THE Gypsy makes some poor simpleton of a lady believe that if the latter
puts her gold into her hands, and she makes it up into a parcel, and puts
it between the lady’s feather-bed and mattress, it will at the end of a
month be multiplied a hundredfold, provided the lady does not look at it
during all that time. On receiving the money she makes it up into a
brown paper parcel, which she seals with wax, turns herself repeatedly
round, squints, and spits, and then puts between the feather-bed and
mattress—not the parcel of gold, but one exactly like it, which she has
prepared beforehand, containing old halfpence, farthings, and the like;
then, after cautioning the lady by no means to undo the parcel before the
stated time, she takes her departure singing to herself:—
O dear me! O dear me!
What dinnelies these gorgies be.
The above artifice is called by the English Gypsies the _hukni_, and by
the Spanish _hokhano baro_, or the great lie. _Hukni_ and _hokano_ were
originally one and the same word; the root seems to be the Sanscrit
_huhanã_, lie, trick, deceit.