THE TENTS--PLEASANT DISCOURSE--I AM PHARAOH--SHIFTING FOR ONE'S
SELF--HORSE-SHOES--THIS IS WONDERFUL--BLESS YOUR WISDOM--A PRETTY
MANOEUVRE--ILL DAY TO THE ROMANS--MY NAME IS HERNE--A SINGULAR PEOPLE--AN
ORIGINAL SPEECH
We went to the farthest of the tents, which stood at a slight distance
from the rest, and which exactly resembled the one which I have described
on a former occasion; we went in and sat down one on each side of a small
fire, which was smouldering on the ground, there was no one else in the
tent but a tall tawny woman of middle age, who was busily knitting.
'Brother,' said Jasper, 'I wish to hold some pleasant discourse with
you.'
'As much as you please,' said I, 'provided you can find anything pleasant
to talk about.'
'Never fear,' said Jasper; 'and first of all we will talk of yourself.
Where have you been all this long time?'
'Here and there,' said I, 'and far and near, going about with the
soldiers; but there is no soldiering now, so we have sat down, father and
family, in the town there.'
'And do you still hunt snakes?' said Jasper.
'No,' said I, 'I have given up that long ago; I do better now: read books
and learn languages.'
'Well, I am sorry you have given up your snake-hunting, many's the
strange talk I have had with our people about your snake and yourself,
and how you frightened my father and mother in the lane.'
'And where are your father and mother?'
'Where I shall never see them, brother; at least, I hope so.'
'Not dead?'
'No, not dead; they are bitchadey pawdel.'
'What's that?'
'Sent across--banished.'
'Ah! I understand; I am sorry for them. And so you are here alone?'
'Not quite alone, brother.'
'No, not alone; but with the rest--Tawno Chikno takes care of you.'
'Takes care of me, brother!'
'Yes, stands to you in the place of a father--keeps you out of harm's
way.'
'What do you take me for, brother?'
'For about three years older than myself.'
'Perhaps; but you are of the Gorgios, and I am a Rommany Chal. Tawno
Chikno take care of Jasper Petulengro!'
'Is that your name?'
'Don't you like it?'
'Very much, I never heard a sweeter; it is something like what you call
me.'
'The horse-shoe master and the snake-fellow, I am the first.'
'Who gave you that name?'
'Ask Pharaoh.'
'I would, if he were here, but I do not see him.'
'I am Pharaoh.'
'Then you are a king.'
'Chachipen Pal.'
'I do not understand you.'
'Where are your languages? You want two things, brother: mother sense,
and gentle Rommany.'
'What makes you think that I want sense?'
'That, being so old, you can't yet guide yourself!'
'I can read Dante, Jasper.'
'Anan, brother.'
'I can charm snakes, Jasper.'
'I know you can, brother.'
'Yes, and horses too; bring me the most vicious in the land, if I whisper
he'll be tame.'
'Then the more shame for you--a snake-fellow--a horse-witch--and a
lil-reader--yet you can't shift for yourself. I laugh at you, brother!'
'Then you can shift for yourself?'
'For myself and for others, brother.'
'And what does Chikno?'
'Sells me horses, when I bid him. Those horses on the chong were mine.'
'And has he none of his own?'
'Sometimes he has; but he is not so well off as myself. When my father
and mother were bitchadey pawdel, which, to tell you the truth, they were
for chiving wafodo dloovu, they left me all they had, which was not a
little, and I became the head of our family, which was not a small one.
I was not older than you when that happened; yet our people said they had
never a better krallis to contrive and plan for them, and to keep them in
order. And this is so well known that many Rommany Chals, not of our
family, come and join themselves to us, living with us for a time, in
order to better themselves, more especially those of the poorer sort, who
have little of their own. Tawno is one of these.'
'Is that fine fellow poor?'
'One of the poorest, brother. Handsome as he is, he has not a horse of
his own to ride on. Perhaps we may put it down to his wife, who cannot
move about, being a cripple, as you saw.'
'And you are what is called a Gypsy King?'
'Ay, ay; a Rommany Kral.'
'Are there other kings?'
'Those who call themselves so; but the true Pharaoh is Petulengro.'
'Did Pharaoh make horse-shoes?'
'The first who ever did, brother.'
'Pharaoh lived in Egypt.'
'So did we once, brother.'
'And you left it?'
'My fathers did, brother.'
'And why did they come here?'
'They had their reasons, brother.'
'And you are not English?'
'We are not gorgios.'
'And you have a language of your own?'
'Avali.'
'This is wonderful.'
'Ha, ha!' cried the woman, who had hitherto sat knitting, at the farther
end of the tent, without saying a word, though not inattentive to our
conversation, as I could perceive by certain glances which she
occasionally cast upon us both. 'Ha, ha!' she screamed, fixing upon me
two eyes, which shone like burning coals, and which were filled with an
expression both of scorn and malignity, 'It is wonderful, is it, that we
should have a language of our own? What, you grudge the poor people the
speech they talk among themselves? That's just like you gorgios; you
would have everybody stupid, single-tongued idiots, like yourselves. We
are taken before the Poknees of the gav, myself and sister, to give an
account of ourselves. So I says to my sister's little boy, speaking
Rommany, I says to the little boy who is with us, Run to my son Jasper,
and the rest, and tell them to be off, there are hawks abroad. So the
Poknees questions us, and lets us go, not being able to make anything of
us; but, as we are going, he calls us back. "Good woman," says the
Poknees, "what was that I heard you say just now to the little boy?" "I
was telling him, your worship, to go and see the time of day, and to save
trouble I said it in our own language." "Where did you get that
language?" says the Poknees. "'Tis our own language, sir," I tells him,
"we did not steal it." "Shall I tell you what it is, my good woman?"
says the Poknees. "I would thank you, sir," says I, "for 'tis often we
are asked about it." "Well, then," says the Poknees, "it is no language
at all, merely a made-up gibberish." "Oh, bless your wisdom," says I,
with a curtsey, "you can tell us what our language is, without
understanding it!" Another time we meet a parson. "Good woman," says
he, "what's that you are talking? Is it broken language?" "Of course,
your reverence," says I, "we are broken people; give a shilling, your
reverence, to the poor broken woman." Oh, these gorgios! they grudge us
our very language!'
'She called you her son, Jasper?'
'I am her son, brother.'
'I thought you said your parents were--'
'Bitchadey pawdel; you thought right, brother. This is my wife's
mother.'
'Then you are married, Jasper?'
'Ay, truly; I am husband and father. You will see wife and chabo anon.'
'Where are they now?'
'In the gav, penning dukkerin.'
'We were talking of language, Jasper?'
'True, brother.'
'Yours must be a rum one?'
''Tis called Rommany.'
'I would gladly know it.'
'You need it sorely.'
'Would you teach it me?'
'None sooner.'
'Suppose we begin now?'
'Suppose we do, brother.'
'Not whilst I am here,' said the woman, flinging her knitting down, and
starting upon her feet; 'not whilst I am here shall this gorgio learn
Rommany. A pretty manoeuvre, truly; and what would be the end of it? I
goes to the farming ker with my sister, to tell a fortune, and earn a few
sixpences for the chabes. I sees a jolly pig in the yard, and I says to
my sister, speaking Rommany, "Do so and so," says I; which the farming
man hearing, asks what we are talking about. "Nothing at all, master,"
says I; "something about the weather"; when who should start up from
behind a pale, where he has been listening, but this ugly gorgio, crying
out, "They are after poisoning your pigs, neighbour!" so that we are glad
to run, I and my sister, with perhaps the farm-engro shouting after us.
Says my sister to me, when we have got fairly off, "How came that ugly
one to know what you said to me?" Whereupon I answers, "It all comes of
my son Jasper, who brings the gorgio to our fire, and must needs be
teaching him." "Who was fool there?" says my sister. "Who, indeed, but
my son Jasper," I answers. And here should I be a greater fool to sit
still and suffer it; which I will not do. I do not like the look of him;
he looks over-gorgeous. An ill day to the Romans when he masters
Rommany; and, when I says that, I pens a true dukkerin.'
'What do you call God, Jasper?'
'You had better be jawing,' said the woman, raising her voice to a
terrible scream; 'you had better be moving off, my gorgio; hang you for a
keen one, sitting there by the fire, and stealing my language before my
face. Do you know whom you have to deal with? Do you know that I am
dangerous? My name is Herne, and I comes of the hairy ones!'
And a hairy one she looked! She wore her hair clubbed upon her head,
fastened with many strings and ligatures; but now, tearing these off, her
locks, originally jet black, but now partially grizzled with age, fell
down on every side of her, covering her face and back as far down as her
knees. No she-bear of Lapland ever looked more fierce and hairy than did
that woman, as standing in the open part of the tent, with her head bent
down, and her shoulders drawn up, seemingly about to precipitate herself
upon me, she repeated, again and again,--
'My name is Herne, and I comes of the hairy ones!--'
'I call God Duvel, brother.'
'It sounds very like Devil.'
'It doth, brother, it doth.'
'And what do you call divine, I mean godly?'
'Oh! I call that duvelskoe.'
'I am thinking of something, Jasper.'
'What are you thinking of, brother?'
'Would it not be a rum thing if divine and devilish were originally one
and the same word?'
'It would, brother, it would--'
* * * * *
From this time I had frequent interviews with Jasper, sometimes in his
tent, sometimes on the heath, about which we would roam for hours,
discoursing on various matters. Sometimes, mounted on one of his horses,
of which he had several, I would accompany him to various fairs and
markets in the neighbourhood, to which he went on his own affairs, or
those of his tribe. I soon found that I had become acquainted with a
most singular people, whose habits and pursuits awakened within me the
highest interest. Of all connected with them, however, their language
was doubtless that which exercised the greatest influence over my
imagination. I had at first some suspicion that it would prove a mere
made-up gibberish; but I was soon undeceived. Broken, corrupted, and
half in ruins as it was, it was not long before I found that it was an
original speech, far more so, indeed, than one or two others of high name
and celebrity, which, up to that time, I had been in the habit of
regarding with respect and veneration. Indeed many obscure points
connected with the vocabulary of these languages, and to which neither
classic nor modern lore afforded any clue, I thought I could now clear up
by means of this strange broken tongue, spoken by people who dwelt
amongst thickets and furze bushes, in tents as tawny as their faces, and
whom the generality of mankind designated, and with much semblance of
justice, as thieves and vagabonds. But where did this speech come from,
and who were they who spoke it? These were questions which I could not
solve, and which Jasper himself, when pressed, confessed his inability to
answer. 'But, whoever we be, brother,' said he, 'we are an old people,
and not what folks in general imagine, broken gorgios; and, if we are not
Egyptians, we are at any rate Rommany Chals!'
'Rommany Chals! I should not wonder after all,' said I, 'that these
people had something to do with the founding of Rome. Rome, it is said,
was built by vagabonds, who knows but that some tribe of the kind settled
down thereabouts, and called the town which they built after their name;
but whence did they come originally? ah! there is the difficulty.'
But abandoning these questions, which at that time were far too profound
for me, I went on studying the language, and at the same time the
characters and manners of these strange people. My rapid progress in the
former astonished, while it delighted, Jasper. 'We'll no longer call you
Sap-engro, brother,' said he; 'but rather Lav-engro, which in the
language of the gorgios meaneth Word-master.' 'Nay, brother,' said Tawno
Chikno, with whom I had become very intimate, 'you had better call him
Cooro-mengro, I have put on _the gloves_ with him, and find him a pure
fist-master; I like him for that, for I am a Cooro-mengro myself, and was
born at Brummagem.'
'I likes him for his modesty,' said Mrs. Chikno; 'I never hears any ill
words come from his mouth, but, on the contrary, much sweet language.
His talk is golden, and he has taught my eldest to say his prayers in
Rommany, which my rover had never the grace to do.' 'He is the pal of my
rom,' said Mrs. Petulengro, who was a very handsome woman, 'and therefore
I likes him, and not the less for his being a rye; folks calls me
high-minded, and perhaps I have reason to be so; before I married Pharaoh
I had an offer from a lord--I likes the young rye, and, if he chooses to
follow us, he shall have my sister. What say you, mother? should not the
young rye have my sister Ursula?'
'I am going to my people,' said Mrs. Herne, placing a bundle upon a
donkey, which was her own peculiar property; 'I am going to Yorkshire,
for I can stand this no longer. You say you like him: in that we
differs; I hates the gorgio, and would like, speaking Romanly, to mix a
little poison with his waters. And now go to Lundra, my children, I goes
to Yorkshire. Take my blessing with ye, and a little bit of a gillie to
cheer your hearts with when ye are weary. In all kinds of weather have
we lived together; but now we are parted. I goes broken-hearted--I can't
keep you company; ye are no longer Rommany. To gain a bad brother, ye
have lost a good mother.'