"Why, sir, you be upon the road now!"
"It seems to me, old lady," remarked the younger professor, "that you
understand Romany very well for one who has been for forty years in the
Methodist communion."
It may be observed that he here confounded washing with worshiping.
The face of the true believer was at this point a fine study. All her
confidence had deserted her. Whether she thought we were of her kind in
disguise, or that, in the unknown higher world of respectability, there
might be gypsies of corresponding rank, even as there might be gypsy
angels among the celestial hierarchies, I cannot with confidence assert.
About a week ago a philologist and purist told me that there is no exact
synonym in English for the word _flabbergasted_, as it expresses a
peculiar state of bewilderment as yet unnamed by scholars, and it exactly
sets forth the condition in which our virtuous poverty appeared. She
was, indeed, flabbergasted. _Cornix scorpum rapuit_,--the owl had come
down on the rabbits, and lo! they had fangs. I resumed,--
"Now, old lady, here is a penny. You are a very poor person, and I pity
you so much that I give you this penny for your poverty. But there is a
pocketful where this came from, and you shall have the lot if you'll
_rakker_,"--that is, talk gypsy.
And at that touch of the Ithuriel spear the old toad flashed up into the
Romany devil, as with gleaming eyes and a witch-like grin she cried in a
mixture of gypsy and tinker languages,--
"Gents, I'll have tute jin when you tharis mandy you rakker a reg'lar fly
old bewer." Which means, "Gentlemen, I'll have you know, when you talk
to me, you talk to a reg'lar shrewd old female thief."
The face of the elder professor was a study of astonishment for Lavater.
His fingers relaxed their grasp of the shilling, his hand was drawn from
his pocket, and his glance, like Bill Nye's, remarked: "_Can_ this be?"
He tells the story to this day, and always adds, "I _never_ was so
astonished in my life." But the venerable washerwoman was also changed,
and, the mask once thrown aside, she became as festive as a witch on the
Brocken. Truly, it is a great comfort to cease playing a part,
particularly a pious one, and be at home and at ease among your like; and
better still if they be swells. This was the delight of Anderson's ugly
duck when it got among the swans, "and, blest sensation, felt genteel."
And to show her gratitude, the sorceress, who really seemed to have grown
several shades darker, insisted on telling our fortunes. I think it was
to give vent to her feelings in defiance of the law that she did this;
certain it was that just then, under the circumstances, it was the only
way available in which the law could be broken. And as it was, indeed,
by heath and hill that the priestess of the hidden spell bade the Palmer
from over the sea hold out his palm. And she began in the usual
sing-song tone, mocking the style of gypsy fortune-tellers, and
satirizing herself. And thus she spoke,--
"You're born under a lucky star, my good gentleman, and you're a married
man; but there's a black-eyed young lady that's in love with you."
"Oh, mother of all the thieves!" I cried, "you've put the _dukkerin_ on
the wrong man. I'm the one that the dark girls go after."
"Yes, my good gentleman. She's in love with you both."
"And now tell my fortune!" I exclaimed, and with a grim expression,
casting up my palm, I said,--
"_Pen mengy if mandy'll be bitchade padel for chorin a gry_, _or nasherdo
for merin a gav-mush_." (Tell me if I am to be transported for stealing
a horse, or hung for killing a policeman.)
The old woman's face changed. "You'll never need to steal a horse. The
man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who
_you_ are _now_; you're not one of these tourists. You're the boro
Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag about
it in your house,--and well you may,--that Old Moll of the Roads couldn't
take you in, and that you found her out. Never another _rye_ but you
will ever say that again. Never."
And she went dancing away in the sunshine, capering backwards along the
road, merrily shaking the pennies in her hand for music, while she sang
something in gypsy,--witch to the last, vanishing as witches only can.
And there came over me a feeling as of the very olden time, and some
memory of another witch, who had said to another man, "_Thou_ art no
traveler, Great master, I know thee now;" and who, when he called her the
mother of the giants, replied, "Go thy way, and boast at home that no man
will ever waken me again with spells. Never." That was the parting of
Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time; and so
the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the
world away to Romanys and rags--when the gods are gone.
When I laughed at the younger professor for confounding forty years in
the church with as many at the wash-tub, he replied,--
"Cleanliness is with me so near to godliness that it is not remarkable
that in my hurry I mistook one for the other."
So we went on and climbed Cader Idris, and found the ancient grave of
rocks in a mystic circle, whose meaning lies buried with the last Druid,
who would perhaps have told you they were--
"Seats of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand
But wrocht by Nature as it ane house had bene
For Nymphes, goddis of floudes and woodis grene."
And we saw afar the beautiful scene, "where fluddes rynnys in the foaming
sea," as Gawain Douglas sings, and where, between the fresh water and
salt, stands a village, even where it stood in earliest Cymric
prehistoric dawn, and the spot where ran the weir in which the prince who
was in grief because his weir yielded no fish, at last fished up a poet,
even as Pharaoh's daughter fished out a prophet. I shall not soon forget
that summer day, nor the dream-like panorama, nor the ancient grave; nor
how the younger professor lay down on the seat of stone nevir hewin with
mennes hand, and declared he had a nap,--just enough to make him a poet.
To prove which he wrote a long poem on the finding of Taliesin in the
nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be
behindhand, wrote another, in imitation of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen,
which were so greatly admired as tributes to Welsh poetry that they were
forthwith translated faithfully into lines of consonants, touched up with
so many _w_'s that they looked like saws; and they circulated even unto
Llandudno, and, for aught I know, may be sung at Eistedfodds, now and
ever, to the twanging of small harps,--_in soecula saeculorum_. Truly,
the day which had begun with a witch ended fitly enough at the tomb of a
prophet poet.