Transcribed from the 1874 Trubner & Co. edition by David Price, email
ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
THE ENGLISH GIPSIES AND THEIR LANGUAGE
By Charles G. Leland
Author of "Hans Breitmann's Ballads," "The Music Lesson of Confucius,"
Etc. Etc.
Second Edition
LONDON
TRUBNER & CO., 57 & 59 LUDGATE HILL
1874
[_All rights reserved_]
PREFACE.
As Author of this book, I beg leave to observe that all which is stated
in it relative to the customs or peculiarities of Gipsies _was gathered
directly from Gipsies themselves_; and that every word of their language
here given, whether in conversations, stories, or sayings, was taken from
Gipsy mouths. While entertaining the highest respect for the labours of
Mr George Borrow in this field, I have carefully avoided repeating him in
the least detail; neither have I taken anything from Simson, Hoyland, or
any other writer on the Rommany race in England. Whatever the demerits
of the work may be, it can at least claim to be an original collection of
material fresh from nature, and not a reproduction from books. There
are, it is true, two German Gipsy letters from other works, but these may
be excused as illustrative of an English one.
I may here in all sincerity speak kindly and gratefully of every true
Gipsy I have ever met, and of the cheerfulness with which they have
invariably assisted me in my labour to the extent of their humble
abilities. Other writers have had much to say of their incredible
distrust of _Gorgios_ and unwillingness to impart their language, but I
have always found them obliging and communicative. I have never had
occasion to complain of rapacity or greediness among them; on the
contrary, I have often wondered to see how the great want of such very
poor people was generally kept in check by their natural politeness,
which always manifests itself when they are treated properly. In fact,
the first effort which I ever made to acquire a knowledge of English
Rommany originated in a voluntary offer from an intelligent old dame to
teach me "the old Egyptian language." And as she also suggested that I
should set forth the knowledge which I might acquire from her and her
relatives in a book (referring to Mr Borrow's having done so), I may hold
myself fully acquitted from the charge of having acquired and published
anything which my Gipsy friends would not have had made known to the
public.
Mr Borrow has very well and truly said that it is not by passing a few
hours among Gipsies that one can acquire a knowledge of their
characteristics; and I think that this book presents abundant evidence
that its contents were not gathered by slight and superficial intercourse
with the Rommany. It is only by entering gradually and sympathetically,
without any parade of patronage, into a familiar knowledge of the
circumstances of the common life of humble people, be they Gipsies,
Indians, or whites, that one can surprise unawares those little inner
traits which constitute the _characteristic_. However this may be, the
reader will readily enough understand, on perusing these pages--possibly
much better than I do myself--how it was I was able to collect whatever
they contain that is new.
The book contains some remarks on that great curious centre and secret of
all the nomadic and vagabond life in England, THE ROMMANY, with comments
on the fact, that of the many novel or story-writers who have described
the "Travellers" of the Roads, very few have penetrated the real nature
of their life. It gives several incidents illustrating the character of
the Gipsy, and some information of a very curious nature in reference to
the respect of the English Gipsies for their dead, and the strange manner
in which they testify it. I believe that this will be found to be fully
and distinctly illustrated by anecdotes and a narrative in the original
Gipsy language, with a translation. There is also a chapter containing
in Rommany and English a very characteristic letter from a full-blood
Gipsy to a relative, which was dictated to me, and which gives a sketch
of the leading incidents of Gipsy life--trading in horses,
fortune-telling, and cock-shying. I have also given accounts of
conversations with Gipsies, introducing in their language and in English
their own remarks (noted down by me) on certain curious customs; among
others, on one which indicates that many of them profess among themselves
a certain regard for our Saviour, because His birth and life appear to
them to be like that of the Rommany. There is a collection of a number
of words now current in vulgar English which were probably derived from
Gipsy, such as row, shindy, pal, trash, bosh, and niggling, and finally a
number of _Gudli_ or short stories. These _Gudli_ have been regarded by
my literary friends as interesting and curious, since they are nearly all
specimens of a form of original narrative occupying a middle ground
between the anecdote and fable, and abounding in Gipsy traits. Some of
them are given word for word as they are current among Gipsies, and
others owe their existence almost entirely either to the vivid
imagination and childlike fancies of an old Gipsy assistant, or were
developed from some hint or imperfect saying or story. But all are
thoroughly and truly Rommany; for every one, after being brought into
shape, passed through a purely "unsophisticated" Gipsy mind, and was
finally declared to be _tacho_, or sound, by real Rommanis. The truth
is, that it is a difficult matter to hear a story among English Gipsies
which is not mangled or marred in the telling; so that to print it,
restitution and invention become inevitable. But with a man who lived in
a tent among the gorse and fern, and who intermitted his earnest
conversation with a little wooden bear to point out to me the gentleman
on horseback riding over the two beautiful little girls in the flowers on
the carpet, such fables as I have given sprang up of themselves, owing
nothing to books, though they often required the influence of a better
disciplined mind to guide them to a consistent termination.
The Rommany English Vocabulary which I propose shall follow this work is
many times over more extensive than any ever before published, and it
will also be found interesting to all philologists by its establishing
the very curious fact that this last wave of the primitive Aryan-Indian
ocean which spread over Europe, though it has lost the original form in
its subsidence and degradation, consists of the same substance--or, in
other words, that although the grammar has wellnigh disappeared, the
words are almost without exception the same as those used in India,
Germany, Hungary, or Turkey. It is generally believed that English Gipsy
is a mere jargon of the cant and slang of all nations, that of England
predominating; but a very slight examination of the Vocabulary will show
that during more than three hundred years in England the Rommany have not
admitted a single English word to what they correctly call their
language. I mean, of course, so far as my own knowledge of Rommany
extends. To this at least I can testify, that the Gipsy to whom I was
principally indebted for words, though he often used "slang," invariably
discriminated correctly between it and Rommany; and I have often admired
the extraordinary pride in their language which has induced the Gipsies
for so many generations to teach their children this difference. {0a}
Almost every word which my assistant declared to be Gipsy I have found
either in Hindustani or in the works of Pott, Liebich, or Paspati. On
this subject I would remark by the way, that many words which appear to
have been taken by the Gipsies from modern languages are in reality
Indian.
And as I have honestly done what I could to give the English reader fresh
material on the Gipsies, and not a rewarming of that which was gathered
by others, I sincerely trust that I may not be held to sharp account (as
the authors of such books very often are) for not having given more or
done more or done it better than was really in my power. Gipsies in
England are passing away as rapidly as Indians in North America. They
keep among themselves the most singular fragments of their Oriental
origin; they abound in quaint characteristics, and yet almost nothing is
done to preserve what another generation will deeply regret the loss of.
There are complete dictionaries of the Dacotah and many other American
Indian languages, and every detail of the rude life of those savages has
been carefully recorded; while the autobiographic romances of Mr Borrow
and Mr Simson's History contain nearly all the information of any value
extant relative to the English Gipsies. Yet of these two writers, Mr
Borrow is the only one who had, so to speak, an inside view of his
subject, or was a philologist.
In conclusion I would remark, that if I have not, like many writers on
the poor Gipsies, abused them for certain proverbial faults, it has been
because they never troubled me with anything very serious of the kind, or
brought it to my notice; and I certainly never took the pains to hunt it
up to the discredit of people who always behaved decently to me. I have
found them more cheerful, polite, and grateful than the lower orders of
other races in Europe or America; and I believe that where their respect
and sympathy are secured, they are quite as upright. Like all people who
are regarded as outcasts, they are very proud of being trusted, and under
this influence will commit the most daring acts of honesty. And with
this I commend my book to the public. Should it be favourably received,
I will add fresh reading to it; in any case I shall at least have the
satisfaction of knowing that I did my best to collect material
illustrating a very curious and greatly-neglected subject. It is merely
as a collection of material that I offer it; let those who can use it, do
what they will with it.
If I have not given in this book a sketch of the history of the Gipsies,
or statistics of their numbers, or accounts of their social condition in
different countries, it is because nearly everything of the kind may be
found in the works of George Borrow and Walter Simson, which are in all
respectable libraries, and may be obtained from any bookseller.
I would remark to any impatient reader for mere entertainment, who may
find fault with the abundance of Rommany or Gipsy language in the
following pages, that _the principal object of the Author was to collect
and preserve such specimens of a rapidly-vanishing language_, and that
the title-page itself indirectly indicates such an object. I have,
however, invariably given with the Gipsy a translation immediately
following the text in plain English--at times very plain--in order that
the literal meaning of words may be readily apprehended. I call especial
attention to this fact, so that no one may accuse me of encumbering my
pages with Rommany.
While writing this book, or in fact after the whole of the first part was
written, I passed a winter in Egypt; and as that country is still
supposed by many people to be the fatherland of the Gipsies, and as very
little is known relative to the Rommany there, I have taken the liberty
of communicating what I could learn on the subject, though it does not
refer directly to the Gipsies of England. Those who are interested in
the latter will readily pardon the addition.
There are now in existence about three hundred works on the Gipsies, but
of the entire number comparatively few contain fresh material gathered
from the Rommany themselves. Of late years the first philologists of
Europe have taken a great interest in their language, which is now
included in "Die Sprachen Europas" as the only Indian tongue spoken in
this quarter of the world; and I believe that English Gipsy is really the
only strongly-distinct Rommany dialect which has never as yet been
illustrated by copious specimens or a vocabulary of any extent. I
therefore trust that the critical reader will make due allowances for the
very great difficulties under which I have laboured, and not blame me for
not having done better that which, so far as I can ascertain, would
possibly not have been done at all. Within the memory of man the popular
Rommany of this country was really grammatical; that which is now spoken,
and from which I gathered the material for the following pages, is, as
the reader will observe, almost entirely English as to its structure,
although it still abounds in Hindu words to a far greater extent than has
been hitherto supposed.
CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY.
The Rommany of the Roads.--The Secret of Vagabond Life in England.--Its
peculiar and thoroughly hidden Nature.--Gipsy Character and the Causes
which formed it.--Moral Results of hungry Marauding.--Gipsy ideas of
Religion. The Scripture story of the Seven Whistlers.--The Baker's
Daughter.--Difficulties of acquiring Rommany.--The Fable of the Cat.--The
Chinese, the American Indian, and the Wandering Gipsy.
Although the valuable and curious works of Mr George Borrow have been in
part for more than twenty years before the British public, {1} it may
still be doubted whether many, even of our scholars, are aware of the
remarkable, social, and philological facts which are connected with an
immense proportion of our out-of-door population. There are, indeed,
very few people who know, that every time we look from the window into a
crowded street, the chances are greatly in favour of the assertion, that
we shall see at least one man who bears in his memory some hundreds of
Sanscrit roots, and that man English born; though it was probably in the
open air, and English bred, albeit his breeding was of the roads.
For go where you will, though you may not know it, you encounter at every
step, in one form or the other, _the Rommany_. True, the dwellers in
tents are becoming few and far between, because the "close cultivation"
of the present generation, which has enclosed nearly all the waste land
in England, has left no spot in many a day's journey, where "the
travellers," as they call themselves, can light the fire and boil the
kettle undisturbed. There is almost "no tan to hatch," or place to stay
in. So it has come to pass, that those among them who cannot settle down
like unto the Gentiles, have gone across the Great Water to America,
which is their true Canaan, where they flourish mightily, the more
enterprising making a good thing of it, by _prastering graias_ or
"running horses," or trading in them, while the idler or more moral ones,
pick up their living as easily as a mouse in a cheese, on the endless
roads and in the forests. And so many of them have gone there, that I am
sure the child is now born, to whom the sight of a real old-fashioned
gipsy will be as rare in England as a Sioux or Pawnee warrior in the
streets of New York or Philadelphia. But there is a modified and yet
real Rommany-dom, which lives and will live with great vigour, so long as
a regularly organised nomadic class exists on our roads--and it is the
true nature and inner life of this class which has remained for ages, an
impenetrable mystery to the world at large. A member of it may be a
tramp and a beggar, the proprietor of some valuable travelling show, a
horse-dealer, or a tinker. He may be eloquent, as a Cheap Jack, noisy as
a Punch, or musical with a fiddle at fairs. He may "peddle" pottery,
make and sell skewers and clothes-pegs, or vend baskets in a caravan; he
may keep cock-shys and Aunt Sallys at races. But whatever he may be,
depend upon it, reader, that among those who follow these and similar
callings which he represents, are literally many thousands who,
unsuspected by the _Gorgios_, are known to one another, and who still
speak among themselves, more or less, that curious old tongue which the
researches of the greatest living philologists have indicated, is in all
probability not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point of age,
an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.
For THE ROMMANY is the characteristic leaven of all the real tramp life
and nomadic callings of Great Britain. And by this word I mean not the
language alone, which is regarded, however, as a test of superior
knowledge of "the roads," but a curious _inner life_ and freemasonry of
secret intelligence, ties of blood and information, useful to a class who
have much in common with one another, and very little in common with the
settled tradesman or worthy citizen. The hawker whom you meet, and whose
blue eyes and light hair indicate no trace of Oriental blood, may not be
a _churdo_, or _pash-ratt_, or half-blood, or _half-scrag_, as a full
Gipsy might contemptuously term him, but he may be, of his kind, a
quadroon or octoroon, or he may have "gipsified," by marrying a Gipsy
wife; and by the way be it said, such women make by far the best wives to
be found among English itinerants, and the best suited for "a traveller."
But in any case he has taken pains to pick up all the Gipsy he can. If
he is a tinker, he knows _Kennick_, or cant, or thieves' slang by nature,
but the Rommany, which has very few words in common with the former, is
the true language of the mysteries; in fact, it has with him become,
strangely enough, what it was originally, a sort of sacred Sanscrit,
known only to the Brahmins of the roads, compared to which the other
language is only commonplace _Prakrit_, which anybody may acquire.
He is proud of his knowledge, he makes of it a deep mystery; and if you,
a gentleman, ask him about it, he will probably deny that he ever heard
of its existence. Should he be very thirsty, and your manners frank and
assuring, it is, however, not impossible that after draining a pot of
beer at your expense, he may recall, with a grin, the fact that he _has_
heard that the Gipsies have a queer kind of language of their own; and
then, if you have any Rommany yourself at command, he will perhaps
_rakker Rommanis_ with greater or less fluency. Mr Simeon, in his
"History of the Gipsies," asserts that there is not a tinker or scissors-
grinder in Great Britain who cannot talk this language, and my own
experience agrees with his declaration, to this extent--that they all
have some knowledge of it, or claim to have it, however slight it may be.
So rare is a knowledge of Rommany among those who are not connected in
some way with Gipsies, that the slightest indication of it is invariably
taken as an irrefutable proof of relationship with them. It is but a few
weeks since, as I was walking along the Marine Parade in Brighton, I
overtook a tinker. Wishing him to sharpen some tools for me, I directed
him to proceed to my home, and _en route_ spoke to him in Gipsy. As he
was quite fair in complexion, I casually remarked, "I should have never
supposed you could speak Rommany--you don't look like it." To which he
replied, very gravely, in a tone as of gentle reproach, "You don't look a
Gipsy yourself, sir; but you know you _are_ one--_you talk like one_."
Truly, the secret of the Rommany has been well kept in England. It seems
so to me when I reflect that, with the exception of Lavengro and the
Rommany Rye, {5} I cannot recall a single novel, in our language, in
which the writer has shown familiarity with the _real_ life, habits, or
language of the vast majority of that very large class, the itinerants of
the roads. Mr Dickens has set before us Cheap Jacks, and a number of men
who were, in their very face, of the class of which I speak; but I cannot
recall in his writings any indication that he knew that these men had a
singular secret life with their _confreres_, or that they could speak a
strange language; for we may well call that language strange which is, in
the main, Sanscrit, with many Persian words intermingled. Mr Dickens,
however, did not pretend, as some have done, to specially treat of
Gipsies, and he made no affectation of a knowledge of any mysteries. He
simply reflected popular life as he saw it. But there are many novels
and tales, old and new, devoted to setting forth Rommany life and
conversation, which are as much like the originals as a Pastor Fido is
like a common shepherd. One novel which I once read, is so full of "the
dark blood," that it might almost be called a gipsy novel. The hero is a
gipsy; he lives among his kind--the book is full of them; and yet, with
all due respect to its author, who is one of the most gifted and best-
informed romance writers of the century, I must declare that, from
beginning to end, there is not in the novel the slightest indication of
any real and familiar knowledge of gipsies. Again, to put thieves' slang
into the mouths of gipsies, as their natural and habitual language, has
been so much the custom, from Sir Walter Scott to the present day, that
readers are sometimes gravely assured in good faith that this jargon is
pure Rommany. But this is an old error in England, since the vocabulary
of cant appended to the "English Rogue," published in 1680, was long
believed to be Gipsy; and Captain Grose, the antiquary, who should have
known better, speaks with the same ignorance.
It is, indeed, strange to see learned and shrewd writers, who pride
themselves on truthfully depicting every element of European life, and
every type of every society, so ignorant of the habits, manners, and
language of thousands of really strange people who swarm on the highways
and bye-ways! We have had the squire and the governess, my lord and all
Bohemia--Bohemia, artistic and literary--but where are our _Vrais
Bohemiens_?--Out of Lavengro and Rommany Rye--nowhere. Yet there is to
be found among the children of Rom, or the descendants of the worshippers
of Rama, or the Doms or Coptic Romi, whatever their ancestors may have
been, more that is quaint and adapted to the purposes of the novelist,
than is to be found in any other class of the inhabitants of England. You
may not detect a trace of it on the roads; but once become truly
acquainted with a fair average specimen of a Gipsy, pass many days in
conversation with him, and above all acquire his confidence and respect,
and you will wonder that such a being, so entirely different from
yourself, could exist in Europe in the nineteenth century. It is said
that those who can converse with Irish peasants in their own native
tongue, form far higher opinions of their appreciation of the beautiful,
and of the elements of humour and pathos in their hearts, than do those
who know their thoughts only through the medium of English. I know from
my own observation that this is quite the case with the Indians of North
America, and it is unquestionably so with the Gipsy. When you know a
true specimen to the depths of his soul, you will find a character so
entirely strange, so utterly at variance with your ordinary conceptions
of humanity, that it is no exaggeration whatever to declare that it would
be a very difficult task for the best writer to convey to the most
intelligent reader an idea of his subject's nature. You have in him, to
begin with, a being whose every condition of life is in direct
contradiction to what you suppose every man's life in England must be. "I
was born in the open air," said a Gipsy to me a few days since; "and put
me down anywhere, in the fields or woods, I can always support myself."
Understand me, he did not mean by pilfering, since it was of America that
we were speaking, and of living in the lonely forests. We pity with
tears many of the poor among us, whose life is one of luxury compared to
that which the Gipsy, who despises them, enjoys with a zest worth more
than riches.
"What a country America must be," quoth Pirengro, the Walker, to me, on
the occasion just referred to. "Why, my pal, who's just welled apopli
from dovo tem--(my brother, who has just returned from that country),
tells me that when a cow or anything dies there, they just chuck it away,
and nobody ask a word for any of it." "What would _you_ do," he
continued, "if you were in the fields and had nothing to eat?"
I replied, "that if any could be found, I should hunt for fern-roots."
"I could do better than that," he said. "I should hunt for a
_hotchewitchi_,--a hedge-hog,--and I should be sure to find one; there's
no better eating."
Whereupon assuming his left hand to be an imaginary hedge-hog, he
proceeded to score and turn and dress it for ideal cooking with a case-
knife.
"And what had you for dinner to-day?" I inquired.
"Some cocks' heads. They're very fine--very fine indeed!"
Now it is curious but true that there is no person in the world more
particular as to what he eats than the half-starved English or Irish
peasant, whose sufferings have so often been set forth for our
condolence. We may be equally foolish, you and I--in fact chemistry
proves it--when we are disgusted at the idea of feeding on many things
which mere association and superstition render revolting. But the old
fashioned gipsy has none of these qualms--he is haunted by no ghost of
society--save the policeman, he knows none of its terrors. Whatever is
edible he eats, except horse-meat; wherever there is an empty spot he
sleeps; and the man who can do this devoid of shame, without caring a pin
for what the world says--nay, without even knowing that he does not care,
or that he is peculiar--is independent to a degree which of itself
confers a character which is not easy to understand.
I grew up as a young man with great contempt for Helvetius, D'Holbach,
and all the French philosophers of the last century, whose ideal man was
a perfect savage; but I must confess that since I have studied gipsy
nature, my contempt has changed into wonder where they ever learned in
their _salons_ and libraries enough of humanity to theorise so boldly,
and with such likeness to truth, as they did. It is not merely in the
absolute out-of-doors independence of the old-fashioned Gipsy, freer than
any wild beast from care for food, that his resemblance to a
"philosopher" consists, or rather to the ideal man, free from imaginary
cares. For more than this, be it for good or for evil, the real Gipsy
has, unlike all other men, unlike the lowest savage, positively no
religion, no tie to a spiritual world, no fear of a future, nothing but a
few trifling superstitions and legends, which in themselves indicate no
faith whatever in anything deeply seated. It would be difficult, I
think, for any highly civilised man, who had not studied Thought deeply,
and in a liberal spirit, to approach in the least to a rational
comprehension of a real Gipsy mind. During my life it has been my
fortune to become intimate with men who were "absolutely" or "positively"
free-thinkers--men who had, by long study and mere logic, completely
freed themselves from any mental tie whatever. Such men are rare; it
requires an enormous amount of intellectual culture, an unlimited
expenditure of pains in the metaphysical hot-bed, and tremendous self-
confidence to produce them--I mean "the real article." Among the most
thorough of these, a man on whom utter and entire freedom of thought sat
easily and unconsciously, was a certain German doctor of philosophy named
P---. To him God and all things were simply ideas of development. The
last remark which I can recall from him was "_Ja, ja_. We advanced
Hegelians agree exactly on the whole with the Materialists." Now, to my
mind, nothing seems more natural than that, when sitting entire days
talking with an old Gipsy, no one rises so frequently from the past
before me as Mr P---. To him all religion represented a portion of the
vast mass of frozen, petrified developments, which simply impede the
march of intelligent minds; to my Rommany friend, it is one of the
thousand inventions of _gorgio_ life, which, like policemen, are simply
obstacles to Gipsies in the search of a living, and could he have grasped
the circumstances of the case, he would doubtless have replied "_Avali_,
we Gipsies agree on the whole exactly with Mr P---." Extremes meet.
One Sunday an old Gipsy was assuring me, with a great appearance of
piety, that on that day she neither told fortunes nor worked at any kind
of labour--in fact, she kept it altogether correctly.
"_Avali_, _dye_," I replied. "Do you know what the Gipsies in Germany
say became of their church?"
"_Kek_," answered the old lady. "No. What is it?"
"They say that the Gipsies' church was made of pork, and the dogs ate
it."
Long, loud, and joyously affirmative was the peal of laughter with which
the Gipsies welcomed this characteristic story.
So far as research and the analogy of living tribes of the same race can
establish a fact, it would seem that the Gipsies were, previous to their
quitting India, not people of high caste, but wandering Pariahs,
outcasts, foes to the Brahmins, and unbelievers. All the Pariahs are not
free-thinkers, but in India, the Church, as in Italy, loses no time in
making of all detected free-thinkers Pariahs. Thus we are told, in the
introduction to the English translation of that very curious book, "The
Tales of the Gooroo Simple," which should be read by every scholar, that
all the true literature of the country--that which has life, and freedom,
and humour--comes from the Pariahs. And was it different in those days,
when Rabelais, and Von Hutten, and Giordano Bruno were, in their wise,
Pariahs and Gipsies, roving from city to city, often wanting bread and
dreading fire, but asking for nothing but freedom?
The more I have conversed intimately with Gipsies, the more have I been
struck by the fact, that my mingled experiences of European education and
of life in the Far West of America have given me a basis of mutual
intelligence which had otherwise been utterly wanting. I, myself, have
known in a wild country what it is to be half-starved for many days--to
feel that all my thoughts and intellectual exertions, hour by hour, were
all becoming centered on one subject--how to get something to eat. I
felt what it was to be wolfish and even ravening; and I noted, step by
step, in myself, how a strange sagacity grew within me--an art of
detecting food. It was during the American war, and there were thousands
of us pitifully starved. When we came near some log hut I began at once
to surmise, if I saw a flour sack lying about, that there was a mill not
far distant; perhaps flour or bread in the house; while the dwellers in
the hut were closely scanned to judge from their appearance if they were
well fed, and of a charitable disposition. It is a melancholy thing to
recall; but it is absolutely necessary for a thinker to have once lived
such a life, that he may be able to understand what is the intellectual
status of those fellow beings whose whole life is simply a hunt for
enough food to sustain life, and enough beer to cheer it.
I have spoken of the Gipsy fondness for the hedgehog. Richard Liebich,
in his book, _Die Zigeuner in ihrem Wesen und in ihrer Sprache_, tells
his readers that the only indication of a belief in a future state which
he ever detected in an old Gipsy woman, was that she once dreamed she was
in heaven. It appeared to her as a large garden, full of fine fat
hedgehogs. "This is," says Mr Liebich, "unquestionably very earthly, and
dreamed very sensuously; reminding us of Mahommed's paradise, which in
like manner was directed to the animal and not to the spiritual nature,
only that here were hedgehogs and there houris."
Six or seven thousand years of hungry-marauding, end by establishing
strange points of difference between the mind of a Gipsy and a well-to-do
citizen. It has starved God out of the former; he inherited unbelief
from his half fed Pariah ancestors, and often retains it, even in
England, to this day, with many other unmistakable signs of his Eastern-
jackal origin. And strange as it may seem to you, reader, his
intercourse with Christians has all over Europe been so limited, that he
seldom really knows what religion is. The same Mr Liebich tells us that
one day he overheard a Gipsy disputing with his wife as to what was the
true character of the belief of the Gentiles. Both admitted that there
was a great elder grown up God (the _baro puro dewel_), and a smaller
younger God (the _tikno tarno dewel_). But the wife maintained,
appealing to Mr Liebich for confirmation, that the great God no longer
reigned, having abdicated in favour of the Son, while the husband
declared that the Great older God died long ago, and that the world was
now governed by the little God who was, however, not the son of his
predecessor, but of a poor carpenter.
I have never heard of any such nonsense among the English wandering
Gipsies with regard to Christianity, but at the same time I must admit
that their ideas of what the Bible contains are extremely vague. One day
I was sitting with an old Gipsy, discussing Rommany matters, when he
suddenly asked me what the word was in the _waver temmeny jib_, or
foreign Gipsy, for The Seven Stars.
"That would be," I said, "the _Efta Sirnie_. I suppose your name for it
is the Hefta Pens. There is a story that once they were seven sisters,
but one of them was lost, and so they are called seven to this day--though
there are only six. And their right name is the Pleiades."
"That _gudlo_--that story," replied the gipsy, "is like the one of the
Seven Whistlers, which you know is in the Scriptures."
"What!"
"At least they told me so; that the Seven Whistlers are seven spirits of
ladies who fly by night, high in the air, like birds. And it says in the
Bible that once on a time one got lost, and never came back again, and
now the six whistles to find her. But people calls 'em the Seven
Whistlers--though there are only six--exactly the same as in your story
of the stars."
"It's queer," resumed my Gipsy, after a pause, "how they always tells
these here stories by Sevens. Were you ever on Salisbury Plain?"
"No!"
"There are great stones there--_bori bars_--and many a night I've slept
there in the moonlight, in the open air, when I was a boy, and listened
to my father tellin' me about the Baker. For there's seven great
stories, and they say that hundreds of years ago a baker used to come
with loaves of bread, and waste it all a tryin' to make seven loaves
remain at the same place, one on each stone. But one all'us fell off,
and to this here day he's never yet been able to get all seven on the
seven stones."
I think that my Gipsy told this story in connection with that of the
Whistlers, because he was under the impression that it also was of
Scriptural origin. It is, however, really curious that the Gipsy term
for an owlet is the _Maromengro's Chavi_, or Baker's Daughter, and that
they are all familiar with the monkish legend which declares that Jesus,
in a baker's shop, once asked for bread. The mistress was about to give
him a large cake, when her daughter declared it was too much, and
diminished the gift by one half.
"He nothing said,
But by the fire laid down the bread,
When lo, as when a blossom blows--
To a vast loaf the manchet rose;
In angry wonder, standing by,
The girl sent forth a wild, rude cry,
And, feathering fast into a fowl,
Flew to the woods a wailing owl."
According to Eilert Sundt, who devoted his life to studying the _Fanten
and Tataren_, or vagabonds and Gipsies of Sweden and Norway, there is a
horrible and ghastly semblance among them of something like a religion,
current in Scandinavia. Once a year, by night, the Gipsies of that
country assemble for the purpose of un-baptizing all of their children
whom they have, during the year, suffered to be baptized for the sake of
gifts, by the Gorgios. On this occasion, amid wild orgies, they worship
a small idol, which is preserved until the next meeting with the greatest
secresy and care by their captain. I must declare that this story seems
very doubtful to me.
I have devoted this chapter to illustrating from different points the
fact that there lives in England a race which has given its impress to a
vast proportion of our vagabond population, and which is more curious and
more radically distinct in all its characteristics, than our writers,
with one or two exceptions, have ever understood. One extraordinary
difference still remains to be pointed out--as it has, in fact, already
been, with great acumen, by Mr George Borrow, in his "Gipsies in Spain,"
and by Dr Alexander Paspati, in his "Etudes sur les Tchinghianes ou
Bohemiens de l'Empire Ottoman" (Constantinople, 1870); also by Mr Bright,
in his "Hungary," and by Mr Simson. It is this, that in every part of
the world it is extremely difficult to get Rommany words, even from
intelligent gipsies, although they may be willing with all their heart to
communicate them. It may seem simple enough to the reader to ask a man
"How do you call 'to carry' in your language?" But can the reader
understand that a man, who is possibly very much shrewder than himself in
reading at a glance many phases of character, and in countless
trickeries, should be literally unable to answer such a question? And
yet I have met with many such. The truth is, that there are people in
this world who never had such a thing as an abstract idea, let us say
even of an apple, plumped suddenly at them--not once in all their
lives--and, when it came, the unphilosophical mind could no more grasp
it, than the gentleman mentioned by G. H. Lewes (History of Philosophy),
could grasp the idea of substance without attribute as presented by
Berkeley. The real Gipsy could talk about apples all day, but the sudden
demand for the unconnected word, staggers him--at least, until he has had
some practice in this, to him, new process. And it is so with other
races. Professor Max Muller once told me in conversation, as nearly as I
can recollect, that the Mohawk Indian language is extremely rich in
declension, every noun having some sixteen or seventeen inflexions of
case, but no nominative. One can express one's relations to a father to
a most extraordinary extent, among the dilapidated descendants of that
once powerful tribe. But such a thing as the abstract idea of _a_
father, or of 'father' _pur et simple_, never entered the Mohawk mind,
and this is very like the Gipsies.
When a rather wild Gipsy once gives you a word, it must be promptly
recorded, for a demand for its repetition at once confuses him. _On doit
saisir le mot echappe au Nomade, et ne pas l'obliger a le repeter, car il
le changera selon so, facon_, says Paspati. Unused to abstract efforts
of memory, all that he can retain is the sense of his last remark, and
very often this is changed with the fleeting second by some associated
thought, which materially modifies it. It is always difficult, in
consequence, to take down a story in the exact terms which a philologist
desires. There are two words for "bad" in English Gipsy, _wafro_ and
_vessavo_; and I think it must have taken me ten minutes one day to
learn, from a by no means dull gipsy, whether the latter word was known
to him, or if it were used at all. He got himself into a hopeless tangle
in trying to explain the difference between _wafro_ and _naflo_, or ill,
until his mind finally refused to act on _vessavo_ at all, and
spasmodically rejected it. With all the patience of Job, and the
meekness of Moses, I awaited my time, and finally obtained my
information.
The impatience of such minds in narrative is amusing. Let us suppose
that I am asking some _kushto Rommany chal_ for a version of AEsop's
fable of the youth and the cat. He is sitting comfortably by the fire,
and good ale has put him into a story-telling humour. I begin--
"Now then, tell me this _adree Rommanis_, in Gipsy--Once upon a time
there was a young man who had a cat."
Gipsy.--"_Yeckorus--'pre yeck cheirus_--_a raklo lelled a matchka_"--
While I am writing this down, and long before it is half done, the
professor of Rommany, becoming interested in the subject, continues
volubly--
--"_an' the matchka yeck sala dicked a chillico apre a rukk_--(and the
cat one morning saw a bird in a tree"--)
I.--"Stop, stop! _Hatch a wongish_! That is not it! Now go on. _The
young man loved this cat so much_"--
_Gipsy_ (fluently, in Rommany), "that he thought her skin would make a
nice pair of gloves"--
"Confound your gloves! Now do begin again"--
_Gipsy_, with an air of grief and injury: "I'm sure I was telling the
story for you the best way I knew how!"
Yet this man was far from being a fool. What was it, then? Simply and
solely, a lack of education--of that mental training which even those who
never entered a schoolhouse, receive more or less of, when they so much
as wait patiently for a month behind a chair, or tug for six months at a
plough, or in short, acquire the civilised virtue of Christian patience.
That is it. We often hear in this world that a little education goes a
great way; but to get some idea of the immense value of a very little
education indeed, and the incredible effect it may have upon character,
one should study with gentleness and patience a real Gipsy.
Probably the most universal error in the world is the belief that all
men, due allowance being made for greater or less knowledge, or
"talents," have minds like our own; are endowed with the same moral
perception, and see things on the whole very much as we do. Now the
truth is that a Chinese, whose mind is formed, not by "religion" as we
understand it, but simply by the intense pressure of "Old Custom," which
we do not understand, thinks in a different manner from an European;
moralists accuse him of "moral obliquity," but in reality it is a moral
difference. Docility of mind, the patriarchal principle, and the very
perfection of innumerable wise and moral precepts have, by the practice
of thousands of years, produced in him their natural result. Whenever he
attempts to think, his mind runs at once into some broad and open path,
beautifully bordered with dry artificial flowers, {21} and the result has
been the inability to comprehend any new idea--a state to which the
Church of the Middle Ages, or any too rigidly established system, would
in a few thousand years have reduced humanity. Under the action of
widely different causes, the gipsy has also a different cast of mind from
our own, and a radical moral difference. A very few years ago, when I
was on the Plains of Western Kansas, old Black Kettle, a famous Indian
chief said in a speech, "I am not a white man, I am a _wolf_. I was born
like a wolf on the prairies. I have lived like a wolf, and I shall die
like one." Such is the wild gipsy. Ever poor and hungry, theft seems to
him, in the trifling easy manner in which he practises it, simply a
necessity. The moral aspects of petty crime he never considers at all,
nor does he, in fact, reflect upon anything as it is reflected on by the
humblest peasant who goes to church, or who in any way feels himself
connected as an integral part of that great body-corporate--Society.