“Well, thatisdeep Romanes,” said the woman, admiringly. “It’s beautiful.”
“Ishould think it was,” remarked the violinist. “Why, I didn’t understand more than one half of it. But what I caught I understood.” Which, I reflected, as he uttered it, is perhaps exactly the case with far more than half the readers of all poetry. They run on in a semi-sensuous mental condition, soothed by cadence and lulled by rhyme, reading as they run for want of thought. Are there not poets of the present day who mean that you shall read them thus, and who cast their gold ornaments hollow, as jewelers do, lest they should be too heavy?
“My children,” said Meister Karl, “I could go on all day with Romany songs; and I can count up to a hundred in the black language. I know three words for a mouse, three for a monkey, and three for the shadow which falleth at noonday. And I know how topen dukkerin,lel dūdikabin te chiv o manzin apré latti.”[270]
“Well, the man who knowsthatis up todrab[medicine], and hasn’t much more to learn,” said the young man. “When arye’sa Rom he’s anywhere at home.”
“Sokushto bak!” (Good luck!) I said, rising to go. “We will come again!”
“Yes, we will come again,” said Meister Karl. “Look for me with the roses at the races, and tell me the horse to bet on. You’ll find mypatteran[amark or sign to show which way a gypsy has traveled] at the next church-door, or may be on the public-house step. Child of the old Egyptians, mother of all the witches, sister of the stars, daughter of darkness, farewell!”
This bewildering speech was received with admiring awe, and we departed. I should have liked to hear the comments on us which passed that evening among the gypsy denizens of Mammy Sauerkraut’s Row.
All the gypsies in the country are not upon the roads. Many of them live in houses, and that very respectably, nay, even aristocratically. Yea, and it may be, O reader, that thou hast met them and knowest them not, any more than thou knowest many other deep secrets of the hearts and lives of those who live around thee. Dark are the ways of the Romany, strange his paths, even when reclaimed from the tent and the van. It is, however, intelligible enough that the Rom converted to the true faith of broadcloth garments by Poole, or dresses by Worth, as well as to the holy gospel of daily baths andsavon au violet, should say as little as possible of his origin. For the majority of the world being snobs, they continually insist that all blood unlike their own is base, and the child of thekālorat, knowing this, sayeth naught, and ever carefully keeps the lid of silence on the pot of his birth. And as no being that ever was, is, or will be ever enjoyed holding a secret, playing a part, or otherwise entering into the deepest mystery of life—which is to make a joke of it—so thoroughly as a gypsy, it follows that the being respectable has to him a raciness and drollery and pungency and point which passeth faith. It has often occurred to me, and the older I grow the more I find it true, that therealpleasure which bank presidents, moral politicians,not a few clergymen, and most other highly representative good men take in having a high character is the exquisite secret consciousness of its being utterly undeserved. They love acting. Let no man say that the love of the drama is founded on the artificial or sham. I have heard the Reverend Histriomastix war and batter this on the pulpit; but the utteranceper sewas an actual, living lie. He was acting while he preached. Love or hunger is not more an innate passion than acting. The child in the nursery, the savage by the Nyanza or in Alaska, the multitude of great cities, all love to bemask and seem what they are not. Crush out carnivals and masked balls and theatres, and lo, you! the disguising and acting and masking show themselves in the whole community. Mawworm and Aminidab Sleek then play a rôle in every household, and every child becomes a wretched little Roscius. Verily I say unto you, the fewer actors the more acting; the fewer theatres the more stages, and the worse. Lay it to heart, study it deeply, you who believe that the stage is an open door to hell, for the chances are ninety and nine to one that if this be trueyouwill end by consciously or unconsciously keeping a private little gate thereunto. Beloved, put this in thy pipe and fumigate it, that acting in some form is a human instinct which cannot be extinguished, which never has been and never will be; and this being so, is it not better, with Dr. Bellows, to try to put it into proper form than to crush it? Truly it has been proved that with this, as with a certain other unquenchable penchant of humanity, when you suppress a score of professionals you create a thousand zealous amateurs. There was never in this world a stage on which mere acting wasmore skillfully carried out than in all England under Cromwell, or in Philadelphia under the Quakers. Eccentric dresses, artificial forms of language, separate and “peculiar” expressions of character unlike those of “the world,” were all only giving a form to that craving for being odd and queer which forms the soul of masking and acting. Of course people who act all the time object to the stage.Le diable ne veut pas de miroir.
The gypsy of society not always, but yet frequently, retains a keen interest in his wild ancestry. He keeps up the language; it is a delightful secret; he loves now and then to take a look at “the old thing.” Closely allied to the converted sinners are theaficionados, or the ladies and gentlemen born with unconquerable Bohemian tastes, which may be accounted for by their having been themselves gypsies in preëxistent lives. No one can explain how or why it is that theaficioncomes upon them. It isinthem. I know a very learned man in England, a gentleman of high position, one whose name is familiar to my readers. He could never explain or understand why from early childhood he had felt himself drawn towards the wanderers. When he was only ten years old he saved up all his little store of pence wherewith to pay a tinker to give him lessons in Romany, in which tongue he is now a Past Grand. I know ladies in England and in America, both of the blood and otherwise, who would give up a ball of the highest flight in society, to sit an hour in a gypsy tent, and on whom a whispered word of Romany acts like wild-fire. Great as my experience has been I can really no more explain the intensity of this yearning, thisrapport, than I can fly. My own fancy for gypsydom is faint and feeble comparedto what I have found in many others. It is in them like the love for opium, for music, for love itself, or for acting. I confess that there is to me a nameless charm in the strangely, softly flowing language, which gives a sweeter sound to every foreign word which it adopts, just as the melody of a forest stream is said to make more musical the songs of the birds who dwell beside it. Thus Wentzel becomes Wenselo and Anselo; Arthur, Artaros; London, Lundra; Sylvester, Westaros. Such a phrase as “Dordi!dovelo adoi?” (See! what is that there?) could not be surpassed for mere beauty of sound.
It is apropos of living double lives, and playing parts, and the charm of stealing away unseen, like naughty children, to romp with the tabooed offspring of outlawed neighbors, that I write this, to introduce a letter from a lady, who has kindly permitted me to publish it. It tells its own story of two existences, two souls in one. I give it as it was written, first in Romany, and then in English:—
Febmunti1st.Miro Kamlo Pal,—Tu tevel mishto ta shun te latcherdum me akovo kūrikus tacho Romany tan akai adré o gav. Buti kāmaben lis sas ta dikk mori foki apopli; buti kushti ta shun moro jib. Mi-duvel atch apā mande, sī ne shomas pash naflo o Gorginess, vonk’ akovo vias. O waver divvus sa me viom fon a swell saleskro hāben, dikdom me dui Romani chia beshin alay apré a longo skamin adré --- Square. Kālor yākkor, kālor balyor, lullo diklas apré i sherria, te lender trushnia aglal lender piria. Mi-duvel, shomas pāsh divio sār kamaben ta dikav lender! Avo! kairdum o wardomengro hatch i graia te sheldom avrī, “Come here!” Yon penden te me sos a rāni ta dūkker te vian sig adosta. Awer me saldom te pendom adré Romanis: “Sarishān miri dearis! Tute don’t jin mandy’s aRomany!” Yon nastis patser lende kania nera yakkor. “Mi-duvel! Sā se tiro nav? putchde yeck. “Miro nav se Britannia Lee.” Kenna-sig yon diktas te me sos tachi, te penden amengi lender navia shanas M. te D. Lis sos duro pā lende ta jin sā a Romani rāni astis jiv amen Gorgios, te dikk sa Gorgious, awer te vel kushti Romani ajā, te tevel buoino lakis kāloratt. Buti rakkerdém apré mori foki, buti nevvi, buti savo sos rumado, te beeno, te puredo, savo sos vino fon o puro tem, te būtikumi aja kekkeno sos rakkerben sa gudli. M. pende amengi, “Mandy don’t jin how tute can jiv among dem Gorgies.” Pukerdom anpāli: “Mandy dont jiv, mandy mérs kairin amen lender.” Yon mangades mande ta well ta dikk a len, adré lendes kér apré o chūmba kai atchena pa o wen. Pende M., “Av miri pen ta hā a bitti sār mendi. Tute jins the chais are only kérri arātti te Kūrrkus.”Sunday sala miri pen te me ghion adoi te latchedon o ker. O tan sos bitto, awer sā i Romanis pende, dikde boro adosta paller jivin adré o wardo. M. sos adoi te lakis roms dye, a kūshti pūri chai. A. sar shtor chavia. M. kerde hāben sā mendui viom adoi. I pūri dye sos mishto ta dikk mande, yoi kāmde ta jin sār trūstal mande. Rakkerdem buti ajā, te yoi pende te yoi né kekker latchde a Romani rāni denna mande. Pendom me ke laki shan adré society kūmi Romani rānia, awer i galderli Gorgios ne jinena lis.Yoi pende sā miri pen dikde simlo Lusha Cooper, te siggerde lākis kāloratt būtider denna me. “Tute don’t favor the Coopers, miri dearie! Tute pens tiri dye rummerd a mush navvered Smith. Wās adovo the Smith as lelled kellin te kurin booths pāsher Lundra Bridge? Sos tute beeno adré Anglaterra?” Pūkkerdom me ke puri dye sār jināv me trūstal miri kokeri te simensi. Tu jinsa shan kek Gorgies sā longi-bavoli apré genealogies, sā i puri Romani dyia. Vonka foki nāstis chin lende adré lilia, rikkerena lende aduro adré lendros sherria.Que la main droit perd recueille la gauche.“Does tute jin any of the ---’s?” pende M. “Tutedikks sim ta ---’s juva.” “Ne kekker, yois too pauno,’ pens A. “It’s chomani adré the look of her,” pende M.Dikkpāli miro pal. Tu jinsa te --- sos i chi savo dudikabinde mānūsh, navdo --- būti wongur. Vānka yoi sos lino apré, o Beshomengro pende ta kér laki chiv apré a shuba sims Gorgios te adenne lelled lāki adré a tan sar desh te dui gorgi chaia. --- astissa pen i chai savo chordé lestis lovvo. Vānka yoi vias adré o tan, yoi ghias sig keti laki, te pende: “Jināva me lāki talla lākis longi vangusti, te rinkeni mui. Yoi sos stardi dui beshya, awer o Gorgio kekker las leski vongur pāli.”Savo-chirus mendi rākkerden o wuder pirido, te trin manushia vian adré. . . . Pali lenders sarishans, M. shelde avrī: “Av ta misali, rikker yer skammins longo tute! Mrs. Lee, why didn’t tute bring yer rom?” “Adenna me shom kek rumadi.” “Mi-duvel, Britannia!” pende --- “M. pende amengy te tu sos rumado.” “M. didn’t dukker tacho vonka yoi dukkerd adovo. Yois a dinneli,” pendom me. Te adenne sar mendi saden atūt M. Hāben sos kushto, loim a kani, ballovas te puvengros, te kushto curro levina. Liom mendi kushto paiass dré moro pūro Romany dromus. Rinkenodiro sos, kérde mande pāsh ta ruv, shomas sā kushto-bākno ta atch yecker apopli men mori foki. Sos “Britannia!” akai, te “Britannia!” doi, te sār sā adré o púro cheirus, vonka chavi shomas. Ne patserava me ta Dante chinde:—“Nessun maggior doloreChe ricordarsi dei tempi felici.”Talla me shomas kūshto-bākno ta pen apré o puro chirus. Sar lende piden miro kāmaben Romaneskaes, sar gudlo; talla H. Yov pende nastis kér lis, pā yuv kennā lias tabūti. Kushto dikin Romnichal yuv. Tu tevel jin lesti sārakai pā Romani, yuv se sa kālo. Teavec l’air indefinnissable du vrai Bohemien. Yuv patserde me ta piav miro sastopen wavescro chirus. Kanā shomas pā misali, geero vias keti ian; dukkeriben kamde yov. Hunali sos i pūri dye tependes amergi, “Beng lel o pūro jūkel for wellin vānka mendi shom hāin, te kennā tu shan akai, miri Britannia Yov ne tevel lel kek kūshto bak. Mandy’ll pen leste a wafedo dukkerin.” Adoi A. putcherde mengy, “Does tute dūkker or sā does tute kér.” “Miri pen, mandy’ll pen tute tacho. Mandy dukkers te dudikabins te kérs būti covvas. Shom a tachi Romani chovihani.” “Tacho! tacho!” saden butider. Miri pen te me rikkerdem a boro matto-morricley pā i chavis. Yon beshden alay apré o purj, hāis lis. Rinkenopicturesas, pendom dikkav mande te miri penia te pralia kennā shomas bitti. Latcherdom me a tāni kāli chavi of panj besh chorin levina avrī miro curro. Dikde, sār lakis bori kāli yakka te kāli balia simno tikno Bacchante, sa yoi prasterde adrom.Pendom parako pā moro kūshto-bākeno chirus—“kushto bak” te “kūshto divvus.” Mendi diom moro tachopen ta well apopli, te kān viom kérri. Patserāva dikk tute akai tallá o prasterin o ye graia. Kūshto bāk te kūshto rātti.Sarja tiro pen,Britannia Lee.TRANSLATION.February1st.My dear Friend,—You will be glad to learn that I, within the week, found a real Romany family (place) here in this town. Charming it was to find our folk again; pleasant it was to listen to our tongue. The Lord be on me! but I was half sick of Gentiles and their ways till this occurred. The other day, as I was returning from a highly aristocratic breakfast, where we had winter strawberries with thecrême de la crême, I saw two gypsy women sitting on a bench in --- Square. Black eyes, black hair, red kerchiefs on their heads, their baskets on the ground before their feet. Dear Lord! but I was half wild with delight at seeing them. Aye, I made the coachman stop the horses, and cried aloud, “Come here!” They thought I was a lady to fortune-tell, and came quickly. But I laughed, and said in Romany, “How are you, my dears? You don’tknow that I am a gypsy.” They could not trust their very ears or eyes! At length one said, “My God! whatisyour name?” “My name’s Britannia Lee,” and, at a glance, they saw that I was to be trusted, and a Romany. Their names, they said, were M. and D. It was hard (far) for them to understand how a Romany ladycouldlive among Gentiles, and look so Gorgious, and yet be a true gypsy withal, and proud of her dark blood. Much they talked about our people; much news I heard,—much as to who was married and born and buried, who was come from the old country, and much more. Oh,neverwas such news so sweet to me! M. said, “I don’t know how youcanlive among the Gentiles.” I answered, “I don’t live; Idie, living in their houses with them.” They begged me then to come and see them in their home, upon the hill, where they are wintering. M. said, “Come, my sister, and eat a little with us. You know that the women are only at home at night and on Sunday.”Sunday morning, sister and I went there, and found the house. It was a little place, but, as they said, after the life in wagons it seemed large. M. was there, and her husband’s mother, a nice old woman; also A., with four children. M. was cooking as we entered. The old mother was glad to see us; she wished to know all about us. All talked, indeed, and that quite rapidly, and she said that I was the first Romany lady[279]she had ever seen. I said to her that in society are many gypsy ladies to be found, but that the wretched Gentiles do not know it.She said that my sister looked like Lusha Cooper, and showed her dark blood more than I do. “You don’t favor the Coopers, my dearie. You say your mother married a Smith. Was that the Smith who kept a dancing and boxingplace near London Bridge? Were you born in England?” I told the old mother all I knew about myself and my relations. You know that no Gorgios are so long-winded on genealogies as old mothers in Rom. When people don’t write them down in their family Bibles, they carry them, extended, in their heads.Que la main droit perd recueille la gauche.“Do you know any of the ---’s?” said M. “You look like ---’s wife.” “No; she’s too pale,” said A. “It’s something in the look of her,” said M.Reflect, my brother. You know that --- was the woman who “cleaned out” a man named --- of a very large sum[280]by “dukkeripen” and “dudikabin.” “When she was arrested, the justice made her dress like any Gorgio, and placed her among twelve Gentile women. The man who had been robbed was to point out who among them had stolen his money. When she came into the room, he went at once to her, and said, ‘I know her by her long skinny fingers and handsome face.’ She was imprisoned for two years, but the Gorgio never recovered his money.”What time we reasoned thus, the door undid, and three men entered. After their greetings, M. cried, “Come to table; bring your chairs with you!” “Mrs. Lee, why didn’t you bring your husband?” “Because I am not married.” “Lord! Britannia! Why, M. told me that you were.” “Ah, M. didn’t fortune right when she fortuned that. She’s a fool,” quoth I. And then we all laughed like children. The food was good: chickens and ham and fried potatoes, with a glass of sound ale. We were gay as flies in summer, in the real old Romany way. ’T was “Britannia” here, “Britannia” there, as in the merry days when we were young. Little do I believe in Dante’s words,—“Nessun maggior dolore,Che ricordarsi dei tempi felici.”“There is no greater griefThan to remember by-gone happy days.”For it is always happiness to me to think of good old times when I was glad. All drank my health,Romaneskaes, together, with a shout,—all save H., who said he had already had too much. Good-looking gypsy, that! You’d know him anywhere for Romany, he is so dark,—avec l’air indéfinissable du vrai Bohemien. He promised to drink my health another time.As we sat, a gentleman came in below, wishing to have his fortune told. I remember to have read that the Pythoness of Delphian oracle prepared herself fordukkerin, or presaging, by taking a few drops of cherry-laurel water. (I have had it prescribed for my eyes as Raq. laur. cerasi. fiat lotio,—possibly to enable me to see into the future.) Perhaps it was the cherry-brandy beloved of British matrons and Brighton school-girls, taken at Mutton’s.Mais revenons à nos moutons. The old mother had taken, not cherry-laurel water, nor even cherry-brandy, but joly good ale, and olde, which, far from fitting her to reveal the darksome lore of futurity, had rendered her loath to leave the festive board of the present. Wrathful was the sybil, furious as the Vala when waked by Odin, angry as Thor when he missed his hammer, to miss her merriment. “May the devil take the old dog for coming when we are eating, and when thou art here, my Britannia! Little good fortune will he hear this day. Evil shall be the best I’ll promise him.” Thus spake the sorceress, and out she went to keep her word. Truly it was a splendid picture this of “The Enraged Witch,” as painted by Hexenmeister von Teufel, of Höllenstadt,—her viper eyes flashing infernal light and most unchristian fire, shakingles noirs serpents de ses cheveux, as she went forth. I know how, in an instant, her face was beautiful with welcome, smiling like a Neapolitan at a cent;but the poor believer caught it hot, all the same, and had a sleepless night over his future fate. I wonder if the Pythoness of old, when summoned from apetit souper, or a holy prophet called out of bed of a cold night, to decide by royal command on the fate of Israel, ever “took it out” on the untimely king by promising him a lively, unhappy time of it. Truly it is fine to be behind the scenes and see how they work the oracle. For the gentleman who came to consult my witch was a man of might in the secrets of state, and one whom I have met in high society. And, oh!ifhe had known who it was that was up-stairs, laughing at him for a fool!While she was forth, A. asked me, “Do you tell fortunes, orwhat?” “My sister,” I replied, “I’ll tell thee the truth. I do tell fortunes. I keep a house for the purchase of stolen goods. I am largely engaged in making counterfeit money and all kinds of forgery. I am interested in burglary. I lie, swear, cheat, and steal, and get drunk on Sunday. And I do many other things. I am a real Romany witch.” This little confession of faith brought down the house. “Bravo! bravo!” they cried, laughing.Sister and I had brought a great tipsy-cake for the children, and they were all sitting under a table, eating it. It was a pretty picture. I thought I saw in it myself and all my sisters and brothers as we were once. Just such little gypsies and duckling Romanys! And now! And then! What a comedy some lives are,—yea, such lives as mine! And now it isyouwho are behind the scenes; anon, I shall change with you.Va Pierre,vient Pierette. Then I surprised a little brown maiden imp of five summers stealing my beer, and as she was caught in the act, and tore away shrieking with laughter, she looked, with her great black eyes and flowing jetty curling locks, like a perfect little Bacchante.Then we said, “Thank you for the happy time!” “Goodluck!” and “Good day!” giving our promises to come again. So we went home all well. I hope to see you at the races here. Good luck and good-night also to you.Always your friend,Britannia Lee
Febmunti1st.
Miro Kamlo Pal,—Tu tevel mishto ta shun te latcherdum me akovo kūrikus tacho Romany tan akai adré o gav. Buti kāmaben lis sas ta dikk mori foki apopli; buti kushti ta shun moro jib. Mi-duvel atch apā mande, sī ne shomas pash naflo o Gorginess, vonk’ akovo vias. O waver divvus sa me viom fon a swell saleskro hāben, dikdom me dui Romani chia beshin alay apré a longo skamin adré --- Square. Kālor yākkor, kālor balyor, lullo diklas apré i sherria, te lender trushnia aglal lender piria. Mi-duvel, shomas pāsh divio sār kamaben ta dikav lender! Avo! kairdum o wardomengro hatch i graia te sheldom avrī, “Come here!” Yon penden te me sos a rāni ta dūkker te vian sig adosta. Awer me saldom te pendom adré Romanis: “Sarishān miri dearis! Tute don’t jin mandy’s aRomany!” Yon nastis patser lende kania nera yakkor. “Mi-duvel! Sā se tiro nav? putchde yeck. “Miro nav se Britannia Lee.” Kenna-sig yon diktas te me sos tachi, te penden amengi lender navia shanas M. te D. Lis sos duro pā lende ta jin sā a Romani rāni astis jiv amen Gorgios, te dikk sa Gorgious, awer te vel kushti Romani ajā, te tevel buoino lakis kāloratt. Buti rakkerdém apré mori foki, buti nevvi, buti savo sos rumado, te beeno, te puredo, savo sos vino fon o puro tem, te būtikumi aja kekkeno sos rakkerben sa gudli. M. pende amengi, “Mandy don’t jin how tute can jiv among dem Gorgies.” Pukerdom anpāli: “Mandy dont jiv, mandy mérs kairin amen lender.” Yon mangades mande ta well ta dikk a len, adré lendes kér apré o chūmba kai atchena pa o wen. Pende M., “Av miri pen ta hā a bitti sār mendi. Tute jins the chais are only kérri arātti te Kūrrkus.”
Sunday sala miri pen te me ghion adoi te latchedon o ker. O tan sos bitto, awer sā i Romanis pende, dikde boro adosta paller jivin adré o wardo. M. sos adoi te lakis roms dye, a kūshti pūri chai. A. sar shtor chavia. M. kerde hāben sā mendui viom adoi. I pūri dye sos mishto ta dikk mande, yoi kāmde ta jin sār trūstal mande. Rakkerdem buti ajā, te yoi pende te yoi né kekker latchde a Romani rāni denna mande. Pendom me ke laki shan adré society kūmi Romani rānia, awer i galderli Gorgios ne jinena lis.
Yoi pende sā miri pen dikde simlo Lusha Cooper, te siggerde lākis kāloratt būtider denna me. “Tute don’t favor the Coopers, miri dearie! Tute pens tiri dye rummerd a mush navvered Smith. Wās adovo the Smith as lelled kellin te kurin booths pāsher Lundra Bridge? Sos tute beeno adré Anglaterra?” Pūkkerdom me ke puri dye sār jināv me trūstal miri kokeri te simensi. Tu jinsa shan kek Gorgies sā longi-bavoli apré genealogies, sā i puri Romani dyia. Vonka foki nāstis chin lende adré lilia, rikkerena lende aduro adré lendros sherria.Que la main droit perd recueille la gauche.
“Does tute jin any of the ---’s?” pende M. “Tutedikks sim ta ---’s juva.” “Ne kekker, yois too pauno,’ pens A. “It’s chomani adré the look of her,” pende M.
Dikkpāli miro pal. Tu jinsa te --- sos i chi savo dudikabinde mānūsh, navdo --- būti wongur. Vānka yoi sos lino apré, o Beshomengro pende ta kér laki chiv apré a shuba sims Gorgios te adenne lelled lāki adré a tan sar desh te dui gorgi chaia. --- astissa pen i chai savo chordé lestis lovvo. Vānka yoi vias adré o tan, yoi ghias sig keti laki, te pende: “Jināva me lāki talla lākis longi vangusti, te rinkeni mui. Yoi sos stardi dui beshya, awer o Gorgio kekker las leski vongur pāli.”
Savo-chirus mendi rākkerden o wuder pirido, te trin manushia vian adré. . . . Pali lenders sarishans, M. shelde avrī: “Av ta misali, rikker yer skammins longo tute! Mrs. Lee, why didn’t tute bring yer rom?” “Adenna me shom kek rumadi.” “Mi-duvel, Britannia!” pende --- “M. pende amengy te tu sos rumado.” “M. didn’t dukker tacho vonka yoi dukkerd adovo. Yois a dinneli,” pendom me. Te adenne sar mendi saden atūt M. Hāben sos kushto, loim a kani, ballovas te puvengros, te kushto curro levina. Liom mendi kushto paiass dré moro pūro Romany dromus. Rinkenodiro sos, kérde mande pāsh ta ruv, shomas sā kushto-bākno ta atch yecker apopli men mori foki. Sos “Britannia!” akai, te “Britannia!” doi, te sār sā adré o púro cheirus, vonka chavi shomas. Ne patserava me ta Dante chinde:—
“Nessun maggior doloreChe ricordarsi dei tempi felici.”
Talla me shomas kūshto-bākno ta pen apré o puro chirus. Sar lende piden miro kāmaben Romaneskaes, sar gudlo; talla H. Yov pende nastis kér lis, pā yuv kennā lias tabūti. Kushto dikin Romnichal yuv. Tu tevel jin lesti sārakai pā Romani, yuv se sa kālo. Teavec l’air indefinnissable du vrai Bohemien. Yuv patserde me ta piav miro sastopen wavescro chirus. Kanā shomas pā misali, geero vias keti ian; dukkeriben kamde yov. Hunali sos i pūri dye tependes amergi, “Beng lel o pūro jūkel for wellin vānka mendi shom hāin, te kennā tu shan akai, miri Britannia Yov ne tevel lel kek kūshto bak. Mandy’ll pen leste a wafedo dukkerin.” Adoi A. putcherde mengy, “Does tute dūkker or sā does tute kér.” “Miri pen, mandy’ll pen tute tacho. Mandy dukkers te dudikabins te kérs būti covvas. Shom a tachi Romani chovihani.” “Tacho! tacho!” saden butider. Miri pen te me rikkerdem a boro matto-morricley pā i chavis. Yon beshden alay apré o purj, hāis lis. Rinkenopicturesas, pendom dikkav mande te miri penia te pralia kennā shomas bitti. Latcherdom me a tāni kāli chavi of panj besh chorin levina avrī miro curro. Dikde, sār lakis bori kāli yakka te kāli balia simno tikno Bacchante, sa yoi prasterde adrom.
Pendom parako pā moro kūshto-bākeno chirus—“kushto bak” te “kūshto divvus.” Mendi diom moro tachopen ta well apopli, te kān viom kérri. Patserāva dikk tute akai tallá o prasterin o ye graia. Kūshto bāk te kūshto rātti.
Sarja tiro pen,
Britannia Lee.
TRANSLATION.
February1st.
My dear Friend,—You will be glad to learn that I, within the week, found a real Romany family (place) here in this town. Charming it was to find our folk again; pleasant it was to listen to our tongue. The Lord be on me! but I was half sick of Gentiles and their ways till this occurred. The other day, as I was returning from a highly aristocratic breakfast, where we had winter strawberries with thecrême de la crême, I saw two gypsy women sitting on a bench in --- Square. Black eyes, black hair, red kerchiefs on their heads, their baskets on the ground before their feet. Dear Lord! but I was half wild with delight at seeing them. Aye, I made the coachman stop the horses, and cried aloud, “Come here!” They thought I was a lady to fortune-tell, and came quickly. But I laughed, and said in Romany, “How are you, my dears? You don’tknow that I am a gypsy.” They could not trust their very ears or eyes! At length one said, “My God! whatisyour name?” “My name’s Britannia Lee,” and, at a glance, they saw that I was to be trusted, and a Romany. Their names, they said, were M. and D. It was hard (far) for them to understand how a Romany ladycouldlive among Gentiles, and look so Gorgious, and yet be a true gypsy withal, and proud of her dark blood. Much they talked about our people; much news I heard,—much as to who was married and born and buried, who was come from the old country, and much more. Oh,neverwas such news so sweet to me! M. said, “I don’t know how youcanlive among the Gentiles.” I answered, “I don’t live; Idie, living in their houses with them.” They begged me then to come and see them in their home, upon the hill, where they are wintering. M. said, “Come, my sister, and eat a little with us. You know that the women are only at home at night and on Sunday.”
Sunday morning, sister and I went there, and found the house. It was a little place, but, as they said, after the life in wagons it seemed large. M. was there, and her husband’s mother, a nice old woman; also A., with four children. M. was cooking as we entered. The old mother was glad to see us; she wished to know all about us. All talked, indeed, and that quite rapidly, and she said that I was the first Romany lady[279]she had ever seen. I said to her that in society are many gypsy ladies to be found, but that the wretched Gentiles do not know it.
She said that my sister looked like Lusha Cooper, and showed her dark blood more than I do. “You don’t favor the Coopers, my dearie. You say your mother married a Smith. Was that the Smith who kept a dancing and boxingplace near London Bridge? Were you born in England?” I told the old mother all I knew about myself and my relations. You know that no Gorgios are so long-winded on genealogies as old mothers in Rom. When people don’t write them down in their family Bibles, they carry them, extended, in their heads.Que la main droit perd recueille la gauche.
“Do you know any of the ---’s?” said M. “You look like ---’s wife.” “No; she’s too pale,” said A. “It’s something in the look of her,” said M.
Reflect, my brother. You know that --- was the woman who “cleaned out” a man named --- of a very large sum[280]by “dukkeripen” and “dudikabin.” “When she was arrested, the justice made her dress like any Gorgio, and placed her among twelve Gentile women. The man who had been robbed was to point out who among them had stolen his money. When she came into the room, he went at once to her, and said, ‘I know her by her long skinny fingers and handsome face.’ She was imprisoned for two years, but the Gorgio never recovered his money.”
What time we reasoned thus, the door undid, and three men entered. After their greetings, M. cried, “Come to table; bring your chairs with you!” “Mrs. Lee, why didn’t you bring your husband?” “Because I am not married.” “Lord! Britannia! Why, M. told me that you were.” “Ah, M. didn’t fortune right when she fortuned that. She’s a fool,” quoth I. And then we all laughed like children. The food was good: chickens and ham and fried potatoes, with a glass of sound ale. We were gay as flies in summer, in the real old Romany way. ’T was “Britannia” here, “Britannia” there, as in the merry days when we were young. Little do I believe in Dante’s words,—
“Nessun maggior dolore,Che ricordarsi dei tempi felici.”
“There is no greater griefThan to remember by-gone happy days.”
For it is always happiness to me to think of good old times when I was glad. All drank my health,Romaneskaes, together, with a shout,—all save H., who said he had already had too much. Good-looking gypsy, that! You’d know him anywhere for Romany, he is so dark,—avec l’air indéfinissable du vrai Bohemien. He promised to drink my health another time.
As we sat, a gentleman came in below, wishing to have his fortune told. I remember to have read that the Pythoness of Delphian oracle prepared herself fordukkerin, or presaging, by taking a few drops of cherry-laurel water. (I have had it prescribed for my eyes as Raq. laur. cerasi. fiat lotio,—possibly to enable me to see into the future.) Perhaps it was the cherry-brandy beloved of British matrons and Brighton school-girls, taken at Mutton’s.Mais revenons à nos moutons. The old mother had taken, not cherry-laurel water, nor even cherry-brandy, but joly good ale, and olde, which, far from fitting her to reveal the darksome lore of futurity, had rendered her loath to leave the festive board of the present. Wrathful was the sybil, furious as the Vala when waked by Odin, angry as Thor when he missed his hammer, to miss her merriment. “May the devil take the old dog for coming when we are eating, and when thou art here, my Britannia! Little good fortune will he hear this day. Evil shall be the best I’ll promise him.” Thus spake the sorceress, and out she went to keep her word. Truly it was a splendid picture this of “The Enraged Witch,” as painted by Hexenmeister von Teufel, of Höllenstadt,—her viper eyes flashing infernal light and most unchristian fire, shakingles noirs serpents de ses cheveux, as she went forth. I know how, in an instant, her face was beautiful with welcome, smiling like a Neapolitan at a cent;but the poor believer caught it hot, all the same, and had a sleepless night over his future fate. I wonder if the Pythoness of old, when summoned from apetit souper, or a holy prophet called out of bed of a cold night, to decide by royal command on the fate of Israel, ever “took it out” on the untimely king by promising him a lively, unhappy time of it. Truly it is fine to be behind the scenes and see how they work the oracle. For the gentleman who came to consult my witch was a man of might in the secrets of state, and one whom I have met in high society. And, oh!ifhe had known who it was that was up-stairs, laughing at him for a fool!
While she was forth, A. asked me, “Do you tell fortunes, orwhat?” “My sister,” I replied, “I’ll tell thee the truth. I do tell fortunes. I keep a house for the purchase of stolen goods. I am largely engaged in making counterfeit money and all kinds of forgery. I am interested in burglary. I lie, swear, cheat, and steal, and get drunk on Sunday. And I do many other things. I am a real Romany witch.” This little confession of faith brought down the house. “Bravo! bravo!” they cried, laughing.
Sister and I had brought a great tipsy-cake for the children, and they were all sitting under a table, eating it. It was a pretty picture. I thought I saw in it myself and all my sisters and brothers as we were once. Just such little gypsies and duckling Romanys! And now! And then! What a comedy some lives are,—yea, such lives as mine! And now it isyouwho are behind the scenes; anon, I shall change with you.Va Pierre,vient Pierette. Then I surprised a little brown maiden imp of five summers stealing my beer, and as she was caught in the act, and tore away shrieking with laughter, she looked, with her great black eyes and flowing jetty curling locks, like a perfect little Bacchante.
Then we said, “Thank you for the happy time!” “Goodluck!” and “Good day!” giving our promises to come again. So we went home all well. I hope to see you at the races here. Good luck and good-night also to you.
Always your friend,
Britannia Lee
I have somewhat abbreviated the Romany text of this letter, and Miss Lee herself has somewhat polished and enlarged the translation, which is strictly fit and proper, she being a very different person in English from what she is in gypsy, as are most of her kind. This letter may be, to many, a strange lesson, a quaint essay, a social problem, a fable, an epigram, or a frolic,—just as they choose to take it. To me it is a poem. Thou, my friend, canst easily understand why all that is wild and strange, out-of-doors, far away by night, is worthy of being Tennysoned or Whitmanned. If there be given unto thee stupendous blasted trees, looking in the moonlight like the pillars of a vast and ghostly temple; the fall of cataracts down awful rocks; the wind wailing in wondrous language or whistling Indian melody all night on heath, rocks, and hills, over ancient graves and through lonely caves, bearing with it the hoot of the night-owl; while over all the stars look down in eternal mystery, like eyes reading the great riddle of the night which thou knowest not,—this is to thee like Ariel’s song. To me and to us there are men and women who are in life as the wild river and the night-owl, as the blasted tree and the wind over ancient graves. No man is educated until he has arrived at that state of thought when a picture is quite the same as a book, an old gray-beard jug as a manuscript, men, women, and children as libraries. It was but yester morn that I read a cuneiform inscriptionprinted by doves’ feet in the snow, finding a meaning where in by-gone years I should have seen only a quaint resemblance. For in this by theornithomanteiaknown of old to the Chaldean sages I saw that it was neither from arrow-heads or wedges which gave the letters to the old Assyrians. When thou art at this point, then Nature is equal in all her types, and the city, as the forest, full of endless beauty and piquancy,—in sæcula sæculorum.
I had written the foregoing, and had enveloped and directed it to be mailed, when I met in a lady-book entitled “Magyarland” with the following passages:—
“The gypsy girl in this family was a pretty young woman, with masses of raven hair and a clear skin, but, notwithstanding her neat dress and civilized surroundings, we recognized her immediately. It is, in truth, not until one sees the Romany translated to an entirely new form of existence, and under circumstances inconsistent with their ordinary lives, that one realizes how completely different they are from the rest of mankind in form and feature. Instead of disguising, the garb of civilization only enhances the type, and renders it the more apparent. No matter what dress they may assume, no matter what may be their calling, no matter whether they are dwellers in tents or houses, it is impossible for gypsies to disguise their origin. Taken from their customary surroundings, they become at once an anomaly and an anachronism, and present such an instance of the absurdity of attempting to invert the order of nature that we feel more than ever how utterly different they are from the human race; that there is a key to their strange life which we do not possess,—a secret freemasonry that renders them more isolated than the veriest savages dwelling in the African wilds,—and a hidden mystery hanging over them and their origin that we shall never comprehend. They are indeed a people so entirely separate and distinct that, in whatever clime or quarter of the globe they may be met with, they are instantly recognized; for with them forty centuries of association with civilized races have not succeeded in obliterating one single sign.”
“The gypsy girl in this family was a pretty young woman, with masses of raven hair and a clear skin, but, notwithstanding her neat dress and civilized surroundings, we recognized her immediately. It is, in truth, not until one sees the Romany translated to an entirely new form of existence, and under circumstances inconsistent with their ordinary lives, that one realizes how completely different they are from the rest of mankind in form and feature. Instead of disguising, the garb of civilization only enhances the type, and renders it the more apparent. No matter what dress they may assume, no matter what may be their calling, no matter whether they are dwellers in tents or houses, it is impossible for gypsies to disguise their origin. Taken from their customary surroundings, they become at once an anomaly and an anachronism, and present such an instance of the absurdity of attempting to invert the order of nature that we feel more than ever how utterly different they are from the human race; that there is a key to their strange life which we do not possess,—a secret freemasonry that renders them more isolated than the veriest savages dwelling in the African wilds,—and a hidden mystery hanging over them and their origin that we shall never comprehend. They are indeed a people so entirely separate and distinct that, in whatever clime or quarter of the globe they may be met with, they are instantly recognized; for with them forty centuries of association with civilized races have not succeeded in obliterating one single sign.”
* * * * *
“Alas!” cried the princess; “I can never, never find the door of the enchanted cavern, nor enter the golden cavern, nor solve its wonderful mystery. It has been closed for thousands of years, and it will remain closed forever.”“What flowers are those which thou holdest?” asked the hermit.“Only primroses or Mary’s-keys,[285]and tulips,” replied the princess.“Touch the rock with them,” said the hermit, “and the door will open.”
“Alas!” cried the princess; “I can never, never find the door of the enchanted cavern, nor enter the golden cavern, nor solve its wonderful mystery. It has been closed for thousands of years, and it will remain closed forever.”
“What flowers are those which thou holdest?” asked the hermit.
“Only primroses or Mary’s-keys,[285]and tulips,” replied the princess.
“Touch the rock with them,” said the hermit, “and the door will open.”
* * * * *
The lady writer of “Magyarland” held in her hand all the while, and knew it not, a beautiful primrose, which might have opened for her the mysterious Romany cavern. On a Danube steamboat she saw a little blind boy sitting all day all alone: only a little Slavonian peasant boy, “an odd, quaint little specimen of humanity, with loose brown garments, cut precisely like those of a grown-up man, and his bits of feet in little raw-hide moccasins.” However, with atender, gentle heart she began to pet the little waif. And the captain told her what the boy was. “He is aguslar, or minstrel, as they call them in Croatia. The Yougo-Slavs dedicate all male children who are born blind, from infancy, to the Muses. As soon as they are old enough to handle anything, a small mandolin is given them, which they are taught to play; after which they are taken every day into the woods, where they are left till evening to commune in their little hearts with nature. In due time they become poets, or at any rate rhapsodists, singing of the things they never saw, and when grown up are sent forth to earn their livelihood, like the troubadours of old, by singing from place to place, and asking alms by the wayside.
“It is not difficult for a Slav to become a poet; he takes in poetic sentiment as a river does water from its source. The first sounds he is conscious of are the words of his mother singing to him as she rocks his cradle. Then, as she watches the dawning of intelligence in his infant face, her mother language is that of poetry, which she improvises at the moment, and though he never saw the flowers nor the snow-capped mountains, nor the flowing streams and rivers, he describes them out of his inner consciousness, and the influence which the varied sounds of nature have upon his mind.”
Rock and river and greenwood tree, sweet-spiced spring flower, rustling grass, and bird-singing nature and freedom,—this is the secret of the poets’ song and of the Romany, and there is no other mystery in either. He who sleeps on graves rises mad or a poet; all who lie on the earth, which is the grave and cradle of nature, and who liveal fresco, understand gypsiesas well as my lady Britannia Lee. Nay, when some natures take to the Romany they become like the Norman knights of the Pale, who were more Paddyfied than the Paddies themselves. These become leaders among the gypsies, who recognize the fact that one renegade is more zealous than ten Turks. As for the “mystery” of the history of the gypsies, it is time, sweet friends, that ’t were ended. When we know that there is to-day, in India, a sect and set of Vauriens, who are there considered Gipsissimæ, and who call themselves, with their wives and language and being, Rom, Romni, and Romnipana, even as they do in England; and when we know, moreover, that their faces proclaim them to be Indian, and that they have been a wandering caste since the dawn of Hindu history, we have, I trow, little more to seek. As for the rest, you may read it in the great book of Out-of Doors,capitulo nullo folio nigro, or wherever you choose to open it, written as distinctly, plainly, and sweetly as the imprint of a school-boy’s knife and fork on a mince-pie, or in the uprolled rapture of the eyes of Britannia when she inhaleth the perfume of a fresh bunch of Florentine violets.Ite missa est.
Noon in Cairo.
A silent old court-yard, half sun and half shadow in which quaintly graceful, strangely curving columns seem to have taken from long companionship with trees something of their inner life, while the palms, their neighbors, from long in-door existence, look as if they had in turn acquired household or animal instincts, if not human sympathies. And as the younger the race the more it seeks for poets and orators to express in thought what it only feels, so these dumb pillars and plants found their poet and orator in the fountain which sang or spoke for them strangely and sweetly all night and day, uttering for them not only their waking thoughts, but their dreams. It gave a voice, too, to the ancient Persian tiles and the Cufic inscriptions which had seen the caliphs, and it told endless stories of Zobeide and Mesrour and Haroun al Raschid.
Beyond the door which, when opened, gave this sight was a dark ancient archway twenty yards long, which opened on the glaring, dusty street, where camels with their drivers and screamingsais, or carriage-runners and donkey-boys and crying venders, kept up the wonted Oriental din. But just within the archway, in its duskiest corner, there sat all day a living picture, a dark and handsome woman, apparentlythirty years old, who was unveiled. She had before her a cloth and a few shells; sometimes an Egyptian of the lower class stopped, and there would be a grave consultation, and the shells would be thrown, and then further solemn conference and a payment of money and a departure. And it was world-old Egyptian, or Chaldean, as to custom, for the woman was a Rhagarin, or gypsy, and she was one of the diviners who sit by the wayside, casting shells for auspices, even as shells and arrows were cast of old, to be cursed by Israel.
It is not remarkable that among the myriadmanteiasof olden days there should have been one by shells. The sound of the sea as heard in the nautilus or conch, when
“It remembers its august abodeAnd murmurs as the ocean murmurs there,”
“It remembers its august abodeAnd murmurs as the ocean murmurs there,”
is very strange to children, and I can remember how in childhood I listened with perfect faith to the distant roaring, and marveled at the mystery of the ocean song being thus forever kept alive, inland. Shells seem so much like work of human hands, and are often so marked as with letters, that it is not strange that faith soon found the supernatural in them. The magic shell of all others is the cowrie. Why the Roman ladies called itporcella, or little pig, because it has a pig’s back, is the objective explanation of its name, and how from its gloss that name, or porcellana, was transferred to porcelain, is in books. But there is another side to the shell, and another or esoteric meaning to “piggy,” which was also known to thedames du temps jadis, to Archipiada and Thais,qui fut la belle Romaine,—and this inner meaning makes of it a type of birth or creation.Now all that symbolizes fertility, birth, pleasure, warmth, light, and love is opposed to barrenness, cold, death, and evil; whence it follows that the very sight of a shell, and especially of a cowrie, frightens away the devils as well as a horse-shoe, which by the way has also its cryptic meaning. Hence it was selected to cast for luck, a world-old custom, which still lingers in the game of props; and for the same reason it is hung on donkeys, the devil being still scared away by the sight of a cowrie, even as he was scared away of old by its prototype, as told by Rabelais.
As the sibyls sat in caves, so the sorceress sat in the dark archway, immovable when not sought, mysterious as are all her kind, and something to wonder at. It was after passing her, and feeling by quick intuition what she was, that the court-yard became a fairy-land, and the fountain its poet, and the palm-trees Tamar maids. There are people who believe there is no mystery, that an analysis of the gypsy sorceress would have shown an ignorant outcast; but while nature gives chiaro-oscuro and beauty, and while God is the Unknown, I believe that the more light there is cast by science the more stupendous will be the new abysses of darkness revealed. These natures must be taken with thelifein them, not dead,—and their life is mystery. The Hungarian gypsy lives in an intense mystery, yes, in true magic in his singing. You may say that he cannot, like Orpheus, move rocks or tame beasts with his music. If he could he could do no more than astonish and move us, and he does that now, and thewhyis as deep a mystery as that would be.
So far is it from being only a degrading superstition in those who believe that mortals like themselvescan predict the future, that it seems, on the contrary ennobling. It is precisely because man feels a mystery within himself that he admits it may be higher in others; if spirits whisper to him in dreams and airy passages of trembling light, or in the music never heard but ever felt below, what may not be revealed to others? You may tell me if you will that prophecies are all rubbish and magic a lie, and it may be so,—nay,isso, but the awful mystery of the Unknown without a name and the yearning to penetrate itis, and is all the more, because I have found all prophecies and jugglings and thaumaturgy fail to bridge over the abyss. It is since I have read with love and faith the evolutionists and physiologists of the most advanced type that the Unknown has become to me most wonderful, and that I have seen the light which never shone on sea or land as I never saw it before. And therefore to me the gypsy and all the races who live in freedom and near to nature are more poetic than ever. For which reason, after the laws of acoustics have fully explained to me why the nautilus sounds like a far off-ocean dirge, the unutterable longingto know moreseizes upon me,
“Till my heart is full of longingFor the secret of the sea,And the heart of the great oceanSends a thrilling pulse through me.”
“Till my heart is full of longingFor the secret of the sea,And the heart of the great oceanSends a thrilling pulse through me.”
That gypsy fortune-teller, sitting in the shadow, is, moreover, interesting as a living manifestation of a dead past. As in one of her own shells when petrified we should have the ancient form without its color, all the old elements being displaced by new ones, so we have the old magic shape, though every atom in it is different; the same, yet not the sameLife in the future, and the divination thereof, was a stupendous, ever-present reality to the ancient Egyptian, and the sole inspiration of humanity when it produced few but tremendous results. It is when we see it in such living forms that it is most interesting. As in Western wilds we can tell exactly by the outline of the forests where the borders of ancient inland seas once ran, so in the great greenwood of history we can trace by the richness or absence of foliage and flower the vanished landmarks of poetry, or perceive where the enchantment whose charm has now flown like the snow of the foregone year once reigned in beauty. So a line of lilies has shown me where the sea-foam once fell, and pine-trees sang of masts preceding them.
“I sometimes think that never blows so redThe rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;That every hyacinth the garden wearsDropt in her lap from some once lovely head.”[292]
“I sometimes think that never blows so redThe rose as where some buried Cæsar bled;That every hyacinth the garden wearsDropt in her lap from some once lovely head.”[292]
The memory of that court-yard reminds me that I possess two Persian tiles, each with a story. There is a house in Cairo which is said to be more or less contemporary with the prophet, and it is inhabited by an old white-bearded emir, more or less a descendant of the prophet. This old gentleman once gave as a precious souvenir to an American lady two of the beautiful old tiles from his house, whereof I had one. In the eyes of a Muslim there is a degree of sanctity attached to this tile, as one on which the eyes of the prophet may have rested,—or at least the eyes of those who were nearer to him than we are. Long after I returned from Cairo I wrote andpublished a fairy-book called Johnnykin, in which occurred the following lines:—
Trust not the Ghoul, love,Heed not his smile;Out of the Mosque,love,He stole the tile.
Trust not the Ghoul, love,Heed not his smile;Out of the Mosque,love,He stole the tile.
One day my friend the Palmer from over the sea came to me with a present. It was a beautiful Persian tile.
“Where did you get it?” I asked.
“I stole it out of a mosque in Syria.”
“Did you ever read my Johnnykin?”
“Of course not.”
“I know you never did.” Here I repeated the verse. “But you remember what the Persian poet says:—
“‘And never since the vine-clad earth was youngWas some great crime committed on the earth,But that some poet prophesied the deed.’”
“‘And never since the vine-clad earth was youngWas some great crime committed on the earth,But that some poet prophesied the deed.’”
“True, and also what the great Tsigane poet sang:—
“‘O manush te lela sossi choredó,Wafodiro se te choramengró.’“He who takes the stolen ring,Is worse than he who stole the thing.”
“‘O manush te lela sossi choredó,Wafodiro se te choramengró.’
“He who takes the stolen ring,Is worse than he who stole the thing.”
“And it would have been better for you, while you weredukkerinor prophesying, to have prophesied about something more valuable than a tile.”
And so it came to pass that the two Persian tiles, one given by a descendant of the Prophet, and the other the subject of a prophecy, rest in my cabinet side by side.
In Egypt, as in Austria, or Syria, or Persia, or India, the gypsies are the popular musicians. I had longsought for the derivation of the wordbanjo, and one day I found that the Oriental gypsies called a gourd by that name. Walking one day with the Palmer in Cambridge, we saw in a window a very fine Hindu lute, or in fact a real banjo made of a gourd. We inquired, and found that it belonged to a mutual friend, Mr. Charles Brookfield, one of the best fellows living, and who, on being forthwith “requisitioned” by the unanimous voice of all who sympathized with me in my need, sent me the instrument. “He did not think it right,” he said, “to keep it, when Philology wanted it. If it had been any other party,—but he always had a particular respect and awe of her.” I do not assert that this discovery settles the origin of the wordbanjo, but the coincidence is, to say the least, remarkable.
I saw many gypsies in Egypt, but learned little from them. What I found I stated in a work called the “Egyptian Sketch Book.” It was to this effect: My first information was derived from the late Khedivé Ismael, who during an interview with me said, “There are in Egypt many people known as Rhagarin, or Ghagarin, who are probably the same as the gypsies of Europe. They are wanderers, who live in tents, and are regarded with contempt even by the peasantry. Their women tell fortunes, tattoo, and sell small wares; the men work in iron. They are all adroit thieves, and noted as such. The men may sometimes be seen going round the country with monkeys. In fact, they appear to be in all respects the same people as the gypsies of Europe.”
I habitually employed, while in Cairo, the same donkey-driver, an intelligent and well-behaved man named Mahomet, who spoke English fairly. On askinghim if he could show me any Rhagarin, he replied that there was a fair or market held every Saturday at Boulac, where I would be sure to meet with women of the tribe. The men, he said, seldom ventured into the city, because they were subject to much insult and ill-treatment from the common people.
On the day appointed I rode to Boulac. The market was very interesting. I saw no European or Frangi there, except my companion, Baron de Cosson, who afterwards traveled far into the White Nile country, and who had with his brother Edward many remarkable adventures in Abyssinia, which were well recorded by the latter in a book. All around were thousands of blue-skirted and red-tarbouched or white-turbaned Egyptians, buying or selling, or else amusing themselves, but with an excess of outcry and hallo which indicates their grown child character. There were dealers in donkeys and horses roaring aloud, “He is for ten napoleons! Had I asked twenty you would have gladly given me fifteen!” “O true believers, here is a Syrian steed which will give renown to the purchaser!” Strolling loosely about were dealers in sugar-cane and pea-nuts, which are called gooba in Africa as in America, pipe peddlers and venders of rosaries, jugglers and minstrels. At last we came to a middle-aged woman seated on the ground behind a basket containing beads, glass armlets, and such trinkets. She was dressed like any Arab-woman of the lower class, but was not veiled, and on her chin blue lines were tattooed. Her features and expression were, however, gypsy, and not Egyptian. And as she sat there quietly I wondered how a woman could feel in her heart who was looked down upon with infinite scorn by an Egyptian, whomight justly be looked down on in his turn with sublime contempt by an average American Methodist colored whitewasher who “took de ‘Ledger.’” Yet there was in the woman the quiet expression which associates itself with respectability, and it is worth remarking that whenever a race is greatly looked down on by another from the stand-point of mere color, as in America, or mere religion, as in Mahometan lands, it always contains proportionally a larger number ofdecentpeople than are to be found among those who immediately oppress it. An average Chinese is as a human being far superior to a hoodlum, and a man of color to the white man who cannot speak of him or to him except as a “naygur” or a “nigger.” It is when a man realizes that he is superior innothingelse save race, color, religion, family, inherited fortune, and their contingent advantages that he develops most readily into the prig and snob.
I spoke to the woman in Romany, using such words as would have been intelligible to any of her race in any other country; but she did not understand me, and declared that she could speak nothing but Arabic. At my request Mahomet explained to her that I had come from a distant country in Orobba, or Europe, where there were many Rhagarin, who said that their fathers came from Egypt, and that I wished to know if any in the old country could speak the old language. She replied that the Rhagarin of Montesinos could still speak it; but that her people in Egypt had lost the tongue. Mahomet, in translating, here remarked that Montesinos meant Mount Sinai or Syria. I then asked her if the Rhagarin had no peculiar name for themselves, and she answered, “Yes; we call ourselves Tatâren.”
This at least was satisfactory. All over Southern Germany and in Norway the gypsies are called Tartaren, and though the word means Tartars, and is misapplied, it indicates the race. The woman seemed to be much gratified at the interest I manifested in her people. I gave her a double piaster, and asked for its value in blue glass armlets. She gave me four, and as I turned to depart called me back, and with a good-natured smile handed me four more as a present. This generosity was very gypsy-like, and very unlike the habitual meanness of the ordinary Egyptian.
After this Mahomet took me to a number of Rhagarin. They all resembled the one whom I had seen, and all were sellers of small articles and fortune-tellers. They all differed slightly from common Egyptians in appearance, and were more unlike them in not being importunate for money, nor disagreeable in their manners. But though they were as certainly gypsies as old Charlotte Cooper herself, none of them could speak Romany. I used to amuse myself by imagining what some of my English gypsy friends would have done if turned loose in Cairo among their cousins. How naturally old Charlotte would have waylaid and “dukkered” and amazed the English ladies in the Muskee, and how easily that reprobate old amiable cosmopolite, the Windsor Frog, would have mingled with the motley mob of donkey-boys and tourists before Shepherd’s Hotel, and appointed himself anattachéto their excursions to the Pyramids, and drunk their pale ale or anything else to their healths, and then at the end of the day have claimed a wage for his politeness! And how well the climate would have agreed with them, and how they would have agreed that it was of all lands the best fortannin, or tenting out, in the world!
The gypsiest-looking gypsy in Cairo, with whom I became somewhat familiar, was a boy of sixteen, a snake-charmer; a dark and even handsome youth, but with eyes of such wild wickedness that no one who had ever seen him excited could hope that he would ever become as other human beings. I believe that he had come, as do all of his calling, from a snake-catching line of ancestors, and that he had taken in from them, as did Elsie Venner, the serpent nature. They had gone snaking, generation after generation, from the days of the serpent worship of old, it may be back to the old Serpent himself; and this tawny, sinuous, active thing of evil, this boy, without the least sense of sympathy for any pain, who devoured a cobra alive with as much indifference as he had just shown in petting it, was the result. He was a human snake. I had long before reading the wonderfully original work of Doctor Holmes reflected deeply on the moral and immoral influences which serpent worship of old, in Syria and other lands, must have had upon its followers. But Elsie Venner sets forth the serpent nature as benumbed or suspended by cold New England winters and New England religions, moral and social influences; the Ophites of old and the Cairene gypsy showed the boy as warmed to life in lands whose winters are as burning summers. Elsie Venner is not sensual, and sensuality is the leading trait of the human-serpent nature. Herein lies an error, just as a sculptor would err who should present Lady Godiva as fully draped, or Sappho merely as a sweet singer of Lesbos, or Antinous only as a fine young man. He who would harrow hell and rake out the devil, and then exhibit to us an ordinary sinner, or anopera bouffe“Mefistofele,” as the result,reminds one of the seven Suabians who went to hunt a monster,—“ä Ungeheuer,”—and returned with a hare. Elsie Venner is not a hare; she is a wonderful creation; but she is a winter-snake. I confess that I have no patience, however, with those who pretend to show us summer-snakes, and would fain dabble with vice; who are amateurs in the diabolical, and drawing-room dilettanti in damnation. Such, as I have said before, are the æsthetic adorers of Villon, whom the oldrouéhimself would have most despised, and the admirers of “Faustine,” whom Faustina would have picked up between her thumb and finger, and eyed with serene contempt before throwing them out of the window. A future age will have for these would-be wickeds, who are only monks half turned inside out, more laughter than we now indulge in at Chloe and Strephon.
I always regarded my young friend Abdullah as a natural child of the devil and a serpent-souled young sinner, and he never disappointed me in my opinion of him. I never in my life felt any antipathy to serpents, and he evidently regarded me as asapengro, or snake-master. The first day I met him he put into my hands a cobra which had the fangs extracted, and then handled an asp which still had its poison teeth. On his asking me if I was afraid of it, and my telling him “No,” he gave it to me, and after I had petted it, he always manifested an understanding,—I cannot say sympathy. I should have liked to see that boy’s sister, if he ever had one, and was not hatched out from some egg found in the desert by an Egyptian incubus or incubator. She must have been a charming young lady, and his mother must have been a beauty, especially when in court-dress,—withher broomet præterea nihil. But neither, alas, could be ever seen by me, for it is written in the “Gittin” that there are three hundred species of male demons, but what the female herself is like is known to no one.
Abdullah first made his appearance before me at Shepherd’s Hotel, and despite his amazing natural impudence, which appeared to such splendid advantage in the street that I always thought he must be a lineal descendant of the brazen serpent himself, he evinced a certain timidity which was to me inexplicable, until I recalled that the big snake of Irish legends had shown the same modesty when Saint Patrick wanted him to enter the chest which he had prepared for his prison. “Sure, it’s a nate little house I’ve made for yees,” said the saint, “wid an iligant parlor.” “I don’t like the look av it at all, at all,” says the sarpent, as he squinted at it suspiciously, “and I’m loath tointerit.”
Abdullah looked at the parlor as if he too were loath to “inter” it; but he was in charge of one in whom his race instinctively trust, so I led him in. His apparel was simple: it consisted of a coarse shirt, very short, with a belt around the waist, and an old tarbouch on his head. Between the shirt and his bare skin, as in a bag, was about a half peck of cobras, asps, vipers, and similar squirming property; while between his cap and his hair were generally stowed one or two enormous living scorpions, and any small serpents that he could not trust to dwell with the larger ones. When I asked Abdullah where he contrived to get such vast scorpions and such lively serpents, he replied, “Out in the desert.” I arranged, in fact, to go out with him some day a-snaking andscorp’ing, and have ever since regretted that I did not avail myself of the opportunity. He showed off his snakes to the ladies, and concluded by offering to eat the largest one alive before our eyes for a dollar, which price he speedily reduced to a half. There was a young New England lady present who was very anxious to witness this performance; but as I informed Abdullah that if he attempted anything of the kind I would kick him out-of-doors, snakes and all, he ceased to offer to show himself a cannibal. Perhaps he had learned what Rabbi Simon ben Yochai taught, that it is a good deed to smash the heads of the best of serpents, even as it is a duty to kill the best of Goyim. And if by Goyim he meant Philistines, I agree with him.
I often met Abdullah after that, and helped him to several very good exhibitions. Two or three things I learned from him. One was that the cobra, when wide awake, yet not too violently excited, lifts its head and maintains a curious swaying motion, which, when accompanied by music, may readily be mistaken for dancing acquired from a teacher. The Hindusappa-wallahsmake people believe that this “dancing” is really the result of tuition, and that it is influenced by music. Later, I found that the common people in Egypt continue to believe that the snakes which Abdullah and his tribe exhibit are as dangerous and deadly as can be, and that they are managed by magic. Whether they believe, as it was held of old by the Rabbis, that serpents are to be tamed by sorcery only on the Sabbath, I never learned.
Abdullah was crafty enough for a whole generation of snakes, but in the wisdom attributed to serpents he was woefully wanting. He would run by my sidein the street as I rode, expecting that I would pause to accept a large wiggling scorpion as a gift, or purchase a viper, I suppose for a riding-whip or a necktie. One day when I was in a jam of about a hundred donkey-boys, trying to outride the roaring mob, and all of a fever with heat and dust, Abdullah spied me, and, joining the mob, kept running by my side, crying in maddening monotony, “Snake, sah! Scorpion, sah! Very fine snake to-day, sah!”—just as if his serpents were edible delicacies, which were for that day particularly fresh and nice.
There are three kinds of gypsies in Egypt,—the Rhagarin, the Helebis, and the Nauar. They have secret jargons among themselves; but as I ascertained subsequently from specimens given by Captain Newboldt[302a]and Seetzen, as quoted by Pott,[302b]their language is made up of Arabic “back-slang,” Turkish and Greek, with a very little Romany,—so little that it is not wonderful that I could not converse with them in it. The Syrian gypsies, or Nuri, who are seen with bears and monkeys in Cairo, are strangers in the land. With them a conversation is not difficult. It is remarkable that while English, German, and Turkish or Syrian gypsy look so different and difficult as printed in books, it is on the whole an easy matter to get on with them in conversation. The roots being the same, a little management soon supplies the rest.
Abdullah was a Helebi. The last time I saw him I was sitting on the balcony of Shepherd’s Hotel, in the early evening, with an American, who had never seen a snake-charmer. I called the boy, and inadvertentlygave him his pay in advance, telling him to show all his stock in trade. But the temptation to swindle was too great, and seizing the coin he rushed back into the darkness. From that hour I beheld him no more. I think I can see that last gleam of his demon eyes as he turned and fled. I met in after-days with other snake-boys, but for an eye which indicated an unadulterated child of the devil, and for general blackguardly behavior to match, I never found anybody like my young friend Abdullah.
The last snake-masters whom I came across were two sailors at the Oriental Seamen’s Home in London. And strangely enough, on the day of my visit they had obtained in London, of all places, a very large and profitable job; for they had been employed to draw the teeth of all the poisonous serpents in the Zoological Garden. Whether these practitioners ever applied for or received positions as members of the Dental College I do not know, any more than if they were entitled to practice as surgeons without licenses. Like all the Hindusappa-wallahs, or snake-men, they are what in Europe would be called gypsies.
The following list gives the names of the principal gypsy families in England, with their characteristics. It was prepared for me by an old, well-known Romany, of full blood. Those which have (a) appended to them are known to have representatives in America. For myself, I believe that gypsies bearing all these names are to be found in both countries. I would also state that the personal characteristics attributed to certain families are by no means very strictly applicable, neither do any of them confine themselves rigidly to any particular part of England. I have met, for instance, with Bosvilles, Lees, Coopers, Smiths, Bucklands, etc., in every part of England as well as Wales. I am aware that the list is imperfect in all respects.
Ayres.
Bailey (a). Half-bloods. Also called rich. Roam in Sussex.
Barton. Lower Wiltshire.
Black. Hampshire.
Bosville (a). Generally spread, but are specially to be found in Devonshire. I have found several fine specimens of real Romanys among the American Bosvilles. In Romany,Chumomishto, that is, Buss (or Kiss) well.
Broadway (a). Somerset.
Buckland. In Gloucestershire, but abounding over England. Sometimes calledChokamengro, that is Tailor.
Burton (a). Wiltshire.
Chapman (a). Half-blood, and are commonly spoken of as a rich clan. Travel all over England.
Chilcott(vul.Chilcock).
Clarke. Half-blood. Portsmouth.
Cooper (a). Chiefly found in Berkshire and Windsor. In Romany,Vardo mescro.
Davies.
Dickens. Half-blood.
Dighton. Blackheath.
Draper. Hertfordshire.
Finch.
Fuller. Hardly half-blood, but talk Romany.
Gray. Essex. In Romany,Gry, or horse.
Hare (a). Chiefly in Hampshire.
Hazard. Half-blood. Windsor.
Herne. Oxfordshire and London. “Of this name there are,” says Borrow (Romano Lavo-Lil), “two gypsy renderings: (1.) Rosar-mescro or Ratzie-mescro, that is,duck-fellow; the duck being substituted for theheron, for which there is no word in Romany, this being done because there is a resemblance in the sound of Heron and Herne. (2.) Balor-engre, or Hairy People, the translator having confounded Herne with Haaren, Old English for hairs.”
Hicks. Half-blood. Berkshire.
Hughes. Wiltshire.
Ingraham (a). Wales and Birmingham, or in the Kálo tem or Black Country.
James. Half-blood.
Jenkins. Wiltshire.
Jones. Half-blood. Headquarters at Battersea, near London.
Lee (a). The same in most respects as the Smiths, but are even more widely extended. I have met with several of the most decided type of pure-blooded, old-fashioned gypsies among Lees in America. They are sometimesamong themselves calledpurum, alee-k, from the fancied resemblance of the words.
Lewis. Hampshire.
Locke. Somerset and Gloucestershire.
Lovel. Known in Romany as Kamlo, or Kamescro, that is, lover. London, but are found everywhere.
Loveridge. Travel in Oxfordshire; are in London at Shepherd’s Bush.
Marshall. As much Scotch as English, especially in Dumfriesshire and Galloway, in which latter region, in Saint Cuthbert’s church-yard, lies buried the “old man” of the race, who died at the age of one hundred and seven. In Romany Makkado-tan-engree, that is, Fellows of the Marshes. Also known as Bungoror, cork-fellows and Chikkenemengree, china or earthenware (lit. dirt or clay) men, from their cutting corks, and peddling pottery, or mending china.
Matthews. Half-blood. Surrey.
North.
Petulengro, orSmith. The Romany name Petulengro means Master of the Horseshoe; that is, Smith. The gypsy who made this list declared that he had been acquainted with Jasper Petulengro, of Borrow’s Lavengro, and that he died near Norwich about sixty years ago. The Smiths are general as travelers, but are chiefly to be found in the East of England.
Pike. Berkshire.
Pinfold, orPenfold. Half and quarter blood. Widely extended, but most at home in London.
Róllin(Roland?). Half-blood. Chiefly about London.
Scamp. Chiefly in Kent. A small clan. Mr. Borrow derives this name from the Sanskrit Ksump, to go. I trust that it has not a more recent and purely English derivation.
Shaw.
Small (a). Found in West England, chiefly in Somerset and Devonshire.
Stanley (a). One of the most extended clans, but said to be chiefly found in Devonshire. They sometimes call themselves in joke Beshalay, that is, Sit-Down, from the wordstan, suggesting standing up in connection with lay. Also Bangor, or Baromescre, that is, Stone (stan) people. Thus “Stony-lea” was probably their first name. Also called Kashtengrees, Woodmen, from the New Forest.
Taylor. A clan described asdiddikai, or half-bloods. Chiefly in London. This clan should be the only one known asChokamengro.
Turner.
Walker. Half-blood. Travel about Surrey.
Wells (a). Half-blood. Somerset.
Wharton.Worton. I have only met the Whartons in America.
Wheeler. Pure and half-blood. Battersea.
White.
“Adré o Lavines tem o Romanies seeWoods,Roberts,Williams, andJones. In Wales the gypsies are Woods, Roberts, Williams, and Jones.”[307a]
Of these gypsies theBailiesare fair.
TheBirdsare in Norfolk and Suffolk.
TheBlacksare dark, stout, and strong.
TheBosvillesare rather short, fair, stout, and heavy.
TheBroadwaysare fair, of medium height and good figures.
TheBucklandsare thin, dark, and tallish.
TheBuncestravel in the South of England.
TheBurtonsare short, dark, and very active.
TheChapmansare fair.
TheClarkesare fair and well-sized men.
TheCoopersare short, dark, and very active.
TheDightonsare very dark and stout.
TheDrapersare very tall and large and dark.
TheFaasare at Kirk Yetholm, in Scotland.
TheGraysare very large and fair.
TheGreenesare small and dark.
TheGregoriesrange from Surrey to Suffolk.
TheHaresare large, stout, and dark.
TheHazardsare tall and fair.
TheHernes(Herons) are very large and dark.
TheHicksare very large, strong, and fair.
TheHughesare short, stubby, and dark.
TheIngrahamsare fair and all of medium height.
TheJenkinsare dark, not large, and active.
TheJonesare fair and of middling height.
TheLanesare fair and of medium height.
TheLeesare dark, tall, and stout.
TheLewisare dark and of medium height.
TheLightsare half-bloods, and travel in Middlesex.
TheLockesare shortish, dark, and large.
TheLovellsare dark and large.
TheMacesare about Norwich.
TheMatthewsare thick, short, and stout, fair, and good fighters.
TheMillersare at Battersea.
North. Are to be found at Shepherd’s Bush.
TheOliversare in Kent.
ThePikesare light and very tall.
ThePinfoldsare light, rather tall, not heavy. (Are really a Norfolk family. F. Groome.)
TheRolandsare rather large and dark.
TheScampsare very dark and stout.
TheShawstravel in Middlesex.
TheSmallsare tall, stout, and fair.
TheSmithsare dark, rather tall, slender, and active.
TheStanleysare tall, dark, and handsome.
TheTaylorsare short, stout, and dark.
TheTurnersare also in Norfolk and Suffolk.
TheWalkersare stout and fair.
TheWellsare very light and tall.
TheWheelersare thin and fair.
TheWhitesare short and light.
TheYoungsare very dark. They travel in the northern counties, and belong both to Scotland and England.
* * * * *
The following is a collection of the more remarkable “fore” or Christian names of Romanys:—