Difficulty of coming to an Understanding with Gipsies.--The
Cabman.--Rommany for French.--"Wanderlust."--Gipsy Politeness.--The
Tinker and the Painting.--Secrets of Bat-catching.--The Piper of Hamelin,
and the Tinker's Opinion of the Story.--The Walloon Tinker of Spa.--Argot.
One summer day in London, in 1871, I was seated alone in an artist's
studio. Suddenly I heard without, beneath the window, the murmur of two
voices, and the sleepy, hissing, grating sound of a scissors-grinder's
wheel.
By me lay a few tools, one of which, a chisel, was broken. I took it,
went softly to the window, and looked down.
There was the wheel, including all the apparatus of a travelling tinker.
I looked to see if I could discover in the two men who stood by it any
trace of the Rommany. One, a fat, short, mind-his-own-business, ragged
son of the roads, who looked, however, as if a sturdy drinker might be
hidden in his shell, was evidently not my "affair." He seemed to be the
"Co." of the firm.
But by him, and officiating at the wheeling smithy, stood a taller
figure--the face to me invisible--which I scrutinised more nearly. And
the instant I observed his _hat_ I said to myself, "This looks like it."
For dilapidated, worn, wretched as that hat was, there was in it an
attempt, though indescribably humble, to be something melo-dramatic,
foreign, Bohemian, and poetic. It was the mere blind, dull, dead germ of
an effort--not even _life_--only the ciliary movement of an antecedent
embryo--and yet it _had_ got beyond Anglo-Saxondom. No costermonger, or
common cad, or true Englishman, ever yet had that indefinable touch of
the opera-supernumerary in the streets. It _was_ a sombrero.
"That's the man for me," I said. So I called him, and gave him the
chisel, and after a while went down. He was grinding away, and touched
his hat respectfully as I approached.
Now the reader is possibly aware that of all difficult tasks one of the
most difficult is to induce a disguised Gipsy, or even a professed one,
to utter a word of Rommany to a man not of the blood. Of this all
writers on the subject have much to say. For it is so black-swanish, I
may say so centenarian in unfrequency, for a gentleman to speak Gipsy,
that the Zingaro thus addressed is at once subjected to morbid
astonishment and nervous fears, which under his calm countenance and
infinite "cheek" are indeed concealed, but which speedily reduce
themselves to two categories.
1. That Rommany is the language of men at war with the law; therefore
you are either a detective who has acquired it for no healthy purpose, or
else you yourself are a scamp so high up in the profession that it
behooves all the little fish of outlawdom to beware of you.
2. Or else--what is quite as much to be dreaded--you are indeed a
gentleman, but one seeking to make fun of him, and possibly able to do
so. At any rate, your knowledge of Rommany is a most alarming coin of
vantage. Certainly, reader, you know that a regular London streeter, say
a cabman, would rather go to jail than be beaten in a chaffing match. I
nearly drove a hansom into sheer convulsions one night, about the time
this chapter happened, by a very light puzzler indeed. I had hesitated
between him and another.
"You don't know _your own mind_," said the disappointed candidate to me.
"_Mind your own_ business," I replied. It was a poor palindrome, {38}
reader--hardly worth telling--yet it settled him. But he swore--oh, of
course he did--he swore beautifully.
Therefore, being moved to caution, I approached calmly and gazed
earnestly on the revolving wheel.
"Do you know," I said, "I think a great deal of your business, and take a
great interest in it."
"Yes, sir."
"I can tell you all the names of your tools in French. You'd like to
hear them, wouldn't you?"
"Wery much indeed, sir."
So I took up the chisel. "This," I said, "is a _churi_, sometimes called
a _chinomescro_."
"That's the French for it, is it, sir?" replied the tinker, gravely. Not
a muscle of his face moved.
"The _coals_," I added, "are _hangars_ or _wongurs_, sometimes called
_kaulos_."
"Never heerd the words before in my life," quoth the sedate tinker.
"The bellows is a _pudemengro_. Some call it a _pishota_."
"Wery fine language, sir, is French," rejoined the tinker. In every
instance he repeated the words after me, and pronounced them correctly,
which I had not invariably done. "Wery fine language. But it's quite
new to me."
"You wouldn't think now," I said, affably, "that _I_ had ever been on the
roads!"
The tinker looked at me from my hat to my boots, and solemnly replied--
"I should say it was wery likely. From your language, sir, wery likely
indeed."
I gazed as gravely back as if I had not been at that instant the worst
sold man in London, and asked--
"Can you _rakher Rommanis_?" (_i.e_., speak Gipsy.)
And _he_ said he _could_.
Then we conversed. He spoke English intermingled with Gipsy, stopping
from time to time to explain to his assistant, or to teach him a word.
This portly person appeared to be about as well up in the English Gipsy
as myself--that is, he knew it quite as imperfectly. I learned that the
master had been in America, and made New York and Brooklyn glad by his
presence, while Philadelphia, my native city had been benefited as to its
scissors and morals by him.
"And as I suppose you made money there, why didn't you remain?" I
inquired.
The Gipsy--for he was really a Gipsy, and not a half-scrag--looked at me
wistfully, and apparently a little surprised that I should ask him such a
question.
"Why, sir, _you_ know that _we_ can't keep still. Somethin' kept telling
me to move on, and keep a movin'. Some day I'll go back again."
Suddenly--I suppose because a doubt of my perfect Freemasonry had been
aroused by my absurd question--he said, holding up a kettle--
"What do you call this here in Rommanis?"
"I call it a _kekavi_ or a _kavi_," I said. "But it isn't _right_
Rommany. It's Greek, which the Rommanichals picked up on their way
here."
And here I would remark, by the way, that I have seldom spoken to a Gipsy
in England who did not try me on the word for kettle.
"And what do you call a face?" he added.
"I call a face a _mui_," I said, "and a nose a _nak_; and as for _mui_, I
call _rikker tiro mui_, 'hold your jaw.' That is German Rommany."
The tinker gazed at me admiringly, and then said, "You're 'deep' Gipsy, I
see, sir--that's what _you_ are."
"_Mo rov a jaw_; _mo rakker so drovan_?" I answered. "Don't talk so
loud; do you think I want all the Gorgios around here to know I talk
Gipsy? Come in; _jal adree the ker and pi a curro levinor_."
The tinker entered. As with most Gipsies there was really, despite the
want of "education," a real politeness--a singular intuitive refinement
pervading all his actions, which indicated, through many centuries of
brutalisation, that fountain-source of all politeness--the Oriental. Many
a time I have found among Gipsies whose life, and food, and dress, and
abject ignorance, and dreadful poverty were far below that of most
paupers and prisoners, a delicacy in speaking to and acting before
ladies, and a tact in little things, utterly foreign to the great
majority of poor Anglo-Saxons, and not by any means too common in even
higher classes.
For example, there was a basket of cakes on the table, which cakes were
made like soldiers in platoons. Now Mr Katzimengro, or Scissorman, as I
call him, not being familiar with the anatomy of such delicate and
winsome maro, or bread, was startled to find, when he picked up one
biscuit de Rheims, that he had taken a row. Instantly he darted at me an
astonished and piteous glance, which said--
"I cannot, with my black tinker fingers, break off and put the cakes back
again; I do not want to take all--it looks greedy."
So I said, "Put them in your pocket." And he did so, quietly. I have
never seen anything done with a better grace.
On the easel hung an unfinished picture, representing the Piper of
Hamelin surrounded by rats without number. The Gipsy appeared to be much
interested in it.
"I used to be a rat-catcher myself," he said. "I learned the business
under old Lee, who was the greatest rat-catcher in England. I suppose
you know, of course, sir, how to _draw_ rats?"
"Certainly," I replied. "Oil of rhodium. I have known a house to be
entirely cleared by it. There were just thirty-six rats in the house,
and they had a trap which held exactly twelve. For three nights they
caught a dozen, and that finished the congregation."
"Aniseed is better," replied the Gipsy, solemnly. (By the way, another
and an older Gipsy afterwards told me that he used caraway-oil and the
heads of dried herrings.) "And if you've got a rat, sir, anywhere in
this here house, I'll bring it to you in five minutes."
He did, in fact, subsequently bring the artist as models for the picture
two very pretty rats, which he had quite tamed while catching them.
"But what does the picture mean, sir?" he inquired, with curiosity.
"Once upon a time," I replied, "there was a city in Germany which was
overrun with rats. They teased the dogs and worried the cats, and bit
the babies in the cradle, and licked the soup from the cook's own ladle."
"There must have been an uncommon lot of them, sir," replied the tinker,
gravely.
"There was. Millions of them. Now in those days there were no
Rommanichals, and consequently no rat-catchers."
"'Taint so now-a-days," replied the Gipsy, gloomily. "The business is
quite spiled, and not to get a livin' by."
"Avo. And by the time the people had almost gone crazy, one day there
came a man--a Gipsy--the first Gipsy who had ever been seen in _dovo tem_
(or that country). And he agreed for a thousand crowns to clear all the
rats away. So he blew on a pipe, and the rats all followed him out of
town."
"What did he blow on a pipe for?"
"Just for _hokkerben_, to humbug them. I suppose he had oils rubbed on
his heels. But when he had drawn the rats away and asked for his money,
they would not give it to him. So then, what do you think he did?"
"I suppose--ah, I see," said the Gipsy, with a shrewd look. "He went and
drew 'em all back again."
"No; he went, and this time piped all the children away. They all went
after him--all except one little lame boy--and that was the last of it."
The Gipsy looked earnestly at me, and then, as if I puzzled, but with an
expression of perfect faith, he asked--
"And is that all _tacho_--all a fact--or is it made up, you know?"
"Well, I think it is partly one and partly the other. You see, that in
those days Gipsies were very scarce, and people were very much astonished
at rat-drawing, and so they made a queer story of it."
"But how about the children?"
"Well," I answered; "I suppose you have heard occasionally that Gipsies
used to chore Gorgios' chavis--steal people's children?"
Very grave indeed was the assent yielded to this explanation. He _had_
heard it among other things.
My dear Mr Robert Browning, I little thought, when I suggested to the
artist your poem of the piper, that I should ever retail the story in
Rommany to a tinker. But who knows with whom he may associate in this
life, or whither he may drift on the great white rolling sea of humanity?
Did not Lord Lytton, unless the preface to Pelham err, himself once tarry
in the tents of the Egyptians? and did not Christopher North also wander
with them, and sing--
"Oh, little did my mother think,
The day she cradled me,
The lands that I should travel in,
Or the death that I should dee;
Or gae rovin' about wi' tinkler loons,
And sic-like companie"?
"You know, sir," said the Gipsy, "that we have two languages. For
besides the Rummany, there's the reg'lar cant, which all tinkers talk."
"_Kennick_ you mean?"
"Yes, sir; that's the Rummany for it. A 'dolly mort' is Kennick, but
it's _juva_ or _rakli_ in Rummanis. It's a girl, or a rom's _chi_."
"You say _rom_ sometimes, and then _rum_."
"There's _rums_ and _roms_, sir. The _rum_ is a Gipsy, and a _rom_ is a
husband."
"That's your English way of calling it. All the rest of the world over
there is only one word among Gipsies, and that is _rom_."
Now, the allusion to _Kennick_ or cant by a tinker, recalls an incident
which, though not strictly Gipsy in its nature, I will nevertheless
narrate.
In the summer of 1870 I spent several weeks at Spa, in the Ardennes. One
day while walking I saw by the roadside a picturesque old tinker, looking
neither better nor worse than the grinder made immortal by Teniers.
I was anxious to know if all of his craft in Belgium could speak Gipsy,
and addressed him in that language, giving him at the same time my knife
to grind. He replied politely in French that he did not speak Rommany,
and only understood French and Walloon. Yet he seemed to understand
perfectly the drift of my question, and to know what Gipsy was, and its
nature, since after a pause he added, with a significant smile--
"But to tell the truth, monsieur, though I cannot talk Rommany, I know
another secret language. I can speak _Argot_ fluently."
Now, I retain in my memory, from reading the Memoirs of Vidocq thirty
years ago, one or two phrases of this French thieves' slang, and I at
once replied that I knew a few words of it myself, adding--
"_Tu sais jaspiner en bigorne_?"--you can talk argot?
"_Oui, monsieur_."
"_Et tu vas roulant de vergne en vergne_?"--and you go about from town to
town?
Grave and keen, and with a queer smile, the tinker replied, very slowly--
"Monsieur knows the Gipsies" (here he shook his head), "and monsieur
speaks _argot_ very well." (A shrug.) "Perhaps he knows more than he
credits himself with. Perhaps" (and here his wink was diabolical)--
"_perhaps monsieur knows the entire tongue_!"
Spa is full not only of gamblers, but of numbers of well-dressed Parisian
sharpers who certainly know "the entire tongue." I hastened to pay my
tinker, and went my way homewards. Ross Browne was accused in Syria of
having "burgled" onions, and the pursuit of philology has twice subjected
me to be suspected by tinkers as a flourishing member of the "dangerous
classes."
But to return to my rat-catcher. As I quoted a verse of German Gipsy
song, he manifested an interest in it, and put me several questions with
regard to the race in other lands.
"I wish I was a rich gentleman. I would like to travel like you, sir,
and have nothing to do but go about from land to land, looking after our
Rummany people as you do, and learnin' everything Rummany. Is it true,
sir, we come from Egypt?"
"No. I think not. There are Gipsies in Egypt, but there is less Rommany
in their _jib_ (language) than in any other Gipsy tribe in the world. The
Gipsies came from India."
"And don't you think, sir, that we're of the children of the lost Ten
Tribes?"
"I am quite sure that you never had a drop of blood in common with them.
Tell me, do you know any Gipsy _gilis_--any songs?"
"Only a bit of a one, sir; most of it isn't fit to sing, but it begins--"
And here he sang:
"Jal 'dree the ker my honey,
And you shall be my rom."
And chanting this, after thanking me, he departed, gratified with his
gratuity, rejoiced at his reception, and most undoubtedly benefited by
the beer with which I had encouraged his palaver--a word, by the way,
which is not inappropriate, since it contains in itself the very word of
words, the _lav_, which means a word, and is most antiquely and
excellently Gipsy. Pehlevi is old Persian, and to _pen lavi_ is Rommany
all the world over "to speak words."