"_One_ 'eri--two-ery, ekkeri--an."
But one-ry is the _exact_ translation of ekkeri; ek or yek being one.
And it is remarkable that in
"_Hickory_ dickory dock,
The rat ran up the clock;
The clock struck _one_,
And down he run,
_Hickory_ dickory dock."
We have hickory or ekkeri again, followed by a significant _one_. It may
be observed that while, the first verses abound in Romany words, I can
find no trace of any in other child-rhymes of the kind. It is also clear
that if we take from the fourth line the _ingle 'em_, _angle 'em_,
evidently added for mere jingle, there remains _stan_ or _stani_, "a
buck," followed by the very same word in English.
With the mournful examples of Mr. Bellenden Kerr's efforts to show that
all our old proverbs and tavern signs are Dutch, and Sir William Betham's
Etruscan-Irish, I should be justly regarded as one of the too frequent
seekers for mystery in moonshine if I declared that I positively believed
this to be Romany. Yet it is possible that it contains gypsy words,
especially "fillissi,' follasy," which mean exactly _chateau_ and gloves,
and I think it not improbable that it was once a sham charm used by some
Romany fortune-teller to bewilder Gorgios. Let the reader imagine the
burnt-sienna wild-cat eyed old sorceress performing before a credulous
farm-wife and her children the great ceremony of _hakk'ni panki_, which
Mr. Borrow calls _hokkani boro_, but for which there is a far deeper
name,--that of _the great secret_,--which even my best friends among the
Romany tried to conceal from me. This feat is performed by inducing some
woman of largely magnified faith to believe that there is hidden in her
house a magic treasure, which can only be made to come to hand by
depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by
natural affinity and attraction. "For gold, as you sees, my deari, draws
gold, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher and
leaves it, you'll find it doubled. An' wasn't there the Squire's lady,
and didn't she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where
they'd laid in a old grave,--and only one guinea she gave me for all my
trouble; an' I hope you'll do better by the poor old gypsy, my deari ---
---."
The gold and all the spoons are tied up,--for, as the enchantress
observes, there may be silver too,--and she solemnly repeats over it
magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to
every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows
are closed, and candles give the only light. The next day the gypsy
comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her
cloak he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one
containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her
rhyme again, and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the
bundle must not be touched or spoken of for three weeks. "Every word you
tell about it, my-deari will be a guinea gone away." Sometimes she
exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said.
Back to the farmer's wife never again. After three weeks another
Extraordinary instance of gross credulity appears in the country paper,
and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to
the absence of the school-master. There is wailing and shame in the
house,--perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years
have beer swept away. The charm has worked.
But the little sharp-eared children remember it and sing it, and the more
meaningless it is in their ears the more mysterious does it sound. And
they never talk about the bundle, which when opened was found to contain
only sticks, stones, and rags, without repeating it. So it goes from
mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it passes current for even worse
nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however,--and the
remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the
language,--that there is a Romany _turn_ to even the roughest corners of
these rhymes. _Kivi_, _stingli_, _stangli_, are all gypsyish. But, as I
have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses
of the kind. There is nothing of it in
"Intery, mintery, cutery corn"--
or in anything else in Mother Goose. It is alone in its sounds and
sense,--or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer of the roads who on
hearing it would not explain, "Rya, there's a great deal of Romanes in
that ere."
I should also say that the word _na-kelas_ or _ne-kelas_, which I here
translate differently, was once explained to me at some length by a gypsy
as signifying "not speaking," or "keeping quiet."
Now the mystery of mysteries of which I have spoken in the Romany tongue
is this. The _hokkani boro_, or great trick, consists of three parts.
Firstly, the telling of a fortune, and this is to _pen dukkerin_ or _pen
durkerin_. The second part is the conveying away of the property, which
is to _lel dudikabin_, or to take lightning, possibly connected with the
very old English slang term of _bien lightment_. There is evidently a
great confusion of words here. And the third is to "_chiv o manzin apre
lati_," or to put the oath upon her, which explains itself. When all the
deceived are under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy
mother has "a safe thing of it."
The _hokkani boro_, or great trick, was brought by the gypsies from the
East. It has been practiced by them all over the world, it is still
played every day somewhere. This chapter was written long ago in
England. I am now in Philadelphia, and here I read in the "Press" of
this city that a Mrs. Brown, whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the
wife of an acquaintance of mine, who walks before the world in other
names, was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling and
persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all
the rest of the grand deception. And Mrs. Brown, good old Mrs. Brown,
went to prison, where she will linger until a bribed alderman, or a
purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is
evaded in Pennsylvania, delivers her.
Yet it is not a good country, on the whole, for _hokkani boro_, since the
people here, especially in the rural districts, have a rough-and-ready
way of inflicting justice which interferes sadly with the profits of
aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy
woman robbed a farmer by the great trick of all he was worth. Now it is
no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee greatly resemble
Indians in certain respects, and when I saw thousands of them, during the
war, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied their dark
brown faces, high cheek bones, and long straight black hair, that the
American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee
farmer and his neighbors, at any rate, reverted very strongly indeed to
the original type when robbed by the gypsies, for they turned out all
together, hunted them down, and, having secured the sorceress, burned her
alive at the stake. And thus in a single crime and its punishment we
have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offense, an European
Middle-Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the red
Indians.