CHAPTER IX

SCOTTISH-TINKER STORIES

NO. 73.—THE BROWN BEAR OF THE GREEN GLEN

There was a king in Erin once who had a leash of sons. John was the

name of the youngest one, and it was said that he was not wise enough.

And this good, worldly king lost the sight of his eyes and the strength

of his feet. The two eldest brothers said that they would go seek three

bottles of the water of the green isle that was about the heaps of the

deep. And so it was that these two brothers went away. Now the fool

said that he would not believe but that he himself would go also. And

the first big town he reached in his father’s kingdom, there he sees

his two brothers there, the blackguards.

‘Oh! my boys,’ says the young one, ‘is it thus you are?’

‘With swiftness of foot,’ said they, ‘take thyself home, or we will

have thy life.’

‘Don’t be afraid, lads. It is nothing to me to stay with you.’

Now John went away on his journey till he came to a great desert of a

wood. ‘Hoo, hoo!’ says John to himself, ‘it is not canny for me to walk

this wood alone.’ The night was coming now, and growing pretty dark.

John ties the cripple white horse to the root of a tree, and he went up

in the top himself. He was but a very short time in the top, when he

saw a bear coming with a fiery cinder in his mouth.

‘Come down, son of the King of Erin,’ says he.

‘Indeed, I won’t come. I am thinking I am safer where I am.’

‘But if thou wilt not come down, I will go up,’ said the bear.

‘Art thou, too, taking me for a fool?’ says John. ‘A shaggy, shambling

creature like thee, climbing a tree.’

‘But if thou wilt not come down, I will go up,’ says the bear, as he

fell out of hand to climbing the tree.

‘Lord! thou canst do that same!’ said John; ‘keep back from the root of

the tree, then, and I will go down to talk to thee.’

And when the son of Erin’s king drew down, they came to chatting. The

bear asked him if he was hungry.

‘Weel, by your leave,’ said John, ‘I am a little at this very same

time.’

The bear took that wonderful watchful turn, and he catches a roebuck.

‘Now, son of Erin’s king,’ says the bear, ‘whether wouldst thou like

thy share of the buck boiled or raw?’

‘The sort of meat I used to get would be kind of plotted boiled,’ says

John. And thus it fell out; John got his share roasted.

‘Now,’ said the bear, ‘lie down between my paws, and thou hast no cause

to fear cold or hunger till morning.’

Early in the morning the bear asked, ‘Art thou asleep, son of Erin’s

king?’

‘I am not very heavily,’ said he.

‘It is time for thee to be on thy soles, then. Thy journey is long—two

hundred miles. But art thou a good horseman, John?’

‘There are worse than me at times,’ said he.

‘Thou hadst best get on top of me, then.’

He did this, and at the first leap John was to earth. ‘Foil! foil!’

says John. ‘What! thou art not bad at the trade thyself. Thou hadst

best come back till we try thee again.’

And with nails and teeth he fastened on the bear, till they reached the

end of the two hundred miles and a giant’s house.

‘Now, John,’ said the bear, ‘thou shalt go to pass the night in this

giant’s house. Thou wilt find him pretty grumpy, but say thou that it

was the Brown Bear of the Green Glen that set thee here for a night’s

share, and don’t thou be afraid that thou wilt not get share and

comfort.’

And he left the bear to go to the giant’s house.

‘Son of Erin’s king,’ says the giant, ‘thy coming was in the prophecy;

but if I did not get thy father, I have got his son. I don’t know

whether I will put thee in the earth with my feet or in the sky with my

breath.’

‘Thou wilt do neither of either,’ said John, ‘for it is the Brown Bear

of the Green Glen that set me here.’

‘Come in, son of Erin’s king,’ said he, ‘and thou shalt be well taken

to this night.’

And as he said, it was true. John got meat and drink without stint. But

to make a long tale short, the bear took John day after day to the

third giant. ‘Now,’ says the bear, ‘I have not much acquaintance with

this giant, but thou wilt not be long in his house when thou must

wrestle with him. And if he is too hard on thy back, say then, “If I

had the Brown Bear of the Green Glen here, that was thy master.”’

As soon as John went in, ‘Ai! ai!! or ee! ee!!’ says the giant. ‘If I

did not get thy father, I have got his son.’

And to grips they go. They would make the boggy bog of the rocky rock.

In the hardest place they would sink to the knee, in the softest up to

the thighs; and they would bring wells of spring water from the face of

every rock. [141] The giant gave John a sore wrench or two.

‘Foil! foil!!’ says he. ‘If I had here the Brown Bear of the Green

Glen, thy leap would not be so hearty.’

And no sooner spoke he the word than the worthy bear was at his side.

‘Yes! yes!’ says the giant, ‘son of Erin’s king, now I know thy matter

better than thou dost thyself.’

So it was that the giant ordered his shepherd to bring home the best

wether he had in the hill, and to throw his carcass before the great

door. ‘Now, John,’ says the giant, ‘an eagle will come and she will

settle on the carcass of this wether, and there is a wart on the ear of

this eagle which thou must cut off with this sword, but a drop of blood

thou must not draw.’

The eagle came, but she was not long eating when John drew close to

her, and with one stroke he cut the wart of her without drawing one

drop of blood. (Och! is not that a fearful lie?) ‘Now,’ said the eagle,

‘come on the root of my two wings, for I know thy matter better than

thou dost thyself.’

He did this, and they were now on sea and now on land, and now on the

wing, till they reached the Green Isle.

‘Now, John,’ says she, ‘be quick and fill thy three bottles. Remember

that the black dogs are away just now.’ (‘What dogs?’—Black dogs. Dost

thou not know that they always had black dogs chasing the Gregorach?)

When he filled the bottles with the water out of the well, he sees a

little house beside him. John said to himself that he would go in, and

that he would see what was in it. And the first chamber he opened, he

saw a full bottle. (‘And what was in it?’ What should be in it but

whisky.) He filled a glass out of it, and he drank it; and when he was

going, he gave a glance, and the bottle was as full as it was before.

‘I will have this bottle along with the bottles of water,’ says he.

Then he went into another chamber, and he saw a loaf. He took a slice

out of it, but the loaf was as whole as it was before. ‘Ye gods! I

won’t leave thee,’ says John. He went on thus till he came to another

chamber. He saw a great cheese; he took a slice of the cheese, but it

was as whole as ever. ‘I will have this along with the rest,’ says he.

Then he went to another chamber, and he saw laid there the very

prettiest little jewel of a woman he ever saw. ‘It were a great pity

not to kiss thy lips, my love,’ says John.

Soon after John jumped on top of the eagle, and she took him on the

self-same steps till they reached the house of the big giant. And they

went paying rent to the giant, and there was the sight of tenants and

giants and meat and drink.

‘Well, John,’ says the giant, ‘didst thou see such drink as this in thy

father’s house in Erin?’

‘Pooh!’ says John, ‘hoo! my hero, thou other man, I have a drink this

is unlike it.’ He gave the giant a glass out of the bottle, but the

bottle was as full as it was before.

‘Well!’ said the giant, ‘I will give thee myself two hundred notes,

[142] a bridle, and a saddle for the bottle.’

‘It is a bargain, then,’ says John; ‘but that the first sweetheart I

ever had must get it if she comes the way.’

‘She will get that,’ says the giant.

But to make the long story short, he left each loaf and cheese with the

two other giants, with the same covenant that the first sweetheart he

ever had should get them if she came the way. Now John reached his

father’s big town in Erin, and he sees his two brothers as he left

them, the blackguards. ‘You had best come with me, lads,’ says he, ‘and

you will get a dress of cloth and a saddle and bridle each.’ And so

they did; but when they were near to their father’s house, the brothers

thought that they had better kill him, and so it was that they set on

him. And when they thought he was dead, they threw him behind a dyke;

and they took from him the three bottles of water, and they went home.

John was not too long here, when his father’s smith came the way with a

cart-load of rusty iron. John called out, ‘Whoever the Christian is

that is there, oh! that he should help him.’ The smith caught him, and

he threw John amongst the iron. And because the iron was so rusty, it

went into each wound and sore that John had; and so it was that John

became rough-skinned and bald.

Here we will leave John, and we will go back to the pretty little jewel

that John left in the Green Isle. She became pale and heavy, and at the

end of three quarters she had a fine lad son. ‘Oh! in all the great

world,’ says she, ‘how did I find this?’

‘Foil! foil!’ says the hen-wife, ‘don’t let that set thee thinking.

Here’s for thee a bird, and as soon as he sees the father of thy son,

he will hop on the top of his head.’

The Green Isle was gathered from end to end, and the people were put in

at the back door and out at the front door; but the bird did not stir,

and the babe’s father was not found. Now here she said she would go

through the world altogether till she should find the father of the

babe. Then she came to the house of the big giant and sees the bottle.

‘Ai! ai!’ said she, ‘who gave thee this bottle?’

Said the giant, ‘It was young John, son of Erin’s king, that left it.’

‘Well, then, the bottle is mine,’ said she.

But to make a long story short, she came to the house of each giant,

and she took with her each bottle and each loaf and each cheese, till

at last she came to the house of the king of Erin. Then the five-fifths

of Erin were gathered, and the bridge of nobles of the people; they

were put in at the back door and out at the front door, but the bird

did not stir. Then she asked if there was one other or any one else at

all in Erin that had not been here.

‘I have a bald rough-skinned gillie in the smithy,’ said the smith,

‘but——’

‘Rough on or off, send him here,’ says she.

No sooner did the bird see the head of the bald rough-skinned gillie

than he took a flight and settles on the bald top of the rough-skinned

lad. She caught him and kissed him: ‘Thou art the father of my babe.’

‘But, John,’ says the great king of Erin, ‘it is thou that gottest the

bottles of water for me.’

‘Indeed ‘twas I,’ says John.

‘Weel, then, what art thou willing to do to thy two brothers?’

‘The very thing they wished to do to me, do for them.’

And that same was done. John married the daughter of the king of the

Green Isle, and they made a great rich wedding that lasted seven days

and seven years. And thou couldst but hear Leeg, leeg, and Beeg, beeg,

solid sound and peg-drawing. Gold a-crushing from the soles of their

feet to the tips of their fingers, the length of seven years and seven

days.

A variant clearly of John Roberts’ Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘An Old

King and his Three Sons in England’ (No. 55, pp. 220–234), but I

expect that Matthew Wood’s variant, ‘The Bottle of Black Water,’

would come closer still. Some day Mr. Sampson must give us that

with its fellows. Which is the better story—that of John Roberts,

the Welsh harper, or this of John MacDonald, the travelling

tinker—is hard to determine; in some respects each is immeasurably

superior. John Roberts’ is the more coherent and intelligible; but

it lacks that splendid wrestling match, with which compare the much

poorer one in the Bohemian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ (No.

44, p. 152). And then while it preserves the handkerchief ordeal,

it has not the inexhaustible whisky-bottle, loaf, and cheese. The

occurrence of a bear in each version, though with marked

differences, can hardly be accidental. For a long while after I got

John Roberts’ story, I believed that its close was largely of his

own invention; but that belief now seems to be inadmissible. The

Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Golden Bird and the Good Hare’ (No. 49,

pp. 182–8), and its Scottish-Tinker version, ‘The Fox’ (No. 75),

should be carefully studied.

NO. 74.—THE TALE OF THE SOLDIER

There was an old soldier once, and he left the army. He went to the top

of a hill that was at the upper end of the town-land, and he said,

‘Well, may it be that the Mischief may come and take me with him on his

back the next time that I come again in sight of this town.’

Then he was walking till he came to the house of a gentleman that was

there. John asked the gentleman if he would get leave to stay in his

house that night.

‘Well, then,’ said the gentleman, ‘since thou art an old soldier, and

hast the look of a man of courage, without dread or fear in thy face,

there is a castle at the side of yonder wood, and thou mayest stay in

it till day. Thou shalt have a pipe and baccy, a cogie full of whisky,

and a Bible to read.’ [143]

When John got his supper, he took himself to the castle. He set on a

great fire, and when a while of the night had come, there came two

tawny women in, and a dead man’s kist between them. They threw it at

the fireside, and they sprang out. John arose, and with the heel of his

foot he drove out its end, and he dragged out an old hoary bodach. And

he set him sitting in the great chair; he gave him a pipe and baccy,

and a cogie of whisky; but the bodach let them fall on the floor.

‘Poor man,’ said John, ‘the cold is on thee.’

John laid himself stretched in the bed, and he left the bodach to toast

himself at the fireside; but about the crowing of the cock he went

away.

The gentleman came well early in the morning. ‘What rest didst thou

find, John?’

‘Good rest,’ said John. ‘Thy father was not the man that would frighten

me.’

‘Right, good John, thou shalt have two hundred pund, and lie to-night

in the castle.’

‘I am the man that will do that,’ said John.

And that night it was the very like. There came three tawny women, and

a dead man’s kist with them amongst them. They threw it up to the side

of the fireplace, and they took their soles out of that. John arose,

and with the heel of his boot he broke the head of the kist, and he

dragged out of it the old hoary man. And, as he did the night before,

he set him sitting in the big chair, and gave him pipe and baccy; and

he let them fall.

‘Oh! poor man,’ said John, ‘cold is on thee.’

Then he gave him a cogie of drink, and he let that fall also.

‘Oh! poor man, thou art cold.’

The bodach went as he did the night before. ‘But,’ said John to

himself, ‘if I stay here this night, and that thou shouldst come, thou

shalt pay my pipe and baccy, and my cogie of drink.’

The gentleman came early enough in the morning, and he asked, ‘What

rest didst thou find last night, John?’

‘Good rest,’ said John. ‘It was not the hoary bodach, thy father, that

would put fear on me.’

‘Och!’ said the gentleman, ‘if thou stayest to-night thou shalt have

three hundred pund.’

‘It’s a bargain,’ said John.

When it was a while of the night there came four tawny women, and a

dead man’s kist with them amongst them. And they set that down at the

side of John. John arose, and he drew his foot, and he drove the head

out of the kist. And he dragged out the old hoary man, and he set him

in the big chair. He reached him the pipe and the baccy, the cup and

the drink; but the old man let them fall, and they were broken.

‘Och!’ said John, ‘before thou goest this night, thou shalt pay me all

thou hast broken.’

But word came there not from the head of the bodach. Then John took the

belt of his abersgaic, [144] and he tied the bodach to his side, and he

took him with him to bed. When the heath-cock crowed, the bodach asked

him to let him go.

‘Pay what thou hast broken first,’ said John.

‘I will tell thee, then,’ said the old man, ‘there is a cellar of drink

under, below me, in which there is plenty of drink, tobacco, and pipes.

There is another little chamber beside the cellar, in which there is a

caldron full of gold. And under the threshold of the big door there is

a crocky full of silver. Thou sawest the women that came with me

to-night?’

‘I saw,’ said John.

‘Well, there thou hast four women from whom I took the cows, and they

in extremity. They are going with me every night thus, punishing me.

But go thou and tell my son how I am being wearied out. Let him go and

pay the cows, and let him not be heavy on the poor. Thou thyself and he

may divide the gold and silver between you; and marry thyself my old

girl. But mind, give plenty of gold of what is left to the poor, on

whom I was too hard. And I will find rest in the world of worlds.’

The gentleman came, and John told him as I have told thee. But John

would not marry the old girl of the hoary bodach. At the end of a day

or two John would not stay longer. He filled his pockets full of the

gold, and he asked the gentleman to give plenty of gold to the poor. He

reached the house, [145] but he was wearying at home, and he had rather

be back with the regiment. He took himself off on a day of days, and he

reached the hill above the town, from which he went away. But who

should come to him but the Mischief.

‘Hoth! hoth! John, thou hast come back?’

‘Hoth on thyself!’ quoth John, ‘I came. Who art thou?’

‘I am the Mischief, the man to whom thou gavest thyself when thou was

here last.’

‘Ai! ai!’ said John, ‘it’s long since I heard tell of thee, but I never

saw thee before. There is glamour on my eyes; I will not believe that

it is thou at all. But make a snake of thyself, and I will believe

thee.’

The Mischief did this.

‘Make now a lion of roaring.’

The Mischief did this.

‘Spit fire now seven miles behind thee and seven miles before thee.’

The Mischief did this.

‘Well,’ said John, ‘since I am to be a servant with thee, come into my

abersgaic, and I will carry thee. But thou must not come out till I ask

thee, or else the bargain’s broke.’

The Mischief promised, and he did this.

‘Now,’ said John, ‘I am going to see a brother of mine that is in the

regiment. But keep thou quiet.’

So now John went into the town; and one yonder and one here would cry,

‘There is John the desairtair.’ There was gripping of John, and a court

held on him; and so it was that he was to be hanged about mid-day on

the morrow. And John asked no favour but to be floored with a bullet.

The Coirneal said, ‘Since he was an old soldier, and in the army so

long, that he should have his asking.’

On the morrow, when John was to be shot, and the soldiers foursome

round all about him, ‘What is that they are saying?’ said the Mischief.

‘Let me amongst them, and I won’t be long scattering them.’

‘Cuist! cuist!’ said John.

‘What’s that speaking to thee?’ said the Coirneal.

‘Oh! it’s but a white mouse,’ said John.

‘Black or white,’ said the Coirneal, ‘don’t thou let her out of the

abersgaic, and thou shalt have a letter of loosing, and let’s see no

more of thee.’

John went away, and in the mouth of night he went into a barn where

there were twelve men threshing. ‘Oh! lads,’ said John, ‘here’s for you

my old abersgaic; and take a while threshing it, it is so hard that it

is taking the skin off my back.’

They took as much as two hours of the watch at the abersgaic with the

twelve flails; and at last, every blow they gave it, it would leap to

the top of the barn, and it was casting one of the threshers now and

again on his back. When they saw that, they asked him to be out of

that, himself and his abersgaic; they would not believe but that the

Mischief was in it.

Then he went on his journey, and he went into a smithy where there were

twelve smiths striking their great hammers. ‘Here’s for you, lads, an

old abersgaic, and I will give you half-a-crown, and take a while at it

with the twelve great hammers; it is so hard that it is taking the skin

off my back.’

But that was fun for the smiths; it was good sport for them, the

abersgaic of the soldier. But every sgaile it got, it was bounding to

the top of the smithy. ‘Go out of this, thyself and it,’ said they; ‘we

will not believe that the Bramman [146] is in it.’

So then John went on, and the Mischief on his back; and he reached a

great furnace that was there.

‘Where art thou going now, John?’ said the Mischief.

‘Patience a little, and thou’lt see that,’ said John.

‘Let me out,’ said the Mischief, ‘and I will never put trouble on thee

in this world.’

‘Nor in the next?’ said John.

‘That’s it,’ said the Mischief.

‘Stop, then,’ said John, ‘till thou get a smoke.’

And so saying, John cast the abersgaic and the Mischief into the middle

of the furnace: and himself and the furnace went as a green flame of

fire to the skies.

The first half is a variant, and a good one, of the Welsh-Gypsy

story of ‘Ashypelt’ (No. 57, p. 235); the second half is a variant,

a better one, of the latter part of the Welsh-Gypsy ‘Old Smith’

(No. 59, p. 247), and of the confused and imperfect Slovak-Gypsy

‘Old Soldier’ (No. 60, p. 250). The prominence given to

tobacco-smoking in both ‘Ashypelt’ and in the Scottish-Tinker story

suggests that the forebears of Cornelius Price and those of John

MacDonald must have parted company at some time later than the

beginning of the seventeenth century, unless, indeed, this

resemblance is accidental. About the beginning of the nineteenth

century English Gypsies must have visited Scotland much more than

they did in 1870–80, when a few of the Smiths or Reynolds, Maces,

and Lees, all closely connected, were the only English Gypsies who

‘travelled’ north of the Tweed. Since 1880, again, there has been a

great influx of English Gypsydom,—one reason that fortune-telling

seems to be not illegal in Scotland. In his notes upon Campbell’s

story in Orient und Occident (ii. 1864, pp. 679–680), Reinhold

Köhler makes an odd slip, very unusual with him. He renders ‘the

Mischief’ by ‘das Unglück,’ and is puzzled why poor Unglück should

be so scurvily handled.

NO. 75.—THE FOX

Brian, the son of the king of Greece, fell in love with the hen-wife’s

daughter, and he would marry no other but she. His father said to him

on a day of days, before that should happen that he must get first for

him the most marvellous bird that there was in the world. Then here

went Brian, and he put the world under his head, till he came much

further than I can tell, or you can think, till he reached the house of

the Carlin of Buskins. [147] He got well taken to by the carlin that

night; and in the morning she said to him, ‘It is time for thee to

arise. The journey is far.’

When he rose to the door, what was it but sowing and winnowing snow. He

looked hither and thither, and what should he see but a fox drawing on

his shoes and stockings. ‘Sha! beast,’ said Brian, ‘thou hadst best

leave my lot of shoes and stockings for myself.’

‘Och!’ said the fox, ‘it’s long since a shoe or a stocking was on me;

and I’m thinking that I shall put them to use this day itself.’

‘Thou ugly beast, art thou thinking to steal my foot-webs, and I myself

looking at thee?’

‘Well,’ said the fox, ‘if thou wilt take me to be thy servant, thou

shalt get thy set of shoes and stockings.’

‘O poor beast!’ said he, ‘thou wouldst find death with me from hunger.’

‘Ho! hoth!’ said the fox, ‘there is little good in the servant that

will not do for his own self and for his master at times.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said he, ‘I don’t mind; at all events thou mayst follow

me.’

They had not gone far on their journey when the fox asked him if he was

good at riding. He said he was, if it could be known what on.

‘Come on top of me a turn of a while,’ said the fox.

‘On top of thee! Poor beast, I would break thy back.’

‘Ho! huth! son of the king of Greece,’ said the fox, ‘thou didst not

know me so well as I know thee. Take no care but that I am able to

carry thee.’

But never mind. When Brian went on top of the fox, they would drive

spray from each puddle, spark from each pebble. And they took no halt

nor rest till they reached the house of the Giant of Five Heads, Five

Humps, and Five Throttles.

‘Here’s for thee,’ said the fox, ‘the house of the giant who has the

marvellous bird. And what wilt thou say to him when thou goest in?’

‘What should I say but that I came to steal the marvellous bird?’

‘Hu! hu!’ said the fox, ‘thou wilt not return. But,’ said the fox,

‘take thou service with this giant to be a stable-lad. And there is no

sort of bird under the seven russet rungs of the world that he has not

got. And when he brings out the marvellous bird, say thou, “Fuith!

fuith! the nasty bird, throw it out of my sight. I could find braver

birds than that on the middens at home.”’

Brian did thus.

‘S’tia!’ said the big one, ‘then I must go to thy country to gather a

part of them.’

But Brian was pleasing the giant well. But on a night of the nights

Brian steals the marvellous bird, and drags himself out with it. When

he was a good bit from the giant’s house, ‘S’tia!’ said Brian to

himself, ‘I don’t know if it is the right bird I have after every

turn.’ Brian lifts the covering off the bird’s head, and he lets out

one screech, and the screech roused the giant.

‘Oh! oh! son of the king of Greece,’ said the giant, ‘that I have

coming to steal the marvellous bird. The prophet was saying that he

would come to his gird.’

Then here the giant put on the shoes that could make nine miles at

every step, and he wasn’t long catching poor Brian. They returned home

to the giant’s house, and the giant laid the binding of the three

smalls on him, and he threw Brian into the peat-corner, and he was

there till the morning on the morrow’s day.

‘Now,’ said the giant, ‘son of the king of Greece, thou hast thy two

rathers—Whether wouldst thou rather thy head to be on yonder stake, or

go to steal the White Glaive of Light that is in the realm of Big

Women?’

‘A man is kind to his life,’ said Brian. ‘I will go to steal the White

Glaive of Light.’

But never mind. Brian had not gone far from the giant’s house when the

fox met with him. ‘O man without mind or sense, thou didst not take my

counsel, and what will now arise against thee? Thou art going to the

realm of Big Women to steal the White Glaive of Light. That is twenty

times as hard for thee as the marvellous bird of that carl of a giant.’

‘But what help for it now but that I must betake myself to it?’ said

poor Brian.

‘Well, then,’ said the fox, ‘come thou on top of me, and I am in hopes

thou wilt be wiser the next time.’

They went then further than I can remember, till they reached the knoll

of the country at the back of the wind and the face of the sun, that

was in the realm of Big Women.

‘Now,’ said the fox, ‘thou shalt sit here, and thou shalt begin at

blubbering and crying; and when the Big Women come out where thou art,

they will lift thee in their oxters; and when they reach the house with

thee, they will try to coax thee. But never thou cease of crying until

thou get the White Glaive of Light; and they will leave it with thee in

the cradle the length of the night, to keep thee quiet.’

Worthy Brian was not long blubbering and crying when the Big Women

came, and they took Brian with them as the fox had said. And when Brian

found the house quiet, he went away with the White Glaive of Light. And

when he thought he was a good way from the house, he thought he would

see if he had the right sword. He took it out of the sheath, and the

sword gave out a ring. This awoke the Big Women, and they were on their

soles. ‘Whom have we here,’ said they, ‘but the son of the king of

Greece coming to steal the White Glaive of Light.’

They took after Brian, and they were not long bringing him back. They

tied him roundly (like a ball), and they threw him into the peat-corner

till the white morrow’s day was. When the morning came, they asked him

to be under the sparks of the bellows, [148] or to go to steal the Sun

Goddess, daughter of the king of the gathering of Fionn.

‘A man is kind to his life,’ said Brian. ‘I will go steal the Sun

Goddess.’

Never mind. Brian went, but he was not long on the path when the fox

met him. ‘O poor fool,’ said the fox, ‘thou art as silly as thou wert

ever. What good for me to be giving thee counsel? Thou art now going to

steal the Sun Goddess. Many a better thief than thou went on the same

journey, but ever a man came never back. There are nine guards guarding

her, and there is no dress under the seven russet rungs of the world

that is like the dress that is on her but one other dress, and here is

that dress for thee. And mind,’ said the fox, ‘that thou dost as I ask

thee, or, if thou dost not, thou wilt not come to the next tale.’

Never mind. They went, and when they were near the guard, the fox put

the dress on Brian, and he said to him to go forward straight through

them, and when he reached the Sun Goddess to do as he bid him. ‘And,

Brian, if thou gettest her out, I will not be far from you.’

But never mind. Brian took courage, and he went on, and each guard made

way for him, till he went in where the Sun Goddess, daughter of the

king of the gathering of Fionn, was. She put all-hail and good-luck on

him, and she it was who was pleased to see him, for her father was not

letting man come near her. And there they were.

‘But how shall we get away at all, at all?’ said she in the morning.

Brian lifted the window, and he put out the Sun Goddess through it.

The fox met them. ‘Thou wilt do yet,’ said he. ‘Leap you on top of me.’

And when they were far, far away, and near the country of Big Women,

‘Now, Brian,’ said the fox, ‘is it not a great pity for thyself to give

away this Sun Goddess for the White Glaive of Light?’

‘Is it not that which is wounding me at this very time?’ said Brian.

‘It is that I will make a Sun Goddess of myself, and thou shalt give me

to the Big Women,’ said the fox.

‘I had rather part with the Sun Goddess herself than thee.’

‘But never thou mind, Brian, they won’t keep me long.’

Here Brian went in with the fox as a Sun Goddess, and he got the White

Glaive of Light. Brian left the fox with the Big Women, and he went

forward. In a day or two the fox overtook them, and they got on him.

And when they were nearing the house of the big giant, ‘Is it not a

great pity for thyself, O Brian, to part with the White Glaive of Light

for that filth of a marvellous bird?’

‘There is no help for it,’ said Brian.

‘I will make myself a White Glaive of Light,’ said the fox; ‘it may be

that thou wilt yet find a use for the White Glaive of Light.’

Brian was not so much against the fox this time, since he saw that he

had got off from the Big Women.

‘Thou art come with it,’ said the big man. ‘It was in the prophecies

that I should cut this great oak-tree at one blow, which my father cut

two hundred years ago with the same sword.’

Brian got the marvellous bird, and he went away. He had gone but a

short distance from the giant’s house when the fox made up to him with

his pad to his mouth.

‘What’s this that befell thee?’ said Brian.

‘Oh! the son of the great one,’ said the fox, ‘when he seized me, with

the first blow he cut the tree all but a small bit of bark. And look

thyself, there is no tooth in the door of my mouth which that filth of

a Bodach has not broken.’

Brian was exceedingly sorrowful that the fox had lost the teeth, but

there was no help for it. They were going forward, walking at times,

and at times riding, till they came to a spring that there was by the

side of the road. ‘Now, Brian,’ said the fox, ‘unless thou dost strike

off my head with one blow of the White Glaive of Light into this

spring, I will strike off thine.’

‘S’tia,’ said Brian, ‘a man is kind to his own life.’

And he swept the head off him with one blow, and it fell into the well.

And in the wink of an eye what should rise up out of the well but the

son of the king that was father to the Sun Goddess.

They went on till they reached his father’s house. And his father made

a great wedding with joy and gladness, and there was no word about

marrying the hen wife’s daughter when I parted from them.

‘On the 25th of April 1859, [at Inverary], John [MacDonald] the

tinker gave the beginning of this as part of his contribution to

the evening’s entertainment. He not only told the story, but acted

it, dandling a fancied baby when it came to the adventure of the

Big Women, and rolling his eyes wildly. The story which he told

varied from that which he dictated in several particulars. It

began:—

‘“There was a king and a knight, as there was and will be, and as

grows the fir-tree, some of it crooked and some of it straight. And

it was the King of Eirinn, it was. And the queen died with her

first son, and the king married another woman. Oh! bad straddling

queen, thou art not like the sonsy, cheery queen that we had ere

now.”

‘And here came a long bit which the tinker put into another story,

and which he seems to have condensed into the first sentence of the

version which I have got and translated. He has also transferred

the scene from Ireland to Greece, perhaps because the latter

country sounds better, and is further off, or perhaps because he

had got the original form of the story from his old father in the

meantime.

‘Some of the things mentioned in the tinker’s version have to do

with Druidical worship—the magic well, the oak-tree, the bird. For

the Celtic tribes, as it is said, were all guided in their

wanderings by the flight of birds. The Sun Goddess, for the Druids

are supposed to have worshipped the sun, and the sun is feminine in

Gaelic. These are all mixed up with Fionn and the Sword of Light

and the Big Women, personages and things which do not appear out of

the Highlands.’

The whole of this last paragraph seems to me more than

questionable, for ‘The Fox’ is beyond all question identical with

the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Golden Bird and the Good Hare’ (No.

49, pp. 182–8), in the excellent Servian version of which it is a

fox, not a hare. Druidism is hardly to be looked for in either

Poland or Servia. In some respects the Polish-Gypsy story is better

than the Tinker one, but in others the Tinker version is greatly

superior. Each, indeed, supplies the other’s deficiencies. The

original beginning, given by Campbell, seems to point to a form of

the story where, as in the Indian versions of ‘The Bad Mother,’

cited on p. 35, note, the hero is sent on his quest by a

stepmother. In his notes on the Gaelic story in Orient und Occident

(ii. 1864, pp. 685–6), Reinhold Köhler cites an interesting

Wallachian version.

NO. 76.—THE MAGIC SHIRT [149]

‘There was a king and a knight, as there was and will be, and as grows

the fir-tree, some of it crooked and some of it straight; and he was a

king of Eirinn,’ said the old tinker, and then came a wicked

stepmother, who was incited to evil by a wicked hen-wife. The son of

the first queen was at school with twelve comrades, and they used to

play at shinny every day with silver shinnies and a golden ball. The

hen-wife, for certain curious rewards, gave the step-dame a magic

shirt, and she sent it to her stepson, ‘Sheen Billy,’ and persuaded him

to put it on. He refused at first, but complied at last, and the shirt

was a great snake about his neck. Then he was enchanted and under

spells, and all manner of adventures happened; but at last he came to

the house of a wise woman who had a beautiful daughter, who fell in

love with the enchanted prince, and said she must and would have him.

‘It will cost thee much sorrow,’ said the mother.

‘I care not,’ said the girl, ‘I must have him.’

‘It will cost thee thy hair.’

‘I care not.’

‘It will cost thee thy right breast.’

‘I care not if it should cost me my life,’ said the girl.

And the old woman agreed to help her to her will. A caldron was

prepared and filled with plants; and the king’s son was put into it and

stripped to the magic shirt, and the girl was stripped to the waist.

And the mother stood by with a great knife, which she gave to her

daughter. Then the king’s son was put down in the caldron; and the

great serpent, which appeared to be a shirt about his neck, changed

into its own form, and sprang on the girl and fastened on her; and she

cut away the hold, and the king’s son was freed from the spells. Then

they were married, and a golden breast was made for the lady.

‘And then,’ adds Mr. Campbell, ‘they went through more adventures

which I do not well remember, and which the old tinker’s son vainly

strove to repeat in August 1860, for he is far behind his father in

the telling of old Highland tales. The serpent, then, would seem to

be an emblem of evil and wisdom in Celtic popular mythology.’

APPENDIX

P. 249.—The following nigger folk-tale, first printed by me in the

Athenæum for 20th August 1887, p. 245, was taken down by an American

acquaintance, Mr. J. P. Suverkrop, C.E., in 1871, at Sand Mountain,

Alabama, from the recitation of his negro servant, Dick Brown, a ‘boy’

about thirty years old, who was a native of Petersburg, Virginia, and

there had got it from his granny. It seems to be clearly a variant of

‘The Master Smith’ (Clouston, ii. 409) and of Grimm’s No. 147, ‘The Old

Man made Young Again’ (ii. 215, 444). If so, it must be a comparatively

recent transmission from one race (Aryan) to another (non-Aryan), yet

it is as thoroughly localised as folk-tale well could be.

DE NEW HAN’.

Wunst dar wer a sawmill on de aige of a wood not a thousan mili from

heah, wid a branch a-runnin by a-turnin de wheel. An ole colored man,

he kep de mill an wer a very fine kine of man; but he son Sam, what

help him, didn’ take arter de ole man, but wer a triflin, no account

sort o’ young nigger; an de ole man had to wuk right sharp to git

along. One day ’long come a poor-lookin sort o’ man, sayin he wanted to

larn de saw-millin, an he wuk fur a yeah fur nuffin. De ole man wer

glad to git his help, an de young ’un ’lowed he could shif some o’ his

wuk on to de New Han’. So de New Han’ he went to totin boads and doin

chores round de mill. De ole man he like de New Han’ fus class, an

allus gin he jes as good as he git hisself; but de son he make hisself

big to de New Han’ behind de ole man back, an order him roun to do dis

an dat. De New Han’ he never say nuffin, but jes go ’long ’bout he own

bisness. De ole man he cotch Sam ’busin an a-bossin de New Han’ aroun,

and he club he good fur hit more’n a few times. One day an ole man come

fur a load o’ plank, and he war a-groanin wid de misery in de back, an

a-wishin he were young an spry like as he used to.

Den up speak de New Han’, an he say, ‘Ef you all go in de woods ’ceptin

dis man an me, whar you can’t see nuffin goin on, an wait till I

holler, I’ll fix dis man right up good; but you all mus promis not to

peek, for suffin bad happen ef yo do.’

So dey promis. An de ole man an he son go in de woods wher dey can’t

see nuffin. An de New Han’ he say to de man wid de misery in he back,

‘Go lay down on de saw-frame.’

Den he up wid de saw, an cut he in two. Den he up wid de two pieces of

de man, an trow em into de branch, an de pieces jine togidder, an de

ole man wid de misery in he back come outer de branch a live an well

man an quite young like an frisky. Den he fell a-thankin de New Han’,

but he jest tole he to shet up. An den he hollerd. Sam and he fader

come a-runnin, an was mighty exprised when dey seen de young-lookin

nigger in de place of de ole limpin man. But de New Han’ wouldn’t say

nuffin ’bout it. So dey jest shet up, an things carried on same as

usual till de ole man he got word his mudder very bad, an he must start

right off fur to see her. Befo he go he dun tole Sam not fur to ac

obstropolus wid de New Han’, case ef he did, so sho’ would he git a

dubbin soon ez he got back. But Sam he forgit jes so soon de ole man

gone, an behave wery overbearin an obstropolus.

Finally de New Han’ say to Sam, ‘Ef you don’ quit behavin, I’se gwine

to leave when my yeah up, an dat’s to-morrer.’

Den Sam ac real owdashus, an tole him, ‘Go along now, yo fool.’

Sho’ enuff nex dey de New Han’ dun gone, an no one seed him go, an no

one pass he in de road or in de wood. Well, de wery nex day ’long come

de nigger what was made young an likely by de New Han’, an ’long wid

him come he ole woman totin a baskit wid a elegant fat possum an sweet

taters dat fairly made Sam mouf water. After passin de time o’ day an

so on, de man ax arter de New Han’, sayin he want him fix up de ole

woman same like he do him.

Sam say, ‘O, he be back to-morrer. Jes leave de possum, an come agin.

I’ll gin it to him when he come.’

But de man too smart fur dat, an wouldn’ leave hit.

So Sam ’fraid he gwine to lose de possum, so he say, ‘De New Han’ dun

gone off fur to see he sic fader, an dun tole me fo’ he go for to ax

you an do same what he done to you.’

So den de man tole Sam, an Sam tell de man to go in de wood an shet he

eyes. Den Sam he saw de ole woman in two, an frow de pieces in de

branch; but dar dey stay. Den Sam git skeered, an go down to de branch,

an try to jine de pieces, but dey wont jine. An de ole ’oman’s husban

come a-runnin and a-hollerin outer de wood case he see suffin wrong; an

de neighbers come, an dey take Sam an try he, an fin’ he guilty.

An de judge he put on he black hat an say, ‘Hang Sam by de neck ontil

he mus be quite ded, an de Lor hab mussy on pore Sam.’

Den Sam’s ole fader come a-runnin, an he fall down, an beg for Sam; but

do’ he roll in de dus, an cry, de judge won’ let Sam go. Den dey all go

’way solemn like to de gallus. An de judge ax Sam, do he got anything

to say for hisself. An Sam see de New Han’ stan a-laffin in de crowd.

An he think how bad he dun treated de pore man.

So he say, ‘Brudren an sistren, min’ what I gwine tell you. Don’ ac

highminded an biggity wid no one, case ef I hadn’ ac dat way to a man

in dis here very crowd, I’d a been heavin saw-logs instid o’ gwine to

be hung dis day.’

’Den all he frinds fall a-cryin an a-rollin, but de New Han’ jump up

longside Sam, an say quick like to he, ‘Do you shore enuff sorry for

you acshuns?’

Den Sam say, ‘Deed an deed I’s sorry, an I ax pardon an hope yo’ll

forgive me when I’s gone.’

Den de New Han’ speak out big an loud to de crowd, an say, ‘How come yo

gwine to hang dis heah man when de ole ’oman he kill is a-standin right

dar?’

Sho’ enuff dar was she standin long o’ her ole man. So dey let Sam

down, an dey had great jollification; but dey never see de New Han’

from dat day to dis nowhar.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Folk-tales are scarcely literature, but a question affecting the

world’s literature arises out of these Gypsy folk-tales. Was the author

of The Pilgrim’s Progress an English peasant or a Gypsy half-breed? The

Rev. J. Brown, in John Bunyan: his Life, Times, and Work (1885), shows

that the family of Bunyan—a name spelt in thirty-four different

ways—was established in Bedfordshire as early at least as 1199, and

that in 1327 a William Bownon was living at Elstow on the very spot

where John Bunyan was born in 1628. There is a gap in the Bunyan annals

between 1327 and 1542, when one finds a William Bonyon of Elstow, as in

1548 a Thomas Bonyon, aged forty-six or more. Next come a Thomas

Bunyon, ‘Pettie Chapman,’ who died in 1641, and his son, also Thomas

Bunyon (1603–76), who, says Mr. Brown, is ‘usually spoken of as a

tinker, but describes himself as a “braseyer.”’ This second Thomas took

for his second wife in 1627 an Elstow woman, Margaret Bentley

(1603–44), and John was the first child of that marriage. He, as every

one knows, was an itinerant though house-dwelling tinker (Brown, pp.

64, 119, 158, etc); and his eldest son, John, ‘was brought up to the

ancestral trade of a brazier, and carried on business in Bedford till

his death in 1728’ (id. pp. 201–2). That is all of the essential to be

gleaned about Bunyan’s pedigree; we know nothing as to his grandmother

or great-grandmother.

With this evidence, then, before him, Canon Venables pronounced, in the

Dictionary of National Biography (vii., 1886, p. 276), that ‘the

antiquity of the family in Bunyan’s native county effectually disposes

of the strange hallucination, which even Sir Walter Scott was disposed

to favour, that the Bunyans, “though reclaimed and settled,” may have

sprung from the Gipsy tribe.’ By no means necessarily, as may be seen

from a single example. During 1870–75 I often came across members of

the Bunce family in Oxfordshire, Wilts, Herts, and Somerset. Stephen

Bunce, of Wiltshire yeoman ancestry, had thirty years earlier married

Phœbe Buckland, a thorough-bred Gypsy woman, had himself turned

tent-dweller, and ‘travelled’ the southern counties till his death.

They had a largish family; and many, perhaps most, of their sons and

daughters have married Gypsies of more or less purity. One son was (and

maybe is still) a small farmer and horse-dealer, living in a house of

his own at Pewsey. Now, if a son or a grandson of his rose to eminence,

he could not by Canon Venables’ argument be a Gypsy, because, forsooth!

the Bunces are an old Wiltshire family.

The chief upholder of Bunyan’s Gypsy ancestry was Mr. James Simson, a

Scoto-American of New York, the editor of Walter Simson’s History of

the Gipsies (1865), and author of John Bunyan and the Gipsies (1882)

and a whole host of similar pamphlets. He pointed out that Bunyan

writes in his Grace Abounding: ‘For my descent, it was, as is well

known to many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my father’s

house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the

families of the land.’ And again: ‘After I had been thus for some

considerable time, another thought came into my mind, and that was,

whether we were of the Israelites or no. For, finding in the Scriptures

that they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were

one of this race, my soul must needs be happy. Now, again, I found

within me a great longing to be resolved about this question, but could

not tell how I should. At last, I asked my father, who told me, No, we

were not.’ And yet again: ‘I often, when these temptations had been

with force upon me, did compare myself to the case of such a child whom

some Gipsy hath by force took up in her arms, and is carrying from

friend and country.’

Kidnapping has never been a Gypsy practice (In Gypsy Tents, pp.

244–46), nor, though it were, would a Gypsy, even a converted Gypsy, be

likely to use it as an illustration. But Mr. Simson’s two first

passages are really pertinent. The Anglo-Israelite craze was not

devised till 1793; and it is hard to conceive why about 1645 an English

peasant-boy should have speculated on a Jewish origin for himself and

his kindred. But with a Gypsy it would not the least surprise me. I

hardly ever see Frampton Boswell, an English Gypsy of fifty, but he

returns to the question, ‘And there’s one thing, Mr. Groome, I’ve been

wanting to ask you about, and that is where you think our people

originated.’ Hindoos, Jews, and Egyptians are regularly passed in

review, but Frampton cannot make up his mind, as neither can he about

Rómani, except that ‘for certain ’tisn’t one of the Seven Languages.’

Tinker in Bunyan’s day indubitably carried a suggestion at least of

Gypsydom. I have not been able to see The Tinker of Turvey, [150] or

Canterbury Tales (Lond. 1630, ed. by J. O. Halliwell), to which Mr.

Brown refers, but from his few quotations on p. 34 it seems evident

that that ‘strolling Tincker and brave mettle-man’ regarded himself as

something widely different from an ordinary English artificer. Sir

Thomas Overbury in his well-known Characters (1614) describes ‘The

Tinker,’ the companion of whose travels ‘is some foul sun-burnt quean,

that since the terrible statute recanted gypsism and is turned

pedlaress. So marches he all over England with his bag and baggage,’

etc. In an article by A. H. A. Hamilton on ‘Quarter Sessions under

Charles I. from original records of Devon’ (Fraser’s Mag., Jan. 1877)

is a quotation concerning ‘sundry suspect persons, Roagues both sturdy

and begging vagrant, some whereof pretend to be petty chapmen [like

Bunyan’s grandfather], others peddlers, others glassmen, tynckers,

others palmesters, fortune readers, Egiptians, and the like.’ Brazier

is a frequent designation of Gypsies at the present day—e.g. the

baptismal register of Hill, Sutton Coldfield, has ‘Jan. 27, 1866,

Miriam Kate Agnes, daughter of Benjamin and Mira Boswell, cutler and

brazier’; and that of Boothroyd, Dewsbury, has ‘Mary Jane dr of Thomas

and Mary Green, Dewsbury Moor, Brazier of the Gipsey tribe.’ The

occurrence in the Bunyan pedigree of such Gypsy ‘Christian’ names as

Mantis and Perun, Delarīfa and Meralíni, would be a strong point, but

is entirely lacking. On the other hand, ‘gaujified’ or gentilised

Gypsies often drop such names; two brothers of my acquaintance, Oti and

Lazzy, became thus plain William and George. A contemporary description

of Bunyan (Brown, p. 399) as ‘tall of stature, strong-boned, though not

corpulent, somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes ... his hair

reddish,’ runs rather against the theory of Bunyan’s Gypsy ancestry,

but not conclusively, for I have known two Gypsy brothers, one very

swarthy, the other red-haired.

The strongest corroboration of that theory was unknown to both Mr.

Simson and Mr. Brown. In Notes and Queries for January 24, 1891, p. 67,

‘R.’ cited an entry from the parish register of St. Mary’s, Launceston:

‘1586, March the ivth daie was christened Nicholas, sonne of James

Bownia, an Egiptia rogue.’ Here ‘Egiptia’ (? Egiptiā) must stand for

‘Egiptian’; ‘Bownia’ similarly should be ‘Bownian,’ and, if so, we have

veritable Gypsy Bunyans. It may seem a far cry from Launceston in

Cornwall to Elstow in Bedfordshire, were nomads not in case; in time,

the interval between this baptism and the birth of ‘the inspired

tinker’ is but forty-two years.

But, anyhow, whether Bunyan was Gypsy [151] or Gentile, folk-tales

(plus the Bible) seem to me quite as likely a source of inspiration for

his Pilgrim’s Progress and Holy War as (say) the fourteenth century

Pélerinage de l’Homme or the siege of the Anabaptists at Münster. I do

not believe this has ever before been suggested; I will merely suggest

it, and leave the working out of it to folklorists.

NOTES

[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 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 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, 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.’

[38] Told by an old sedentary Gypsy woman of Adrianople.

[39] Lit. ‘the lad there became dry’; but that is how an English Gypsy

would put it.

[40] Kláka. ‘Claca,’ says Grenville Murray, ‘signifies a species of

assembly very popular in Wallachia. If any family has some particular

work to do on any particular account, they invite the neighbourhood to

come and work for them. When the work is completed there is high glee,

singing and dancing, and story-telling.’—Doine; or, Songs and Legends

of Roumania (Lond. 1854), p. 109 n.

[41] In Wlislocki, p. 104 note, the devil has a duck’s foot. In F. A.

Steel’s Indian Wide-awake Stories, p. 54, the hero detects a ghost by

her feet being set on hind part before.

[42] On p. 110 Dr. Barbu Constantinescu gives a long and terrific

formula for bewitching with the evil eye.

[43] The notion of a dead girl turning into a flower is very common in

Indian folk-tales. Cf. Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 145, 149,

244, 247, 248, 252, etc.; and Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 6,

‘Little Surya Bai,’ pp. 79–93.

[44] Dá pes pe sherésti, lit. gave, or threw, herself on her head. In

Gypsy stories this undignified proceeding almost invariably precedes

every transformation. Cf. ‘The Red King and the Witch,’ ‘The Snake who

became the King’s Son-in-law,’ ‘Tropsyn,’ etc.

[45] For golden boy cf. Dr. Barbu Constantinescu’s own ‘The Golden

Children,’ No. 18, also Hahn, ii. 293. The two apples seem to be

birth-marks.

[46] For the bursting of monsters, cf. Dasent’s Tales from the Norse,

pp. 27, 240; and Ralston, p. 130.

[47] Our queen’s great-great-great-grandfather, George I., was a firm

believer in the vampire superstition (Horace Walpole’s Letters, vol. i.

p. cix.).

[48] Cf. Grimm, No. 56, ‘Sweetheart Roland,’ i. 226.

[49] i.e. Pretend to be ill. English Gypsies employ the same phrase

alike in Rómani and in English.

[50] Lit. ‘put himself.’

[51] See note on No. 6, ‘God’s Godson.’

[52] Baldpate makes the same remark in No. 2, p. 8, but the

conventional answer is wanting there.

[53] So I had written; but I have since read Maive Stokes’ story of

‘The Demon conquered by the King’s Son’ (Indian Fairy Tales, No. 24,

pp. 173 and 288). Here it is the demon step-mother, who, pretending her

eyes are bad, sends the hero to fetch tigress’s milk, an eagle’s

feather, night-growing rice and water from the Glittering Well. He

speaks, however, of her as his ‘mother.’ e.g. on p. 180. Compare ‘The

Son of Seven Mothers’ in F. A. Steel’s Indian Wide-awake Stories, pp.

98–110, and Knowles’ Folk-tales of Kashmir, pp. 1 and 42.

[54] There is obviously an omission, at this point, of a wager or

something of that sort.

[55] See note on No. 46.

[56] See footnote 2 on p. 16.

[57] Clearly Mr. Mayhew was no folklorist. The boy’s claim to have

invented the story is worth noting.

[58] The Roumanian-Gypsy word is Baht, which in one form or another

(bakht, bahi, bok, bachí, etc.) occurs in every Gypsy dialect—Turkish,

Russian, Scandinavian, German, English, Spanish, etc., and which Pott

derives from the Sanskrit (ii. 398–9). But the curious point is that in

Dozon’s Contes Albanais (1881), p. 60, we get ‘Va trouver ma Fortune,’

and a footnote explains, ‘Fortune, en turc bakht, espèce de génie

protecteur.’ Paspati, again, in his Turkish-Gypsy vocabulary (1870), p.

155, gives—‘Bakht, n.f. fortune, sort, hasard.... Les Grecs et les

Turcs se servent très souvent du même mot’; and Miklosich, too, cites

the Modern Greek μπάκτι (Ueber die Mundarten, vii. 14). The occurrence

of this Gypsy word as a loan-word in Modern Greek and Turkish is

suggestive of a profound influence of the Gypsies on the folklore of

the Balkan Peninsula. Bakht, fortune, is also good Persian.

[59] This is a little puzzling, but it must mean that all the speeches

seemingly by the princess were really made by the watchmaker—that he

maintained the dialogue.

[60] Lit. Greek.

[61] This is the first real remark on the part of the princess, who,

woman-like, cannot stand a stupid male remark about the price of a

dress.

[62] This change from the third to the second person is in the

original.

[63] What ‘pearly hay’ is I know not, but it stands so in the original.

[64] The last four words fairly beat me, but such seems their literal

meaning. In the Roumanian rendering, ‘le-a facut doue mere.’

[65] See footnote 2 on p. 16.

[66] The meaning of these three words is obscure. According to

Miklosich, they are a magic formula with which the boy summons the

empress from her grave behind the door. Or, perhaps, at this point the

boy shows his pearly teeth.

[67] Slov. Vah, Ger. Waag, a river of Northern Hungary.

[68] By rights this question should be put to the grand-parents.

[69] Zenele, a Roumanian loan-word, is rendered ‘zenæ’ in the Latin

translation; ‘böse weibliche Genien,’ ‘evil feminine spirits,’ in the

vocabulary.

[70] She says much worse in the original.

[71] This phrase occurs also in our No. 24, in a Wallachian story cited

by Hahn (ii. 312), and, if I mistake not, in Ralston, but I have

mislaid the exact reference. The Romani trúshul, cross, is from the

Sanskrit trisula, the trident of Siva.

[72] Bowdlerised.

[73] Cf. the very curious ‘Story of Lelha’ in Campbell’s Santal

Folk-tales, p. 80:—Boots, the youngest brother, presses his three

brothers ‘to attempt the removal of the stone, so they and others to

the number of fifty tried their strength, but the stone remained

immovable. Then Lelha said, “Stand by, and allow me to try.” So putting

to his hand, he easily removed it, and revealed the entrance to the

mansion of the Indarpuri Kuri.’

[74] Cf. Hahn, i. 140, lines 4–7.

[75] Anastasia.

[76] Ruthenian mountaineers of the Carpathians.

[77] With this episode of the horse compare that of the pony in ‘Brave

Seventee Bai’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 3, p. 30).

[78] That is, of course, the prince’s poor little blow had seemed to

her like a caress.

[79] Cf. footnote on p. 80.

[80] This, it seems, is the comrade’s name.

[81] A very Gypsy touch this, for the fiddlers of course would be

Gypsies, so the meanness of dispensing with their services would appeal

to the Gypsy mind.

[82] Observe, he had become a seer already.

[83] Lit. they raised him on the hands.

[84] See footnotes on p. 16.

[85] No use is made of these. Was the ship to be made of them?

[86] Hahn has the selfsame story up to this point, only not so well

told, ‘Von dem Schönen und vom Drakos’ (No. 3, i. 75–79, and ii.

178–86).

[87] As a kind of block evidently. I do not remember this elsewhere.

[88] It should be remembered that Austro-Hungarian Gypsies have all to

serve in the army.

[89] The text runs, ‘So he, the king’s son,’ etc., but this makes

nonsense.

[90] This inquiry as to the secret of the hero’s strength should by

rights be made, not by the emperor, but by a former lover.

[91] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33, 35.

[92] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33.

[93] This suggests that the cat and the princess really were one. Cf.

footnote on No. 46.

[94] Cf. footnote 2, p. 16.

[95] Cf. note on the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Brigands and the

Miller’s Daughter,’ No 47, p. 171.

[96] Urme.

[97] He threw the hat in the direction of the light, so that when he

had descended, and could no longer discern the light, he might know by

the hat in which direction to find it. So in Grimm, No. 111 (ii. 103).

[98] The idea may be far-fetched (literally), but this passage has a

very Oriental flavour. Cf. ‘A Simple Thief’ in Campbell’s Santal

Folk-tales, p. 126.—The thieves ‘went to a rich man’s house, and dug a

hole through the wall. They then said, “You creep in.”’

[99] The text for the next ten lines is very corrupt, like the

narrative. I have Bowdlerised much, and omitted a good deal more.

[100] This is wrong; and from this point onward there is some

confusion—the son, not the mother, seeming to become the narrator.

[101] Cf. Hahn, i. 186 and ii. 52.

[102] Now first mentioned. The whole story is confused.

[103] This answer presupposes the presence of at least three robbers.

[104] This method of killing the robbers is exactly the same as that

followed by the youth in the Moravian-Gypsy story of ‘The Princess and

the Forester’s Son’ (No. 43, p. 147). Cf. too, No. 8, ‘The Bad Mother,’

pp. 25, 30, where the lad kills eleven of twelve dragons, and Hahn,

vol. ii. p. 279.

[105] For cutting three red stripes out of back, cf. ‘Osborn’s Pipe’

(Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 3), which = the Welsh-Gypsy tale of

‘The Ten Rabbits’ (No. 64); also Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, ‘The

Seven Foals,’ p. 380. Cutting three strips out of the back occurs also

in a Russian story epitomised by Ralston, p. 145; and cutting a strip

of skin from head to foot in Campbell’s West Highland tale, No. 18 (cf.

supra, p. 124), which Reinhold Köhler connects with the pound of flesh

in the Merchant of Venice (Orient und Occident, 1864, pp. 313–316).

[106] Our story here has a curious resemblance with pp. 122–3 of ‘Le

Trimmatos ou l’Ogre aux Trois Yeux,’ a vampire story from Cyprus, in

Legrand’s Contes Grecs (1881). Query: Was ‘Mr. Fox’ originally a

vampire story?

[107] It is the general custom among pious people in Poland, on

entering a house, or when meeting one another, to give the greeting,

‘Jesus Christ be praised.’ To which the response is, ‘From age to age.’

[108] Albanian folk-tales open with a similar formula (Dozon’s Contes

Albanais, 1881, p. 1).

[109] The Gypsy word, rashani, originally means ‘priestess.’

[110] Cf. Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands, i. 61, and iv. 283;

and Dozon’s Contes Albanais, 27, note.

[111] It should by rights be a drake; still, the swan is suggestive of

‘swan-maidens.’ Nor does she strictly adhere to her self-prescribed

rules of metamorphosis.

[112] Apparel.

[113] So in the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Mother’s Chastisement,’

No. 9, p. 29. Cf. Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 245.

[114] God.

[115] Liege.

[116] Poverty = poor, possibly confused with paltry, is very common

among English Gypsies.

[117] Cf. footnote, p. 212.

[118] Cf. Noah Young’s name for elder, mi-duvel’s kandlo ruk (‘God’s

stinking tree’); some other Gypsies, including Isaac Herren, call it

wuzén. Oliver Lee’s name for ivy is chirikléskro ruk (‘bird’s tree’),

because it was the tree brought back by the dove into the ark, and this

is the reason that birds are fond of clustering round it. Holly is

mi-duveléskro ruk (‘God’s tree’; cf. Cornish Aunt Mary’s Tree); and

Gypsies pitching their tent against a holly-bush are under divine

protection.—J. S.

[119] ‘As cunning as a bushel o’ monkeys’ is a favourite figure of a

Gypsy friend of mine.

[120] Cf. also Hahn, Nos. 22, 70, 98, and i. 308.

[121] Cf. footnote on p. 118. John Roberts also was an old soldier.

[122] Much the same phrase recurs in ‘An Old King and his three Sons in

England’ (No. 55), and in ‘Ashypelt’ (No. 57). Cf. also Goldsmith’s

Vicar of Wakefield chapter xiii.:—‘They now travelled far, and farther

than I can tell, till they met with a company of robbers.’

[123] Cf. notes on ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land,’ No. 62.

[124] Gypsies have different kinds of whistles, one peculiar to each

family, by which they can recognise one another at a distance or in the

dark.

[125] Dordi = ‘look-ye,’ a common Gypsy exclamation.

[126] Valentine and Oliver are both Welsh-Gypsy Christian names.

[127] See footnote on p. 212.

[128] This point is lost, of course, in my English rendering of the

Rómani portions of this story. In the original MS. the youngest brother

uses the broken dialect put by John Roberts in the mouths of all

English Gypsies, while the two others speak in the very deepest Rómani.

[129] The Jacobite engraver, Sir Robert Strange, thus tethered his

horse on the eve of Culloden (Life, i. 59).

[130] Presumably the royal arms of England would be engraved on his

watch, and his princely initials embroidered on his

pocket-handkerchief.

[131] In another Welsh-Gypsy story, ‘Jack the Robber,’ summarised on

pp. 48–9, the master says, ‘If you can’t do that, Jack, I’ll be behead

you.’

[132] That story is of very wide and seemingly recent dispersion. It

occurs in Norway (‘The Three Lemons,’ Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p.

158); Sicily (‘Die Schöne mit den sieben Schleiern,’ Laura Gonzenbach,

No. 13, i. 73, which offers striking analogies to ‘An Old King’ and

‘The Accursed Garden’); Zacynthus (‘Die drei Citronen,’ Bernhard

Schmidt, No. 5, p. 71), etc.; also in India (‘The Bel Princess,’ Maive

Stokes, No. 21, p. 138).

[133] See note on p. 212.

[134] The next eight Welsh-Gypsy stories were told, like the last, in

Rómani, by Matthew Wood to Mr. Sampson; and the English summaries of

them given here are by Mr. Sampson.

[135] I am reminded of Poly Mace, the champion’s cousin. He was camping

at Golden Acre near Granton, and told me one Sunday that he knew a

sea-captain who had a familiar: would I care to see it? Of course I

would; had he seen it? what was it like, then? ‘Well, it’s a very

curious kind of a little, wee, teeny dragon, that is, Mr. Groome;

changes colour, it does, according to where you puts it.’ I found Poly

meant a chameleon.

[136] I Shuvali Râni is the Rómani title of this story.

[137] The first half of this story, which, like the next, was told to

Mr. Sampson in English by Cornelius Price, is here omitted, having been

already summarised on pp. 48–9.

[138] Montford Bridge, over the Severn, near Shrewsbury.

[139] Valiant.

[140] A corruption probably of ‘Welcome.’

[141] A passage in ‘The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome

Island’ (Curtin’s Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland, p. 98) offers a

curious parallel:—‘They fought an awful battle that day from sunrise to

sunset. They made soft places hard, and hard places soft; they made

high places low, and low places high; they brought water out of the

centre of hard grey rocks, and made dry rushes soft in the most distant

parts of Erin till sunset.’

[142] Of course, £1 notes in Scotland.

[143] In the Welsh-Gypsy story Ashypelt gets no whisky, also no Bible.

[144] Haversack.

[145] Went home.

[146] ‘This word,’ says Campbell, ‘I have never met before.’

[147] A sock, a brogue of untanned leather or skin, commonly worn with

the hairy side outward; Lat. cothurnus, Welsh cwaran, French

cothurne.—J. F. C.

[148] ‘Bolg seididh, bag of blowing. The bellows used for melting

copper in the mint at Tangier in 1841 consisted of two sheepskins

worked by two men. The neck of the hide was fastened to the end of an

iron tube, and the legs sewed up. The end of each bag opened with two

flat sticks; and the workmen, by a skilful action of the hand, filled

the bag with air as they raised it, and then squeezed it out by

pressing downwards. By working the two bags turn-about, a constant

steady blast was kept on a crucible in the furnace, and the copper was

soon melted. The Gaelic word clearly points to the use of some such

apparatus. I believe something of the kind is used in India; but I saw

the Tangier mint at work.’—J. F. C.

Were Mr. Campbell still living I would call his attention to ‘something

of the kind’ much nearer home than India or Tangiers, viz. the

Scottish-Gypsy method of smelting iron in a furnace of stone, turf, and

clay, three feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter: ‘the

materials in the furnace are powerfully heated by the blasts of a large

hand-bellows, generally wrought by females, admitted at a small hole a

little from the ground’ (Walter Simson’s History of the Gipsies, 1865,

p. 234). In the Gypsy Lore Journal for January 1892, pp. 134–142, is an

article by Henri van Elven on ‘The Gypsies of Belgium,’ with excellent

illustrations of a Hungarian-Gypsy furnace and bellows, corresponding

to Simson’s description. And there are also illustrations and minute

descriptions of the Gypsy furnace and bellows in Kopernicki’s masterly

monograph on ‘Les Zlotars ou Dzvonkars, Tsiganes fondeurs en bronze

dans la Galicie Orientale et la Bukovine,’ communicated by Bataillard

to the Société d’Anthropologie (Paris, 1878). From a footnote here on

p. 519 we learn that ‘the Calderari often use two of these bellows at

once, making them work turn-about to right and to left, so as to

produce a constant blast.’ One is tempted to conclude that the mint at

Tangiers in 1841 was worked by Gypsies, that here we get an explanation

of those mysterious visits of the Hungarian Calderari to Northern

Africa, referred to in the Introduction. It sounds surprising, but Mr.

Campbell, I doubt not, would have been quite as surprised to learn that

the church bell of Edzell in Forfarshire was cast in the woods by

Gypsies in 1726; that about 1740 the Border Gypsies practised engraving

on pewter, lead, and copper, as well as rude drawing and painting; that

about the beginning of this century the Gypsies had a small foundry

near St. Andrews, which the country-folk called ‘Little Carron’; that

Killin in 1748 had its tinker silversmith, whose secret of enamel

inlaying died with him; or that the silver Celtic Lochbuy Brooch, a

pound in weight, was made by a Mull tinker ‘in the reign of Queen

Elizabeth, about the year 1600’ (Strand Magazine, January 1897, p.

115). I myself have sat and watched a Gypsy lad, a Boswell, fashion a

pretty silver finger-ring out of a shilling I had given him, and have

thought of the hoard of a travelling silversmith which in 1858 was

unearthed on Skaill Links in Orkney. It comprised brooches, neck-rings,

arm-rings, silver ingots, and Cufic coins, struck at Bagdad between 887

and 945. ‘It seems most unlikely,’ says Mr. Lang, ‘that tales which

originated in India could have reached the Hebrides within the historic

period.’ Perhaps; but where coins could come, so surely also could

folk-tales.—A desperate footnote this, but nothing to what has some day

to be written on the subject of Gypsy metallurgy.

[149] I have furnished a name to this nameless story, a long one, which

Campbell got from ‘Old MacDonald, travelling tinker.’ Else I give it

just as he gives it.

[150] Turvey, a parish near Elstow, was a Gypsy abode long after

Bunyan’s day; at it, in 1822–25, Legh Richmond buried two Gypsies—James

Smith, and his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Robinson, both of the reputed

age of 105. Robinson was a surname of descendants of Bunyan.

[151] There are those to whom the notion will seem monstrous that the

author of The Pilgrim’s Progress should have been ‘a gipsy!’ I would

remind such that at the present day there is Mr. George Smith, the

Converted Gypsy, of the Potteries, who conducts missions in Edinburgh

and other large cities. I have never heard him myself, but I am assured

by a competent judge that he is a really eloquent preacher. Then there

was William Mitchel (1672–1740), the Edinburgh ‘Tinklarian Doctor,’

author of a score of prophetical pamphlets. There was Thomas Wright,

the tinker Berean of Barnsley, who baptized Ebenezer Elliott in 1781.

And there was the founder of the American Shakers, ‘Mother’ Ann Lee

(1736–86), a Manchester blacksmith’s illiterate daughter, who married

in 1762 the blacksmith Abraham Stanley. The conjunction of the surnames

Lee and Stanley, of the smith’s craft, and of the illiteracy, renders

it almost certain in my mind that these were Gypsies.