GYPSY women, as long as we have known anything of Gypsy history, have
been arrant fortune-tellers. They plied fortune-telling about France and
Germany as early as 1414, the year when the dusky bands were first
observed in Europe, and they have never relinquished the practice. There
are two words for fortune-telling in Gypsy, _bocht_ and _dukkering_.
_Bocht_ is a Persian word, a modification of, or connected with, the
Sanscrit _bagya_, which signifies ‘fate.’ _Dukkering_ is the
modification of a Wallaco-Sclavonian word signifying something spiritual
or ghostly. In Eastern European Gypsy, the Holy Ghost is called
_Swentuno Ducos_.
Gypsy fortune-telling is much the same everywhere, much the same in
Russia as it is in Spain and in England. Everywhere there are three
styles—the lofty, the familiar, and the homely; and every Gypsy woman is
mistress of all three and uses each according to the rank of the person
whose _vast_ she _dukkers_, whose hand she reads, and adapts the luck she
promises. There is a ballad of some antiquity in the Spanish language
about the _Buena Ventura_, a few stanzas of which translated will convey
a tolerable idea of the first of these styles to the reader, who will
probably with no great reluctance dispense with any illustrations of the
other two:—
Late rather one morning
cIn summer’s sweet tide,
Goes forth to the Prado
Jacinta the bride:
There meets her a Gypsy
So fluent of talk,
And jauntily dressed,
On the principal walk.
“O welcome, thrice welcome,
Of beauty thou flower!
Believe me, believe me,
Thou com’st in good hour.”
Surprised was Jacinta;
She fain would have fled;
But the Gypsy to cheer her
Such honeyed words said:
“O cheek like the rose-leaf!
O lady high-born!
Turn thine eyes on thy servant,
But ah, not in scorn.
“O pride of the Prado!
O joy of our clime!
Thou twice shalt be married,
And happily each time.
“Of two noble sons
Thou shalt be the glad mother,
One a Lord Judge,
A Field-Marshal the other.”
Gypsy females have told fortunes to higher people than the young Countess
Jacinta: _Modor_—of the Gypsy quire of Moscow—told the fortune of
Ekatarina, Empress of all the Russias. The writer does not know what the
Ziganka told that exalted personage, but it appears that she gave perfect
satisfaction to the Empress, who not only presented her with a diamond
ring—a Russian diamond ring is not generally of much value—but also her
hand to kiss. The writer’s old friend, Pepíta, the Gitana of Madrid,
told the _bahi_ of Christina, the Regentess of Spain, in which she
assured her that she would marry the son of the King of France, and
received from the fair Italian a golden ounce, the most magnificent of
coins, a guerdon which she richly merited, for she nearly hit the mark,
for though Christina did not marry the son of the King of France, her
second daughter was married to a son of the King of France, the Duke of
M-, one of the three claimants of the crown of Spain, and the best of the
lot; and Britannia, the Caumli, told the good luck to the Regent George
on Newmarket Heath, and received ‘foive guineas’ and a hearty smack from
him who eventually became George the Fourth—no bad fellow by the by,
either as regent or king, though as much abused as Pontius Pilate, whom
he much resembled in one point, unwillingness to take life—the _sonkaypè_
or gold-gift being, no doubt, more acceptable than the _choomapé_ or
kiss-gift to the Beltenebrosa, who, if a certain song be true, had no
respect for _gorgios_, however much she liked their money:—
Britannia is my nav;
I am a Kaulo Camlo;
The gorgios pen I be
A bori chovahaunie;
And tatchipen they pens,
The dinneleskie gorgies,
For mande chovahans
The luvvu from their putsies.
Britannia is my name;
I am a swarthy Lovel;
The Gorgios say I be
A witch of wondrous power;
And faith they speak the truth,
The silly, foolish fellows,
For often I bewitch
The money from their pockets.
Fortune-telling in all countries where the Gypsies are found is
frequently the prelude to a kind of trick called in all Gypsy dialects by
something more or less resembling the Sanscrit _kuhana_; for instance, it
is called in Spain _jojana_, _hokano_, and in English _hukni_. It is
practised in various ways, all very similar; the defrauding of some
simple person of money or property being the object in view. Females are
generally the victims of the trick, especially those of the middle class,
who are more accessible to _the poor woman_ than those of the upper. One
of the ways, perhaps the most artful, will be found described in another
chapter.