steals the priest out of the church in a sack, out of which he has just let 300 crabs, each with a lighted taper fastened to its claw. According to Cosquin, the complete crab episode occurs only in Grimm (he of [[53]]course knows nothing of our Gypsy version). But herein he for once is wrong, since we find it also in Krauss’s Croatian version of the ‘Master Thief’ (No. 55), which bears the title of ‘The Lad who was up to Gypsy Tricks’; its hero, indeed, is generally styled ‘the Gypsy.’ He is a Gypsy in Dr. Friedrich Müller’s Gypsy variant, and in Dr. von Sowa’s. In the latter version, as in several non-Gypsy ones, the hero, it will be noticed, catches crabs, but makes no use whatever of them afterwards.
No. 13.—The Watchmaker
There was once a poor lad. He took the road, went to find himself a master. He met a priest on the road.
‘Where are you going, my lad?’
‘I am going to find myself a master.’
‘Mine’s the very place for you, my lad, for I’ve another lad like you, and I have six oxen and a plough. Do you enter my service and plough all this field.’
The lad arose, and took the plough and the oxen, and went into the fields and ploughed two days. Luck[19] and the Ogre came to him. And the Ogre said to Luck, ‘Go for him.’ Luck didn’t want to go for him; only the Ogre went. When the Ogre went for him, he laid himself down on his back, and unlaced his boots, and took to flight across the plain.
The other lad shouted after him, ‘Don’t go, brother; don’t go, brother.’
‘Bah! God blast your plough and you as well.’
Then he came to a city of the size of Bucharest. Presently he arrived at a watchmaker’s shop. And he leaned his elbows on the shop-board and watched the prentices at their work. Then one of them asked him, ‘Why do you sit there hungry?’
He said, ‘Because I like to watch you working.’ [[54]]
Then the master came out and said, ‘Here, my lad, I will hire you for three years, and will show you all that I am master of. For a year and a day,’ he continued, ‘you will have nothing to do but chop wood, and feed the oven fire, and sit with your elbows on the table, and watch the prentices at their work.’
Now the watchmaker had had a clock of the emperor’s fifteen years, and no one could be found to repair it; he had fetched watchmakers from Paris and Vienna, and not one of them had managed it. The time came when the emperor offered the half of his kingdom to whoso should repair it; one and all they failed. The clock had twenty-four tunes in it. And as it played, the emperor grew young again. Easter Sunday came; and the watchmaker went to church with his prentices. Only the old wife and the lad stayed behind. The lad chopped the wood up quickly, and went back to the table that they did their work at. He never touched one of the little watches, but he took the big clock, and set it on the table. He took out two of its pipes, and cleaned them, and put them back in their place; then the four-and-twenty tunes began to play, and the clock to go. Then the lad hid himself for fear; and all the people came out of the church when they heard the tunes playing.
The watchmaker, too, came home, and said, ‘Mother, who did me this kindness, and repaired the clock?’
His mother said, ‘Only the lad, dear, went near the table.’
And he sought him and found him sitting in the stable. He took him in his arms: ‘My lad, you were my master, and I never knew it, but set you to chop wood on Easter Day.’ Then he sent for three tailors, and they made him three fine suits of clothes. Next day he ordered a carriage with four fine horses; and he took the clock in his arms, and went off to the emperor. The emperor, when he heard it, came down from his throne, and took his clock in his arms and grew young. Then he said to the watchmaker, ‘Bring me him who mended the clock.’
He said, ‘I mended it.’
‘Don’t tell me it was you. Go and bring me him who mended it.’
He went then and brought the lad.