THE young people often ask: What good is there in the Romany tongue? I
answers: Ye are all fools! There is plenty, plenty of good in it, and
plenty, plenty of our people would have been transported or hung, but for
the old, poor Roman language. A word in Romany said in time to a little
girl, and carried to the camp, has caused a great purse of money and
other things, which had been stolen, to be stowed underground; so that
when the constables came they could find nothing, and had not only to let
the Gypsy they had taken up go his way, but also to beg his pardon.
His term of transportation has now expired, and it were but right in him
to come home, if it were only to take care of his poor old wife: she has
been a true, true wife to him, and I don’t believe that she has taken up
with another man ever since he was sent across.
When one’s pitched up one’s little tent, made one’s little fire before
the door, and hung one’s kettle by the kettle-iron over it, one doesn’t
like that an inspector or constable should come and say: What are you
doing here? Take yourself off, you Gypsy dog.
On the first Friday of July, before the public-house called the
Bald-faced Stag, on the hill above the town of the great tree in the
Forest, you will see many Roman people, men and women, lads and lasses.
Do you know my old friend Mr. Stanniwix, the old gentleman that wears a
pigtail, and made fourteen thousand pounds by smuggling?
He went on talking and talking foolishness till I said to him: If you
goes on in that ’ere way I’ll hit you a hot ’un on the nose.
You ask me what are _patrins_. _Patrin_ is the name of the signs by
which the Gypsies who go before show the road they have taken to those
who follow behind. We flings handfuls of grass down at the head of the
road we takes, or we makes with the finger a cross-mark on the ground, we
sticks up branches of trees by the side the hedge. But the true patrin
is handfuls of leaves flung down; for _patrin_ or _patten_ in old Roman
language means the leaf of a tree.
The true way to be a wise man is to hear, see, and bear in mind.
The man who has not the whip-hand of his tongue and his temper is not fit
to go into company.
The Bill to take up the no-man’s lands (comons), and to make the poor
people die of hunger and cold, has been flung out of the House of
Commons.
The name they gives her is “Luck in a basket,” because she carries about
a basket, which every night, when she goes home, is sure to be full of
stolen property.
This here, brothers, is the title of a book, the head-work of an old king
of Roumany land: the Tribunal, or the dispute between the wise man and
the world: or, the death-sentence passed by the soul upon the body.
When the rope was about his neck they brought him his pardon, and let him
go; but from that day he would wear a neck-kerchief no more, for he said
it brought to his mind the rope about his neck.
Jack Cooper could read enough to know all that was upon the milestones
and the sign-posts.
The Roman way to cook a fowl is to do it up with its feathers in clay,
and then to put it in fire for a little more than half an hour. When the
clay and the burnt feathers are taken from the fowl, the belly cut open,
and the inside flung out, ’tis a food good enough for a queen to eat
without salt.
When the Gentile way of living and the Gypsy way of living come together,
it is anything but a good way of living.
He told me once that when he was a chap of twenty he killed a Gentile,
and buried the dead meat under ground. He was taken up for the murder,
but as no one could find the cold meat, the justices let him go. He said
that the job did not sit heavy upon his mind for a long time, but then
all of a sudden he became sad, and afraid of the dead Gentile’s ghost;
and that often of a night, as he was coming half-drunk from the
public-house by himself, he would look over his right shoulder and over
his left shoulder, to know if the dead man’s ghost was not coming behind
to lay hold of him.
* * * * *
Do you know the Gypsy way of taking the hand?
Aye, aye, brother.
Show it to me.
They does it _so_, brother.
* * * * *
A tramp has more fun than a Gypsy.
You have heard the word _pazorrus_. That is what is called by the
Gentiles “trusted,” or in debt. In the old time the Roman who got from
his brother money or other things on trust, and did not pay him again,
could be made to work for him as horse, ass, or wood cutter for a year
and a day. At present the matter is not so. If a Roman got money, or
other things, from my hand on credit, and did not repay me, how could I
make him labour for me as horse, ass, or stick-cutter for one day, not to
say for a year?
Do you call this a fair? A very pretty fair is this: you might put it
all into your pocket.
It is not a wise thing to say you have been wrong. If you allow you have
been wrong, people will say: You may be a very honest fellow, but are
certainly a very great fool.
* * * * *
Where are you living?
Mine is not living; mine is staying, to say the best of it; I am a
traveller, brother!
* * * * *
When Roman people speak to one another, they say brother and sister.
When parents speak to their children, they say, my son, or my daughter,
or my child, _gorgiko_-like, to either. When children speak to their
parents, they say, my father, or my mother.
My father, why were worms made? My son, that moles might live by eating
them. My father, why were moles made? My son, that you and I might live
by catching them. My father, why were you and I made? My son, that
worms might live by eating us.
All farmers are fools. When they hear a citizen in the country say:
That’s a fine horse! they say: ’Tis no horse, ’tis a mare; whether the
thing’s a horse or not. The simpletons don’t know that a mare’s a horse,
though a horse is not a mare.
No one like Gypsy Will’s wife for dancing in a platter.
When Constance Smith died, she was a hundred ten years old.
* * * * *
Do you know Mrs. Cooper?