"Now I come to think of it, I do remember to have heard somethin' in the
parst like that. It's a conwivial expression arskin' me if I won't have
a tanner for ale. Which I will."
"Now since you take such an interest in gypsies," I answered, "it is a
pity that you should know so little about them. I have seen them since
you have. I saw a nice young woman, one of the Bosvilles here, not half
an hour ago. Shall I introduce you?"
"That young woman," remarked the tinker, with the same immovable
countenance, "is my wife. And I've come down here, by app'intment, to
meet some Romany pals."
And having politely accepted his sixpence, the griddler went his way,
tinkling his bell, along the road. He did not disturb himself that his
first speeches did not agree with his last; he was not in the habit of
being disturbed about anything, and he knew that no one ever learned
Romany without learning with it not to be astonished at any little
inconsistencies. Serene and polished as a piece of tin in the sunshine,
he would not stoop to be put out by trifles. He was a typical tinker.
He knew that the world had made up proverbs expressing the utmost
indifference either for a tinker's blessing or a tinker's curse, and he
retaliated by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or banned him.
In all ages and in all lands the tinker has always been the type of this
droning indifference, which goes through life bagpiping its single
melody, or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs, "Toujours
Santerre."
"Es ist und bleibt das alte Lied
Von dem versoff'nen Pfannenschmied,
Und wer's nicht weiter singen kann,
Der fang's von Vorne wieder an."
'T will ever be the same old song
Of tipsy tinkers all day long,
And he who cannot sing it more
May sing it over, as before.
I should have liked to know John Bunyan. As a half-blood gypsy tinker he
must have been self-contained and pleasant. He had his wits about him,
too, in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison he made a flute or
pipe out of the leg of his three legged-stool, and would play on it to
pass time. When the jailer entered to stop the noise, John replaced the
leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent as only a gypsy tinker
could,--calm as a summer morning. I commend the subject for a picture.
Very recently, that is, in the beginning of 1881, a man of the same
tinkering kind, and possibly of the same blood as Honest John, confined
in the prison of Moyamensing, Philadelphia, did nearly the same thing,
only that instead of making his stool leg into a musical pipe he
converted it into a pipe for tobacco. But when the watchman, led by the
smell, entered his cell, there was no pipe to be found; only a deeply
injured man complaining that "somebody, had been smokin' outside, and it
had blowed into his cell through the door-winder from the corridore, and
p'isoned the atmosphere. And he didn't like it." And thus history
repeats itself. 'T is all very well for the sticklers for Wesleyan
gentility to deny that John Bunyan was a gypsy, but he who in his life
cannot read Romany between the lines knows not the jib nor the cut
thereof. Tough was J. B., "and de-vil-ish sly," and altogether a much
better man than many suppose him to have been.
The tinker lived with his wife in a "tramps' lodging-house" in the town.
To those Americans who know such places by the abominable dens which are
occasionally reported by American grand juries, the term will suggest
something much worse than it is. In England the average tramp's lodging
is cleaner, better regulated, and more orderly than many Western
"hotels." The police look closely after it, and do not allow more than a
certain number in a room. They see that it is frequently cleaned, and
that clean sheets are frequently put on the beds. One or two hand-organs
in the hall, with a tinker's barrow or wheel, proclaimed the character of
the lodgers, and in the sitting-room there were to be found, of an
evening, gypsies, laborers with their families seeking work or itinerant
musicians. I can recall a powerful and tall young man, with a badly
expressive face, one-legged, and well dressed as a sailor. He was a
beggar, who measured the good or evil of all mankind by what they gave
him. He was very bitter as to the bad. Yet this house was in its way
upper class. It was not a den of despair, dirt, and misery, and even the
Italians who came there were obliged to be decent and clean. It would
not have been appropriate to have written for them on the door, "_Voi che
intrate lasciate ogni speranza_." (He who enters here leaves soap
behind.) The most painful fact which struck me, in my many visits, was
the intelligence and decency of some of the boarders. There was more
than one who conversed in a manner which indicated an excellent early
education; more than one who read the newspaper aloud and commented on it
to the company, as any gentleman might have done. Indeed, the painful
part of life as shown among these poor people was the manifest fact that
so many of them had come down from a higher position, or were qualified
for it. And this is characteristic of such places. In his "London
Labour and the London Poor," vol. i. p. 217, Mahew tells of a low
lodging-house "in which there were at one time five university men, three
surgeons, and several sorts of broken-down clerks." The majority of
these cases are the result of parents having risen from poverty and
raised their families to "gentility." The sons are deprived by their
bringing up of the vulgar pluck and coarse energy by which the father
rose, and yet are expected to make their way in the world, with nothing
but a so-called "education," which is too often less a help than a
hindrance. In the race of life no man is so heavily handicapped as a
young "gentleman." The humblest and raggedest of all the inmates of this
house were two men who got their living by _shelkin gallopas_ (or selling
ferns), as it is called in the Shelta, or tinker's and tramp's slang.
One of these, whom I have described in another chapter as teaching me
this dialect, could conjugate a French verb; we thought he had studied
law. The other was a poor old fellow called Krooty, who could give the
Latin names for all the plants which he gathered and sold, and who would
repeat poetry very appropriately, proving sufficiently that he had read
it. Both the fern-sellers spoke better English than divers Lord Mayors
and Knights to whom I have listened, for they neither omitted _h_ like
the lowly, nor _r_ like the lofty ones of London.
The tinker's wife was afflicted with a nervous disorder, which caused her
great suffering, and made it almost impossible for her to sell goods, or
contribute anything to the joint support. Her husband always treated her
with the greatest kindness; I have seldom seen an instance in which a man
was more indulgent and gentle. He made no display whatever of his
feelings; it was only little by little that I found out what a heart this
imperturbable rough of the road possessed. Now the Palmer, who was
always engaged in some wild act of unconscious benevolence, bought for
her some medicine, and gave her an order on the first physician in the
town for proper advice; the result being a decided amelioration of her
health. And I never knew any human being to be more sincerely grateful
than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for
wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with crocus powder, "to put an
edge on." He had a remarkably fine whetstone, "the best in England; it
was worth half a sovereign," and this he often and vainly begged me to
accept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly
feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an evening to the lodging-house, he
would cunningly borrow my knife, and then disappear. Presently the
_whiz-whiz_, _st'st_ of his wheel would be heard without, and then the
artful dodger would reappear with a triumphant smile, and with the knife
sharpened to a razor edge. Anent which gratitude I shall have more to
say anon.
One day I was walking on the Front, when I overtook a gypsy van, loaded
with baskets and mats, lumbering along. The proprietor, who was a
stranger to me, was also slightly or lightly lumbering in his gait, being
cheerfully beery, while his berry brown wife, with a little
three-year-old boy, peddled wares from door to door. Both were amazed
and pleased at being accosted in Romany. In the course of conversation
they showed great anxiety as to their child, who had long suffered from
some disorder which caused them great alarm. The man's first name was
Anselo, though it was painted Onslow on his vehicle. Mr. Anselo, though
himself just come to town, was at once deeply impressed with the duty of
hospitality to a Romany rye. I had called him _pal_, and this in
gypsydom involves the shaking of hands, and with the better class an
extra display of courtesy. He produced half a crown, and declared his
willingness to devote it all to beer for my benefit. I declined, but he
repeated his offer several times,--not with any annoying display, but
with a courteous earnestness, intended to set forth a sweet sincerity.
As I bade him good-by, he put the crown-piece into one eye, and as he
danced backward, gypsy fashion up the street and vanished in the sunny
purple twilight towards the sea I could see him winking with the other,
and hear him cry, "Don't say no--now's the last chance--do I hear a bid?"
We found this family in due time at the lodging-house, where the little
boy proved to be indeed seriously ill, and we at once discovered that the
parents, in their ignorance, had quite misunderstood his malady and were
aggravating it by mal-treatment. To these poor people the good Palmer
also gave an order on the old physician, who declared that the boy must
have died in a few days, had he not taken charge of him. As it was, the
little fellow was speedily cured. There was, it appeared, some kind of
consanguinity between the tinker or his wife and the Anselo family.
These good people, anxious to do anything, yet able to do little,
consulted together as to showing their gratitude, and noting that we were
specially desirous of collecting old gypsy words gave us all they could
think of, and without informing us of their intention, which indeed we
only learned by accident a long time after, sent a messenger many miles
to bring to Aberystwith a certain Bosville, who was famed as being deep
in Romany lore, and in possession of many ancient words. Which was
indeed true, he having been the first to teach us _pisali_, meaning a
saddle, and in which Professor Cowell, of Cambridge, promptly detected
the Sanskrit for sit-upon, the same double meaning also existing in
_boshto_; or, as old Mrs. Buckland said to me at Oaklands Park, in
Philadelphia, "a _pisali_ is the same thing with a _boshto_."
"What will gain thy faith?" said Quentin Durward to Hayradden Maugrabhin.
"Kindness," answered the gypsy.
The joint families, solely with intent to please us, although they never
said a word about it, next sent for a young Romany, one of the Lees, and
his wife whom they supposed we would like to meet. Walking along the
Front, I met the tinker's wife with the handsomest Romany girl I ever
beheld. In a London ball-room or on the stage she would have been a
really startling beauty. This was young Mrs. Lee. Her husband was a
clever violinist, and it was very remarkable that when he gave himself up
to playing, with _abandon_ or self-forgetfulness, there came into his
melodies the same wild gypsy expression, the same chords and tones, which
abound in the music of the Austrian Tsigane. It was not my imagination
which prompted the recognition; the Palmer also observed it, without
thinking it remarkable. From the playing of both Mat Woods and young
Lee, I am sure that there has survived among the Welsh gypsies some of
the spirit of their old Eastern music, just as in the solo dancing of
Mat's sister there was precisely the same kind of step which I had seen
in Moscow. Among the hundreds of the race whom I have met in Great
Britain, I have never known any young people who were so purely Romany as
these. The tinker and Anselo with his wife had judged wisely that we
would be pleased with this picturesque couple. They always seemed to me
in the house like two wild birds, and tropical ones at that, in a cage.
There was a tawny-gold, black and scarlet tone about them and their garb,
an Indian Spanish duskiness and glow which I loved to look at.
Every proceeding of the tinker and Anselo was veiled in mystery and
hidden in the obscurity so dear to such grown-up children, but as I
observed after a few days that Lee did nothing beyond acting as assistant
to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised that the visit was solely for our
benefit. As the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo and
his dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave little fellow,
and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and sturdiness so greatly
admired by the Romanys of the road; and when he would take a whip and
lead the horse, or in other ways show his courage, the delight of his
parents was in its turn delightful. They would look at the child as if
charmed, and then at one another with feelings too deep for words, and
then at me for sympathetic admiration.
The keeper of the house where they lodged was in his way a character and
a linguist. Welsh was his native tongue and English his second best. He
also knew others, such as Romany, of which he was proud, and the Shelta
or Minklas of the tinkers, of which he was not. The only language which
he knew of which he was really ashamed was Italian, and though he could
maintain a common conversation in it he always denied that he remembered
more than a few words. For it was not as the tongue of Dante, but as the
lingo of organ-grinders and such "catenone" that he knew it, and I think
that the Palmer and I lost dignity in his eyes by inadvertently admitting
that it was familiar to us. "I shouldn't have thought it," was all his
comment on the discovery, but I knew his thought, and it was that we had
made ourselves unnecessarily familiar with vulgarity.
It is not every one who is aware of the extent to which Italian is known
by the lower orders in London. It is not spoken as a language; but many
of its words, sadly mangled, are mixed with English as a jargon. Thus
the Italian _scappare_, to escape, or run away, has become _scarper_; and
a dweller in the Seven Dials has been heard to say he would "_scarper_
with the _feele_ of the _donna_ of the _cassey_;" which means, run away
with the daughter of the landlady of the house, and which, as the editor
of the Slang Dictionary pens, is almost pure Italian,--_scappare colla
figlia della donna_, _della casa_. Most costermongers call a penny a
_saltee_, from _soldo_; a crown, a _caroon_; and one half, _madza_, from
_mezza_. They count as follows:--
ITALIAN.
Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo.
Dooey saltee, twopence Dui soldi.
Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi.
Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi.
Chinker saltee, fivepence Cinque soldi.
Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi.
Say oney saltee, or setter Sette soldi.
saltee, sevenpence
Say dooee saltee, or otter Otto soldi.
saltee, eightpence
Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, Nove soldi.
ninepence
Say quarterer saltee, or dacha Dieci soldi.
(datsha) saltee, tenpence
Say chinker saltee, or dacha one Dieci uno soldi
saltee, elevenpence
Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco.
A beong say saltee, one shilling Uno bianco sei soldi.
and sixpence
Madza caroon, half a crown Mezza corona.
Mr. Hotten says that he could never discover the derivation of _beong_,
or _beonk_. It is very plainly the Italian _bianco_, white, which, like
_blanc_ in French and _blank_ in German, is often applied slangily to a
silver coin. It is as if one had said, "a shiner." Apropos of which
word there is something curious to be noted. It came forth in evidence,
a few years ago in England, that burglars or other thieves always carried
with them a piece of coal; and on this disclosure, a certain writer, in
his printed collection of curiosities, comments as if it were a
superstition, remarking that the coal is carried for an amulet. But the
truth is that the thief has no such idea. The coal is simply a sign for
money; and when the bearer meets with a man whom he thinks may be a
"fence," or a purchaser of stolen goods, he shows the coal, which is as
much as to say, Have you money? Money, in vulgar gypsy, is _wongur_, a
corruption of the better word _angar_, which also means a hot coal; and
_braise_, in French _argot_, has the same double meaning. I may be
wrong, but I suspect that _rat_, a dollar in Hebrew, or at least in
Schmussen, has its root in common with _ratzafim_, coals, and possibly
_poschit_, a farthing, with _pecham_, coal. In the six kinds of fire
mentioned in the Talmud, {222} there is no identification of coals with
money; but in the German legends of Rubezahl, there is a tale of a
charcoal-burner who found them changed to gold. Coins are called shiners
because they shine like glowing coals, and I dare say that the simile
exists in many more languages.
One twilight we found in the public sitting-room of the lodging-house a
couple whom I can never forget. It was an elderly gypsy and his wife.
The husband was himself characteristic; the wife was more than merely
picturesque. I have never met such a superb old Romany as she was;
indeed, I doubt if I ever saw any woman of her age, in any land or any
range of life, with a more magnificently proud expression or such
unaffected dignity. It was the whole poem of "Crescentius" living in
modern time in other form.
When a scholar associates much with gypsies there is developed in him in
due time a perception or intuition of certain kinds of men or minds,
which it is as difficult to describe as it is wonderful. He who has read
Matthew Arnold's "Gipsy Scholar" may, however, find therein many apt
words for it. I mean very seriously what I say; I mean that through the
Romany the demon of Socrates acquires distinctness; I mean that a faculty
is developed which is as strange as divination, and which is greatly akin
to it. The gypsies themselves apply it directly to palmistry; were they
well educated they would feel it in higher forms. It may be reached
among other races and in other modes, and Nature is always offering it to
us freely; but it seems to live, or at least to be most developed, among
the Romany. It comes upon the possessor far more powerfully when in
contact with certain lives than with others, and with the sympathetic it
takes in at a glance that which may employ it at intervals for years to
think out.
And by this _duk_ I read in a few words in the Romany woman an eagle
soul, caged between the bars of poverty, ignorance, and custom; but a
great soul for all that. Both she and her husband were of the old type
of their race, now so rare in England, though commoner in America. They
spoke Romany with inflection and conjugation; they remembered the old
rhymes and old words, which I quoted freely, with the Palmer. Little by
little, the old man seemed to be deeply impressed, indeed awed, by our
utterly inexplicable knowledge. I wore a velveteen coat, and had on a
broad, soft felt hat.
"You talk as the old Romanys did," said the old man. "I hear you use
words which I once heard from old men who died when I was a boy. I
thought those words were lying in graves which have long been green. I
hear songs and sayings which I never expected to hear again. You talk
like gypsies, and such gypsies as I never meet now; and you look like
Gorgios. But when I was still young, a few of the oldest Romany _chals_
still wore hats such as you have; and when I first looked at you, I
thought of them. I don't understand you. It is strange, very strange."
"It is the Romany _soul_," said his wife. "People take to what is in
them; if a bird were born a fox, it would love to fly."
I wondered what flights she would have taken if she had wings. But I
understood why the old man had spoken as he did; for, knowing that we had
intelligent listeners, the Palmer and I had brought forth all our best
and quaintest Romany curios, and these rural Welsh wanderers were not,
like their English pals, familiar with Romany ryes. And I was moved to
like them, and nobody perceives this sooner than a gypsy. The old couple
were the parents of young Lee, and said they had come to visit him; but I
think that it was rather to see us that we owed their presence in
Aberystwith. For the tinker and Anselo were at this time engaged, in
their secret and owl-like manner, as befitted men who were up to all
manner of ways that were dark, in collecting the most interesting
specimens of Romanys, for our especial study; and whenever this could be
managed so that it appeared entirely accidental and a surprise, then they
retired into their shadowed souls and chuckled with fiendish glee at
having managed things so charmingly. But it will be long ere I forget
how the old man's eye looked into the past as he recalled,--
"The hat of antique shape and coat of gray,
The same the gypsies wore,"
and went far away back through my words to words heard in the olden time,
by fires long since burnt out, beneath the flame-gilt branches of forests
which have sailed away as ships, farther than woods e'er went from
Dunsinane, and been wrecked in Southern seas. But though I could not
tell exactly what was in every room, I knew into what house his soul had
gone; and it was for this that the scholar-gypsy went from Oxford halls
"to learn strange arts and join a gypsy tribe." His friends had gone
from earth long since, and were laid to sleep; some, perhaps, far in the
wold and wild, amid the rocks, where fox and wild bird were their
visitors; but for an instant they rose again from their graves, and I
knew them.
"They could do wonders by the power of the imagination," says Glanvil of
the gypsies; "their fancy binding that of others." Understand by
imagination and fancy all that Glanvil really meant, and I agree with
him. It is a matter of history that, since the Aryan morning of mankind,
the Romanys have been chiromancing, and, following it, trying to read
people's minds and bind them to belief. Thousands of years of
transmitted hereditary influences always result in something; it has
really resulted with the gypsies in an instinctive, though undeveloped,
intuitive perception, which a sympathetic mind acquires from them,--nay,
is compelled to acquire, out of mere self-defense; and when gained, it
manifests itself in many forms,
"But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill."