The Gypsies Part 30

"First--here--you begin.

Castle--gloves. You don't play. Go on!

_Kivi_--kettle. How are you?

_Stini_--buck--buck."

The common version of the rhyme begins with:--

"_One_ 'eri--two-ery, ekkeri--an."

But one-ry is the _exact_ translation of ekkeri; ek or yek being one.

And it is remarkable that in

"_Hickory_ d.i.c.kory dock, The rat ran up the clock; The clock struck _one_, And down he run, _Hickory_ d.i.c.kory dock."

We have hickory or ekkeri again, followed by a significant _one_. It may be observed that while, the first verses abound in Romany words, I can find no trace of any in other child-rhymes of the kind. It is also clear that if we take from the fourth line the _ingle 'em_, _angle 'em_, evidently added for mere jingle, there remains _stan_ or _stani_, "a buck," followed by the very same word in English.

With the mournful examples of Mr. b.e.l.l.e.n.den Kerr's efforts to show that all our old proverbs and tavern signs are Dutch, and Sir William Betham's Etruscan-Irish, I should be justly regarded as one of the too frequent seekers for mystery in moons.h.i.+ne if I declared that I positively believed this to be Romany. Yet it is possible that it contains gypsy words, especially "fillissi,' follasy," which mean exactly _chateau_ and gloves, and I think it not improbable that it was once a sham charm used by some Romany fortune-teller to bewilder Gorgios. Let the reader imagine the burnt-sienna wild-cat eyed old sorceress performing before a credulous farm-wife and her children the great ceremony of _hakk'ni panki_, which Mr. Borrow calls _hokkani boro_, but for which there is a far deeper name,--that of _the great secret_,--which even my best friends among the Romany tried to conceal from me. This feat is performed by inducing some woman of largely magnified faith to believe that there is hidden in her house a magic treasure, which can only be made to come to hand by depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by natural affinity and attraction. "For gold, as you sees, my deari, draws gold, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher and leaves it, you'll find it doubled. An' wasn't there the Squire's lady, and didn't she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where they'd laid in a old grave,--and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; an' I hope you'll do better by the poor old gypsy, my deari --- ---."

The gold and all the spoons are tied up,--for, as the enchantress observes, there may be silver too,--and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles give the only light. The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her cloak he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again, and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the bundle must not be touched or spoken of for three weeks. "Every word you tell about it, my-deari will be a guinea gone away." Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said.

Back to the farmer's wife never again. After three weeks another Extraordinary instance of gross credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the school-master. There is wailing and shame in the house,--perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years have beer swept away. The charm has worked.

But the little sharp-eared children remember it and sing it, and the more meaningless it is in their ears the more mysterious does it sound. And they never talk about the bundle, which when opened was found to contain only sticks, stones, and rags, without repeating it. So it goes from mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it pa.s.ses current for even worse nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however,--and the remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the language,--that there is a Romany _turn_ to even the roughest corners of these rhymes. _Kivi_, _stingli_, _stangli_, are all gypsyish. But, as I have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses of the kind. There is nothing of it in

"Intery, mintery, cutery corn"--

or in anything else in Mother Goose. It is alone in its sounds and sense,--or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer of the roads who on hearing it would not explain, "Rya, there's a great deal of Romanes in that ere."

I should also say that the word _na-kelas_ or _ne-kelas_, which I here translate differently, was once explained to me at some length by a gypsy as signifying "not speaking," or "keeping quiet."

Now the mystery of mysteries of which I have spoken in the Romany tongue is this. The _hokkani boro_, or great trick, consists of three parts.

Firstly, the telling of a fortune, and this is to _pen dukkerin_ or _pen durkerin_. The second part is the conveying away of the property, which is to _lel dudikabin_, or to take lightning, possibly connected with the very old English slang term of _bien lightment_. There is evidently a great confusion of words here. And the third is to "_chiv o manzin apre lati_," or to put the oath upon her, which explains itself. When all the deceived are under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has "a safe thing of it."

The _hokkani boro_, or great trick, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practiced by them all over the world, it is still played every day somewhere. This chapter was written long ago in England. I am now in Philadelphia, and here I read in the "Press" of this city that a Mrs. Brown, whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine, who walks before the world in other names, was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the grand deception. And Mrs. Brown, good old Mrs. Brown, went to prison, where she will linger until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is evaded in Pennsylvania, delivers her.

Yet it is not a good country, on the whole, for _hokkani boro_, since the people here, especially in the rural districts, have a rough-and-ready way of inflicting justice which interferes sadly with the profits of aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy woman robbed a farmer by the great trick of all he was worth. Now it is no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee greatly resemble Indians in certain respects, and when I saw thousands of them, during the war, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied their dark brown faces, high cheek bones, and long straight black hair, that the American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee farmer and his neighbors, at any rate, reverted very strongly indeed to the original type when robbed by the gypsies, for they turned out all together, hunted them down, and, having secured the sorceress, burned her alive at the stake. And thus in a single crime and its punishment we have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offense, an European Middle-Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the red Indians.

SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK.

"So good a proficient in one quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life."--_King Henry the Fourth_.

One summer day, in the year 1876, I was returning from a long walk in the beautiful country which lies around Bath, when, on the road near the town, I met with a man who had evidently grown up from childhood into middle age as a beggar and a tramp. I have learned by long experience that there is not a so-called "traveler" of England or of the world, be he beggar, tinker, gypsy, or hawker, from whom something cannot be learned, if one only knows how to use the test-gla.s.ses and proper reagents. Most inquirers are chiefly interested in the morals--or immorals--of these nomads. My own researches as regards them are chiefly philological. Therefore, after I had invested twopence in his prospective beer, I addressed him in Romany. Of course he knew a little of it; was there ever an old "traveler" who did not?

"But we are givin' Romanes up very fast,--all of us is," he remarked.

"It is a gettin' to be too blown. Everybody knows some Romanes now. But there _is_ a jib that ain't blown," he remarked reflectively. "Back slang an' cantin' an' rhymin' is grown vulgar, and Italian always _was_ the lowest of the lot; thieves _kennick_ is genteel alongside of organ-grinder's lingo, you know. Do _you_ know anythin' of Italian, sir?"

"I can _rakker_ it pretty _flick_" (talk it tolerably), was my reply.

"Well I should never a _penned_ [thought] sitch a swell gent as you had been down so low in the slums. Now _Romanes_ is genteel. I heard there's actilly a book about Romanes to learn it out of. But as for this other jib, its wery hard to talk. It is most all Old Irish, and they calls it Shelter."

This was all that I could learn at that time. It did not impress me much, as I supposed that the man merely meant Old Irish. A year went by, and I found myself at Aberystwith, the beautiful sea-town in Wales, with my friend Professor Palmer--a palmer who has truly been a pilgrim _outre-mer_, even by Galilee's wave, and dwelt as an Arab in the desert.

One afternoon we were walking together on that end of the beach which is the ant.i.thesis of the old Norman castle; that is, at the other extremity of the town, and by the rocks. And here there was a little crowd, chiefly of young ladies, knitting and novel-reading in the sun, or watching children playing on the sand. All at once there was an alarm, and the whole party fled like partridges, skurrying along and hiding under the lee of the rocks. For a great rock right over our heads was about to be blasted. So the professor and I went on and away, but as we went we observed an eccentric and most miserable figure crouching in a hollow like a little cave to avoid the antic.i.p.ated falling stones.

"_Dikk o dovo mush adoi a gavverin lester kokero_!" (Look at that man there, hiding himself!) said the professor in Romanes. He wished to call attention to the grotesque figure without hurting the poor fellow's feelings.

"_Yuv's atrash o' ye baryia_" (He is afraid of the stones), I replied.

The man looked up. "I know what you're saying, gentlemen. That's Romany."

"Jump up, then, and come along with us."

He followed. We walked from rock to rock, and over the sand by the sea, to a secluded nook under a cliff. Then, seated around a stone table, we began our conversation, while the ocean, like an importunate beggar, surfed and foamed away, filling up the intervals with its mighty roaring language, which poets only understand or translate:--

"Thus far, and then no more:"

Such language speaks the sounding sea To the waves upon the sh.o.r.e.

Our new acquaintance was ragged and disreputable. Yet he held in his hand a s.h.i.+lling copy of "Helen's Babies," in which were pressed some fern leaves.

"What do you do for a living?" I asked.

"_Shelkin gallopas_ just now," he replied.

"And what is that?"

"Selling ferns. Don't you understand? That's what we call it in _Minklers Thari_. That's tinkers' language. I thought as you knew Romanes you might understand it. The right name for it is _Shelter_ or _Shelta_."

Out came our note-books and pencils. So this was the _Shelter_ of which I had heard. He was promptly asked to explain what sort of a language it was.

"Well, gentlemen, you must know that I have no great gift for languages.

I never could learn even French properly. I can conjugate the verb _etre_,--that is all. I'm an ignorant fellow, and very low. I've been kicked out of the lowest slums in Whitechapel because I was too much of a blackguard for 'em. But I know rhyming slang. Do you know Lord John Russell?"

"Well, I know a little of rhyming, but not that."

"Why, it rhymes to _bustle_."

"I see. _Bustle_ is to pick pockets."

"Yes, or anything like it, such as ringing the changes."

Here the professor was "in his plate." He knows perfectly how to ring the changes. It is effected by going into a shop, asking for change for a sovereign, purchasing some trifling article, then, by ostensibly changing your mind as to having the change, so bewilder the shopman as to cheat him out of ten s.h.i.+llings. It is easily done by one who understands it. The professor does not practice this art for the lucre of gain, but he understands it in detail. And of this he gave such proofs to the tramp that the latter was astonished.

"A tinker would like to have a wife who knows as much of that as you do,"

he remarked. "No woman is fit to be a tinker's wife who can't make ten s.h.i.+llings a day by _glantherin_. _Glantherin_ or _glad'herin_ is the correct word in Shelter for ringing the changes. As for the language, I believe it's mostly Gaelic, but it's mixed up with Romanes and canting or thieves' slang. Once it was the common language of all the old tinkers.

But of late years the old tinkers' families are mostly broken up, and the language is peris.h.i.+ng."