“You talk as the old Romanys did,” said the old man. “I hear you use words which I once heard from old men who died when I was a boy. I thought those words were lying in graves which have long been green. I hear songs and sayings which I never expected to hear again. You talk like gypsies, and such gypsies as I never meet now; and you look like Gorgios. But when I was still young, a few of the oldest Romanychalsstill wore hats such as you have; and when I first looked at you, I thought of them. I don’t understand you. It is strange, very strange.”
“It is the Romanysoul,” said his wife. “People take to what is in them; if a bird were born a fox, it would love to fly.”
I wondered what flights she would have taken if she had wings. But I understood why the old man had spoken as he did; for, knowing that we had intelligent listeners, the Palmer and I had brought forth all our best and quaintest Romany curios, and these rural Welsh wanderers were not, like their English pals, familiar with Romany ryes. And I was moved to like them, and nobody perceives this sooner than a gypsy. The old couple were the parents of young Lee, and said they had come to visit him; but I think that it was rather to see us that we owed their presence in Aberystwith. For the tinker and Anselo were at this time engaged, in their secret and owl-like manner, as befitted men who were up to all manner of ways that were dark, in collecting the most interesting specimens of Romanys, for our especial study; and whenever this could be managed so that itappeared entirely accidental and a surprise, then they retired into their shadowed souls and chuckled with fiendish glee at having managed things so charmingly. But it will be long ere I forget how the old man’s eye looked into the past as he recalled,—
“The hat of antique shape and coat of gray,The same the gypsies wore,”
“The hat of antique shape and coat of gray,The same the gypsies wore,”
and went far away back through my words to words heard in the olden time, by fires long since burnt out, beneath the flame-gilt branches of forests which have sailed away as ships, farther than woods e’er went from Dunsinane, and been wrecked in Southern seas. But though I could not tell exactly what was in every room, I knew into what house his soul had gone; and it was for this that the scholar-gypsy went from Oxford halls “to learn strange arts and join a gypsy tribe.” His friends had gone from earth long since, and were laid to sleep; some, perhaps, far in the wold and wild, amid the rocks, where fox and wild bird were their visitors; but for an instant they rose again from their graves, and I knew them.
“They could do wonders by the power of the imagination,” says Glanvil of the gypsies; “their fancy binding that of others.” Understand by imagination and fancy all that Glanvil really meant, and I agree with him. It is a matter of history that, since the Aryan morning of mankind, the Romanys have been chiromancing, and, following it, trying to read people’s minds and bind them to belief. Thousands of years of transmitted hereditary influences always result in something; it has really resulted with the gypsies in an instinctive, though undeveloped, intuitiveperception, which a sympathetic mind acquires from them,—nay, is compelled to acquire, out of mere self-defense; and when gained, it manifests itself in many forms,
“But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.”
“But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.”
It is true that the American gypsy has grown more vigorous in this country, and, like many plants, has thriven better for being trans—I was about to write incautiouslyported, but, on second thought, sayplanted. Strangely enough, he is more Romany than ever. I have had many opportunities of studying both the elders from England and the younger gypsies, born of English parents, and I have found that there is unquestionably a great improvement in the race here, even from a gypsy stand-point. The young sapling, under more favorable influences, has pushed out from the old root, and grown stronger. The causes for this are varied. Gypsies, like peacocks, thrive best when allowed to range afar.Il faut leur donner le clef des champs(you must give them the key of the fields), as I once heard an old Frenchman, employed on Delmonico’s Long Island farm, lang syne, say of that splendid poultry. And what a range they have, from the Atlantic to the Pacific! Marry, sir, ’t is like roaming from sunrise to sunset, east and west, “and from the aurora borealis to a Southern blue-jay,” and no man shall make them afraid. Wood! “Well, ’t is akushto tem for kāsht”(a fair land for timber), as a very decentRomani-chalsaid to me one afternoon. It was thinking of him which led me to these remarks.
I had gone with my niece—who speaks Romany—out to a gypsyry by Oaklands Park, and found there one of our good people, with his wife and children, in a tent. Hard by was the wagon and the horse, and, after the usual initiatory amazement at being accosted in thekālo jib, or black language, had been survived, we settled down into conversation. It was a fine autumnal day, Indian-summery,—the many in one of all that is fine in weather all the world over, put into a single glorious sense,—a sense of bracing air and sunshine not over-bold or bright, and purple, tawny hues in western skies, and dim, sweet feelings of the olden time. And as we sat lounging in lowly seats, and talked about the people and their ways, it seemed to me as if I were again in Devonshire or Surrey. Our host—for every gypsy who is visited treats you as a guest, thus much Oriental politeness being deeply set in him—had been in America from boyhood, but he seemed to be perfectly acquainted with all whom I had known over the sea. Only one thing he had not heard, the death of old Gentilla Cooper, of the Devil’s Dyke, near Brighton, for I had just received a letter from England announcing the sad news.
“Yes, this America is a good country for travelers.We can go South in winter. Aye, the land is big enough to go to a warm side in winter, and a cool one in summer. But I don’t go South, because I don’t like the people; I don’t get along with them.Some Romanys do. Yes, but I’m not on that horse, I hear that the old country’s getting to be a hardplace for our people. Yes, just as you say, there’s notan to hatch, no place to stay in there, unless you pay as much as if you went to a hotel. ’T isn’t so here. Some places they’re uncivil, but mostly we can get wood and water, and a place for a tent, and a bite for the oldgry[horse]. The country people like to see us come, in many places. They’re more high-minded and hon’rable here than they are in England. If we can cheat them in horse-dealin’ they stand it as gentlemen always ought to do among themselves in such games. Horse-dealin’ is horse-stealin’, in a way, among real gentlemen. If I can Jew you or you do me, it’s all square in gamblin’, and nobody has any call to complain. Therefore, I allow that Americans are higher up as gentlemen than what they are in England. It is not all of one side, like a jug-handle, either. Many of these American farmers can cheat me, and have done it, and are proud of it. Oh, yes; they’re much higher toned here. In England, if you put off abavolengro[broken-winded horse] on a fellow he comes after you with achinamāngri[writ]. Here he goes like a man and swindles somebody else with thegry, instead of sneaking off to a magistrate.
“Yes,” he continued, “England’s a little country, very little, indeed, but it is astonishing how many Romanys come out of it over here.Do I notice any change in them after coming? I do. When they first come, they drink liquor or beer all the time. After a while they stop heavy drinking.”
I may here observe that even in England the gypsy, although his getting drunk is too often regulated or limited simply by his means, seldom shows in his person the results of long-continued intemperance.Living in the open air, taking much exercise, constantly practicing boxing, rough riding, and other manly sports, he is “as hard as nails,” and generally lives to a hearty old age. As he very much prefers beer to spirits, it may be a question whether excess in such drinking is really any serious injury to him. The ancestors of the common English peasants have for a thousand, it may be for two thousand, years or more all got drunk on beer, whenever they could afford it, and yet a more powerful human being than the English peasant does not exist. It may be that the weaklings all die at an early age. This I cannot deny, nor that those who survive are simply so tough that beer cannot kill them. What this gypsy said of the impartial and liberal manner in which he and his kind are received by the farmers is also true. I once conversed on this subject with a gentleman farmer, and his remarks were much like those of the Rom. I inferred from what he said that the coming of a party of gypsy horse-dealers into his neighborhood was welcomed much as the passengers on a Southern steamboat were wont of old to welcome the proprietor of a portable faro bank. “I think,” said he, “that the last time the gypsies were here they left more than they took away.” An old Rom told me once that in some parts of New Jersey they were obliged to watch their tents and wagons very carefully for fear of the country people. I do not answer for the truth of this. It speaks vast volumes for the cleverness of gypsies that they can actually make a living by trading horses in New Spain.
It is very true that in many parts of America the wanderers are welcomed withfeux de joie, or with salutes of shot-guns,—the guns, unfortunately, beingshotted and aimed at them. I have mentioned in another chapter, on a Gypsy Magic Spell, that once in Tennessee, when an old Romany mother had succeeded in hoaxing a farmer’s wife out of all she had in the world, the neighboring farmers took the witch, and, with a view to preventing effectually further depredation, caused her to pass “through flames material and temporal unto flames immaterial and eternal;” that is to say, they burned her alive. But the gypsy would much prefer having to deal with lynchers than with lawyers. Like the hedge-hog, which is typically a gypsy animal, he likes better to be eaten by those of his own kind than to be crushed into dirt by those who do not understand him. This story of the hedge-hog was cited from my first gypsy book by Sir Charles Dilke, in a speech in which he made an application of it to certain conservatives who remained blindly suffering by their own party. It will hold good forever. Gypsies never flourished so in Europe as during the days when every man’s hand was against them. It is said that they raided and plundered about Scotland for fifty years before they were definitely discovered to be mere marauders, for the Scots themselves were so much given up to similar pursuits that the gypsies passed unnoticed.
The American gypsies do not beg, like their English brothers, and particularly their English sisters. This fact speaks volumes for their greater prosperity and for the influence which association with a proud race has on the poorest people. Our friends at Oaklands always welcomed us as guests. On another occasion when we went there, I said to my niece, “If we find strangers who do not know us, do notspeak at first in Romany. Let us astonish them.” We came to a tent, before which sat a very dark, old-fashioned gypsy woman. I paused before her, and said in English,—
“Can you tell a fortune for a young lady?”
“She don’t want her fortune told,” replied the old woman, suspiciously and cautiously, or it may be with a view of drawing us on. “No, I can’t tell fortunes.”
At this the young lady was so astonished that, without thinking of what she was saying, or in what language, she cried,—
“Dordi!Can’t tute pen dukkerin?” (Look! Can’t you tell fortunes?)
This unaffected outburst had a greater effect than the most deeply studied theatrical situation could have brought about. The old dame stared at me and at the lady as if bewildered, and cried,—
“In the name of God, what kind of gypsies areyou?”
“Oh!mendui shom bori chovihani!” cried L., laughing; “we are a great witch and a wizard, and if you can’t tell me my fortune, I’ll tell yours. Hold out your hand, and cross mine with a dollar, and I’ll tell you as big a lie as you everpennedagalderli Gorgio[a green Gentile].”
“Well,” exclaimed the gypsy, “I’ll believe that you can tell fortunes or do anything!Dordi!dordi! but this is wonderful. Yet you’re not the first Romanyrāni[lady] I ever met. There’s one in Delaware: aboridiri[very great] lady she is, and true Romany,—flick o the jib te rinkeni adosta[quick of tongue and fair of face]. Well, I am glad to see you.” “Who is that talking there?” cried a man’s voicefrom within the tent. He had heard Romany, and he spoke it, and came out expecting to see familiar faces. His own was a study, as his glance encountered mine. As soon as he understood that I came as a friend, he gave way to infinite joy, mingled with sincerest grief that he had not at hand the means of displaying hospitality to such distinguished Romanys as we evidently were. He bewailed the absence of strong drink. Would we have some tea made? Would I accompany him to the next tavern, and have some beer? All at once a happy thought struck him. He went into the tent and brought out a piece of tobacco, which I was compelled to accept. Refusal would have been unkind, for it was given from the very heart. George Borrow tells us that, in Spain, a poor gypsy once brought him a pomegranate as a first acquaintanceship token. A gypsy is a gypsy wherever you find him.
These were very nice people. The old dame took a great liking to L., and showed it in pleasant manners. The couple were both English, and liked to talk with me of the old country and the many mutual friends whom we had left behind. On another visit, L. brought a scarlet silk handkerchief, which she had bound round her head and tied under her chin in a very gypsy manner. It excited, as I anticipated, great admiration from the old dame.
“Ah kennā tute dikks rinkeni—now you look nice. That’s the way a Romany lady ought to wear it! Don’t she look just as Alfi used to look?” she cried to her husband. “Just such eyes and hair!”
Here L. took off thediklo, or handkerchief, and passed it round the gypsy woman’s head, and tied it under her chin, saying,—
“I am sure it becomes you much more than it does me. Now you look nice:—
“‘Red and yellow for Romany,And blue and pink for the Gorgiee.’”
“‘Red and yellow for Romany,And blue and pink for the Gorgiee.’”
We rose to depart, the old dame offered back to L. her handkerchief, and, on being told to keep it, was greatly pleased. I saw that the way in which it was given had won her heart.
“Did you hear what the old woman said while she was telling your fortune?” asked L., after we had left the tent.
“Now, I think of it, I remember that she or you had hold of my hand, while I was talking with the old man, and he was making merry with my whisky. I was turned away, and around so that I never noticed what you two were saying.”
“Shepennedyourdukkerin, and it was wonderful. She said that she must tell it.”
And here L. told me what the olddyehad insisted on reading in my hand. It was simply very remarkable, and embraced an apparent knowledge of the past, which would make any credulous person believe in her happy predictions of the future.
“Ah, well,” I said, “I suppose thedukktold it to her. She may be an eye-reader. A hint dropped here and there, unconsciously, the expression of the face, and a life’s practice will make anybody a witch. And if there ever was a witch’s eye, she has it.”
“I would like to have her picture,” said L., “in thatlullo diklo[red handkerchief]. She looked like all the sorceresses of Thessaly and Egypt in one, and, as Bulwer says of the Witch of Vesuvius, was all the more terrible for having been beautiful.”
Some time after this we went, with Britannia Leea-gypsying, not figuratively, but literally, over the river into New Jersey. And our first greeting, as we touched the ground, was of good omen, and from a great man, for it was Walt Whitman. It is not often that even a poet meets with three sincerer admirers than the venerable bard encountered on this occasion; so, of course, we stopped and talked, and L. had the pleasure of being the first to communicate to Bon Gualtier certain pleasant things which had recently been printed of him by a distinguished English author, which is always an agreeable task. Blessed upon the mountains, or at the Camden ferryboat, or anywhere, are the feet of anybody who bringeth glad tidings.
“Well, are you going to see gypsies?”
“We are. We three gypsies be. By the abattoir.Au revoir.”
And on we went to the place where I had first found gypsies in America. All was at first so still that it seemed if no one could be camped in the spot.
“Se kekno adoi.” (There’s nobody there.)
“Dordi!” cried Britannia, “Dikkava me o tuv te tan te wardo. [I see a smoke, a tent, a wagon.] I declare, it is mypuro pal, my old friend, W.”
And we drew near the tent and greeted its owner, who was equally astonished and delighted at seeing such distinguished Romanytāni rānis, or gypsy young ladies, and brought forth his wife and three really beautiful children to do the honors. W. was a good specimen of an American-born gypsy, strong, healthy, clean, and temperate, none the worse for wear in out-of-dooring, through tropical summers and terrible winters. Like all American Romanys, he was morestraightforward than most of his race in Europe. All Romanys are polite, but many of the European kind are most uncomfortably and unconsciously naïve. Strange that the most innocent people should be those who most offend morality. I knew a lady once—Heaven grant that I may never meet with such another!—who had been perfectly educated in entire purity of soul. And I never knew anydevergondéewho could so shock, shame, and pain decent people as this Agnes did in her sweet ignorance.
“I shall never forget the first day you came to my camp,” said W. to Britannia. “Ah, you astonished me then. You might have knocked me down with a feather. And I didn’t know what to say. You came in a carriage with two other ladies. And you jumped out first, and walked up to me, and cried, ‘Sa’shān!’ That stunned me, but I answered, ‘Sa’shān.’ Then I didn’t speak Romanes to you, for I didn’t know but what you kept it a secret from the other two ladies, and I didn’t wish to betray you. And when you began to talk it as deep as any old Romany I ever heard, and pronounced it so rich and beautiful, I thought I’d never heard the like. I thought you must be a witch.”
“Awer me shom chovihani” (but I am a witch), cried the lady. “Mukka men jā adré o tan.” (Let us go into the tent.) So we entered, and sat round the fire, and asked news of all the wanderers of the roads, and the young ladies, having filled their pockets with sweets, produced them for the children, and we were as much at home as we had ever been in any salon; for it was a familiar scene to us all, though it would, perhaps, have been a strange one to the reader, hadhe by chance, walking that lonely way in the twilight, looked into the tent and asked his way, and there found two young ladies—bien mises—with their escort, all very much at their ease, and talking Romany as if they had never known any other tongue from the cradle.
“What is the charm of all this?” It is that if one has a soul, and does not live entirely reflected from the little thoughts and little ways of a thousand other little people, it is well to have at all times in his heart some strong hold of nature. No matter how much we may be lost in society, dinners, balls, business, we should never forget that there is an eternal sky with stars over it all, a vast, mysterious earth with terrible secrets beneath us, seas, mountains, rivers, and forests away and around; and that it is from these and what is theirs, and not from gas-lit, stifling follies, that all strength and true beauty must come. To this life, odd as he is, the gypsy belongs, and to be sometimes at home with him by wood and wold takes us for a time from “the world.” If I express myself vaguely and imperfectly, it is only to those who know not the charm of nature, its ineffable soothing sympathy,—its life, its love. Gypsies, like children, feel this enchantment as the older grown do not. To them it is a song without words; would they be happier if the world brought them to know it as words without song, without music or melody? I never read a right old English ballad of sumere when the leaves are grene or the not-broune maid, with its rustling as of sprays quivering to the song of the wode-wale, without thinking or feeling deeply how those who wrote them would have been bound to the Romany. It is ridiculous to say that gypsies are not “educated”to nature and art, when, in fact, they live it. I sometimes suspect that æsthetic culture takes more true love of nature out of the soul than it inspires. One would not say anything of a wild bird or deer being deficient in a sense of that beauty of which it is a part. There are infinite grades, kinds, or varieties of feeling of nature, and every man is perfectly satisfied that his is the true one. For my own part, I am not sure that a rabbit, in the dewy grass, does not feel the beauty of nature quite as much as Mr. Ruskin, and much more than I do.
No poet has so far set forth the charm of gypsy life better than Lenau has done, in his highly-colored, quickly-expressive ballad of “Die drei Zigeuner,” of which I here give a translation into English and another into Anglo-American Romany.
THE THREE GYPSIES.I saw three gypsy men, one day,Camped in a field together,As my wagon went its weary way,All over the sand and heather.And one of the three whom I saw thereHad his fiddle just before him,And played for himself a stormy air,While the evening-red shone o’er him.And the second puffed his pipe againSerenely and undaunted,As if he at least of earthly menHad all the luck that he wanted.In sleep and comfort the last was laid,In a tree his cymbal[238]lying,Over its strings the breezes played,O’er his heart a dream went flying.Ragged enough were all the three,Their garments in holes and tatters;But they seemed to defy right sturdilyThe world and all worldly matters.Thrice to the soul they seemed to say,When earthly trouble tries it,How to fiddle, sleep it, and smoke it away,And so in three ways despise it.And ever anon I look around,As my wagon onward presses,At the gypsy faces darkly browned,And the long black flying tresses.TRIN ROMANI CHALIA.Dikdom me trin geeriaSār yeckno a tacho Rom,Sā miro wardo ghias adūrApré a wafedo drom.O yeckto sos boshengero,Yuv kellde pes-kokero,O kamlo-dūd te pereléSos lullo apré lo.O duito sār a swägeleDikde ’pré lestes tūv,Ne kamde kūmi, penava me’Dré sār o midúvels pūv.O trinto sovadé kushto-bākLest ’zimbel adré rukk se,O bavol kelld’ pré i tavia,O sutto ’pré leskro zī.Te sār i lengheri rūdabenShan katterdi-chingerdoAwer me penav’ i Romani chalsNe kesserden chi pā lo.Trin dromia lende sikkerden kanSār dikela wafedo,Ta bosher, tuver te sove-a-léAjā sā bachtalo.Dikdom palal, sā ghiom adūrTalla yeckno Romani chal’Pré lengheri kāli-brauni mūi,Te lengheri kāli bal.
THE THREE GYPSIES.
I saw three gypsy men, one day,Camped in a field together,As my wagon went its weary way,All over the sand and heather.
And one of the three whom I saw thereHad his fiddle just before him,And played for himself a stormy air,While the evening-red shone o’er him.
And the second puffed his pipe againSerenely and undaunted,As if he at least of earthly menHad all the luck that he wanted.
In sleep and comfort the last was laid,In a tree his cymbal[238]lying,Over its strings the breezes played,O’er his heart a dream went flying.
Ragged enough were all the three,Their garments in holes and tatters;But they seemed to defy right sturdilyThe world and all worldly matters.
Thrice to the soul they seemed to say,When earthly trouble tries it,How to fiddle, sleep it, and smoke it away,And so in three ways despise it.
And ever anon I look around,As my wagon onward presses,At the gypsy faces darkly browned,And the long black flying tresses.
TRIN ROMANI CHALIA.
Dikdom me trin geeriaSār yeckno a tacho Rom,Sā miro wardo ghias adūrApré a wafedo drom.
O yeckto sos boshengero,Yuv kellde pes-kokero,O kamlo-dūd te pereléSos lullo apré lo.
O duito sār a swägeleDikde ’pré lestes tūv,Ne kamde kūmi, penava me’Dré sār o midúvels pūv.
O trinto sovadé kushto-bākLest ’zimbel adré rukk se,O bavol kelld’ pré i tavia,O sutto ’pré leskro zī.
Te sār i lengheri rūdabenShan katterdi-chingerdoAwer me penav’ i Romani chalsNe kesserden chi pā lo.
Trin dromia lende sikkerden kanSār dikela wafedo,Ta bosher, tuver te sove-a-léAjā sā bachtalo.
Dikdom palal, sā ghiom adūrTalla yeckno Romani chal’Pré lengheri kāli-brauni mūi,Te lengheri kāli bal.
It was a fine spring noon, and the corner of Fourth and Library streets in Philadelphia was like a rock in the turn of a rapid river, so great was the crowd of busy business men which flowed past. Just out of the current a man paused, put down a parcel which he carried, turned it into a table, placed on it several vials, produced a bundle of hand-bills, and began, in the language of his tribe, tocant—that is,cantare, to sing—the virtues of a medicine which was certainlypatentin being spread out by him to extremest thinness. In an instant there were a hundred people round him. He seemed to be well known and waited for. I saw at a glance what he was. The dark eye and brown face indicated a touch of thediddikai, or one with a little gypsy blood in his veins, while his fluent patter and unabashed boldness showed a long familiarity with race-grounds and the road, or with the Cheap-Jack and Dutch auction business, and other pursuits requiring unlimited eloquence and impudence. How many a man of learning, nay of genius, might have paused and envied that vagabond the gifts which were worth so little to their possessor! But what was remarkable about him was that instead of endeavoring to conceal any gypsyindications, they were manifestly exaggerated. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and ear-rings and a red embroidered waistcoat of the most forcible old Romany pattern, which was soon explained by his words.
“Sorry to keep you waiting,” he said. “I am always sorry to detain a select and genteel audience. But I was detained myself by a very interesting incident. I was invited to lunch with a wealthy German gentleman; a very wealthy German, I say, one of the pillars of your city and front door-step of your council, and who would be the steeple of your exchange, if it had one. And on arriving at his house he remarked, ‘Toctor, by tam you koom yust in goot dime, for mine frau und die cook ish bote fall sick mit some-ding in a hoory, und I kess she’ll die pooty quick-sudden.’ Unfortunately I had with me, gentlemen, but a single dose of my world-famous Gypsy’s Elixir and Romany Pharmacopheionepenthé. (That is the name, gentlemen, but as I detest quackery I term it simply the Gypsy’s Elixir.) When the German gentleman learned that in all probability but one life could be saved he said, ‘Veil, denn, doctor, subbose you gifes dat dose to de cook. For mine frau ish so goot dat it’s all right mit her. She’s reaty to tie. But de boor gook ish a sinner, ash I knows, und not reaty for de next world. And dere ish no vomans in town dat can gook mine sauer-kraut ash she do.’ Fortunately, gentlemen, I found in an unknown corner of a forgotten pocket an unsuspected bottle of the Gypsy’s Elixir, and both interesting lives were saved with such promptitude, punctuality, neatness and dispatch that the cook proceeded immediately to conclude the preparation of our meal—(thank you sir,—one dollar, if you please, sir. You say I onlycharged half a dollar yesterday! That was for a smaller bottle, sir. Same size, as this, was it? Ah, yes, I gave you a large bottle by mistake,—so you owe me fifty cents. Never mind, don’t give it back. I’ll take the half dollar.”)
All of this had been spoken with the utmost volubility. As I listened I almost fancied myself again in England, and at a country fair. Taking in his audience at a glance, I saw his eye rest on me ere it flitted, and he resumed,—
“We gypsies are, as you know, a remarkable race, and possessed of certain rare secrets, which have all been formulated, concentrated, dictated, and plenipotentiarated into this idealized Elixir. If I were a mountebank or a charlatan I would claim that it cures a hundred diseases. Charlatan is a French word for a quack. I speak French, gentlemen; I speak nine languages, and can tell you the Hebrew for an old umbrella. The Gypsy’s Elixir cures colds, gout, all nervous affections, with such cutaneous disorders as are diseases of the skin, debility, sterility, hostility, and all the illities that flesh is heir to except what it can’t, such as small-pox and cholera. It has cured cholera, but it don’t claim to do it. Others claim to cure, but can’t. I am not a charlatan, but an Ann-Eliza. That is the difference between me and a lady, as the pig said when he astonished his missus by blushing at her remarks to the postman. (Better have another bottle,sir.Haven’t you the change?Never mind,you can owe me fifty cents.I know a gentleman when I see one.) I was recently Down East in Maine, where they are so patriotic, they all put the stars and stripes into their beds for sheets, have the Fourth of July three hundred and sixty-five times inthe year, and eat the Declaration of Independence for breakfast. And they wouldn’t buy a bottle of my Gypsy’s Elixir till they heard it was good for the Constitution, whereupon they immediately purchased my entire stock. Don’t lose time in securing this invaluable blessing to those who feel occasional pains in the lungs. This is not taradiddle. I am engaged to lecture this afternoon before the Medical Association of Germantown, as on Wednesday before the University of Baltimore; for though I sell medicine here in the streets, it is only, upon my word of honor, that the poor may benefit, and the lowly as well as the learned know how to prize the philanthropic and eccentric gypsy.”
He run on with his patter for some time in this vein, and sold several vials of his panacea, and then in due time ceased, and went into a bar-room, which I also entered. I found him in what looked like prospective trouble, for a policeman was insisting on purchasing his medicine, and on having one of his hand-bills. He was remonstrating, when I quietly said to him in Romany, “Don’t trouble yourself; you were not making any disturbance.” He took no apparent notice of what I said beyond an almost imperceptible wink, but soon left the room, and when I had followed him into the street, and we were out of ear-shot, he suddenly turned on me and said,—
“Well, youarea swell, for a Romany. How do you do it up to such a high peg?”
“Do what?”
“Do the whole lay,—look so gorgeous?”
“Why, I’m no better dressed than you are,—not so well, if you come to thatvongree” (waistcoat).
“’T isn’tthat,—’t isn’t the clothes. It’s the airand the style. Anybody’d believe you’d had no end of an education. I could make ten dollars a patter if I could do it as natural as you do. Perhaps you’d like to come in on halves with me as a bonnet.No? Well, I suppose you have a better line. You’ve been lucky. I tell you, you astonished me when yourakkered, though I spotted you in the crowd for one who was off the color of the common Gorgios,—or, as the Yahudi say, theGoyim. No, I carn’trakker, or none to speak of, and noways as deep as you, though I was born in a tent on Battersea Common and grew up a fly fakir. What’s the drab made of that I sell in these bottles? Why, the old fake, of course,—you needn’t sayyoudon’t know that.Italic good English. Yes, I know I do. A fakir is bothered out of his life and chaffed out of half his business when he drops hish’s. A man can do anything when he must, and I must talk fluently and correctly to succeed in such a business.Would I like a drop of something? You paid for the last, now you must take a drop with me.Do I know of any Romany’s in town? Lots of them. There is a ken in Lombard Street with a regular fly mort,—but on second thoughts we won’t go there,—and—oh, I say—a very nice place in --- Street. The landlord is a Yahud; his wife canrakkeryou, I’m sure.She’sa good lot, too.”
And while on the way I will explain that my acquaintance was not to be regarded as a real gypsy. He was one of that large nomadic class with a tinge of gypsy blood who have grown up as waifs and strays, and who, having some innate cleverness, do the best they can to live without breaking the law—much. They deserve pity, for they have never been cared for; they owe nothing to society for kindness, andyet they are held even more strictly to account by the law than if they had been regularly Sunday-schooled from babyhood. This man when he spoke of Romanys did not mean real gypsies; he used the word as it occurs in Ainsworth’s song of
“Nix my dolly, pals fake away.And here I am both tight and free,A regular rollicking Romany.”
“Nix my dolly, pals fake away.And here I am both tight and free,A regular rollicking Romany.”
For he meantBohemianin its widest and wildest sense, and to him all that was apart from the world washisworld, whether it was Rom or Yahudi, and whether it conversed in Romany or Schmussen, or any other tongue unknown to the Gentiles. He had indeed no home, and had never known one.
It was not difficult to perceive that the place to which he led me was devoted in the off hours to some other business besides the selling of liquor. It was neat and quiet, in fact rather sleepy; but its card, which was handed to me, stated in a large capital head-line that it was OPEN ALL NIGHT, and that there was pool at all hours. I conjectured that a little game might also be performed there at all hours, and that, like the fountain of Jupiter Ammon, it became livelier as it grew later, and that it certainly would not be on the full boil before midnight.
“Scheiker fur mich,der Isch will jain soreff shaskenen” (Beer for me and brandy for him), I said to the landlord, who at once shook my hand and saluted me withSholem! Even so did Ben Daoud of Jerusalem, not long ago. Ben knew me not, and I was buying a pocket-book of him at his open-air stand in Market Street, and talking German, while he was endeavoring to convince me that I ought to give five cents more for it than I had given for a similar case theday before, on the ground that it was of a different color, or under color that the leather had a different ground, I forget which. In talking I let fall the wordkesef(silver). In an instant Ben had taken my hand, and saidSholem aleichum, and “Can you talk Spanish?”—which was to show that he was superfine Sephardi, and not common Ashkenaz.
“Yes,” resumed the crocus-fakir; “a man must be able to talk English very fluently, pronounce it correctly, and, above all things, keep his temper, if he would do anything that requires chanting or pattering.How did I learn it? A man can learn to do anything when it’s business and his living depends on it. The people who crowd around me in the streets cannot pronounce English decently; not one in a thousand here can saylaugh, except as a sheep says it. Suppose that you are a Cheap Jack selling things from a van. About once in an hour some tipsy fellow tries to chaff you. He hears your tongue going, and that sets his off. He hears the people laugh at your jokes, and he wants them to laugh at his. When you say you’re selling to raise money for a burned-out widow, he asks if she isn’t your wife. Then you answer him, ‘No, but the kind-hearted old woman who found you on the door-step and brought you up to the begging business.’ If you say you are selling goods under cost, it’s very likely some yokel will cry out, ‘Stolen, hey?’ And you patter as quick as lightning, ‘Very likely; I thought your wife sold ’em to me too cheap for the good of somebody’s clothes-line.’ If you show yourself his superior in language awd wit, the people will buy better; they always prefer a gentleman to a cad. Bless me! why, a swell in a dress-coat and kid gloves, with good patter and hatter, cansell a hundred rat-traps while a dusty cad in a flash kingsman would sell one. As for the replies, most of them are old ones. As the men who interrupt you are nearly all of the same kind, and have heads of very much the same make, with an equal number of corners, it follows that they all say nearly the same things. Why, I’ve heard two duffers cry out the same thing at once to me. So you soon have answers cut and dried for them. We call ’emcocks, because they’re just like half-penny ballads, all ready printed, while the pitcher always has the one you want ready at his finger-ends. It is the same in all canting. I knew a man once who got his living by singing of evenings in the gaffs to the piano, and making up verses on the gentlemen and ladies as they came in; and very nice verses he made, too,—always as smooth as butter.How do you do it? I asked him one day. ‘Well, you wouldn’t believe it,’ said he; ‘but they’re mostly cocks. The best ones I buy for a tanner [sixpence] apiece. If a tall gentleman with a big beard comes in, I strike a deep chord and sing,—
“‘This tall and handsome party,With such a lot of hair,Who seems so grand and hearty,Must be amilitaire;We like to see a swell comeWho looks sodistingué,So let us bid him welcome,And hope he’ll find us gay.’
“‘This tall and handsome party,With such a lot of hair,Who seems so grand and hearty,Must be amilitaire;We like to see a swell comeWho looks sodistingué,So let us bid him welcome,And hope he’ll find us gay.’
“The last half can be used for anybody. That’s the way the improvisatory business is managed for visitors. Why, it’s the same with fortune-telling.You have noticed that. Well, if the Gorgios had, it would have been all up with the fake long ago. The old woman has the same sort of girls come to herwith the same old stories, over and over again, and she has a hundred dodges and gets a hundred straight tips where nobody else would see anything; and of course she has the same replies all ready. There is nothing like being glib. And there’s really a great deal of the same in the regular doctor business, as I know, coming close on to it and calling myself one. Why, I’ve been called into a regular consultation in Chicago, where I had an office,—’pon my honor I was, and no great honor neither. It was all patter, and I pattered ’em dumb.”
I began to think that the fakir could talk forever and ever faster. If he excelled in his business, he evidently practiced at all times to do so. I intimated as much, and he at once proceeded fluently to illustrate this point also.
“You hear men say every day that if they only had an education they would do great things. What it would all come to with most of them is that they wouldtalkso as to shut other men up and astonish ’em. They have not an idea above that. I never had any schooling but the roads and race-grounds, but I can talk the hat off a lawyer, and that’s all I can do. Any man of them could talk well if he tried; but none of them will try, and as they go through life, telling you how clever they’d have been if somebody else had only done something for them, instead of doing something for themselves. So you must be going. Well, I hope I shall see you again. Just come up when you’re going by and say that your wife was raised from the dead by my Elixir, and that it’s the best medicine you ever had. And if you want to see some regular tent gypsies, there’s a camp of them now just four miles from here; real old styleRomanys. Go out on the road four miles, and you’ll find them just off the side,—anybody will show you the place.Sarishan!”
I was sorry to read in the newspaper, a few days after, that the fakir had been really arrested and imprisoned for selling a quack medicine. For in this land of liberty it makes an enormous difference whether you sell by advertisement in the newspapers or on the sidewalk, which shows that there is one law for the rich and another for the poor, even in a republic.
The Weather had put on his very worst clothes, and was never so hard at work for the agricultural interests, or so little inclined to see visitors, as on the Sunday afternoon when I started gypsying. The rain and the wind were fighting one with another, and both with the mud, even as the Jews in Jerusalem fought with themselves, and both with the Romans,—which was the time when theShaket, or butcher, killed the ox who drank the water which quenched the fire which the reader has often heard all about, yet not knowing, perhaps, that the house which Jack built was the Holy Temple of Jerusalem. It was with such reflections that I beguiled time on a long walk, for which I was not unfitly equipped in corduroy trousers, with a long Ulster and a most disreputable cap befitting a stable-boy. The rig, however, kept out the wet, and I was too recently from England to care much that it was raining. I had seen the sun on color about thirty times altogether during the past year, and so had not as yet learned to miss him. It is on record that when the Shah was in England a lady said to him, “Can it be possible, your highness, that there are in your dominions people who worship the sun?” “Yes,” replied the monarch, musingly; “and so would you, if you could only see him.”
The houses became fewer as I went on, till at last I reached the place near which I knew the gypsies must be camped. As is their custom in England, they had so established themselves as not to be seen from the road. The instinct which they display in thus getting near people, and yet keeping out of their sight, even as rats do, is remarkable. I thought I knew the town of Brighton, in England, thoroughly, and had explored all its nooks, and wondered that I had never found any gypsies there. One day I went out with a Romany acquaintance, who, in a short time, took me to half a dozen tenting-places, round corners in mysterious by-ways. It often happens that the spots which they select tohatch the tan, or pitch the tent, are picturesque bits, such as artists love, and all gypsies are fully appreciative of beauty in this respect. It is not a week, as I write, since I heard an old horse-dealing veteran of the roads apologize to me with real feeling for the want of a view near his tent, just as any other man might have excused the absence of pictures from his walls. The most beautiful spot for miles around Williamsport, in Pennsylvania, a river dell, which any artist would give a day to visit, is the favorite camping-ground of the Romany. Woods and water, rocks and loneliness, make it lovely by day, and when, at eventide, the fire of the wanderers lights up the scene, it also lights up in the soul many a memory of tents in the wilderness, of pictures in the Louvre, of Arabs and of Wouvermanns and belated walks by the Thames, and of Salvator Rosa. Ask me why I haunt gypsydom. It has put me into a thousand sympathies with nature and art, which I had never known without it. The Romany, like the red Indian, and all who dwellby wood and wold as outlawes wont to do, are the best human links to bind us to their home-scenery, and lead us into its inner life. What constitutes the antithetic charm of those wonderful lines,
“Afar in the desert, I love to ride,With the silent bush-boy alone by my side,”
“Afar in the desert, I love to ride,With the silent bush-boy alone by my side,”
but the presence of the savage who belongs to the scene, and whosebeingbinds the poet to it, and blends him with it as the flux causes the fire to melt the gold?
I left the road, turned the corner, and saw before me the low, round tents, with smoke rising from the tops, dark at first and spreading into light gray, like scalp-locks and feathers upon Indian heads. Near them were the gayly-painted vans, in which I at once observed a difference from the more substantial-looking old-countryvardo. The whole scene was so English that I felt a flutter at the heart: it was a bit from over the sea; it seemed as if hedge-rows should have been round, and an old Gothic steeple looking over the trees. I thought of the last gypsy camp I had seen near Henley-on-Thames, and wished Plato Buckland were with me to share the fun which one was always sure to have on such an occasion in his eccentric company. But now Plato was, like his father in the song,
“Duro pardel the boro panī,”Far away over the broad-rolling sea,
“Duro pardel the boro panī,”Far away over the broad-rolling sea,
and I must introduce myself. There was not a sign of life about, save in a sorrowful hen, who looked as if she felt bitterly what it was to be a Pariah among poultry and a down-pin, and who cluttered as if she might have had a history of being borne from her bower in the dark midnight by desperate Africanreivers, of a wild moonlit flitting and crossing black roaring torrents, drawn all the while by the neck, as a Turcoman pulls a Persian prisoner on an “alaman,” with a rope, into captivity, and finally of being sold unto the Egyptians. I drew near a tent: all was silent, as it always is in atanwhen the foot-fall of the stranger is heard; but I knew that it was packed with inhabitants.
I called in Romany my greeting, and bade somebody come out. And there appeared a powerfully built, dark-browed, good-looking man of thirty, who was as gypsy as Plato himself. He greeted me very civilly, but with some surprise, and asked me what he could do for me.
“Ask me in out of the rain, pal,” I replied. “You don’t suppose I’ve come four miles to see you and stop out here, do you?”
This was, indeed, reasonable, and I was invited to enter, which I did, and found myself in a scene which would have charmed Callot or Goya. There was no door or window to the black tent; what light there was came through a few rifts and rents and mingled with the dull gleam of a smoldering fire, producing a perfect Rembrandt blending of rosy-red with dreamy half-darkness. It was a real witch-aura, and the denizens were worthy of it. As my eyes gradually grew to the gloom, I saw that on one side four brown old Romany sorceresses were “beshing apré ye pus” (sitting on the straw), as the song has it, with deeper masses of darkness behind them, in which other forms were barely visible. Their black eyes all flashed up together at me, like those of a row of eagles in a cage; and I saw in a second that, with men and all I was in a party who were anything but milksops;in fact, with as regularly determined a lot of hard old Romanys as ever battered a policeman. I confess that a feeling like a thrill of joy came over me—a memory of old days and by-gone scenes over the sea—when I saw this, and knew they were notdiddikais, or half-breed mumpers. On the other side, several young people, among them three or four good-looking girls, were eating their four-o’clock meal from a canvas spread on the ground. There were perhaps twenty persons in the place, including the children who swarmed about.
Even in a gypsy tent something depends on the style of a self-introduction by a perfect stranger. Stepping forward, I divested myself of my Ulster, and handed it to a nice damsel, giving her special injunction to fold it up and lay it by. Mymise en scèneappeared to meet with approbation, and I stood forth and remarked,—
“Here I am, glad to see you; and if you want to see a regularRomany rye[gypsy gentleman], just over from England, now’s your chance.Sarishan!”
And I received, as I expected, a cordial welcome. I was invited to sit down and eat, but excused myself as having just come fromhābben, or food, and settled myself to a cigar. But while everybody was polite, I felt that under it all there was a reserve, a chill. I was altogether too heavy a mystery. I knew my friends, and they did not know me. Something, however, now took place which went far to promote conviviality. The tent-flap was lifted, and there entered an elderly woman, who, as a gypsy, might have been the other four in one, she was so quadruply dark, so fourfold uncanny, so too-too witch-like in her eyes. The others had so far been reserved as to speakingRomany; she, glancing at me keenly, began at once to talk it very fluently, without a word of English, with the intention of testing me; but as I understood her perfectly, and replied with a burning gush of the same language, being, indeed, glad to have at last “got into my plate,” we were friends in a minute. I did not know then that I was talking with a celebrity whose name has even been groomily recorded in an English book; but I found at once that she was truly “a character.” She had manifestly been sent for to test the stranger, and I knew this, and made myself agreeable, and was evidently foundtacho, or all right. It being a rule, in fact, with few exceptions, that when you really like people, in a friendly way, and are glad to be among them, they never fail to find it out, and the jury always comes to a favorable verdict.
And so we sat and talked on in the monotone in which Romany is generally spoken, like an Indian song, while, like an Indian drum, the rain pattered an accompaniment on the tightly drawn tent. Those who live in cities, and who are always realizing self, and thinking how they think, and are while awake given up to introverting vanity, neverlivein song. To do this one must be a child, an Indian, a dweller in fields and green forests, a brother of the rain and road-puddles and rolling streams, and a friend of the rustling leaves and the summer orchestra of frogs and crickets and rippling grass. Those who hear this music and think to it never think about it; those who live only in books never sing to it in soul. As there are dreams whichwill notbe remembered or known toreason, so this music shrinks from it. It is wonderful how beauty perishes like a shade-grownflower before the sunlight of analysis. It is dying out all the world over in women, under the influence of cleverness and “style;” it is perishing in poetry and art before criticism; it is wearing away from manliness, through priggishness; it is being crushed out of true gentleness of heart and nobility of soul by the pessimist puppyism of miching Mallockos. But nature is eternal and will return. When man has run one of his phases of culture fairly to the end, and when the fruit is followed by a rattling rococo husk, then comes a winter sleep, from which he awakens to grow again as a child-flower. We are at the very worst of such a time; but there is a morning redness far away, which shows that the darkness is ending, the winter past, the rain is over and gone. Arise, and come away!
“Sossi kair’d tute to av’akai pardel o boro pāni?” (And what made you come here across the broad water?) said the good old dame confidentially and kindly, in the same low monotone. “Si lesti chorin a gry?” (Was it stealing a horse?)
Dum,dum,dum,patter,patter,dum! played the rain.
“Avali I dikked your romus kaliko” (I saw your husband yesterday), remarked some one aside to a girl.
Dum,dum,dum,patter,patter,dum!
“No, mother deari, it was not a horse, for I am on a better, higher lay.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,patter,dum!
“He is a first-rate dog, but mine’s as good.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“Tacho! There’s money to be made by a gentleman like you by telling fortunes.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“Yes, a five-hundred-dollar hit sometimes. Butdye, I work upon a better lay.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“Perhaps you area boro drabengro” (a great physician).
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“It was away among the rocks that he fell into the reeds, half in the water, and kept still till they went by.”
“If any one is ill among you, I may be of use.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“And what a wind! It blows as if the good Lord were singing! Kushti chirus se atch a-kerri.” (This is a pleasant day to be at home.)
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“I thought you were a doctor, for you were going about in the town with the one who sells medicine. I heard of it.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
“Do not hurry away! Come again and see us. I think the Coopers are all out in Ohio.”
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
The cold wind and slight rain seemed refreshing and even welcome, as I went out into the cold air. The captain showed me his stock of fourteen horses and mules, and we interchanged views as to the best method of managing certain maladies in such stock. I had been most kindly entertained; indeed, with the home kindliness which good people in the country show to some hitherto unseen and unknown relative who descends to them from the great world of the city. Not but that my friends did not know cities and men as well as Ulysses, but even Ulysses sometimesmet with a marvel. In after days I became quite familiar with the several families who made the camp, and visited them in sunshine. But they always occur to me in memory as in a deep Rembrandt picture, a wonderful picture, and their voices as in vocal chiaroscuro; singing to the wind without and the rain on the tent,—
Dum,dum,dum,patter,dum!
This chapter was written by my niece through marriage, Miss Elizabeth Robins. It is a part of an article which was published in “The Century,” and it sets forth certain wanderings in seeking old houses in the city of Philadelphia.
All along the lower part of Race Street, saith the lady, are wholesale stores and warehouses of every description. Some carts belonging to one of them had just been unloaded. The stevedores who do this—all negroes—were resting while they waited for the next load. They were great powerful men, selected for their strength, and were of many hues, fromcafé au lait, or coffee much milked, up to the browned or black-scorched berry itself, while the veryathletæwere coal-black. They wore blue overalls, and on their heads they had thrown old coffee-bags, which, resting on their foreheads, passed behind their ears and hung loosely down their backs. It was in fact thehaikor bag-cloak of the East, and it made a wonderfully effective Arab costume. One of them was half leaning, half sitting, on a pile of bags; his Herculean arms were folded, and he had unconsciously assumed an air of dignity and defiance. He might have passed for an African chief. When we see such men in Egypt or other sunny countriesoutre mer, we become artistically eloquent; but it rarely occursto sketchers and word-painters to do much business in the home-market.
The mixture of races in our cities is rapidly increasing, and we hardly notice it. Yet it is coming to pass that a large part of our population is German and Irish, and that our streets within ten years have become fuller of Italian fruit dealers and organ-grinders, so thatCives sum Romanus(I am a Roman citizen), when abroad, now means either “I possess a monkey” or “I sell pea-nuts.” Jews from Jerusalem peddle pocket-books on our sidewalks, Chinamen are monoplizing our washing and ironing, while among laboring classes are thousands of Scandinavians, Bohemians, and other Slaves. The prim provincial element which predominated in my younger years is yielding before this influx of foreigners, and Quaker monotony and stern conservatism are vanishing, while Philadelphia becomes year by year more cosmopolite.
As we left the handsome negroes and continued our walk on Water Street an Italian passed us. He was indeed very dirty and dilapidated; his clothes were of the poorest, and he carried a rag-picker’s bag over his shoulder; but his face, as he turned it towards us, was really beautiful.
“Siete Italiano?” (Are you an Italian?) asked my uncle.
“Si,signore” (Yes, sir), he answered, showing all his white teeth, and opening his big brown eyes very wide.
“E come lei piace questo paese?” (And how do you like this country?)
“Not at all. It is too cold,” was his frank answer, and laughing good-humoredly he continued his search through the gutters. He would have made a goodmodel for an artist, for he had what we do not always see in Italians, the real southern beauty of face and expression. Two or three weeks after this encounter, we were astonished at meeting on Chestnut Street a little man, decently dressed, who at once manifested the most extraordinary and extravagant symptoms of delighted recognition. Never saw I mortal so grin-full, so bowing. As we went on and crossed the street, and looked back, he was waving his hat in the air with one hand, while he made gestures of delight with the other. It was the little Italian rag-picker.
Then along and afar, till we met a woman, decently enough dressed, with jet-black eyes and hair, and looking not unlike a gypsy. “A Romany!” I cried with delight. Her red shawl made me think of gypsies, and when I caught her eye I saw the indescrible flash of thekālorat, or black blood. It is very curious that Hindus, Persians, and gypsies have in common an expression of the eye which distinguishes them from all other Oriental races, and chief in this expression is the Romany. Captain Newbold, who first investigated the gypsies of Egypt, declares that, however disguised, he could always detect them by their glance, which is unlike that of any other human being, though something resembling it is often seen in the ruder type of the rural American. I believe myself that there is something in the gypsy eye which is inexplicable, and which enables its possessor to see farther through that strange mill-stone, the human soul, than I can explain. Any one who has ever seen an old fortune-teller of “the people” keeping some simple-minded maiden by the hand, while she holds her by her glittering eye, like the Ancient Mariner, with a basilisk stare, will agree with me. As Scheele deVere writes, “It must not be forgotten that the human eye has, beyond question, often a power which far transcends the ordinary purposes of sight, and approaches the boundaries of magic.”
But one glance, and my companion whispered, “Answer me in Romany when I speak, and don’t seem to notice her.” And then, in loud tone, he remarked, while looking across the street,—
“Adovo’s a kushto puro rinkeno kér adoi.” (That is a nice old pretty house there.)
“Avali,rya” (Yes, sir), I replied.
There was a perceptible movement by the woman in the red shawl to keep within ear-shot of us. Mine uncle resumed,—
“Boro kushto covva se ta rakker a jib te kek Gorgio iinella.” (It’s nice to talk a language that no Gentile knows.)
The red shawl was on the trail. “Je crois que ça mord,” remarked my uncle. We allowed our artist guide to pass on, when, as I expected, I felt a twitch at my outer garment. I turned, and the witch eyes, distended with awe and amazement, were glaring into mine, while she said, in a hurried whisper,—
“Wasn’t it Romanes?”
“Avah,” I replied, “mendui rakker sarja adovo jib.Būtikūmi ryeskro lis se denna Gorgines.” (Yes, we always talk that language. Much more genteel it is than English.)
“Te adovo wavero rye?” (And thatothergentleman?) with a glance of suspicion at our artist friend.
“Sar tacho” (He’s all right), remarked mine uncle, which I greatly fear meant, when correctly translated in a Christian sense, “He’s all wrong.” But thereis a natural sympathy and intelligence between Bohemians of every grade, all the world over, and I never knew a gypsy who did not understand an artist. One glance satisfied her that he was quite worthy of our society.
“And where are youtannin kennā?” (tenting now), I inquired.
“We are not tenting at this time of year; we’rekairin,”i.e., houseing, or home-ing. It is a good verb, and might be introduced into English.
“And where is your house?”
“There, right by Mammy Sauerkraut’s Row. Come in and sit down.”
I need not give the Romany which was spoken, but will simply translate. The house was like all the others. We passed through a close, dark passage, in which lay canvas and poles, a kettle and asarshta, or the iron which is stuck into the ground, and by which a kettle hangs. The old-fashioned tripod, popularly supposed to be used by gypsies, in all probability never existed, since the Roms of India to-day use thesarshta, as mine uncle tells me he learned from aci-devantIndian gypsy Dacoit, or wandering thief, who was one of his intimates in London.
We entered an inner room, and I was at once struck by its general indescribable unlikeness to ordinary rooms. Architects declare that the type of the tent is to be distinctly found in all Chinese and Arab or Turkish architecture; it is also as marked in a gypsy’s house—when he gets one. This room, which was evidently the common home of a large family, suggested, in its arrangement of furniture and the manner in which its occupants sat around the tent and the wagon. There was a bed, it is truebut there was a roll of sail-cloth, which evidently did duty for sleeping on at night, but which now, rolled up, acted the part described by Goldsmith:—
“A thing contrived a double part to play,A bed by night, a sofa during day.”
“A thing contrived a double part to play,A bed by night, a sofa during day.”
There was one chair and a saddle, a stove and a chest of drawers. I observed an engraving hanging up which I have several times seen in gypsy tents. It represents a very dark Italian youth. It is a favorite also with Roman Catholics, because the boy has a consecrated medal. The gypsies, however, believe that the boy stole the medal. The Catholics think the picture is that of a Roman boy, because the inscription says so; and the gypsies call it a Romany, so that all are satisfied. There were some eight or nine children in the room, and among them more than one whose resemblance to the dark-skinned saint might have given color enough to the theory that he was
“One whose bloodHad rolled through gypsies ever since the flood.”
“One whose bloodHad rolled through gypsies ever since the flood.”
There was also a girl, of the pantherine type, and one damsel of about ten, who had light hair and fair complexion, but whose air was gypsy and whose youthful countenance suggested not the golden, but the brazenest, age of life. Scarcely was I seated in the only chair, when this little maiden, after keenly scrutinizing my appearance, and apparently taking in the situation, came up to me and said,—
“Yer come here to have yer fortune told. I’ll tell it to yer for five cents.”
“Can tute pen dukkerin aja?” (Can you tell fortunes already?) I inquired. And if that damsel had been lifted at that instant by the hair into the infiniteglory of the seventh sphere, her countenance could not have manifested more amazement. She stoodbouche beante, stock still staring, open-mouthed wide. I believe one might have put a brandy ball into it, or a “bull’s eye,” without her jaws closing on the dainty. It was a stare of twenty-four carats, and fourth proof.
“This hererye” remarked mine uncle, affably, in middle English, “is a hartist. He puts ’is heart into all he does;that’swhy. He ain’t Romanes, but he may be trusted. He’s come here, that wot he has, to draw this ’ere Mammy Sauerkraut’s Row, because it’s interestin’. He ain’t a tax-gatherer.Wedon’t approve o’ payin’ taxes, none of hus. We practices heconomy, and dislike the po-lice. Who was Mammy Sauerkraut?”
“I know!” cried the youthful would-be fortune-teller. “She was a witch.”
“Tool yer chib!” (Hold your tongue!) cried the parent. “Don’t bother the lady with stories aboutchovihanis” (witches).
“But that’s just what I want to hear!” I cried. “Go on, my little dear, about Mammy Sauerkraut, and you will get your five cents yet, if you only give me enough of it.”
“Well, then, Mammy Sauerkraut was a witch, and a little black girl who lives next door told me so. And Mammy Sauerkraut used to change herself into a pig of nights, and that’s why they called her Sauerkraut. This was because they had pig ketchers going about in those times, and once they ketched a pig that belonged to her, and to be revenged on them she used to look like a pig, and they would follow her clear out of town way up the river, andshe’d run, and they’d run after her, till by and by fire would begin to fly out of her bristles, and she jumped into the river and sizzed.”
This I thought worthy of the five cents. Then my uncle began to put questions in Romany.
“Where is Anselo W.? He that wasstarubenfor agry?” (imprisoned for a horse).
“Staruben apopli.” (Imprisoned again.)
“I am sorry for it, sister Nell. He used to play the fiddle well. I wot he was a canty chiel’, and dearly lo’ed the whusky, oh!”
“Yes, he was too fond of that. How well he could play!”
“Yes,” said my uncle, “he could. And I have sung to his fiddling when thetatto-pāni[hot water,i.e., spirits] boiled within us, and made us gay, oh, my golden sister! That’s the way we Hungarian gypsy gentlemen always call the ladies of our people. I sang in Romany.”
“I’d like to hear you sing now,” remarked a dark, handsome young man, who had just made a mysterious appearance out of the surrounding shadows.
“It’s akamaben gilli” (a love-song), said therye; “and it is beautiful, deep old Romanes,—enough to make you cry.”
There was the long sound of a violin, clear as the note of a horn. I had not observed that the dark young man had found one to his hand, and, as he accompanied, my uncle sang; and I give the lyric as he afterwards gave it to me, both in Romany and English. As he frankly admitted, it was his own composition.
KE TEINALI.Tu shan miri pireniMe kamāva tute,Kamlidiri, rinkeni,Kāmes mande buti?Sa o miro kūshto gryTaders miri wardi,—Sa o boro būno ryeRikkers lesto stardi.Sa o bokro dré o charHawala adovo,—Sa i choramengeriLels o ryas luvoo,—Sa o sasto levinorKairs amandy mātto,—Sa o yag adré o tanKairs o geero tātto,—Sa i pūri Romni chaiPens o kushto dukkrin,—Sa i Gorgi dinneli,Patsers lākis pukkrin,—Tute taders tiro rom,Sims o gry, o wardi,Tute chores o zī adromRikkers sā i stardi.Tute haws te chores m’ri all,Tutes dukkered būtiTu shan miro jivabenMe t’vel paller tute.Paller tute sarasaPardel pūv te pāni,Trinali—o krallisa!Miri chovihāni!TO TRINALI.Now thou art my darling girl,And I love thee dearly;Oh, beloved and my fair,Lov’st thou me sincerely?As my good old trusty horseDraws his load or bears it;As a gallant cavalierCocks his hat and wears it;As a sheep devours the grassWhen the day is sunny;As a thief who has the chanceTakes away our money;As strong ale when taken downMakes the strongest tipsy;As a fire within a tentWarms a shivering gypsy;As a gypsy grandmotherTells a fortune neatly;As the Gentile trusts in her,And is done completely,—So you draw me here and there,Where you like you take me;Or you sport me like a hat,—What you will you make me.So you steal and gnaw my heartFor to that I’m fated!And by you, my gypsy Kate,I’m intoxicated.And I own you are a witch,I am beaten hollow;Where thou goest in this worldI am bound to follow,—Follow thee, where’er it be,Over land and water,Trinali, my gypsy queen!Witch and witch’s daughter!
KE TEINALI.
Tu shan miri pireniMe kamāva tute,Kamlidiri, rinkeni,Kāmes mande buti?
Sa o miro kūshto gryTaders miri wardi,—Sa o boro būno ryeRikkers lesto stardi.
Sa o bokro dré o charHawala adovo,—Sa i choramengeriLels o ryas luvoo,—
Sa o sasto levinorKairs amandy mātto,—Sa o yag adré o tanKairs o geero tātto,—
Sa i pūri Romni chaiPens o kushto dukkrin,—Sa i Gorgi dinneli,Patsers lākis pukkrin,—
Tute taders tiro rom,Sims o gry, o wardi,Tute chores o zī adromRikkers sā i stardi.
Tute haws te chores m’ri all,Tutes dukkered būtiTu shan miro jivabenMe t’vel paller tute.
Paller tute sarasaPardel pūv te pāni,Trinali—o krallisa!Miri chovihāni!
TO TRINALI.
Now thou art my darling girl,And I love thee dearly;Oh, beloved and my fair,Lov’st thou me sincerely?
As my good old trusty horseDraws his load or bears it;As a gallant cavalierCocks his hat and wears it;
As a sheep devours the grassWhen the day is sunny;As a thief who has the chanceTakes away our money;
As strong ale when taken downMakes the strongest tipsy;As a fire within a tentWarms a shivering gypsy;
As a gypsy grandmotherTells a fortune neatly;As the Gentile trusts in her,And is done completely,—
So you draw me here and there,Where you like you take me;Or you sport me like a hat,—What you will you make me.
So you steal and gnaw my heartFor to that I’m fated!And by you, my gypsy Kate,I’m intoxicated.
And I own you are a witch,I am beaten hollow;Where thou goest in this worldI am bound to follow,—
Follow thee, where’er it be,Over land and water,Trinali, my gypsy queen!Witch and witch’s daughter!