3 182201961 2100 NIVERSITY OF CALIFORN A SAN DIEGO 3 182201961 2100 Social Sciences & Humanities Library University of California, San Diego Please Note: This item is subject to recall. Date Due SEP 2 Q 1995 SEP 6 1995 0139(295) UCSDLb. WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR. The English Gypsies and their Language. London : TrUbner & Co. Anglo-Romany Ballads. In. the Gypsy Language; with Translations into English by CHARLES G. LELAND, PROF. E. A. PALMER, and Miss JANET TUCKAY. London : Trubner & Co. Remarks on the Origin of the Gypsies and their Language. Published in the Proceedings of the Oriental Congress, held at Florence in 1878. The Origin of the Gypsies. London Saturday Review, 1879. THE GYPSIES CHARLES G. LELAND AUTHOR OF " THE ENGLISH GYPSIES AND THEtR LANGUAGE, " " ANGLO-ROMANS' BALLADS," "HANS BREITMANN'S BALLADS," ETC. NEW YORK : 11 EAST SEVENTEENTH STREET Htoermtoe Press, Cambrics'* 1882 Copyright, 1882, BY CHARLES G. LELAND. All rights reserved. The Riverside Press, Cambridge : Stereotyped and Printed by H. 0. Houghton & Co. PREFACE. THE reader will find in this book sketches of ex- periences among gypsies of different nations by one who speaks their language and is conversant with their ways. These embrace descriptions of the justly famed musical gypsies of St. Petersburg and Mos- cow, by whom the writer was received literally as a brother ; of the Austrian gypsies, especially those composing the first Romany orchestra of that country, selected by Liszt, and who played for their friend as they declared they had never played before for any .man ; and also of the English, Welsh, Oriental, and American brethren of the dark blood and the tents. I believe that the account of interviews with Amer- ican gypsies will possess at least the charm of nov- elty, but little having as yet been written on this extensive and very interesting branch of our nomadic population. To these I have added a characteristic letter in the gypsy language, with translation by a lady, legendary stories, poems, and finally the sub- stance of two papers, one of which I read before the British Philological Society, and the other before iv PREFACE. the Oriental Congress at Florence, in 1878. Those who study ethnology will be interested to learn from these papers, subsequently combined in an article in the " Saturday Review," that I have definitely deter- mined the existence in India of a peculiar tribe of gypsies, who are par eminence the Romanys of the East, and whose language is there what it is in Eng- land, the same in vocabulary, and the chief slang of the roads. This I claim as a discovery, having learned it from a Hindoo who had been himself a gypsy in his native land. Many writers have suggested the Jats, Banjars, and others as probable ancestors or type-givers of the race ; but the existence of the Rom himself in India, bearing the distinctive name of Rom, has never before been set forth in any book or by any other writer. I have also given what may in reason be regarded as settling the immensely dis- puted origin of the word " Zingan," by the gypsies' own account of its etymology, which was beyond all question brought by them from India. In addition to this I have given in a chapter cer- tain conversations with men of note, such as Thomas Carlyle, Lord Lytton, Mr. Roebuck, and others, on gypsies ; an account of the first and family names and personal characteristics of English and American Romanys, prepared for me by a very famous old gypsy ; and finally a chapter on the " Shelta Thari," or Tinkers' Language, a very curious jargon or lan- guage, never mentioned before by any writer except Shakespeare. What this tongue may be, beyond the PREFACE. V fact that it is purely Celtic, and that it does not seem to be identical with any other Celtic dialect, is un- known to me. I class it with the gypsy, because all who speak it are also acquainted with Romany. For an attempt to set forth the tone or feeling in which the sketches are conceived, I refer the reader to the Introduction. When I published my " English Gypsies and their Language," a reviewer declared that I " had added nothing to our " (that is, his) " knowledge on the subject." As it is always pleasant to meet with a man of superior information, I said nothing. And as I had carefully read everything ever printed on the Romany, and had given a very respectable collec- tion of what was new to me as well as to all my Romany rye colleagues in Europe, I could only grieve to think that such treasures of learning should thus remain hidden in the brain of one who had never at any time or in any other way manifested the posses- sion of any remarkable knowledge. Nobody can tell in this world what others may know, but I modestly suggest that what I have set forth in this work, on the origin of the gypsies, though it may be known to the reviewer in question, has at least never been set before the public by anybody but myself, and that it deserves further investigation. No account of the tribes of the East mentions the Rom or Trablus, and yet I have personally met with and thoroughly examined one of them. In like manner, the " Shelta Thari " has remained till the present day entirely Vi PREFACE. unknown to all writers on either the languages or the nomadic people of Great Britain. If we are so ignorant of the wanderers among us, and at our very doors, it is not remarkable that we should be igno- rant of those of India. CONTENTS. Page INTRODUCTION 9 RUSSIAN GYPSIES 17 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 1 67 II. Austrian Gypsies in Philadelphia ... 91 ENGLISH GYPSIES. I. OatlandsPark 97 II. Walking and Visiting 119 III. CobhamFair 130 IV. The Mixed Fortunes 145 V. Hampton Races 152 VI. Street Sketches 161 VII. Of Certain Gentlemen and Gypsies . . .172 WELSH GYPSIES. I. Mat Woods the Fiddler . . . . . 189 II. The Pious Washerwoman 198 III. The Gypsies at Aberystwith .... 207 AMERICAN GYPSIES. I. Gypsies in Philadelphia 227 II. The Crocus-Pitcher 241 III. Gypsies in Camp. (New Jersey.) . . . 251 IV. House Gypsies in Philadelphia .... 260 V. A Gypsy Letter 272 viii CONTENTS. Page GYPSIES IN THE EAST 288 GYPSY NAMES AND FAMILY CHARACTERISTICS . . . 304 GYPSY STORIES IN ROMANY, WITH TRANSLATION . . 312 THE ORIGIN OF THE GYPSIES 331 A GYPSY MAGIC SPELL 348 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK 354 INTRODUCTION. I HAVE frequently been asked, " Why do you take an interest in gypsies ? " And it is not so easy to answer. Why, indeed ? In Spain one who has been fascinated by them is culled one of the aficion, or affection, or " fancy ; " he is an aficionado, or affected unto them, and people there know perfectly what it means, for every Spaniard is at heart a Bohemian. He feels what a charm there is in a wandering life, in camping in lonely places, under old chestnut-trees, near towering cliffs, al pasar del arroyo, by the rivulets among the rocks. He thinks of the wine skin and wheaten cake when one was hungry on the road, of the mules and tinkling bells, the fire by night, and the cigarito, smoked till he fell asleep. Then he remembers the gypsies who came to the camp, and the black-eyed girl who told him his fortune, and all that followed in the rosy dawn and ever onward into starry night. " Y se alegre el alma lleua De la luz de esos luceros." And his heart is filled with rapture At the light of those lights above. This man understands it. So, too, does many an Englishman. But I cannot tell you why. Why do I love to wander on the roads to hear the birds : to 10 INTRODUCTION. see old church towers afar, rising over fringes of for- est, a river and a bridge in the foreground, and an ancient castle beyond, with a modern village spring- ing up about it, just as at the foot of the burg there lies the falling trunk of an old tree, around which weeds and flowers are springing up, nourished by its decay ? Why love these better than pictures, and with a more than fine-art feeling ? Because on the roads, among such scenes, between the hedge-rows and by the river, I find the wanderers who properly inhabit not the houses but the scene, not a part but the whole. These are the gypsies, who live like the birds and hares, not of the house-born or the town- bred, but free and at home only with nature. I am at some pleasant watering-place, no matter where. Let it be Torquay, or Ilfracombe, or Aberyst- witb, or Bath, or Bournemouth, or Hastings. I find out what old churches, castles, towns, towers, manors, lakes, forests, fairy-wells, or other charms of England lie within twenty miles. Then I take my staff and sketch-book, and set out on my day's pil- grimage. In the distance lie the lines of the shining sea, with ships sailing to unknown lands. Those who live in them are the Bohemians of the sea, homing while roaming, sleeping as they go, even as gypsies dwell on wheels. And if you look wistfully at these ships far off and out at sea with the sun upon their sails, and wonder what quaint mysteries of life they hide, verily you are not far from being affected or elected unto the Romany. And if, when you see the wild birds on the wing, wending their way to the South, and wish that you could fly with them, anywhere, anywhere over the world and into ad- venture, then you are not far in spirit from the INTRODUCTION. 11 kingdom of Bohemia and its seven castles, in the deep windows of which JEolian wind-harps sing for- ever. Now, as you wander along, it may be that in the wood and by some grassy nook you will hear voices, and see the gleam of a red garment, and then find a man of the roads, with dusky wife and child. You speak one word, " Sarishan ! " and you are introduced. These people are like birds and bees, they belong to out-of-doors and nature. If you can chirp or buzz a little in their language and know their ways, you will find out, as you sit in the forest, why he who loves green bushes and mossy rocks is glad to fly from cities, and likes to be free of the joyous citizen- ship of the roads, and everywhere at home in such boon company. When I have been a stranger in a strange town, I have never gone out for a long walk without know- ing that the chances were that I should meet within an hour some wanderer with whom I should have in common certain acquaintances. These be indeed humble folk, but with nature and summer walks they make me at home. In merrie England I could nowhere be a stranger if I would, and that with people who cannot read ; and the English-born Romany rye, or gentleman speaking gypsy, would in like manner be everywhere at home in America. There was a gypsy family always roaming between Windsor and Lon- don, and the first words taught to their youngest child were " Romany rye ! " and these it was trained to address to me. The little tot came up to me, I had never heard her speak before, a little brown-faced, black-eyed thing, and said, " How-do, Omany 'eye ? " and great was the triumph and rejoicing and laughter 12 INTRODUCTION. of the mother and father and all the little tribe. To \>e familiar with these wanderers, who live by dale and down, is like having the bees come to you, as they did to the Dacian damsel, whose death they mourned ; it is like the attraction of the wild deer to the fair Genevieve ; or if you know them to be danger- ous outlaws, as some are, it is like the affection of serpents and other wild things for those whom nature has made their friends, and who handle them with- out fear. They are human, but in their lives they are between man as he lives in houses and the bee and bird and fox, and I cannot help believing that those who have no sympathy with them have none for the forest and road, and cannot be rightly familiar with the witchery of wood and wold. There are many ladies and gentlemen who can well-nigh die of a sunset, and be enraptured with " bits " of color, and captured with scenes, and to whom all out-of- doors is as perfect as though it were painted by Millais, yet to whom the bee and bird and gypsy and red Indian ever remain in their true inner life strangers. And just as strange to them, in one sense, are the scenes in which these creatures dwell ; for those who see in them only pictures, though they be by Claude and Turner, can never behold in them the fairy-land of childhood. Only in Ruysdael and Salvator Rosa and the great unconscious artists lurks the spell of the Romany, and this spell is un- felt by Mr. Cimabue Brown. The child and the gypsy have no words in which to express their sense of nature and its charm, but they have this sense, and there are very, very few who, acquiring culture, retain it. And it is gradually disappearing from the world, just as the old delicately sensuous, naive, pic- INTRODUCTION. 13 turesque type of woman's beauty the perfection of natural beauty is rapidly vanishing in every coun- try, and being replaced by the mingled real and un- real attractiveness of " cleverness," intellect, and fash- ion. No doubt the newer tend to higher forms of culture, but it is not without pain that he who has been " in the spirit " in the old Sabbath of the soul, and in its quiet, solemn sunset, sees it all vanishing. It will all be gone in a few years. I doubt very much whether it will be possible for the most unaffectedly natural writer to preserve any of its hieroglyphics for future Champollions of sentiment to interpret. In the coming days, when man shall have developed new senses, and when the blessed sun himself shall per- haps have been supplanted by some tremendous elec- trical light, and the moon be expunged altogether as interfering with the new arrangements for gravity, there will doubtless be a new poetry, and art become to the very last degree self-conscious of its cleverness, artificial and impressional ; yet even then weary schol- ars will sigh from time to time, as they read in our books of the ancient purple seas, and how the sun went down of old into cloud-land, gorgeous land, and then how all dreamed away into night ! Gypsies are the human types of this vanishing, direct love of nature, of this mute sense of rural romance, and of al fresco life, and he who does not recognize it in them, despite their rags and dis- honesty, need not pretend to appreciate anything more in Callot's etchings than the skillful manage- ment of the needle and the acids. Truly they are but rags themselves ; the last rags of the old romance which connected man with nature. Once romance was a splendid mediaeval drama, colored and gemmed 14 INTRODUCTION. with chivalry, minnesong, bandit-flashes, and waving plumes ; now there remain but a few tatters. Yes, we were young and foolish then, but there are per- ishing with the wretched fragments of the red Indian tribes mythologies as beautiful as those of the Greek or Norseman ; and there is also vanishing with the gypsy an unexpressed mythology, which those who are to come after us would gladly recover. Would we not have been pleased if one of the thousand Latin men of letters whose works have been preserved had told us how the old Etruscans, then still living in mountain villages, spoke and habited and customed ? But oh that there had ever lived of old one man who, noting how feelings and sentiments changed, tried to so set forth the souls of his time that after-comers might understand what it was which inspired their art! In the Sanskrit humorous romance of " Baital Pa- chisi," or King Vikram and the Vampire, twenty-five different and disconnected trifling stories serve col- lectively to illustrate in the most pointed manner the highest lesson of wisdom. In this book the gypsies, and the scenes which surround them, are intended to teach the lesson of freedom and nature. Never were such lessons more needed than at present. I do not say that culture is opposed to the perception of nat- ure ; I would show with all my power that the higher our culture the more we are really qualified to appreciate beauty and freedom. But gates must be opened for this, and unfortunately the gates as yet are very few, while Philistinism in every form makes it a business of closing every opening to the true fairy-land of delight. The gypsy is one of many links which connect the INTRODUCTION. 15 simple feeling of nature with romance. During the Middle Ages thousands of such links and symbols united nature with religion. Thus Conrad von Wiirtzburg tells in his " Goldene Schmiede " that the parrot which shines in fairest grass-green hue, and yet like common grass is never wet, sets forth the Vir- gin, who bestowed on man an endless spring, and yet remained unchanged. So the parrot and grass and green and shimmering light all blended in the ideal of the immortal Maid-Mother, and so the bird ap- pears in pictures by Van Eyck and Diirer. To me the gypsy-parrot and green grass in lonely lanes and the rain and sunshine all mingle to set forth the in- expressible purity and sweetness of the virgin parent, Nature. For the gypsy is parrot-like, a quaint pil- ferer, a rogue in grain as in green ; for green was his favorite garb in olden time in England, as it is to-day in Germany, where he who breaks the Rom- any law may never dare on heath to wear that fatal fairy color. These words are the key to the following book, in which I shall set forth a few sketches taken during my rambles among the Romany. The day is coming when there will be no more wild parrots nor wild wanderers, no wild nature, and certainly no gypsies. Within a very few years in the city of Philadelphia, the English sparrow, the very cit and cad of birds, has driven from the gardens all the wild, beautiful feathered creatures whom, as a boy, I knew. The fire-flashing scarlet tanager and the humming-bird, the yellow-bird, blue-bird, and golden oriole, are now almost forgotten, or unknown to city children. So the people of self-conscious culture and the mart and factory are banishing the wilder sort, and it 16 INTRODUCTION. is all right, and so it must be, and therewith basta ! But as a London reviewer said when I asserted in a book that the child was perhaps born who would see the last gypsy, " Somehow we feel sorry for that child." THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. IT is, I believe, seldom observed that the world is so far from having quitted the romantic or senti- mental for the purely scientific that, even in science itself, whatever is best set forth owes half its charm to something delicately and distantly reflected from the forbidden land of fancy. The greatest reasoners and writers on the driest topics are still " genial," because no man ever yet had true genius who did not feel the inspiration of poetry, or mystery, or at least of the unusual. We are not rid of the marvelous or curious, and, if we have not yet a science of curi- osities, it is apparently because it lies for the present distributed about among the other sciences, just as in small museums illuminated manuscripts are to be found in happy family union with stuffed birds or minerals, and with watches and snuff-boxes, once the property of their late majesties the Georges. Until such a science is formed, the new one of ethnology may appropriately serve for it, since it of all presents most attraction to him who is politely called the gen- eral reader, but who should in truth be called the man who reads the most for mere amusement. For Ethnology deals with such delightful material as primeval kumbo-cephalic skulls, and appears to her votaries arrayed, not in silk attire, but in strange frag- 18 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. ments of leather from ancient Irish graves, or in cloth from Lacustrine villages. She glitters with the quaint jewelry of the first Italian race, whose ghosts, if they wail over the " find," " speak in a language man knows no more." She charms us with etchings or scratchings of mammoths on mammoth-bone, and in- vites us to explore mysterious caves, to picnic among megalithic monuments, and speculate on pictured Scottish stones. In short, she engages man to inves- tigate his ancestry, a pursuit which presents charms even to the illiterate, and asks us to find out facts concerning works of art which have interested every- body in every age. Ad interim, before the science of curiosities is seg- regated from that of ethnology, I may observe that one of the marvels in the latter is that, among all the subdivisions of the human race, there are only two which have been, apparently from their begin- ning, set apart, marked and cosmopolite, ever living among others, and yet reserved unto themselves. These are the Jew and the gypsy. From time whereof history hath naught to the contrary, the Jew was, as he himself holds in simple faith, the first man. Red Earth, Adam, was a Jew, and the old claim to be a peculiar people has been curiously con- firmed by the extraordinary genius and influence of the race, and by their boundless wanderings. Go where we may, we find the Jew has any other wandered so far ? Yes, one. For wherever Jew has gone, there, too, we find the gypsy. The Jew may be more ancient, but even the authentic origin of the Romany is lost in ancient Aryan record, and, strictly speaking, his is a prehistoric caste. Among the hundred and fifty wan- THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 19 dering tribes of India and Persia, some of them Tu- ranian, some Aryan, and others mixed, it is of course difficult to identify the exact origin of the European gypsy. One thing we know : that from the tenth to the twelfth century, and probably much later on, India threw out from her northern half a vast mul- titude of very troublesome indwellers. What with Buddhist, Brahman, and Mohammedan wars, in- vaders outlawing invaded, the number of out-castes became alarmingly great. To these the Jats, who, according to Captain Burton, constituted the main stock of our gypsies, contributed perhaps half their entire nation. Excommunication among the Indian professors of transcendental benevolence meant social death and inconceivable cruelty. Now there are many historical indications that these outcasts, before leaving India, became gypsies, which was the most natural thing in a country where such classes had already existed in very great numbers from early times. And from one of the lowest castes, which still exists in India, and is known as the Dom, 1 the emigrants to the West probably derived their name and several characteristics. The Dom burns the dead, handles corpses, skins beasts, and performs other functions, all of which were appropriated by, and became peculiar to, gypsies in several countries in Europe, notably in Denmark and Holland, for several centuries after their arrival there. The Dom 1 Prom the observations of Frederic Drew ( The Northern Barrier of India, London, 1877) there can be little doubt that the Dom, or Dum, belong to the pre-Aryan race or races of India. " They are described in the Shastras as Sopukh, or Dog-Eaters " ( Types of In- dia). I have somewhere met with the statement that the Dom was pre-Aryan, but allowed to rank as Hindoo on account of services ren- dered to the early conquerors. 20 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. of the present day also sells baskets, and wanders with a tent ; he is altogether gypsy. It is remark- able that he, living in a hot climate, drinks ardent spirits to excess, being by no means a " temperate Hindoo," and that even in extreme old age his hair seldom turns white, which is a noted peculiarity among our own gypsies of pure blood. I know and have often seen a gypsy woman, nearly a hundred years old, whose curling hair is black, or hardly per- ceptibly changed. It is extremely probable that the Dom, mentioned as a caste even in the Shastras, gave the name to the Rom. The Dom calls his wife a Domni, and being a Dom is " Domnipana." In Eng- lish gypsy, the same words are expressed by Rom, romni, and romnipen. D, be it observed, very often changes to r in its transfer from Hindoo to Romany. Thus doi, " a wooden spoon," becomes in gypsy roi, a term known to every tinker in London. But, while this was probably the origin of the word Rom, there were subsequent reasons for its continuance. Among the Cophts, who were more abundant in Egypt when the first gypsies went there, the word for man is romi, and after leaving Greece and the Levant, or Rum, it would be natural for the wander- ers to be called Rumi. But the Dom was in all prob- ability the parent stock of the gypsy race, though the latter received vast accessions from many other sources. I call attention to this, since it has always been held, and sensibly enough, that the mere fact of the gypsies speaking Hindi-Persian, or the oldest type of Urdu, including many Sanskrit terms, does not prove an Indian or Aryan origin, any more than the English spoken by American negroes proves a Saxon descent. But if the Rom can be identified THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 21 with the Dom and the circumstantial evidence, it must be admitted, is very strong but little remains to seek, since, according to the Shastras, the Doms are Hindoo. Among the tribes whose union formed the Euro- pean gypsy was, in all probability, that of the Nats, consisting of singing and dancing girls and male mu- sicians and acrobats. Of these, we are told that not less than ten thousand lute-players and minstrels, un- der the name of Luri, were once sent to Persia as a present to a king, whose land was then without mu- sic or song. This word Luri is still preserved. The saddle-makers and leather- workers of Persia are called Tsingani ; they are, in their way, low caste, and a kind of gypsy, and it is supposed that from them are possibly derived the names Zingan, Zigeuner, Zin- garo, etc., by which gypsies are known in so many lands. From Mr. Arnold's late work on " Persia," the reader may learn that the Eeli, who constitute the majority of the inhabitants of the southern por- tion of that country, are Aryan nomads, and appar- ently gypsies. There are also in India the Banjari, or wandering merchants, and many other tribes, all spoken of as gypsies by those who know them. As regards the great admixture of Persian with Hindi in good Romany, it is quite unmistakable, though I can recall no writer who has attached suffi- cient importance to a fact which identifies gypsies with what is almost preeminently the land of gyp- sies. I once had the pleasure of taking a Nile journey in company with Prince S , a Persian, and in most cases, when I asked my friend what this or that gypsy word meant, he gave me its correct meaning, after a little thought, and then added, in his imperfect English, " What for you want to know 22 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. such word ? that old word that no more used. Only common people old peasant-woman use that word gentleman no want to know him." But I did want to know " him " very much. I can re- member that one night, when our bon prince had thus held forth, we had dancing girls, or Almeh, on board, and one was very young and pretty. I was told that she was gypsy, but she spoke no Romany. Yet her panther eyes and serpent smile and beautS du diable were not Egyptian, but of the Indian, kalo-ratt, the dark blood, which, once known, is known forever. I forgot her, however, for a long time, until I went to Moscow, when she was recalled by dancing and smiles, of which I will speak anon. I was sitting one day by the Thames, in a gypsy tent, when its master, Joshua Cooper, now dead, pointing to a swan, asked me for its name in gypsy. I replied, " Boro pappin" " No, rya. Boro pappin is ' a big goose.' Sdkkti is the real gypsy word. It is very old, and very few Romany know it." A few days after, when my Persian friend was dining with me at the Langham Hotel, I asked him if he knew what Sdkku meant. By way of reply, he, not being able to recall the English word, waved his arms in wonderful pantomime, indicating some enormous winged creature ; and then, looking into the distance, and pointing as if to some far-vanishing object, as boys do when they declaim Bryant's ad- dress " To a Water-Fowl," said, " Sakku one ver' big bird, like one swen but he not swen. He like the man who carry too much water up-stairs 1 his head in Constantinople. That 1 Up-stairs in this gentleman's dialect signified up or upon, like top- side in Pidgin-English. THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 23 bird all same that man. He sakkia all same wheel that you see get water up-stairs in Egypt." This was explanatory, but far from satisfactory. The prince, however, was mindful of me, and the next day I received from the Persian embassy the word elegantly written in Persian, with the transla- tion, " a pelican" Then it was all clear enough, for the pelican bears water in the bag under its bill. When the gypsies came to Europe they named ani- mals after those which resembled them in Asia. A dog they called juckal, from a jackal, and a swan sdkkti, or pelican, because it so greatly resembles it." The Hindoo bandarus, or monkey, they have changed to bombaros, but why Tom Cooper should declare that it is pugasah, or pukkus-asa, I do not know. 1 As little can I conjecture the meaning of the prefix mod, or mode, which I learned on the road near Weymouth from a very ancient tinker, a man so battered, tattered, seamed, riven, and wrinkled that he looked like a pet- rifaction. He had so bad a barrow, or wheel, that I wondered what he could do with it, and regarded him as the very poorest man I had ever seen in Eng- land, until his mate came up, an alter ego, so excel- lent in antiquity, wrinkles, knobbiness, and rags that he surpassed the vagabond pictures not only of Cal- lot, Dore", and Goya, but even the unknown Spanish maker of a picture which I met with not long since for sale, and which for infinite poverty defied any- thing I ever saw on canvas. These poor men, who seemed at first amazed that I should speak to them at all, when I spoke Romany at once called me " brother." When I asked the younger his name, 1 Puccasa, Sanskrit. Low, inferior. Given by Pliny E. Chase in his Sanskrit Analogues as the root-word for several inferior animals. 24 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. he sank his voice to a whisper, and, with a furtive air, said, " Kdmlo, Lovel, you know." " What do you call yourself in the way of busi- ness?" I asked. " Katsamengro, I suppose." Now Katsamengro means scissors-master. " That is a very good word. But chiv6 is deeper." " Chiv6 means a knife-man ? " " Yes. But the deepest of all, master, is Mod- angarSngro. For you see that the right word for coals is n't wongur, as Romanys generally say, but Angdra" Now angdra, as Pott and Benfey indicate, is pure Sanskrit for coals, and angarSngro is a worker in coals, but what mod means I know not, and should be glad to be told. I think it will be found difficult to identify the European gypsy with any one stock of the wander- ing races of India. Among those who left that country were men of different castes and different color, varying from the pure northern invader to the negro-like southern Indian. In the Danubian principalities there are at the present day three kinds of gypsies : one very dark and barbarous, an- other light brown and more intelligent, and the third, or Slite, of yellow-pine complexion, as American boys characterize the hue of quadroons. Even in Eng- land there are straight-haired and curly-haired Rom- anys, the two indicating not a difference resulting from white admixture, but entirely different original stocks. It will, I trust, be admitted, even from these re- marks, that Romanology, or that subdivision of eth- nology which treats of gypsies, is both practical and THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 25 curious. It deals with the only race except the Jew, which has penetrated into every village which Euro- pean civilization has ever touched. He who speaks Romany need be a stranger in few lands, for on every road in Europe and America, in Western Asia, and even in Northern Africa, he will meet those with whom a very few words may at once establish a pe- culiar understanding. For, of all things believed in by this widely spread brotherhood, the chief is this, that he who knows the jib, or language, knows the ways, and that no one ever attained these without treading strange paths, and threading mysteries un- known to the Gorgios, or Philistines. And if he who speaks wears a good coat, and appears a gentleman, let him rest assured that he will receive the greeting which all poor relations in all lands extend to those of their kin who have risen in life. Some of them, it is true, manifest the winsome affection which is based on great expectations, a sentiment largely de- veloped among British gypsies ; but others are hon- estly proud that a gentleman is not ashamed of them. Of this latter class were the musical gypsies, whom I met in Russia during the winter of 1876 and 1877, and some of them again in Paris during the Expo- sition of 1878. ST. PETEESBUHG. There are gypsies and gypsies in the world, for there are the wanderers on the roads and the secret dwellers in towns ; but even among the aficionados, or Romany ryes, by whom I mean those scholars who are fond of studying life and language from the people themselves, very few have dreamed that there exist communities of gentlemanly and lady-like gyp- 26 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. sies of art, like the Bohemians of Murger and George Sand, but differing from them in being real " Bohe- mians" by race. I confess that it had never occurred to me that there was anywhere in Europe, at the pres- ent day, least of all in the heart of great and wealthy cities, a class or caste devoted entirely to art, well-to- do or even rich, refined in manners, living in comfort- able homes, the women dressing elegantly ; and yet with all this obliged to live by law, as did the Jews once, in Ghettos or in a certain street, and regarded as outcasts and cagots. I had heard there were gyp- sies in Russian cities, and expected to find them like the krengri of England or Germany, house-dwellers somewhat reformed from vagabondage, but still reck- less semi-outlaws, full of tricks and lies ; in a word, gypsies, as the world understands the term. And I certainly anticipated in Russia something queer, the gentleman who speaks Romany seldom fails to achieve at least that, whenever he gets into an unbroken haunt, an unhunted forest, where the Romany rye is unknown, but nothing like what I really found. A recent writer on Russia 1 speaks with great con- tempt of these musical Romanys, their girls at- tired in dresses by Worth, as compared with the free wild outlaws of the steppes, who, with dark, ineffable glances, meaning nothing more than a wild-cat's, steal poultry, and who, wrapped in dirty sheep-skins, proudly call themselves Mi dvorane Polaivii, Lords of the Waste. The gypsies of Moscow, who ap- peared to me the most interesting I have ever met, because most remote from the Surrey ideal, seemed to Mr. Johnstone to be a kind of second-rate Rom- 1 A Trip up the Volga to the Fair of Nijni-Novgorod. By H. A. Munro Butler Johnstone. 1875. THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 27 anys or gypsies, gypsified for exhibition, like Mr. Barnum's negro minstrel, who, though black as a coal by nature, was requested to put on burnt cork and a wig, that the audience might realize that they were getting a thoroughly good imitation. Mr. John- stone's own words are that a gypsy maiden in a long queue, " which perhaps came from Worth," is " hor- rible," " corruptio optimi pessima est ;" and he fur- ther compares such a damsel to a negro with a cocked hat and spurs. As the only negro thus arrayed who presents himself to my memory was one who lay dead on the battle-field in Tennessee, after one of the bravest resistances in history, and in which he and his men, not having moved, were extended in "stark, serried lines " (" ten cart-loads of dead niggers," said a man to me who helped to bury them), I may be excused for not seeing the wit of the com- parison. As for the gypsies of Moscow, I can only say that, after meeting them in public, and pene- trating to their homes, where I was received as one of themselves, even as a Romany, I found that this opinion of them was erroneous, and that they were altogether original in spite of being clean, deeply interesting although honest, and a quite attractive class in most respects, notwithstanding their ability to read and write. Against Mr. Johnstone's impres- sions, I may set the straightforward and simple result of the experiences of Mr. W. R. Ralston. " The gypsies of Moscow," he says, " are justly celebrated for their picturesqueness and for their wonderful ca- pacity for music. All who have heard their women sing are enthusiastic about the weird witchery of the performance." When I arrived in St. Petersburg, one of my first 28 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. inquiries was for gypsies'. To my astonishment, they were hard to find. They are not allowed to live in the city ; and I was told that the correct and proper way to see them would be to go at night to certain cafes, half an hour's sleigh-ride from the town, and listen to their concerts. What I wanted, however, was not a concert, but a conversation ; not gypsies on exhibition, but gypsies at home, and everybody seemed to be of the opinion that those of " Samar- cand " and " Dorot " were entirely got up for effect. In fact, I heard the opinion hazarded that, even if they spoke Romany, I might depend upon it they had acquired it simply to deceive. One gentleman, who had, however, been much with them in other days, assured me that they were of pure blood, and had an inherited language of their own. " But," he added, " I am sure you will not understand it. You may be able to talk with those in England, but not with ours, because there is not a single word in their lan- guage which resembles anything in English, German, French, Latin, Greek, or Italian. I can only recall," he added, " one phrase. I don't know what it means, and I think it will puzzle you. It is me kamdva tut" If I experienced internal laughter at hearing this it was for a good reason, which I can illustrate by an anecdote : " I have often observed, when I lived in China," said Mr. Hoffman Atkinson, author of " A Vocabulary of the Yokohama Dialect," " that most young men, particularly the gay and handsome ones, generally asked me, about the third day after their arrival in the country, the meaning of the Pidgin- English phrase, ' You makee too muchee lov-lov-pid- gin.' Investigation always established the fact that THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 29 the inquirer had heard it from ' a pretty China girl.' Now lov-pidgin means love, and me kamdva tut is perfectly good gypsy anywhere for ' I love you ; ' and a very soft expression it is, recalling kama-deva, the Indian Cupid, whose bow is strung with bees, and whose name has two strings to it, since it means, both in gypsy and Sanskrit, Love-God, or the god of love. ' It 's kdma-duvel, you know, rya, if you put it as it ought to be,' said Old Windsor Froggie to me once ; ' but I think that Kama-c?evz7 would by rights come nearer to it, if Cupid is what you mean.' " I referred the gypsy difficulty to a Russian gen- tleman of high position, to whose kindness I had been greatly indebted while in St. Petersburg. He laughed. " Come with me to-morrow night to the caf6, and see the gypsies ; I know them well, and can promise that you shall talk with them as much as you like. Once, in Moscow, I got together all in the town perhaps a hundred and fifty to entertain the Amer- ican minister, Curtin. That was a very hard thing to do, there was so much professional jealousy among them, and so many quarrels. Would you have believed it?" I thought of the feuds between sundry sturdy Romanys in England, and felt that I could suppose such a thing, without dangerously stretching my faith, and I began to believe in Russian gypsies. " Well, then, I shall call for you to-morrow night with a troika; I will come early, at ten. They never begin to sing before company arrive at eleven, so that you will have half an hour to talk to them." It is on record that the day on which the general gave me this kind invitation was the coldest known 30 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. in St. Petersburg for thirty years, the thermometer having stood, or rather having lain down and grov- eled that morning at 40 below zero, Fahr. At the appointed hour the troika, or three-horse sleigh, was before the HQtel d 'Europe. It was, indeed, an arc- tic night, but, well wrapped in fur-lined shubas, with immense capes which fall to the elbow or rise far above the head, as required, and wearing fur caps and fur-lined gloves, we felt no cold. The beard of our istvostshik, or driver, was a great mass of ice, giv- ing him the appearance of an exceedingly hoary youth, and his small horses, being very shaggy and thor- oughly frosted, looked in the darkness like immense polar bears. If the general and myself could only have been considered as gifts of the slightest value to anybody, I should have regarded our turn-out, with the driver in his sheep-skin coat, as coming within a miracle of resemblance to that of Santa Glaus, the American Father Christmas. On, at a tremendous pace, over the snow, which gave out under our runners that crunching, iron sound only heard when the thermometer touches zero. There is a peculiar fascination about the troika, and the sweetest, saddest melody and most plaintive song of Russia belong to it. THE TROIKA. Vot y'dit troika udalaiya. Hear ye the troika-bell a-ringing, And see the peasant driver there ? Hear ye the mournful song he 's singing, Like distant tolling through the air ? " O eyes, blue eyes, to me so lonely, O eyes alas ! ye give me pain ; THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 31 O eyes, that once looked at me only, I ne'er shall see your like again. " Farewell, my darling, now in heaven, And still the heaven of my soul ; Farewell, thou father town, O Moscow, Where I have left my life, my all ! " And ever at the rein still straining, One backward glance the driver gave ; Sees but once more a green low hillock, Sees but once more his loved one's grave. " Stoi ! " Halt I We stopped at a stylish-look- ing building, entered a ball, left our shubas, and I heard the general ask, " Are the gypsies here ? " An affirmative being given, we entered a large room, and there, sure enough, stood six or eight girls and two men, all very well dressed, and all unmistakably Romany, though smaller and of much slighter or more delicate frame than the powerful gypsy " travelers " of England. In an instant every pair of great, wild eyes was fixed on me. The general was in every way a more striking figure, but I was manifestly a fresh stranger, who knew nothing of the country, and certainly nothing of gypsies or gypsydbm. Such a verdant visitor is always most interesting. It was not by any means my first reception of the kind, and, as I reviewed at a glance the whole party, I said within myself : " Wait an instant, you black snakes, and I will give you something to make you stare." This promise I kept, when a young man, who looked like a handsome light Hindoo, stepped up and addressed me in Russian. I looked long and steadily at him before I spoke, and then said : " Latcho divvus prala ! " (Good day, brother.) " What is that ? " he exclaimed, startled. 32 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. " Tujines latcho adosta" (You know very well.) And then, with the expression in his face of a man who has been familiarly addressed by a brazen statue, or asked by a new-born babe, " What o'clock is it ?" but with great joy, he cried : " RomanicJial ! ' ' In an instant they were all around me, marveling greatly, and earnestly expressing their marvel, at what new species of gypsy I might be ; being in this quite unlike those of England, who, even when they are astonished " out of their senses " at being addressed in Romany by a gentleman, make the most red-Indian efforts to conceal their amazement. But I speedily found that these Russian gypsies were as unaffected and child-like as they were gentle in manner, and that they compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy- begging, always-suspecting Romany roughs and rufi- anas as a delicate greyhound might compare with a very shrewd old bull-dog, trained by an unusually " fly " tramp. That the girls were first to the fore in questioning me will be doubted by no one. But we had great trouble in effecting a mutual understanding. Their Romany was full of Russian; their pronunciation puzzled me ; they " bit off their words," and used many in a strange or false sense. Yet, notwithstand- ing this, I contrived to converse pretty readily with the men, very readily with the captain, a man as dark as Ben Lee, to those who know Benjamin, or as mahogany, to those who know him not. But with the women it was very difficult to converse. There is a theory current that women have a specialty of tact and readiness in understanding a foreigner, or in making themselves understood ; it may be so with THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 33 cultivated ladies, but it is my experience that, among the uneducated, men have a monopoly of such quick intelligence. In order fully to convince them that we really had a tongue in common, I repeated per- haps a hundred nouns, giving, for instance, the names of various parts of the body, of articles of apparel and objects in the room, and I believe that we did not find a single word which, when pronounced dis- tinctly by itself, was not intelligible to us. all. I had left in London a Russo-Romany vocabulary, once published in " The Asiatic Magazine," and I had met with Bohtlinghk's article on the dialect, as well as specimens of it in the works of Pott and Miklo- sich, but had unfortunately learned nothing of it from them. I soon found, however, that I knew a great many more gypsy words than did my new friends, and that our English Romany far excels the Russian in copia verborum. " But I must sit down." I observed on this and other occasions that Russian gypsies are very naif. And as it is in human nature to prefer sitting by a pretty girl, these Slavonian Romanys so arrange it according to the principles of natural selection or natural politeness that, when a stranger is in their gates, the two prettiest girls in their possession sit at his right and left, the two less attractive next again, et seriatim. So at once a damsel of comely mien, arrayed in black silk attire, of faultless elegance, cried to me, pointing to a chair by her side, " Bersh tu alay, rya!" (Sit down, sir), a phrase which would be perfectly intelligible to any Romany in England. I admit that there was another damsel, who is generally regarded by most people as the true gypsy belle of the party, who did not sit by me. 34 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. But, as the one who had "voted herself into the chair," by my side, was more to my liking, being the most intelligent and most gypsy, I had good cause to rejoice. I was astonished at the sensible curiosity as to gypsy life in other lands which was displayed, and at the questions asked. I really doubt if I ever met with an English gypsy who cared a farthing to know anything about his race as it exists in foreign coun- tries, or whence it came. Once, and once only, I thought I had interested White George, at East Moulsey, in an account of Egypt, and the small num- ber of Romanys there ; but his only question was to the effect that, if there were so few gypsies in Egypt, would n't it be a good place for him to go to sell baskets ? These of Russia, however, asked all kinds of questions about the manners and customs of their congeners, and were pleased when they recognized familiar traits. And every gypsyism, whether of word or way, was greeted with delighted laughter. In one thing I noted a radical difference between these gypsies and those of the rest of Europe and of America. There was none of that continually as- sumed mystery and Romany freemasonry, of superior occult knowledge and " deep " information, which is often carried to the depths of absurdity and to the height of humbug. I say this advisedly, since, how- ever much it may give charm to a novel or play, it is a serious impediment to a philologist. Let me give an illustration. Once, during the evening, these Russian gypsies were anxious to know if there were any books in their language. Now I have no doubt that Dr. Bath Smart, or Prof. E. H. Palmer, or .any other of the THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 35 initiated, will perfectly understand when I say that by mere force of habit I shivered and evaded the question. When a gentleman who manifests a knowl- edge of Romany among gypsies in England is sus- pected of " dixonary " studies, it amounts to lasciate ogni speranza, give up all hope of learning any more. " I 'm glad to see you here, rya, in my tent," said the before-mentioned Ben Lee to me one night, in camp near Weybridge, " because I 've heard, and I know, you did n't pick up your Romany out of books." The silly dread, the hatred, the childish antipathy, real or affected, but always ridiculous, which is felt in England, not only among gypsies, but even by many gentlemen scholars, to having the Romany language published is indescribable. Vambe'ry was not more averse to show a lead pencil among Tartars than I am to take notes of words among strange English gypsies. I might have spared myself any annoyance from such a source among the Russian Romanys. They had not heard of Mr. George Bor- row ; nor were there ugly stories current among them to the effect that Dr. Smart and Prof. E. H. Palmer had published works, the direct result of which would be to facilitate their little paths to the jail, the gal- lows, and the grave. " Would we hear some singing ? " We were ready, and for the first time in my life I listened to the long- anticipated, far-famed magical melody of Russian gypsies. And what was it like ? May I preface my reply to the reader with the remark that there are, roughly speaking, two kinds of music in the world, the wild and the tame, and the rarest of human 36 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. beings is he who can appreciate both. Only one such man ever wrote a book, and his nomen et omen is Engel, like that of the little English slaves who were non Angli, sed angeli. I have in my time been deeply moved by the choruses of Nubian boatmen ; I have listened with great pleasure to Chinese and Japan- ese music, Ole Bull once told me he had done the same ; I have delighted by the hour in Arab songs ; and I have felt the charm of our red-Indian music. If this seems absurd to those who characterize all such sound and song as "caterwauling,' let me re- mind the reader that in all Europe there is not one man fonder of music than an average Arab, a Chinese, or a red Indian ; for any of these people, as I have seen and know, will sit twelve or fifteen hours, with- out the least weariness, listening to what cultivated Europeans all consider as a mere charivari. When London gladly endures fifteen-hour concerts, com- posed of morceaux by Wagner, Chopin, and Liszt, I will believe that art can charm as much as nature. The medium point of intelligence in this puzzle may be found in the extraordinary fascination which many find in the monotonous turn-turn of the banjo, and which reappears, somewhat refined, or at least somewhat Frenchified, in the Bamboula and other Creole airs. Thence, in an ascending series, but con- nected with it, we have old Spanish melodies, then the Arabic, and here we finally cross the threshold into mystery, midnight, and " caterwauling." I do not know that I can explain the fact why the more " bar- barous " music is, the more it is beloved of man ; but I think that the principle of the refrain, or repeti- tion in music, which as yet governs all decorative art, and which Mr. Whistler and others are endeavoring THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 37 desperately to destroy, acts in music as a sort of ani- mal magnetism or abstraction, ending in an extase. As for the fascination which such wild melodies exert, it is beyond description. The most enraptured au- dience I ever saw in my life was at a Coptic wedding in Cairo, where one hundred and fifty guests listened, from seven P. M. till three A. M., and Heaven knows how much later, to what a European would call ab- solute jangling, yelping, and howling. The real medium, however, between what I have, for want of better words, called wild and tame music exists only in that of the Russian gypsies. These artists, with wonderful tact and untaught skill, have succeeded, in all their songs, in combining the myste- rious and maddening charm of the true, wild Eastern music with that of regular and simple melody, intel- ligible to every Western ear. I have never listened to the singing or playing of any distinguished artist and certainly never of any far-famed amateur with- out realizing that neither words nor melody was of the least importance, but that the man's manner of performance or display was everything. Now, in enjoying gypsy singing, one feels at once as if the vocalists had entirely forgotten self, and were carried away by the bewildering beauty of the air and the charm of the words. There is no self-consciousness, no vanity, all is real. The listener feels as if he were a performer ; the performer is an enraptured listener. There is no soulless " art for the sake of art," but art for direct pleasure. "We intend to sing only Romany for you, rya" said the young lady to my left, " and you will hear our real gypsy airs. The G-aji [Russians] often ask for songs in our language, and don't get them. But 38 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. you are a Romanichal, and when you go home, far over the baro Tcdlo pdni [the broad black water, that is, the ocean], you shall tell the Romany how we can sing. Listen ! " And I listened to the strangest, wildest, and sweet- est singing I ever had heard, the singing of Lur- leis, of sirens, of witches. - First, one damsel, with an exquisitely. clear, firm voice, began to sing a verse of a love-ballad, and as it approached the end the cho- rus stole in, softly and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a few seconds, the summer breeze, mur- muring melody over a rippling lake, seemed changed to a midnight tempest, roaring over a stormy sea, in which the basso of the kdlo shureskro (the black cap- tain) pealed like thunder. Just as it died away a second girl took up the melody, very sweetly, but with a little more excitement, it was like a gleam of moonlight on the still agitated waters, a strange contralto witch-gleam; and then again the chorus and the storm ; and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger, the movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild, and mad, a locomotive quickstep, and then a sudden silence sunlight the storm had blown away. Nothing on earth is so like magic and elfin-work as when women burst forth into improvised melody. The bird only " sings as his bill grew," or what he learned from the elders ; yet when you hear birds singing in woodland green, throwing out to God or the fairies irrepressible floods of what seems like au- dible sunshine, so well does it match with summer's light, you think it is wonderful. It is mostly when you forget the long training of the prima donna, in her ease and apparent naturalness, that her song is THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 39 sweetest. But there is a charm, which was well known of old, though we know it not to-day, which was practiced by the bards and believed in by their historians. It was the feeling that the song was born of the moment ; that it came with the air, gushing and fresh from the soul. In reading the strange stories of the professional bards and scalds and min- strels of the early Middle Age, one is constantly be- wildered at the feats of off-hand composition which were exacted of the poets among Celts or Norse- men. And it is evident enough that in some myste- rious way these singers knew how to put strange pressure on the Muse, and squeeze strains out of her in a manner which would have been impossible at present. Yet it lingers here and there on earth among wild, strange people, this art of making melody at will. I first heard it among Nubian boatmen on the Nile. It was as manifest that it was composed during the making as that the singers were unconscious of their power. One sung at first what may have been a well- known verse. While singing, another voice stole in, and yet another, softly as shadows steal into twilight ; and ere I knew it all were in a great chorus, which fell away as mysteriously, to become duos, trios, changing in melody in strange, sweet, fitful wise, as the faces seen in the golden cloud in the visioned aureole of God blend, separate, burn, and fade away ever into fresher glory and tints incarnadined. Miss C. F. Gordon Gumming, after informing us that " it is utterly impossible to give you the faintest shadow of an idea of the fascination of Tahitian himnes" proceeds, as men in general and women in particular invariably do, to give what the writer 40 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. really believes is "a very good description indeed. *T is ever thus, and thus 't will ever be, and the de- scription of these songs is so good that any person gifted with imagination or poetry cannot fail to smile at the preceding disavowal of her ability to give an idea. These him^nes are not and here such of my too expectant young lady-readers as are careless in spell- ing will be sadly disappointed in any way con- nected with weddings. They are simply the natural music of Tahiti, or strange and beautiful part-songs. " Nothing you have ever heard in any other country," says our writer, " bears the slightest resemblance to these wild, exquisite glees, faultless in time and har- mony, though apparently each singer introduces any variations which may occur to him or to her. Very often there is no leader, and apparently all sing ac- cording to their own sweet will. One voice com- mences ; it may be that of an old native, with genu- ine native words (the meaning of which we had bet- ter not inquire), or it may be with a Scriptural story, versified and sung to an air originally from Europe, but so completely Tahitianized that no mortal could recognize it, which is all in its favor, for the wild melodies of this isle are beyond measure fascinating. " After one clause of solo, another strikes in here, there, everywhere in harmonious chorus. It seems as if one section devoted themselves to pour- ing forth a rippling torrent of ' Ra, ra, ra ra ra ! ' while others burst into a flood of ' La, la la la la ! ' Some confine their care to sound a deep, boom- ing bass in a long-continued drone, somewhat sug- gestive (to my appreciative Highland ear) of our own bagpipes. Here and there high falsetto notes THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 41 strike in, varied from verse to verse, and then the choruses of La and Ra come bubbling in liquid mel- ody, while the voices of the principal singers now join in unison, now diverge as widely as it is possible for them to do, but all combine to produce the quaint- est, most melodious, rippling glee that ever was heard." This is the himne ; such the singing which I heard in Egypt in a more regular form ; but it was exactly as the writer so admirably sets it forth (and your description, my lady traveler, is, despite your disavowal, quite perfect and a himene of itself) that I heard the gypsy girls of St. Petersburg and of Mos- cow sing. For, after a time, becoming jolly as flies, first one voice began with "La, la, la la* la! " to an unnamed, unnamable, charming melody, into which went and came other voices, some bringing one verse or no verse, in unison or alone, the least expected do- ing what was most awaited, which was to surprise us and call forth gay peals of happy laughter, while the " La, la, la la la!" was kept up continuously, like an accompaniment. And still the voices, basso, soprano, tenor, baritone, contralto, rose and fell, the moment's inspiration telling how, till at last all blended in a locomotive-paced La, and in a final roar of laughter it ended. I could not realize at the time how much this ex- quisite part-singing was extemporized. The sound of it rung in my head I assure you, reader, it rings there yet when I think of it like a magic bell. An- other day, however, when I begged for a repetition of it, the girls could recall nothing of it. They could start it again on any air to the unending strain of "La la la:" but the "La la la" of the 42 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. previous evening was avec les neiges cCantan, with the smoke of yesterday's fire, with the perfume and bird-songs. " La, la, la la la ! " In Arab singing, such effects are applied simply to set forth erotomania ; in negro minstrelsy, they are degraded to the lowest humor ; in higher European music, when employed, they simply illustrate the skill of composer and musician. The spirit of gypsy singing recalled by its method and sweetness that of the Nubian boatmen, but in its general effect I could think only of those strange fits of excitement which thrill the red Indian and make him burst into song. The Abbe Domenech 1 has observed that the Ameri- can savage pays attention to every sound that strikes upon his ear when the leaves, softly shaken by the evening breeze, seem to sigh through the air, or when the tempest, bursting forth with fury, shakes the gi- gantic trees that crack like reeds. " The chirping of the birds, the cry of the wild beasts, in a word, all those sweet, grave, or imposing voices that animate the wilderness, are so many musical lessons, which he easily remembers." In illustration of this, the mis- sionary describes the singing of a Chippewa chief, and its wild inspiration, in a manner which vividly illustrates all music of the class of which I write. " It was," he says, " during one of those long winter nights, so monotonous and so wearisome in the woods. We were in a wigwam, which afforded us but miserable shelter from the inclemency of the season. The storm raged without ; the tempest roared in the open country ; the wind blew with violence, and whistled through the fissures of the cabin ; the rain fell in torrents, and prevented us from continu- 1 Seven Years in the Deserts of America. THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 43 ing our route. Our host was an Indian, with spark- ling and intelligent eyes, clad with a certain elegance, and wrapped majestically in a large fur cloak. Seated close to the fire, which cast a reddish gleam through the interior of his wigwam, he felt himself all at once seized with an irresistible desire to imitate the con- vulsions of nature, and to sing his impressions. So, taking hold of a drum which hung near his bed, he beat a slight rolling, resembling the distant sounds of an approaching storm ; then, raising his voice to a shrill treble, which he knew how to soften when he pleased, he imitated the whistling of the air, the creaking of the branches dashing against one another, and the particular noise produced by dead leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground. By degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder, the chants more sonorous and shrill, and at last our Indian shrieked, howled, and roared in a most frightful manner ; he struggled and struck his instrument with extraordinary rapidity. It was a real tempest, to which nothing was wanting, not even the distant howling of the dogs, nor the bel- lowing of the affrighted buffaloes." I have observed the same musical inspiration of a storm upon Arabs, who, during their singing, also ac- companied themselves on a drum. I once spent two weeks in a Mediterranean steamboat, on board of which were more than two hundred pilgrims, for the greater part wild Bedouins, going to Mecca. They had a minstrel who sang and played on the darabuka, or earthenware drum, and he was aided by another with a simple nai, or reed- whistle ; the same orchestra, in fact, which is in universal use among all red In- dians. To these performers the pilgrims listened 44 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. with indescribable pleasure ; and I soon found that they regarded me favorably because I did the same, being, of course, the only Frank on board who paid any attention to the singing or any money for it. But it was at night and during storms that the spirit of music always seemed to be strongest on the Arabs, and then, amid roaring of wild waters and thunder- ing, and in dense darkness, the rolling of the drum and the strange, bewildering ballads never ceased. It was the very counterpart, in all respects, of the Chippewa storm song. After the first gypsy lyric there came another, to which the captain especially directed my attention as being what Sam Petulengro calls " reg'lar Rom- any." It was I rakli adro o lolo gad (The girl in the red chemise), as well as I can recall his words, a very sweet song, with a simple but spirited cho- rus ; and as the sympathetic electricity of excitement seized the performers we were all in a minute "go- ing down the rapids in a spring freshet." " Bag an tu rya, bag an ! " (Sing, sir, sing) cried my handsome neighbor, with her black gypsy eyes sparkling fire. " Jines hi lagan eto eto latcho Romanes" (You can sing that, it's real Rom- any.) It was evident that she and all were sing- ing with thorough enjoyment, and with a full and realizing consciousness of gypsyism, being greatly stimulated by my presence and sympathy. I felt that the gypsies were taking unusual pains to please the Romany rye from the dur* tern, or far country, and they had attained the acme of success by being thoroughly delighted with themselves, which is all that can be hoped for in art, where the aim is pleas- ure and not criticism. THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 45 There was a pause in the performance, but none in the chattering of the young ladies, and during this a curious little incident occurred. Wishing to know if my pretty friend could understand an English gypsy lyric, I sang in an undertone a ballad, taken from George Borrow's "Lavengro," and which be- gins with these words : "Pende Romani chai ke laki dye ; 'Miri diri dye, mi shorn karaeli.' " I never knew whether this was really an old gypsy poem or one written by Mr. Borrow. Once, when I repeated it to old Henry James, as he sat making baskets, I was silenced by being told, "That ain't no real gypsy gilli. That 's one of the kind made up by gentlemen and ladies." However, as soon as I repeated it, the Russian gypsy girl cried eagerly, " I know that song ! " and actually sang me a ballad which was essentially the same, in which a damsel describes her fall, owing to a Gajo (Gorgio, a Gentile, not gypsy) lover, and her final expulsion from the tent. It was adapted to a very pretty melody, and as soon as she had sung it, sotto voce, my pretty friend exclaimed to another girl, " Only think, the rye from America knows that song!'' Now, as many centu- ries must have passed since the English and Russian gypsies parted from the parent stock, the preserva- tion of this song is very remarkable, and its antiq- uity must be very great. I did not take it down, but any resident in St. Petersburg can, if so inclined, do so among the gypsies at Dorat, and verify my statement. Then there was a pretty dance, of a modified Ori- ental character, by one of the damsels. For this, as for the singing, the only musical instrument used was 46 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. a guitar, which had seven strings, tuned in Spanish fashion, and was rather weak in tone. I wished it had been a powerful Panormo, which would have ex- actly suited the timbre of these voices. The gypsies were honestly interested in all I could tell them about their kind in other lands ; while the girls were professionally desirous to hear more Anglo-Romany songs, and were particularly pleased with one begin- ning with the words : " ' Me shorn akonyo,' gildas yoi, Men buti ruzhior, Te sar i chiriclia adoi Pen mengy gilior.' " Though we " got on " after a manner in our Rom- any talk, I was often obliged to have recourse to my friend the general to translate long sentences into Russian, especially when some sand-bar of a verb or some log of a noun impeded the current of our conversation. Finally, a formal request was made by the captain that I would, as one deep beyond all their experience in Romany matters, kindly tell them what kind of people they really were, and whence they came. With this demand I cheerfully complied, every word being listened to with breathless interest. So I told them what I knew or had conjectured rel- ative to their Indian origin : how their fathers had wandered forth through Persia ; how their travels could be traced by the Persian, Greek, or Roumanian words in the language ; how in 1417 a band of them appeared in Europe, led by a few men of great dip- lomatic skill, who, by crafty dealing, obtained from the Pope, the Emperor of Germany, and all the kings of Europe, except that of England, permission to wander for fifty years as pilgrims, declaring that they THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 47 had been Christians, but, having become renegades, the King of Hungary had imposed a penance on them of half a century's exile. Then I informed them that precisely the same story had been told by them to the rulers in Syria and Egypt, only that in the Moham- medan countries they pretended to be good followers of Islam. I said there was reason to believe that some of their people had been in Poland and the other Slavonic countries ever since the eleventh cent- ury, but that those of England must have gone di- rectly from Eastern Europe to Great Britain ; for, although they had many Slavic words, such as krallis (king) and shuba, there were no "French terms, and very few traces of German or Italian, in the English dialect. I observed that the men all understood the geographical allusions which I made, knowing ap- parently where India, Pei'sia, and Egypt were situ- ated a remarkable contrast to our own English " travelers," one of whom once informed me that he would like to go "on the road" in America, "be- cause you know, sir, as America lays along into France, we could get our French baskets cheaper there." I found, on inquiry, that the Russian gypsies pro- fess Christianity ; but, as the religion of the Greek church, as I saw it, appears to be practically some- thing very little better than fetich-worship, I cannot exalt them as models of evangelical piety. They are, however, according to a popular proverb, not far from godliness in being very clean in their persons ; and not only did they appear so to me, but I was as- sured by several Russians that, as regarded these singing gypsies, it was invariably the case. As for morality in gypsy girls, their principles are very pe- 48 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. culiar. Not a whisper of scandal attaches to these Russian Romany women as regards transient amours. But if a wealthy Russian gentleman falls in love with one, and will have and hold her permanently, or for a durable connection, he may take her to his home if she likes him, but must pay monthly a sum into the gypsy treasury ; for these people apparently form an artel, or society-union, like all other classes of Russians. It may be suggested, as an explanation of this apparent incongruity, that gypsies all the world over regard steady cohabitation, or agreement, as marriage, binding themselves, as it were, by Crand- harbavivaha, as the saint married Vasantasena, which is an old Sanskrit way of wedding. And let me re- mark that if one tenth of what I heard in Russia about " morals " in the highest or lowest or any other class be true, the gypsies of that country are shining lights and brilliant exemplars of morality to all by whom they are surrounded. Let me also add that never on any occasion did I hear or see among them anything in the slightest degree improper or unre- fined. I knew very well that I could, if I chose, talk to such naive people about subjects which would shock an English lady, and, as the reader may re- member, I did quote Mr. Sorrow's song, which he has not translated. But a European girl who would have endured allusions to tabooed subjects would have at all times shown vulgarity or coarseness, while these Russian Romany girls were invariably lady-like. It is true that the St. Petersburg party had a dissipated air ; thi-ee or four of them looked like second-class French or Italian theatrical artistes, and I should not be astonished to learn that very late hours and cham- pagne were familiar to them as cigarettes, or that THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 49 their flirtations among their own people were neither faint, nor few, nor far between. But their conduct in my presence was irreproachable. Those of Mos- cow, in fact, had not even the apparent defects of their St. Petersburg sisters and brothers, and when among them it always seemed to me as if I were sim- ply witli nice gentle Creoles or Cubans, the gypsy manner being tamed down to the Spanish level, their great black eyes and their guitars increasing the re- semblance. The indescribably wild and thrilling character of gypsy music is thoroughly appreciated by the Rus- sians, who pay very high prices for Romany per- formances. From, five to eight or ten pounds ster- ling is usually given to a dozen gypsies for singing an hour or two to a special party, and this is some- times repeated twice or thrice of an evening. "A Russian gentleman, when he is in funds," said the clerk of the Slavansky Bazaar in Moscow to me, " will make nothing of giving the Zigani a hundred- ruble note," the ruble rating at half a crown. The result is that good singers among these lucky Roma- nys are well to do, and lead soft lives, for Russia. MOSCOW. I had no friends in Moscow to direct me where to find gypsies en famille, and the inquiries which I made of chance acquaintances simply convinced me that the world at large was as ignorant of their ways as it was prejudiced against them. At last the good- natured old porter of our hotel told me, in his rough Baltic German, how to meet these mysterious min- strels to advantage. " You must take a sleigh," he said, " and go out to Petrovka. That is a place in 4 50 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. the country, where there are grand cafes at consider- able distances one from the other. Pay the driver three rubles for four hours. Enter a cafS, call for something to drink, listen to the gypsies singing, and when they pass round a plate put some money in it. That 's all/' This was explicit, and at ten o'clock in the evening I hired a sleigh and went. If the cold which I had experienced in the gen- eral's troika in St. Petersburg might be compared to a moderate rheumatism, that which I encountered in the sleigh outside the walls of Moscow, on Christ- mas Eve, 187G, was like a fierce gout. The ride was in all conscience Russian enough to have its ending among gypsies, Tartars, or Cossacks. To go at a headlong pace over the creaking snow behind an ist- vostshik, named Vassili, the round, cold moon over- head, church-spires tipped with great inverted golden turnips in the distance, and this on a night when the frost seemed almost to scream in its intensity, is as much of a .sensation in the suburbs of Moscow as it could be out on the steppes. A few wolves, more or less, make no difference, and even they come sometimes within three hours' walk of the Kremlin. Et ego inter lupos, I too have been among wolves in my time by night, in Kansas, and thought nothing of such rides compared to the one I had when I went gypsy ing from Moscow. In half an hour Vassili brought me to a house, which I entered. A " proud porter," a vast creature, in uniform suggestive of embassies and kings' pulaces, relieved me of my shuba, and I found my way into a very large and high hall, brilliantly lighted as if for a thousand guests, while the only occupants were four couples, " spooning " sans gene, one in each corner, THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 51 and a small party of men and girls drinking in the middle. I called a waiter ; he spoke nothing but Russian, and Russian is of all languages the most useless to him who only talks it " a little." A little Arabic, or even a little Chippewa, I have found of great service, but a fair vocabulary and weeks of study of the grammar are of no avail in a country where even men of gentlemanly appearance turn away with childish ennui the instant they detect the foreigner, resolving apparently that they cannot and will not understand him. In matters like this the ordinary Russian is more impatient and less intelli- gent than any .Oriental or even red Indian. The result of my interview with the waiter was that we were soon involved in the completest misunderstand- ing on the subject of gypsies. The question was settled by reference to a fat and fair damsel, one of the "spoons" already referred to, who spoke Ger- man. She explained to me that as it was Christ- mas Eve no gypsies would be there, or at any other cafe. This was disappointing. I called Vassili, and he drove on to another "garden," deeply buried in snow. When I entered the rooms at this place, I per- ceived at a glance that matters had mended. There was the hum of many voices, and a perfume like that of tea and many papiross, or cigarettes, with a prompt sense of society and of enjoyment. I was dazzled at first by the glare of the lights, and could distinguish nothing, unless it was that the numerous company re- garded me with utter amazement ; for it was an " off night," when no business was expected, -few were there save " professionals " and their friends, and I was manifestly an unexpected intruder on Bohemia. 52 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. As luck would have it, that which I believed was the one worst night in the year to find the gypsy minstrels proved to be the exceptional occasion when they were all assembled, and I had hit upon it. Of course this struck me pleasantly enough as I looked around, for I knew that at a touch the spell would be broken, and with one word I should have the warmest welcome from all. I had literally not a single speaking acquaintance within a thousand miles, and yet here was a room crowded with gay and fes- tive strangers, whom the slightest utterance would convert into friends. I was not disappointed. Seeking for an opportu- nity, I saw a young man of gentlemanly appearance, well dressed, and with a mild and amiable air. Speak- ing to him in German, I asked the very needless ques- tion if there were any gypsies present. " You wish to hear them sing ? " he inquired. " I do not. I only want to talk with one, with any one." He appeared to be astonished, but, pointing to a handsome, slender young lady, a very dark brunette, elegantly attired in black silk, said, " There is one." I stepped across to the girl, who rose to meet me. I said nothing for a few seconds, but looked at her intently, and then asked, " Rakessa tu Romanes^ miri pen ? " (Do you talk Romany, my sister ?) She gave one deep, long glance of utter astonish- ment, drew one long breath, and, with a cry of de- light and'wonder, said, " Romanichal ! " That word awoke the entire company, and with it THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 53 they found out who the intruder was. " Then might you hear them cry aloud, ' The Moringer is here ! ' ' for I began to feel like the long-lost lord returned, so warm was my welcome. They flocked around me ; they cried aloud in Romany, and one good-natured, smiling man, who looked like a German gypsy, mounting a chair, waved a guitar by its neck high in the air as a signal of discovery of a great prize to those at a distance, repeating rapidly, " Av'akai, avctkai, Romanichal ! " (Come here ; here's a gypsy !) And they came, dark and light, great and small, and got round me, and shook hands, and held to my arms, and asked where I came from, and how I did, and if it was n't jolly, and what would I take to drink, and said how glad they were to see me ; and when conversation flagged for an instant, somebody said to his next neighbor, with an air of wisdom, " American Romany," and everybody repeated it with delight. Then it occurred to the guitarist and the young lady that we had better sit down. So my first acquaintance and discoverer, whose name was Liu- basha, was placed, in right of preemption, at my right hand, the belle des belles, Miss Sarsha, at my left, a number of damsels all around these, and then three or four circles of gypsies, of different ages and tints, standing up, surrounded us all. In the outer ring were several fast-looking and pretty Russian or German blonde girls, whose mission it is, I believe, to dance and flirt with visitors, and a few gentlemanly-looking Russians, vieux gargons, evi- dently of the kind who are at home behind the scenes, and who knew where to come to enjoy them- selves. Altogether there must have been about fifty 54 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. present, and I soon observed that every word I ut- tered was promptly repeated, while every eye was fixed on me. I could converse in Romany with the guitarist, and without much difficulty; but with the charming, heedless young ladies I had as much trouble to talk as with their sisters in St. Petersburg. The young gentleman already referred to, to whom in my fancy I promptly gave the Offenbachian name of Prince Paul, translated whenever there was a misunder- standing, and in a few minutes we were all intimate. Miss Sarsha, who had a slight cast in one of her wild black eyes, which added something to the gypsiness and roguery of her smiles, and who wore in a ring a large diamond, which seemed as if it might be the right eye in the wrong place, was what is called an earnest young lady, with plenty to say and great energy wherewith to say it. What with her eyes, her diamond, her smiles, and her tongue, she consti- tuted altogether a fine specimen of irrepressible fire- works, and Prince Paul had enough to do in facili- tating conversation. There was no end to his po- liteness, but it was an impossible task for him now and then promptly to carry over a long sentence from German to Russian 7 , and he would give it up like an invincible conundrum, with the patient smile and head- wag and hand- wave of an amiable Dun- dreary. Yet \[ began to sui'mise a mystery even in him. More than once he inadvertently betrayed a knowledge of Romany, though he invariably spoke of his friends around in a patronizing manner as "these gypsies." This was very odd, for in appear- ance he was a Gorgio of the Gorgios, and did not seem, despite any talent for languages which he might THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 55 possess, likely to trouble himself to acquire Romany while Russian would answer every purpose of conver- sation. All of this was, however, explained to me afterward. Prince Paul again asked me if I had come out to hear a concert. I said, " No ; that I had simply come out to see my brothers and sisters and talk with them, just as I hoped they would come to see me if I were in my own country." This speech pro- duced a most favorable impression, and there was, in a quiet way, a little private conversation among the leaders, after which Prince Paul said to me, in a very pleasant manner, that " these gypsies," being delighted at the visit from the gentleman from a distant country, would like to offer me a song in token of welcome. To this I answered, with many thanks, that such kindness was more than I had ex- pected, for I was well aware of the great value of such a compliment from singers whose fame had reached me even in America. It was evident that my grain of a reply did not fall upon stony ground, for I never was among people who seemed to be so quickly impressed by any act of politeness, however trifling. A bow, a grasp of the hand, a smile, or a glance would grat- ify them, and this gratification their lively black eyes expressed in the most unmistakable manner. So we had the song, wild and wonderful like all of its kind, given with that delightful abandon which attains perfection only among gypsies. I had enjoyed the singing in St. Petersburg, but there was a laisser aller, a completely gay spirit, in this Christmas-Eve gypsy party in Moscow which was much more " whirl- ing away." For at Dorot the gypsies had been on exhibition ; here at Petrovka they were frolicking en 56 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. famille with a favored guest, a Romany rye from a far land to astonish and delight, and he took good care to let them feel that they were achieving a splen- did success, for I declared many times that it was butsi shukdr, or very beautiful. Then I called for tea and lemon, and after that the gypsies sang for their own amusement, Miss Sarsha, as the incarna- tion of fun and jollity, taking the lead, and mak- ing me join in. Then the crowd made way, and in the space appeared a very pretty little girl, in the graceful old gypsy Oriental dress. This child danced charmingly indeed, in a style strikingly like that of the Almeh of Egypt, but without any of the erotic ex- pressions which abound in Eastern pantomime. This little Romany girl was to me enchanting, being alto- gether unaffected and graceful. It was evident that her dancing, like the singing of her elder sisters, was not an art which had been drilled in by instruction. They had come into it in infancy, and perfected themselves by such continual practice that what they did was as natural as walking or talking. When the dancing was over, I begged that the little girl would come to me, and, kissing her tiny gypsy hand, I said, " Spassibo tute kamli, eto hi butsi shukdr " (Thank you, dear; that is very pretty), with which the rest were evidently pleased. I had observed among the singers, at a little distance, a very remarkable and rather handsome old woman, a good study for an artist, and she, as I also noticed, had sung with a powerful and clear voice. " She is our grandmother," said one of the girls. Now, as every student of gyp- sies knows, the first thing to do in England or Ger- many, on entering a tent-gypsy encampment, is to be polite to " the old woman." Unless you can win THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 57 her good opinion you had better be gone. The Rus- sian city Roms have apparently no such fancies. On the road, however, life is patriarchal, and the grand- mother is a power to be feared. As a fortune-teller she is a witch, ever at warfare with the police world ; she has a bitter tongue, and is quick to wrath. This was not the style or fashion of the old gypsy singer ; but, as soon as I saw the puri babali dye, I requested that she would shake hand with me, and by the im- pression which this created I saw that the Romany of the city had not lost all the feelings of the road. I spoke of Waramoff 's beautiful song of the " Kras- neya Sarafan," which Sarsha began at once to war- ble. The characteristic of Russian gypsy-girl voices is a peculiarly delicate metallic tone, like that of the two silver bells of the Tower of Ivan Velikoi when heard from afar, yet always marked with fineness and strength. This is sometimes startling in the wilder effects, but it is always agreeable. These Moscow gypsy girls have a great name in their art, and it was round the shoulders of one of them for aught I know it may have been Sarsha's great- grandmother that Catalani threw the cashmere shawl which had been given to her by the Pope as " to the best singer in the world." " It is not mine by right," said the generous Italian ; " it belongs to the gypsy." The gypsies were desirous of learning something about the songs of their kindred in distant lands, and, though no singer, I did my best to please them, the guitarist easily improvising accompaniments, while the girls joined in. As all were in a gay mood, faults were easily excused, and the airs were much liked, one lyric, set by Virginia Gabriel, being even 58 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. more admired in Moscow than in St. Petersburg ; apropos of which I may mention that, when I after- ward visited the gypsy family in their own home, the first request from Sarsha was, " Eto gilyo, rya!" (That song, sir), referring to "Romany," which has been heard at several concerts in London. And so, after much discussion of the affairs of Egypt, I took my leave amid a chorus of kind farewells. Then Vassili, loudly called for, reappeared from some nook with his elegantly frosted horse, and in a few minutes we were dashing homeward. Cold! It was as sevei-e as in Western New York or Minnesota, where the thermometer for many days every winter sinks lower than in St. Petersburg, but where there are no such incredible precautions taken as in the land of double windows cemented down, and fur-lined shubas. It is remarkable that the gypsies, although of Oriental origin, are said to surpass the Russians in enduring cold ; and there is a marvelous story told about a Romany who, for a wager, undertook to sleep naked against a clothed Muscovite on the ice of a river dur- ing an unusually cold night. In the morning the Russian was found frozen stiff, while the gypsy was snoring away unharmed. As we returned, I saw in the town something which recalled this story in more than one movjik, who, well wrapped up, lay sleeping in the open air, under the lee of a house. Passing through silent Moscow on the early Christmas morn, under the stars, as I gazed at the marvelous city, which yields neither to Edinburgh, Cairo, nor Prugue in picturesqueuess, and thought over the strange evening I had spent among the gypsies, I felt as if I were in a melodrama with striking scenery. The pleasing finale was the utter amazement and almost THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 59 speechless gratitude of Vassili at getting an extra half-ruble as an early Christmas gift. As I had received a pressing invitation from the gypsies to corne again, I resolved to pay them a visit on Christmas afternoon in their own house, if I ccfuld find it. Having ascertained that the gypsy street was in a distant quarter, called the Grrouszini, I engaged a sleigh, standing before the door of the Slavanski- Bazaar Hotel, and the usual close bargain with the driver was effected with the aid of a Russian gentle- man, a stranger passing by, who reduced the ruble (one hundred kopecks) at first demanded to seventy kopecks. After a very long drive we found ourselves in the gypsy street, and the istvostshik asked me, " To what house ? " " I don't know," I replied. " Gypsies live here, don't they ? " " Gypsies, and no others." " Well, I want to find a gypsy." The driver laughed, and just at that instant I saw, as if awaiting me on the sidewalk, Sarsha, Liubasha, and another young lady, with a good-looking youth, their brother. " This will do," I said to the driver, who appeared utterly amazed at seeing me greeted like an old friend by the Zigani, but who grinned with delight, as all Russians of the lower class invariably do at anything like sociability and fraternity. The damsels were faultlessly attired in Russian style, with full fur- lined, glossy black-satin cloaks and fine Orenberg scarfs, which are, I believe, the finest woolen fabrics in the world. The party were particularly anxious to know if I had come specially to visit them, for I have passed over the fact that I had also made the 60 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. acquaintance of another very large family of gypsies, who sang at a rival cafe, and who had also treated me very kindly. I was at once conducted to a house, which we entered in a rather gypsy way, not in front, but through a court, a back door, and up a staircase, very much in the style of certain dwellings in the Potteries in London. But, having entered, I was led through one or two neat rooms, where I saw lying sound asleep on beds, but dressed, one or two very dark Romanys, whose faces I remembered. Then we passed into a sitting-room, which was very well furnished. I observed hanging up over the chimney- piece a good collection of photographs, nearly all of gypsies, and indicating that close resemblance to Hin- doos which comes out so strongly in such pictures, being, in fact, more apparent in the pictures than in the faces ; just as the photographs of the old Ulfilas manuscript revealed alterations not visible in the original. In the centre of the group was a cabinet- size portrait of Sarsha, and by it another of an Eng- lishman of very high rank. I thought this odd, but asked no questions. My hosts were very kind, offering me promptly a rich kind of Russian cake, begging to know what else I would like to eat or drink, and apparently deeply concerned that I could really partake of nothing, as I had just come from luncheon. They were all light- hearted and gay, so that the music began at once, as wild and as bewitching as ever. And here I observed, even more than before, how thoroughly sincere these gypsies were in their art, and to what a degree they enjoyed and were excited by their own singing. Here in their own home, warbling like birds and frolicking like children, their performance was even more de- THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 61 lightful than it had been in the concert- room. There was evidently a great source of excitement in the fact that I must enjoy it far more than an ordinary stranger, because I understood Romany, and sympa- thized with gypsy ways, and regarded them not as the G-aji or Gentiles do, but as brothers and sisters. I confess that I was indeed moved by the simple kind- ness with which I was treated, and I knew that, with the wonderfully keen perception of character in which gypsies excel, they perfectly understood my liking for them. It is this ready intuition of feelings which, when it is raised from an instinct to an art by prac- tice, enables shrewd old women to tell fortunes with so much skill. I was here introduced to the mother of the girls. She was a neat, pleasant-looking woman, of perhaps forty years, in appearance and manners irresistibly re- minding me of some respectable Cuban lady. Like the others, she displayed an intelligent curiosity as to my knowledge of Romany, and I was pleased at finding that she knew much more of the language than her children did. Then there entered a young Russian gentleman, but not "Prince Paul." He was, however, a very agreeable person, as all Russians can be when so minded ; and they are always so minded when they gather, from information or conjecture, the fact that the stranger whom they meet is one of education or position. This young gentleman spoke French, and undertook the part of occasional translator. I asked Liubasha if any of them understood fort- une-telling. " No ; we have quite lost the art of dorriki. 1 None 1 In Old English Romany this is called dorrikin ; in common par- lance, dukkerin. Both forms are really old. 62 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. of us know anything about it. But we hear that you Romanichals over the Black Water understand it. Oh, rya" she cried, eagerly, " you know so much, you 're such a deep Romany, can't you tellfovtunes?" " I should indeed know very little about Romany ways," I replied, gravely, " if I could not pen dorriki. But I tell you beforehand, terni pen, ' dorrikipen hi hokanipenj little sister, fortune-telling is deceiving. Yet what the lines say I can read." In an instant six as pretty little gypsy hands as I ever beheld were thrust before me, and I heard as many cries of delight. "Tell my fortune, rya! tell mine ! and mine ! " exclaimed the damsels, and I complied. It was all very well to tell them there was nothing in it ; they knew a trick worth two of that. I perceived at once that the faith which endures beyond its own knowledge was placed in all I said. In England the gypsy woman, who at home ridicules her own fortune-telling and her dupes, still puts faith in a gusveri mush, or some "wise man," who with crystal or magical apparatus professes oc- cult knowledge ; for she thinks that her own false art is an imitation of a true one. It is really amusing to see the reverence with which an old gypsy will look at the awful hieroglyphics in Cornelius Agrippa's " Occult Philosophy," or, better still, " Trithemius," and, as a gift, any ordinary fortune-telling book is esteemed by them beyond rubies. It is true that they cannot read it, but the precious volume is treas- ured like a fetich, and the owner is happy in the thought of at least possessing darksome and forbidden lore, though it be of no earthly use to her. After all the kindness they had shown me, I could not find THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 63 it in my heart to refuse to tell these gentle Zingari their little fortunes. It is not, I admit, exactly in the order of things that the chicken should dress the cook, or the Gorgio tell fortunes to gypsies ; but he who wanders in strange lands meets with strange ad- ventures. So, with a full knowledge of the legal penalties attached in England to palmistry and other conjuration, and with the then pending Slade case knocking heavily on my conscience, I proceeded to examine and predict. When I afterward narrated this incident to the late G. H. Lewes, he expressed himself to the effect that to tell fortunes to gypsies struck him as the very ne plus ultra of cheek, which shows how extremes meet ; for verily it was with great modesty and proper diffidence that I ventured to fore- tell the lives of these little ladies, having an antipa- thy to the practice of chiromancing as to other ro- mancing. I have observed that as among men of great and varied culture, and of extensive experience, there are more complex and delicate shades and half-shades of light in the face, so in the palm the lines are corre- spondingly varied and broken. Take a man of intel- lect and a peasant, of equal excellence of figure ac- cording to the literal rules of art or of anatomy, and this subtile multiplicity of variety shows itself in the whole body in favor of the "gentleman," so that it would almost seem as if every book we read is re pub- lished in the person. The first thing that struck me in these gypsy hands was the fewness of the lines, their clearly defined sweep, and their simplicity. In every one the line of life was unbroken, and, in fine, one might think from a drawing of the hand, and without knowing who its owner might be, that he or 64 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. she was of a type of character unknown in most great European cities, a being gifted with special culture, and in a certain simple sense refined, but not en- dowed with experience in a thousand confused phases of life. The hands of a true genius, who has passed through life earnestly devoted to a single art, how- ever, are on the whole like these of the gypsies. Such, for example, are the hands of Fanny Janau- schek, the lines of which agree to perfection with the laws of chiromancy. The art reminds one of Cer- vantes's ape, who told the past and present, but not the future. And here " tell me what thou hast been, and I will tell what thou wilt be " gives a fine op- portunity to the soothsayer. To avoid mistakes I told the fortunes in French, which was translated into Russian. I need not say that every word was listened to with earnest atten- tion, or that the group of dark but young and comely faces, as they gathered around and bent over, would have made a good subject for a picture. After the girls, the mother must needs hear her dorriki also, and last of all the young Russian gentleman, who seemed to take as earnest an interest in his future as even the gypsies. As he alone understood French, and as he appeared to be tin pen gaillard, and, finally, as the lines of his hand said nothing to the contrary, I predicted for him in detail a fortune in which bonnes fortunes were not at all wanting. I think he was pleased, but when I asked him if he would translate what I had said of his future into Russian, he replied with a slight wink and a scarcely perceptible nega- tive. I suppose he had his reasons for declining. Then we had singing again, and Christopher, the brother, a wild and gay young gypsy, became so ex- THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. 65 cited that while playing the guitar he also danced and caroled, and the sweet voices of the girls rose in cho- rus, and I was again importuned for the Romany song, and we had altogether a very Bohemian frolic. I was sorry when the early twilight faded into night, and I was obliged, notwithstanding many entreaties to the contrary, to take my leave. These gypsies had been very friendly and kind to me in a strange city, where I had not an acquaintance, and where I had expected none. They had given me of their very best ; for they gave me songs which I can never forget, and which were better to me than all the op- era could bestow. The young Russian, polite to the last, went bareheaded with me into the street, and, hailing a sleigh-driver, began to bargain for me. In Moscow, as in other places, it makes a great differ- ence in the fare whether one takes a public convey- ance from before the first hotel or from a house in the gypsy quarter. I had paid seventy kopecks to come, and I at once found that my new friend and the driver were engaged in wild and fierce dispute whether I should pay twenty or thirty to return. " Oh, give him thirty ! " I exclaimed. " It 's little enough." " Non" replied the Russian, with the air of a man of principles. " 11 ne faut pas gdter ces gens-la." But I gave the driver thirty, all the same, when we got home, and thereby earned the usual shower of blessings. A few days afterward, while going from Moscow to St. Petersburg, I made the acquaintance of a young Russian noble and diplomat, who was well informed on all current gossip, and learned from him some curious facts. The first young gentleman whom I 66 THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES. had seen among the Roraanys of Moscow was the son of a Russian prince by a gypsy mother, and the very noble Englishman whose photograph I had seen in Sarsha's collection had not long ago (as rumor averred) paid desperate attentions to the belle of the Romanys without obtaining the least success. My informant did not know her name. Putting this and that together, I think it highly probable that Savsha was the young lady, and that the latcho bar, or dia- mond, which sparkled on her finger had been paid for with British gold, while the donor had gained the same "unluck" which befell one of his type in the Spanish gypsy song as given by George Borrow : " Loud sang the Spanish cavalier, And thus his ditty ran : ' God send the gypsy maiden here, But not the gypsy man.' " On high arose the moon so bright, The gypsy 'gan to sing, 'I see a Spaniard coming here, I must be on the wing. ' " AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. I. IN June, 1878, I went to Paris, during the great Exhibition. I had been invited by Monsieur Ed- mond About to attend as a delegate the Congre's In- ternationale Litte*raire, which was about to be held in the great city. How we assembled, how M. About distinguished himself as one of the most practical and common-sensible of men of genius, and how we were all finally harangued by M. Victor Hugo with the most extraordinary display of oratorical sky-rockets, Catherine-wheels, blue-lights, fire-crackers, and pin- wheels by which it was ever my luck to be amused, is matter of history. But this chapter is only autobi- ographical, and we will pass -over the history. As an Anglo-American delegate, I was introduced to several great men gratis ; to the greatest of all I introduced myself at the expense of half a franc. This was to the Chinese giant, Chang, who was on exhibition at a small cafd garden near the Trocadero. There were no other visitors in his pavilion when I entered. He received me with politeness, and we began to con- verse in fourth-story English, but gradually went down-stairs into Pidgin, until we found ourselves fairly in the kitchen of that humble but entertaining dia- lect. It is a remarkable sensation to sit alone with 68 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. a mild monster, and feel like a little boy. I do not distinctly remember whether Chang is eight, or ten, or twelve feet high ; I only know that, though I am, as he said, "one velly big piecee man," I sat and lifted my eyes from time to time at the usual level, forgetfully expecting to meet his eyes, and beheld instead the buttons on his breast. Then I looked up like Daruma to Buddha and up, and saw far above me his " lights of the soul " gleaming down on me as it were from the top of a lofty beacon. I soon found that Chang, regarding all things from a giant's point of view, esteemed mankind by their size and looks. Therefore, as he had complimented me according to his lights, I replied that he was a " numpa one too muchee glanti handsome man, first chop big." Then he added, " You belongy Inklis man ? " " No. My one piecee fa-ke-kwok ; 1 my Melican, galaw. You dlinkee ale some-tim ? " The giant replied that pay-wine, which is Pidgin for beer, was not ungrateful to his palate or foreign to his habits. So we had a quart of Alsopp between us, and drank to better acquaintance. I found that the giant had exhibited himself in many lands, and taken great pains to learn the language of each, so that he spoke German, Italian, and Spanish well enough. He had been at a mission-school when he used to " stop China-side," or was in his native land. I assured him that I had perceived it from the first, because he evidently "talked ink," as his countrymen say of words which are uttered by a scholar, and I greatly gratified him by citing some of my own " beautiful verses," which are reversed from a Chinese original : 1 Flower-flag-nation man ; that is, American. AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 69 " One man who never leadee 1 Like one dly 2 inkstan be : You turn he up-side downy, No ink lun 3 outside he." So we parted with mutual esteem. This was the second man by the name of Chang whom I had known, and singularly enough they were both exhib- ited as curiosities. The other made a living as a Siamese twin, and his brother was named Eng. They wrote their autographs for me, and put them wisely at the very top of the page, lest I should write a promise to pay an immense sum of money, or forge a free pass to come into the exhibition gratis over their signatures. Having seen Chang, I returned to the H6tel de Louvre, dined, and then went forth with friends to the Orangerie. This immense garden, devoted to concerts, beer, and cigars, is said to be capable of containing three thousand people ; before I left it it held about five thousand. I knew not why this unwonted crowd had assembled ; when I found the cause I was astonished, with reason. At the gate was a bill, on which I read " Les Bohemiennes de Moscow." " Some small musical comedy, I suppose," I said to myself. " But let us see it." We pressed on. " Look there ! " said my companion. " Those are certainly gypsies." Sure enough, a procession of men and women, strangely dressed in gayly colored Oriental garments, was entering the gates. But I replied, " Impossible. Not here in Paris. Probably they are performers." " But see. They notice you. That girl certainly 1 Leadee, reads. 2 Dly, dry. 8 Lun, run. 70 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. knows you. She 's turning her head. There, I heard her say O Romany rye ! " I was bewildered. The crowd was dense, but as the procession passed me at a second turn I saw they were indeed gypsies, and I was grasped by the hand by more than one. They were my old friends from Moscow. This explained the immense multi- tude. There was during the Exhibition a great furor as regarded les zigains. The g}'psy orchestra which performed in the Hungarian caf was so beset by visitors that a comic paper represented them as cov- ering the roofs of the adjacent houses so as to hear something. This evening the Russian gypsies were to make their debut in the Orangerie, and they were frightened at their own success. They sang, but their voices were inaudible to two thirds of the audi- ence, and those who could not hear roared, " Louder ! " Then they adjourned to the open air, where the voices were lost altogether on a crowd calling, " Grarpon vite une tasse cafe!" or applauding. In the in- tervals scores of young Russian gentlemen, golden swells, who had known the girls of old, gathered round the fair ones like moths around tapers. The singing was not the same as it had been ; the voices were the same, but the sweet wild charm of the Romany caroling, bird-like, for pleasure was gone. But I found by themselves and unnoticed two of the troupe, whom I shall not soon forget. They were two very handsome youths, one of sixteen years, the other twenty. And with the first words in Rom- any they fairly jumped for joy, and the artist who could have caught their picture then would have made a brave one. They were clad in blouses of colored silk, which, with their fine dark complexions AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 71 and great black eyes, gave them a very picturesque air. These had not seen me in Russia, nor had they heard of me ; they were probably from Novogorod. Like the girls they were children, but in a greater degree, for they had not been flattered, and kind words delighted them so that they clapped their hands. They began to hum gypsy songs, and had I not prevented it they would have run at once and brought a guitar, and improvised a small concert for me al fresco. I objected to this, not wishing to take part any longer in such a very public exhibition. For the gobe-mouches and starers, noticing a stranger talking with ces zigains, had begun to gather in a dense crowd around us, and the two ladies and the gentleman who were with us were seriously incon- venienced. We endeavored to step aside, but the multitude stepped aside also, and would ndt let us alone. They were French, but they might have been polite. As it was, they broke our merry con- ference up effectively, and put us to flight. " Do let us come and see you, rya" said the younger boy. " We will sing, for I can really sing beautifully, and we like you so much. Where do you live ? " I could not invite them, for I was about to leave Paris, as I then supposed. I have never seen them since, and there was no adventure and no strange scenery beyond the thousands of lights and guests and trees and voices speaking French. Yet to this day the gay boyishness, the merry laughter, and the child-like ndivet6 of the promptly-formed liking of those gypsy youths remains impressed on my mind with all the color and warmth of an adventure or a living poem. Can you recall no child by any way- 72 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. side of life to whom you have given a chance smile or a kind word, and been repaid with artless sudden attraction ? For to all of us, yes, to the coldest and worst, there are such memories of young people, of children, and I pity him who, remembering them, does not feel the touch of a vanished hand and hear a chord which is still. There are adventures which we can tell to others as stories, but the best have no story ; they may be only the memory of a strange dog which followed us, and I have one such of a cat who, without any introduction, leaped wildly towards me, " and would not thence away." It is a good life which has many such memories. I was walking a day or two after with an English friend, who was also a delegate to the International Literary Congress, in the Exhibition, when we ap- proached the side gate, or rear entrance of the Hun- garian cafe". Six or seven dark and strange-looking men stood about, dressed in the uniform of a military band. I caught their glances, and saw that they were Romany. " Now you shall see something queer," I said to my friend. So advancing to the first dark man I greeted him in gyp s y- " I do not understand you," he promptly replied or lied. I turned to a second. " You have more sense, and you do understand. Adro miro tern penena mande o baro rai." (In my country the gypsies call me the great gentleman.) This phrase may be translated to mean either the " tall gentleman " or the " great lord." It was ap- parently taken in the latter sense, for at once all the AUSTRIAN GYPSIES, 73 party bowed very low, raising their hands to their foreheads, in Oriental fashion. " Hallo ! " exclaimed my English friend, who had not understood what I had said. " What game is this you are playing on these fellows ? " Up to the front came a superior, the leader of the band. " Great God ! " he exclaimed, " what is this I hear? This is wonderful. To think that there should be anybody here to talk with ! I can only talk Magyar and Romanes." " And what do you talk ? " I inquired of the first violin. " Ich spreche nur Deutsch /" he exclaimed, with a strong Vienna accent and a roar of laughter. " I only talk German." This worthy man, I found, was as much delighted with my German as the leader with my gypsy ; and in all my experience I never met two beings so charmed at being able to converse. That I should have met with them was of itself wonderful. Only there was this difference : that the Viennese burst into a laugh every time he spoke, while the gypsy grew more sternly solemn and awfully impressive. There are people to whom mere talking is a pleas- ure, never mind the ideas, and here I had struck two at once. I once knew a gentleman named Stew- art. He was the mayor, first physician, and post- master of St. Paul, Minnesota. While camping out, en route, and in a tent with him, it chanced that among the other gentlemen who had tented with us there were two terrible snorers. Now Mr. Stewart had heard that you may stop a man's snoring by whistling. And here was a wonderful opportunity. 74 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. " So I waited," he said, " until one man was coming down with his snore, diminuendo, while the other was rising, crescendo, and at the exact point of inter- section, moderato, I blew my car-whistle, and so got both birds at one shot. I stopped them both." Even as Mayor Stewart had winged his two birds with one ball had I hit my two peregrines. " We are now going to perform," said the gypsy captain. " Will you not take seats on the platform,' and hear us play ? " I did not know it at the time, but I heard after- wards that this was a great compliment, and one rarely bestowed. The platform was small, and we were very near our new friends. Scarcely had the performance begun ere I perceived that, just as the gypsies in Russia had sung their best in my honor, these artists were exerting themselves to the utmost, and, all unheeding the audience, playing directly at me and into me. When any tour was deftly made the dark master nodded to me with gleaming eyes, as if saying, " What do you think of that, now ? " The Viennese laughed for joy every time his glance met mine, and as I looked at the various Lajoshes and Joshkas of the band, they blew, beat, or scraped with redoubled fury, or sank into thrilling tenderness. Hurrah ! here was somebody to play to who knew gypsy and all the games thereof ; for a very little, even a word, reveals a great deal, and I must be a virtuoso, at least by Romany, if not by art. It was with all the joy of success that the first piece ended amid thunders of applause. " That was not the racoczy," I said. " Yet it sounded like it." " No," said the captain. " But now you shall hear AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 75 the racoczy and the czardas as you never heard them before. For we can play that better than any or- chestra in Vienna. Truly, you will never forget us after hearing it." And then they played the racoczy, the national Hungarian favorite, of gypsy composition, with heart and soul. As these men played for me, inspired with their own music, feeling and enjoying it far more than the audience, and all because they had got a gypsy gentleman to play to, I appreciated what a life that was to them, and what it should be ; not cold-blooded skill, aiming only at excellence or preexcellence and at setting up the artist, but a fire and a joy, a self- forgetfulness which whirls the soul away as the soul of the Moenad went with the stream adown the mountains, Evoe Bacchus ! This feeling is deep in the heart of the Hungarian gypsy ; he plays it, he feels it in every air, he knows the rush of the stream as it bounds onwards, knows that it expresses his deepest desire ; and so he has given it words in a song which, to him who has the key, is one of the most touching ever written : " Dyal o pani repedishis, M'ro pirano hegedishis ; " Dyal o pani tale vatra, M'ro pirano klanetaha. " Dyal o pani pe kishai M'ro pirano tsino rai." " The stream runs on with rushing din As I hear my true love's violin ; " And the river rolls o'er rock and stone As he plays the flute so sweet alone. " Runs o'er the sand as it began, Then my true love lives a gentleman." 76 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. Yes, music whirling the soul away as on a rushing river, the violin notes falling like ripples, the flute tones all aflow among the rocks ; and when it sweeps adagio on the sandy bed, then the gypsy player is at heart equal to a lord, then he feels a gentleman. The only true republic is art. There all earthly dis- tinctions pass away ; there he is best who lives and feels best, and makes others feel, not that he is clev- erer than they, but that he can awaken sympathy and joy. The intense reality of musical art as a comforter to these gypsies of Eastern Europe is wonderful. Among certain inedited songs of the Transylvanian gypsies, in the Kolosvarer dialect, I find the fol- lowing : " Na janav ko dad m'ro as, . Niko mallen mange as, Miro gule dai merdyas Pirani me pregelyas. Uva tu o hegedive Tu sal mindik pash mange." " I 've known no father since my birth, I have no friend alive on earth ; My mother 's dead this many day, The girl I loved has gone her way ; Thou violin with music free Alone art ever true to me." It is very wonderful that the charm of the Russian gypsy girls' singing was destroyed by the atmosphere or applause of a Paris concert-room, while the Hun- garian Romany s conquered it as it were by sheer force, and by conquering gave their music the charm of intensity. I do not deny that in this music, be it of voice or instruments, there is much which is per- haps imagined, which depends on association, which is plain to John but not to Jack ; but you have only AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 77 to advance or retreat a few steps to find the same in the highest art. This, at least, we know: that no per- former at any concert in London can awake the feel- ing of intense enjoyment which these wild minstrels excite in themselves and in others by sympathy. Now it is a question in many forms as to whether art for enjoyment is to die, and art for the sake of art alone survive. Is joyous and healthy nature to vanish step by step from the heart of man, and mor- bid, egoistic pessimism to take its place ? Are over- culture, excessive sentiment, constant self-criticism, and all the brood of nervous curses to monopolize and inspire art ? A fine alliance this they are mak- ing, the ascetic monk and the atheistic pessimist, to kill Nature ! They will never effect it. It may die in many forms. It may lose its charm, as the singing of Sarsha and of Liubasha was lost among the rust- ling and noise of thousands of Parisian badauds in the Orangerie. But there will be stronger forms of art, which will make themselves heard, as the Hun- garian Roman ys heeded no din, and bore all away with their music. " Latcho divvus miri pralia ! miduvel atch pa tumende!" (Good-day, my brothers. God rest on you) I said, and they rose and bowed, and I went forth into the Exhibition. It was a brave show, that of all the fine things from all parts of the world which man can make, but to me the most interesting of all were the men themselves. Will not the managers of the next world show give us a living ethnological department ? Of these Hungarian gypsies who played in Paris during the Exhibition much was said in the news- papers, and from the following, which appeared in an 78 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. American journal, written by some one to me un- known, the reader may learn that there were many others to whom their music was deeply thrilling or wildly exciting : "The Hungarian Tziganes (Zigeuner) are the rage just now at Paris. The story is that Liszt picked out the individuals composing the band one by one from among the gypsy performers in Hungary and Bo- hemia. Half-civilized in appearance, dressed in an unbecoming half-military costume, they are nothing while playing Strauss' waltzes or their own ; but when they play the Radetsky Defile, the Racoksky March, or their marvelous czardas, one sees and hears the battle, and it is easy to understand the in- fluence of their music in fomenting Hungarian revo- lutions ; why for so long it was made treasonable to play or listen to these czardas ; and why, as they heard them, men rose to their feet, gathered together, and with tears rolling down their faces, and throats swelling with emotion, departed to do or die." And when I remember that they played for me as they said they had played for no other man in Paris, "into the ear," and when I think of the gleam in their eyes, I verily believe they told the truth, I feel glad that I chanced that morning on those dark men and spoke to them in Romany. Since the above was written I have met in an entertaining work called " Unknown Hungary," by Victor Tissot, with certain remarks on the Hungarian gypsy musicians which are so appropriate that I cite them in full : "The gypsy artists in Hungary play by inspira- tion, with inimitable verve and spirit, without even AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 79 knowing their notes, and nothing whatever of the rhymes and rules of the masters. Liszt, who has closely studied them, says, The art of music being for them a sublime language, a song, mystic in itself, though dear to the initiated, they use it according to the wants of the moment which they wish to express. They have invented their music for their own use, to sing about themselves to themselves, to express them- selves in the most heartfelt and touching monologues. " Their music is as free as their lives ; no inter- mediate modulation, no chords, no transition, it goes from one key to another. From ethereal heights they precipitate you into the howling depths of hell ; from the plaint, barely heard, they pass brusquely to the warrior's song, which bursts loudly forth, passion- ate and tender, at once burning and calm. Their melodies plunge you into a melancholy reverie, or carry you away into a stormy whirlwind ; they are a faithful expression of the Hungarian character, some- times quick, brilliant, and lively, sometimes sad and apathetic. " The gypsies, when they arrived in Hungary, had no music of their own ; they appropriated the Mag- yar music, and made from it an original art which now belongs to them." I here break in upon Messieurs Tissot and Liszt to remark that, while it is very probable that the Roms reformed Hungarian music, it is rather boldly assumed that they had no music of their own. It was, among other callings, as dancers and musicians that they left India and entered Europe, and among them were doubtless many descendants of the ten thousand Indo- Persian Luris or Nuris. But to resume quotation: " They made from it an art full of life, passion, 80 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. laughter, and tears. The instrument which the gyp- sies prefer is the violin, which they call bas' alja, ' the king of instruments.' They also play the viola, the cymbal, and the clarionet. " There was a pause. The gypsies, who had per- ceived at a table a comfortable-looking man, evi- dently wealthy, and on a pleasure excursion in the town, came down from their platform, and ranged themselves round him to give him a serenade all to himself, as is their custom. They call this ' playing into the ear.' " They first asked the gentleman his favorite air, and then played it with such spirit and enthusiasm and overflowing richness of variation and ornament, and with so much emotion, that it drew forth the applause of the whole company. After this they executed a czardas, one of the wildest, most feverish, harshest, and, one may say, tormenting, as if to pour intoxication into the soul of their listener. They watched his countenance to note the impression pro- duced by the passionate rhythm of their instruments ; then, breaking off suddenly, they played a hushed, soft, caressing measure ; and again, almost breaking the trembling cords of their bows, they produced such an intensity of effect that the listener was al- most beside himself with delight and astonishment. He sat as if bewitched ; he shut his eyes, hung his head in melancholy, or raised it with a start, as the music varied ; then jumped up and struck the back of his head with his hands. He positively laughed and cried at once ; then, drawing a roll of bank-notes from his pocket-book, he threw it to the gypsies, and fell back in his chair, as if exhausted with so much enjoyment. And in this lies the triumph of the AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 81 gypsy music ; it is like that of Orpheus, which moved the rocks and trees. The soul of the Hungarian plunges, with a refinement of sensation that we can understand, but cannot follow, into this music, which, like the unrestrained indulgence of the imagination in fantasy and caprice, gives to the initiated all the in- toxicating sensations experienced by opium smokers." The Austrian gypsies have many songs which per- fectly reflect their character. Most of them are only single verses of a few lines, such as are sung every- where in Spain ; others, which are longer, seem to have grown from the connection of these verses. The following translation from the Roumanian Romany (Vassile Alexandri) gives an idea of their style and spirit : - GYPSY SONG. The wind whistles over the heath, The moonlight flits over the flood; And the gypsy lights up his fire, In the darkness of the wood. Hurrah ! In the darkness of the wood. Free is the bird in the air, And the fish where the river flows ; Free is the deer in the forest, And the gypsy wherever he goes. Hurrah! And the gypsy wherever he goes. A GOBGIO GENTLEMAN SPEAKS. Girl, wilt thou live in my home? I will give thee a sable gown, And golden coins for a necklace, Jf thou wilt be my own. GYPSY GIRL. No wild horse will leave the prairie For a harness with silver stars ; 6 82 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. Nor an eagle the crags of the mountain, For a cage with golden bars ; Nor the gypsy girl the forest, Or the meadow, though gray and cold, For garments made of sable, Or necklaces of gold. THE GORGIO. Girl, wilt thou live in my dwelling, For pearls and diamonds true ? 1 I will give thee a bed of scarlet, And a royal palace, too. GYPSY GIRL. My white teeth are my pearlins, My diamonds my own black eyes ; My bed is the soft green meadow, My palace the world as it lies. Free is the bird in the air, And the fish where the river flows; Free is the deer in the forest, And the gypsy wherever he goes. Hurrah ! And the gypsy wherever he goes. There is a deep, strange element in the gypsy char- acter, which finds no sympathy or knowledge in the German, and very little in other. Europeans, but which is so much in accord with the Slavonian and Hungarian that he who truly feels it with love is often disposed to mingle them together. It is a dreamy mysticism ; an indefinite semi-supernaturalism, often passing into gloom ; a feeling as of Buddhism which has glided into Northern snows, and taken a new and darker life in winter-lands. It is strong in the Czech or Bohemian, whose nature is the worst understood in the civilized world. That he should hate the Ger- 1 Diamonds true. latcho bar (in England, tatcho bar), " the true or real stone," is the gypsy for a diamond. AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 83 man with all his heart and soul is in the order of things. We talk about the mystical Germans, but German self-conscious mysticism is like a problem of Euclid beside the natural, unexpressed dreaminess of the Czech. The German mystic goes to work at once to expound his " system " in categories, dressing it up in a technology which in the end proves to be the only mystery in it. The Bohemian and gypsy, each in their degrees of culture, form no system and make no technology, but they feel all the more. Now the difference between true and imitative mysticism is that the former takes no form ; it is even narrowed by religious creeds, and wing-clipt by pious " illumi- nation." Nature, and nature alone, is its real life. It was from the Southern Slavonian lands that all real mysticism, and all that higher illumination which means freedom, came into Germany and Europe ; and after all, Germany's first and best mystic, Jacob Bohme, was Bohemian by name, as he was by nat- ure. When the world shall have discovered who the as yet unknown Slavonian German was who wrote all the best part of " Consuelo," and who helped him- self in so doing from " Der letzte Taborit," by Her- lossohn, we shall find one of the few men who under- stood the Bohemian. Once in a while, as in Fanny Janauschek, the Czech bursts out into art, and achieves a great tri- umph. I have seen Rachel and Ristori many a time, but their best acting was shallow compared to Janau- schek's, as I have seen it in by-gone years, when she played Iphigenia and Medea in German. No one save a Bohemian could ever so intuit the gloomy profundity and unearthly fire of the Colchian sorcer- ess. These are the things required to perfect every 84 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. artist, above all, the tragic artist, that the tree of his or her genius shall not only soar to heaven among the angels, but also have roots in the depths of darkness and fire ; and that he or she shall play not only to the audience, and in sympathy with them, but also unto one's self and down to one's deepest dreams. No one will accuse me of wide discussion or pad- ding who understands my drift in this chapter. I am speaking of the gypsy, and I cannot explain him more clearly than by showing his affinities with the Slavo- nian and Magyar, and how, through music and prob- ably in many other ways, he has influenced them. As the Spaniard perfectly understands the objective vag- abond side of the Gitano, so the Southeastern Euro- pean understands the musical and wild-forest yearn- ings of the Tsigane. Both to gypsy and Slavonian there is that which makes them dream so that even debauchery has for them at times an unearthly in- spiration ; and as smoking was inexpressibly sacred to the red Indians of old, so that when the Guatemalan Christ harried hell, the demons offered him cigars ; in like manner tipsiness is often to the gypsy and Servian, or Czech, or Croat, something so serious and impressive that it is a thing not to be lightly thought of, but to be undertaken with intense deliberation and under due appreciation of its benefits. Many years ago, when I had begun to feel this strange element I gave it expression in a poem which I called " The Bohemian," as expressive of both gypsy and Slavonian nature : AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 85 THE BOHEMIAN. Chces li tajnou vec aneb pravdu vyzv^deti Blazen, dit6 opily clov^k o torn umeji povodeti. Wouldst thou know a truth or mystery, A drunkard, fool, or child may tell it thee. BOHEMIAN PROVERB And now I '11 wrap my blanket o'er me, And on the tavern floor I '11 lie, A double spirit-flask before me, And watch my pipe clouds, melting, die. They melt and die, but ever darken As night comes on and hides the day, Till all is black ; then, brothers, hearken, And if ye can write down my lay. In yon long loaf my knife is gleaming, Like one black sail above the boat ; As once at Pesth I saw it beaming, Half through a dark Croatian throat. Now faster, faster, whirls the ceiling, And wilder, wilder, turns my brain ; And still I '11 drink, till, past all feeling, My soul leaps forth to light again. Whence come these white girls wreathing round me ? Barushka ! long I thought thee dead ; Katchenka ! when these arms last bound thee Thou laid'st by Kajrad, cold as lead. And faster, faster, whirls the ceiling, And wilder, wilder, turns my brain ; And from afar a star comes stealing Straight at me o'er the death-black plain. Alas ! I sink. My spirits miss me. I swim, I shoot from shore to shore ! Klara 1 thou golden sister kiss me ! I rise I 'm safe I'm strong once more. And faster, faster, whirls the ceiling, And wilder, wilder, whirls my brain ; 86 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. The star ! it strikes my soul, revealing All life and light to me again. Against the waves fresh waves are dashing, Above the breeze fresh breezes blow; Through seas of light new light is flashing, And with them all I float and flow. Yet round me rings of fire are gleaming, Pale rings of fire, wild eyes of death ! Why haunt me thus, awake or dreaming? Methought I left ye with my breath ! ' Ay, glare and stare, with life increasing, And leech-like eyebrows, arching in ; Be, if ye must, my fate unceasing, But never hope a fear to win. He who knows all may haunt the haunter, He who fears naught hath conquered fate : Who bears in silence quells the daunter, And makes his spoiler desolate. O wondrous eyes, of star-like lustre, How have ye changed to guardian love ! Alas ! where stars in myriads cluster, Ye vanish in the heaven above. I hear two bells so softly ringing ; How sweet their silver voices roll ! The one on distant hills is ringing, The other peals within my soul. I hear two maidens gently talking, Bohemian maids, and fair to see: The one on distant hills is walking, The other maiden, where is she ? Where is she ? When the moonlight glistens O'er silent lake or murmuring stream, I hear her call my soul, which listens, " Oh, wake no more ! Come, love, and dream ! " AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 87 She came to earth, earth's loveliest creature ; She died, and then was born once more ; Changed was her race, and changed each feature, But yet I loved her as before. We live, but still, when night has bound me In golden dreams too sweet to last, A wondrous light-blue world around me, She comes, the loved one of the past. I know not which I love the dearest, For both the loves are still the same : The living to my life is nearest, The dead one feeds the living flame. And when the sun, its rose-wine quaffing, Which flows across the Eastern deep, Awakes us, Klara chides me, laughing, And says we love too well in sleep. And though no more a Voivode's daughter, As when she lived on earth before, The love is still the same which sought her, And I am true, and ask no more. Bright moonbeams on the sea are playing, And starlight shines upon the hill, And I should wake, but still delaying In our old life I linger still. For as the wind clouds flit above me, And as the stars above them shine, My higher life 's in those who love me, And higher still, our life 's divine. And thus I raise my soul by drinking, As on the tavern floor I lie ; It heeds not whence begins our thinking If to the end its flight is high. E'en outcasts may have heart and feeling, The blackest wild Tsigan be true, And love, like light in dungeons stealing, Though bars be there, will still burst through. 88 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. It is the reecho of more than one song of those strange lands, of more than one voice, and of many a melody ; and those who have heard them, though not more distinctly than Frangois Villon when he spoke of flinging the question back by silent lake and streamlet lone, will understand me, and say'it is true to nature. In a late work on Magyarland, by a lady Fellow of the Carpathian Society, I find more on Hungarian gypsy music, which is so well written that I quote fully from it, being of the opinion that one ought, when setting forth any subject, to give quite as good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves. And truly this lady has felt the charm of the Tsigan music and describes it so well that one wishes she were a Romany in language and by adop- tion, like unto a dozen dames and damsels whom I know. " The Magyars have a perfect passion for this gypsy music, and there is nothing that appeals so powerfully to their emotions, whether of joy or sor- row. These singular musicians are, as a rule, well taught, and can play almost any music, greatly pre- ferring, however, their own compositions. Their mu- sic, consequently, is highly characteristic. It is the language of their lives and strange surroundings, a wild, weird banshee music : now all joy and sparkle, like sunshine on the plains ; now sullen, sad, and pa- thetic by turns, like the wail of a crushed and op- pressed people, an echo, it is said, of the minstrelsy of the hegedosok or Hungarian bards, but sounding to our ears like the more distant echo of that exceed- ing bitter cry, uttered long centuries ago by their forefathers under Egyptian bondage, and borne over the time-waves of thousands of years, breaking forth in their music of to-day." AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. 89 Here I interrupt the lady with all due courtesy to remark that I cannot agree with her, nor with her probable authority, Walter Simson, in believing that the gypsies are the descendants of the mixed races who followed Moses out of Egypt. The Rom in Egypt is a Hindoo stranger now, as he ever was. But that the echo of centuries of outlawry and wretched- ness and wildness rises and falls, like the ineffable discord in a wind-harp, in Romany airs is true enough, whatever its origin may have been. But I beg par- don, madam, I interrupted you. " The soul-stirring, madly exciting, and martial strains of the Racoczys one of the Revolutionary airs has just died upon the ear. A brief interv I of rest has passed. Now listen with bated breath to that recitative in the minor key, that passionate wail, that touching story, the gypsies' own music, which rises and falls on the air. Knives and forks are set down, hands and arms hang listless, all the seeming necessities of the moment being either sus- pended or forgotten, merged in the memories which those vibrations, so akin to human language, reawaken in each heart. Eyes involuntarily fill with tears, as those pathetic strains echo back and make present some sorrow of long ago, or rouse from slumber that of recent time. . . . " And now, the recitative being ended, and the last chord struck, the melody begins, of which the former was the prelude. Watch the movements of the supple figure of the first violin, standing in the centre of the other musicians, who accompany him softly. How every nerve is en rapport with his instrument, and how his very soul is speaking through it ! See how gently he draws the bow across the trembling strings, 90 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. and how lovingly he lays his cheek upon it, as if list- ening to some responsive echo of his heart's inmost feeling, for it is his mystic language ! How the in- strument lives and answers to his every touch, send- ing forth in turn utterances tender, sad, wild, and joyous ! The audience once more hold their breath to catch the dying tones, as the melody, so rich, so beautiful, so full of pathos, is drawing to a close. The tension is absolutely painful as the gypsy dwells on the last lingering note, and it is a relief when, with a loud and general burst of sound, every performer starts into life and motion. Then what crude and wild dissonances are made to resolve themselves into delicious harmony ! What rapturous and fervid phrases, and what energy and impetuosity, are there in every motion of the gypsies' figures, as their dark eyes glisten and emit flashes in unison with the tones ! " The writer is gifted in giving words to gypsy mu- sic. One cannot say, as the inexhaustible Cad writes of Niagara ten times on a page in the Visitors' Book, that it is indescribable. I think that if language means anything this music has been very well de- scribed by the writers whom I have cited. When I am told that the gypsies' impetuous and passionate natures make them enter into musical action with heart and soul, I feel not only the strains played long ago, but also hear therein the horns of Elfland blow- ing, which he who has not heard, of summer days, in the drone of the bee, by reedy rustling stream, will never know on earth in any wise. But once heard it comes ever, as I, though in the city, heard it last night in the winter wind, with Romany words mingled in wild refrain : " Karnava tute, miri chelladi I " II. AUSTRIAN GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. IT was a sunny Sunday afternoon, and I was walk- ing down Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, when I met with three very dark men. Dark men are not rarities in my native city. There is, for instance, Eugene, who has the invaluable fac- ulty of being able to turn his hand to an infinite helpfulness in the small arts. These men were darker than Eugene, but they differed from him in this, that while he is a man of color, they were not. For in America the man of Aryan blood, however dark he may be, is always "off" color, while the lightest-hued quadroon is always on it. Which is not the only paradox connected with the descendants of Africans of which I have heard. I saw at a glance that these dark men were much nearer to the old Aryan stock than are even my purely white readers. For they were more recently from India, and they could speak a language abound- ing in Hindi, in pure old Sanskrit, and in Persian. Yet they would make no display of it ; on the con- trary, I knew that they would be very likely at first to deny all knowledge thereof, as well as their race and blood. For they were gypsies ; it was very apparent in their eyes, which had the Gitano gleam as one seldom sees it in England. I confess that I experienced a thrill aa I exchanged glances with 92 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. them. It was a long time since I had seen a Rom- any, and, as usual, I knew that I was going to as- tonish them. They were singularly attired, having very good clothes of a quite theatrical foreign fash- ion, bearing silver buttons as large as and of the shape of hen's eggs. Their hair hung in black ring- lets down their shoulders, and I saw that they had come from the Austrian Slavonian land. I addressed the eldest in Italian. He answered fluently and politely. I changed to Ilirski or Illyr- ian and to Serb, of which I have a few phrases in stock. They spoke all these languages fluently, for one was a born Illyrian and one a Serb. They also spoke Nemetz, or German ; in fact, everything ex- cept English. " Have you got through all your languages ? " I at last inquired. " Tutte, signore, all of them." " Is n't there one left behind, which you have for- gotten ? Think a minute." " No, signore. None." " What, not one ! You know so many that per- haps a language more or less makes no difference to you." " By the Lord, signore, you have seen every egg in the basket." I looked him fixedly in the eyes, and said, in a low tone, "Ne rakesa tu Romanes miro prala ?" There was a startled glance from one to the other, and a silence. I had asked him if he could not talk Romany. And I added, " Won't you talk a word with a gypsy brother ? " That moved them. They all shook my hands with AUSTRIAN GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 93 great feeling, expressing intense joy and amazement at meeting with one who knew them. " Mishto horn me dikava tute" (I am glad to see you.) So they told me how they were getting on, and where they were camped, and how they sold horses, and so on, and we might have got on much farther had it not been for a very annoying interruption. As I was talking to the gypsies, a great number of men, attracted by the sound of a foreign language, stopped, and fairly pushed themselves up to us, endeavoring to make it all out. When there were at least fifty, they crowded in between me and the foreigners, so that I could hardly talk to them. The crowd did not consist of ordinary people, or snobs. They were well dressed, young clerks, at least, who would have fiercely resented being told that they were im- pertinent. " Eye-talians, ain't they ? " inquired one man, who was evidently zealous in pursuit of knowledge. " Why don't you tell us what they are sayin' ? " " What kind of fellers air they, any way? " I was desirous of going with the Hungarian Horns. But to walk along Chestnut Street with an augment- ing procession of fifty curious Sunday promenaders was not on my card. In fact, I had some difficulty in tearing myself from the inquisitive, questioning, well-dressed people. The gypsies bore the pressure with the serene equanimity of cosmopolite superiority, smiling at provincial rawness. Even so in China and Africa the traveler is mobbed by the many, who, there as here, think that " I want to know " is full excuse for all intrusiveness. C'est tout comme chez nous. I confess that I was vexed, and, considering that it was in my native city, mortified. 94 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES A few days after I went out to the tan where these Roms had camped. But the birds had flown, and a little pile of ashes and the usual debris of a gypsy camp were all that remained. The police told me that they had some very fine horses, and had gone to the Northwest ; and that is all I ever saw of them. I have heard of a philanthropist who was turned into a misanthrope by attempting to sketch in public and in galleries. Respectable strangers, even clergy- men, would stop and coolly look over his shoulder, and ask questions, and give him advice, until he could work no longer. Why is it that people who would not speak to you for life without an introduction should think that their small curiosity to see your sketches authorizes them to act as aquaintances ? Or why is the pursuit of knowledge assumed among the half-bred to be an excuse for so much intrusion ? " I want to know." Well, and what if you do ? The man who thinks that his desire for knowledge is an excuse for impertinence and there are too many who act on this in all sincerity is of the kind who knocks the fingers off statues, because " he wants them " for his collection ; who chips away tombstones, and hews down historic trees, and not infrequently steals outright, and thinks that his pretense of culture is full excuse for all his mean deeds. Of this tribe is the man who cuts his name on all walls and smears it on the pyramids, to proclaim himself a fool to the world ; the difference being that, instead of wanting to know anything, he wants everybody to know that His Littleness was once in a great place. I knew a distinguished artist, who, while in the East, only secured his best sketch of a landscape by employing fifty men to keep off the multitude. I AUSTRIAN GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 95 have seen a strange fellow take a lady's sketch out of her hand, excusing himself with the remark that he was so fond of pictures. Of course my readers do not act thus. When they are passing through the Louvre or British Museum they never pause and overlook artists, despite the notices requesting them not to do so. Of course not. Yet I once knew a charming young American lady, who scouted the idea as nonsense that she should not watch artists at work. " Why, we used to make up parties for the purpose of looking at them ! " she said. " It was half the fun of going there. I 'm sure the artists were delighted to get a chance to talk to us." Doubtless. And yet there are really very few artists who do not work more at their ease when not watched, and I have known some to whom such watching was mis- ery. They are not, O intruder, painting for your amusement! This is not such a far cry from my Romanys as it may seem. When I think of what I have lost in this life by impertinence coming between me and gypsies, I feel that it could not be avoided. The proportion of men, even of gentlemen, or of those who dress decently, who cannot see another well- dressed man talking with a very poor one in public, without at once surmising a mystery, and endeavor- ing to solve it, is amazing. And they do not stop at a trifle, either. It is a marked characteristic of all gypsies that they are quite free from any such mean intrusive- ness. Whether it is because they themselves are continually treated as curiosities, or because great knowledge of life in a small way has made them philosophers, I will not say, but it is a fact that in 96 AUSTRIAN GYPSIES. this respect they are invariably the politest people in the world. Perhaps their calm contempt of the go- lerly, or green Gorgios, is founded on a consciousness of their superiority in this matter. The Hungarian gypsy differs from all his brethren of Europe in being more intensely gypsy. He has deeper, wilder, and more original feeling in music, and he is more inspired with a love of travel. Num- bers of Hungarian Romany chals in which I in- clude all Austrian gypsies travel annually all over Europe, but return as regularly to their own country. I have met with them exhibiting bears in Baden- Baden. These Ricinari, or bear-leaders, form, how- ever, a set within a set, and are in fact more nearly allied to the gypsy bear-leaders of Turkey and Syria than to any other of their own people. They are wild and rude to a proverb, and generally speak a peculiar dialect of Romany, which is called the Bear- leaders' by philologists. I have also seen Syrian- gypsy Ricinari in Cairo. Many of the better caste make a great deal of money, and some are rich. Like all really pure-blooded gypsies, they have deep feel- ings, which are easily awakened by kindness, but es- pecially by sympathy and interest. ENGLISH GYPSIES. I. OATLANDS PARK. OATLANDS PARK (between Weybridge and Wal- ton-upon-Tharaes) was once the property of the Duke of York, but now the lordly manor-house is a hotel. The grounds about it are well preserved and very picturesque. They should look well, for they cover a vast and wasted fortune. There is, for instance, a grotto which cost forty thousand pounds. It is one of those wretched and tasteless masses of silly rock-rococo work which were so much admired at the beginning of the present century, when sham ruins and sham caverns were preferred to real. There is, also, close by the grotto, a dogs' burial-ground, in which more than a hundred animals, the favorites of the late duchess, lie buried. Over each is a tomb- stone, inscribed with a rhyming epitaph, written by the titled lady herself, and which is in sober sadness in every instance doggerel, as befits the subject. In order to degrade the associations of religion and church rites as effectually as possible, there is at- tached to these graves the semblance of a ruined chapel, the stained-glass window of which was taken from a church. 1 I confess that I could never see either 1 Within a mile, Maginn lies buried, without a monument. 98 ENGLISH GYPSIES. grotto or grave-yard without sincerely wishing, out of regard to the memory of both duke and duchess, that these ridiculous relics of vulgar taste and affected sentimentalism could be completely obliterated. But, apart from them, the scenes around are veiy beauti- ful ; for there are grassy slopes and pleasant lawns, ancient trees and broad gravel walks, over which, as the dry leaves fall on the crisp sunny morning, the feet are tempted to walk on and on, all through the merry golden autumn day. The neighborhood abounds in memories of olden time. Near Oatlands is a modernized house, in which Henry the Eighth lived in his youth. It belonged then to Cardinal Wolsey ; now it is owned by Mr. Lindsay, a sufficient cause for wits calling it Lind- say-Wolsey, that being also a " fabric." Within an hour's walk is the palace built by Cardinal Wolsey, while over the river, and visible from the portico, is the little old Gothic church of Shepperton, and in the same view, to the right, is the old Walton Bridge, by Cowie Stakes, supposed to cover the exact spot where Caesar crossed. This has been denied by many, but I know that the field adjacent to it abounds in an- cient British jars filled with burned bones, the relics of an ancient battle, probably that which legend states was fought on the neighboring Battle Island. Stout-hearted Queen Bessy has also left her mark on this neighborhood, for within a mile is the old Saxon- towered church of Walton, in which the royal dame was asked for her opinion of the sacrament when it was given to her, to which she replied : " Christ was the Word who spake it, He took the bread and brake it ; And what that Word did make it, That I believe, and take it." OATLANDS PARK. 99 In memory of this the lines were inscribed on the massy Norman pillar by which she stood. From the style and cutting it is evident that the inscription dates from the reign of Elizabeth. And very near Oatlands, in fact on the grounds, there are two an- cient yew-trees, several hundred yards apart. The story runs that Queen Elizabeth once drew a long bow and shot an arrow so far that, to commemo- rate the deed, one of these trees was planted where she stood, and the other where the shaft fell. All England is a museum of touching or quaint relics ; to me one of its most interesting cabinets is this of the neighborhood of Weybridge and Walton-upon- Thames. I once lived for eight months at Oatlands Park, and learned to know the neighborhood well. I had many friends among the families in the vicinity, and, guided by their advice, wandered to every old church and manor-house, ruin and haunted rock, fairy-oak, tower, palace, or shrine within a day's ramble. But there was one afternoon walk of four miles, round by the river, which I seldom missed. It led by a spot on the bank, and an old willow-tree near the bridge, which spot was greatly haunted by the Romany, so that, excepting during the hopping-season of autumn, when they were away in Kent, I seldom failed to see from afar a light rising smoke, and near it a tent and a van, as the evening shadows blended with the mist from the river hi phantom union. It is a common part of gypsy life that the father shall be away all day, lounging about the next vil- lage, possibly in the kitchema or ale-house, or try- ing to trade a horse, while the wife trudges over the country, from one farm-house or cottage to another, 100 ENGLISH GYPSIES. loaded with baskets, household utensils, toys, or cheap ornaments, which she endeavors, like a true Autolyca, with wily arts and wheedling tones, to sell to the rus- tics. When it can be managed, this hawking is often an introduction to fortune-telling, and if these fail the gypsy has recourse to begging. But it is a weary life, and the poor dye is always glad enough to get home. During the day the children have been left to look out for themselves or to the care of the eldest, and have tumbled about the van, rolled around with the dog, and fought or frolicked as they chose. But though their parents often have a stock of cheap toys, especially of penny dolls and the like, which they put up as prizes for games at races and fairs, I have never seen these children with playthings. The lit- tle girls have no dolls ; the boys, indeed, affect whips, as becomes incipient jockeys, but on the whole they never seemed to me to have the same ideas as to play as ordinary house-children. The author of " My In- dian Garden " has made the same observation of Hin- doo little ones, whose ways are not as our ways were when we were young. Roman and Egyptian children had their dolls ; and there is something sadly sweet to me in the sight of these barbarous and naive fac- similes of miniature humanity, which come up like little spectres out of the dust of ancient days. They are so rude and queer, these Roman puppets ; and yet they were loved once, and had pet names, and their owl-like faces were as tenderly kissed as their little mistresses had been by their mothers. So the Romany girl, unlike the Roman, is generally doll-less and toy- less. But the affection between mother and child is as warm among these wanderers as with any other people ; and it is a touching sight to see the gypsy who OATLANDS PARK. 101 has been absent all the weary day returning home. And when she is seen from afar off there is a race among all the little dark-brown things to run to mother and get kissed, and cluster and scramble around her, and perhaps receive some little gift which mother's thoughtful love has provided. Knowing these customs, I was wont to fill my pockets with chestnuts or oranges, and, distributing them among the little ones, talk with them, and await the sunset return of their parents. The confidence or love of all children is delightful ; but that of gypsy children resembles the friendship of young foxes, and the study of their artless-artful ways is indeed attractive. I can remember that one afternoon six small Rom- any boys implored me to give them each a penny. I replied, " If I had sixpence, how would you divide it ? " " That would be a penny apiece," said the eldest boy. " And if threepence ? " " A ha'penny apiece." " And three ha'pence ? " " A farden all round. And then it could n't go no furder, unless we bought tobacco an' diwided it." " Well, I have some tobacco. But can any of you smoke ? " They were from four to ten years of age, and at the word every one pulled out the stump of a black- ened pipe, such depraved-looking fragments I never saw, and holding them all up, and crowding closely around, like hungry poultry with uplifted bills, they began to clamor for tuvalo, or tobacco. They were connoisseurs, too, and the elder boy, as he secured his share, smelled it with intense satisfaction, and 102 ENGLISH GYPSIES. said, "That 's rye's tuvalo;" that is, "gentleman's tobacco," or best quality. One evening, as the shadows were ^darkening the day, I met a little gypsy boy, dragging along, with incredible labor, a sack full of wood, which one needed not go far afield to sui'mise was neither purchased nor begged. The alarmed and guilty or despairing look which he cast at me was very touching. Perhaps he thought I was the gentleman upon whose prop- erty he had " found" the wood ; or else a magistrate. How he stared when I spoke to him in Romany, and offered to help him carry it ! As we bore it along I suggested that we had better be careful and avoid the police, which remark established perfect confidence between us. But as we came to the tent, what was the amazement of the boy's mother to see him re- turning with a gentleman helping him to carry his load ! And to hear me say in Romany, and in a cheerful tone, " Mother, here is some wood we 've been stealing for you." Gypsies have strong nerves and much cheek, but this was beyond her endowment ; she was appalled at the unearthly strangeness of the whole proceeding, and when she spoke there was a skeleton rattle in her words and a quaver of startled ghastliness in her laugh. She had been alarmetl for her boy, and when I appeared she thought I was a swell bringing him in under arrest ; but when I announced myself in Romany as an accomplice, emotion stifled thought. And I lingered not, and spoke no more, but walked away into the woods and the darkness. However, the legend went forth on the roads, even unto Kingston, and was told among the rollicking Romanys of 'Appy 'Ampton ; for there are always a merry, loafing lot OATLANDS PARK. 103 of them about that festive spot, looking out for excur- sionists through the months when the gorse blooms, and kissing is in season which is always. And he who seeks them on Sunday may find them camped in Green Lane. When I wished for a long ramble on the hedge- lined roads the sweet roads of old England and by the green fields, I was wont to take a day's walk to Netley Abbey. Then I could pause, as I went, before many a quiet, sheltered spot, adorned with arbors and green alleys, and protected by trees and hawthorn hedges, and again surrender my soul, while walking, to tender and vague reveries, in which all definite thoughts swim overpowered, yet happy, in a sea of voluptuous emotions inspired by clouds lost in the blue sea of heaven and valleys visioned away into the purple sky. What opium is to one, what hasheesh may be to another, what kheyf or mere re- pose concentrated into actuality is to the Arab, that is Nature to him who has followed her for long years through poets and mystics and in works of art, until at last he pierces through dreams and pictures to reality. The ruins of Netley Abbey, nine or ten miles from Oatlands Park, are picturesque and lonely, and well fitted for the dream-artist in shadows among sun- shine. The priory was called Newstead or De Novo Loco in Norman times, when it was founded by Ruald de Calva, in the day of Richard Coeur de Lion. The ruins rise gray, white, and undressed with ivy, that they may contrast the more vividly with the deep emerald of the meadows around. " The surrounding scenery is composed of rivers and rivu- lets," for seven streams run by it, according to An- 104 ENGLISH GYPSIES. brey, "of foot-bridge and fords, plashy pools and fringed, tangled hollows, trees in groups or alone, and cattle dotted over the pastures : " an English Cuyp from many points of view, beautiful and English- home-like from all. Very near it is the quaint, out- of-the-way, darling little old church of Pirford, up a hill, nestling among trees, a half-Norman, decorated beauty, out of the age, but altogether in the heart. As I came near, of a summer afternoon, the waving of leaves and the buzzing of bees without, and the hum of the voices of children at school within the adjoin- ing building, the cool shade and the beautiful view of the ruined Abbey beyond, made an impression which I can never forget. Among such scenes one learns why the English love so heartily their rural life, and why every object peculiar to it has brought forth a picture or a poem. I can imagine how many a man, who has never known what poetry was at home, has wept with yearning inexpressible, when sitting, among burning sands and under the palms of the East, for such scenes as these. But Netley Abbey is close by the river Wey, and the sight of that river and the thought of the story of the monks of the olden time who dwelt in the Abbey drive away sentiment as suddenly as a north wind scatters sea-fogs. For the legend is a merry one, and the reader may have heard it ; but if he has not I will give it in one of the merriest ballads ever written. By whom I know not, doubtless many know. I sing, while walking, songs of olden time. .r OATLANDS PARK. 105 THE MONKS OF THE WEY. A. TRUE AND IMPORTANT RELATION OP THE WONDERFUL TUN- NELL OF NEWARKE ABBEY AND OF THE UNTIMELY ENDE OF 8EVERALL OF YE GHOSTLY BRETHREN. The monks of the Wey seldom sung any psalms, And little they thought of religion or qualms ; Such rollicking, frolicking, ranting, and gay, And jolly old boys were the monks of the Wey. To the sweet nuus of Ockham devoting their cares, They had little time for their beads and their prayers ; For the love of these maidens they sighed night and day, And neglected devotion, these monks of the Wey. And happy i' faith might these brothers have been If the river had never been rolling between The abbey so grand and the convent so gray, That stood on the opposite side of the Wey. For daily they sighed, and then nightly they pined, But little to anchorite precepts inclined, So smitten with beauty's enchantments were they, These rollicking, frolicking monks of the Wey. But scandal was rife in the country near, They dared not row over the river for fear ; And no more could they swim it, so fat were they, These oily and amorous monks of the Wey. Loudly they groaned for their fate so hard, From the love of these beautiful maidens debarred, Till a brother just hit on a plan which would stay The woe of these heart-broken monks of the Wey. " Nothing," quoth he, " should true love sunder ; Since we cannot go over, then let us go under ! Boats and. bridges shall yield to clay, We '11 dig a long tunnel clean under the Wey." So to it they went with right good will, With spade and shovel and pike and bill ; 106 ENGLISH GYPSIES. And from evening's close till the dawn of day They worked like miners all under the Wey. And at vesper hour, as their work begun, Each sung of the charms of his favorite nun ; "How surprised they will be, and how happy ! " said they, " When we pop in upon them from under the Wey ! " And for months they kept grubbing and making no sound Like other black moles, darkly under the ground ; And no one suspected such going astray, So sly were these mischievous monks of the Wey. At last their fine work was brought near to a close And early one morn from their pallets they rose, And met in their tunnel with lights to survey If they 'd scooped a free passage right under the Wey. But alas for their fate ! As they smirked and thej r smiled. To think how completely the world was beguiled, The river broke in, and it grieves me to say It drowned all the frolicksome monks of the Wey. O churchmen beware of the lures of the flesh, The net of the devil has many a mesh ! And remember whenever you 're tempted to stray, The fate that befell the poor monks of the Wey. It was all long ago, and now there are neither monks nor nuns ; the convent has been converted, little by little, age by age, into cottages, even as the friars and nuns themselves may have been organically changed possibly into violets, but more probably into the festive sparrows which flit and hop and flirt about the ruins with abrupt startles, like pheasants sudden bursting on the wing. There is a pretty little Latin epigram, written by a gay monk, of a pretty little lady, who, being very amorous, and observing that sparrows were like her as to love, hoped that she might be turned into one after death ; and it is not OATLANDS PARK. 107 difficult for a dreamer in an old abbey, of a golden day to fancy that these merry, saucy birdies, who dart and ,dip in and out of the sunshine or shadow, chirping their shameless ditties pro et con, were once the human dwellers in the spot, who sang their gau- drioles to pleasant strains. I became familiar with many such scenes for many miles about Oatlands, not merely during solitary walks, but by availing myself of the kind invitations of many friends, and by hunting afoot with the bea- gles. In this fashion one has hare and hound, but no horse. It is not needed, for while going over crisp stubble and velvet turf, climbing fences and jump- ing ditches, a man has a keen sense of being" his own horse, and when he accomplishes a good leap of being intrinsically well worth .200. And indeed, so long as anybody can walk day in and out a greater dis- tance than would tire a horse, he may well believe he is really worth one. It may be a good thing for us to reflect on the fact that if slavery prevailed at the present day as it did among the polished Greeks the average price of young gentlemen, and even of young ladies, would not be more than what is paid for a good hunter. Divested of diamonds and of Worth's dresses, what would a girl of average charms be worth to a stranger ? Let us reflect ! It was an October morning, and, pausing after a run, I let the pack and the "'course-men" sweep away, while I sat in a pleasant spot to enjoy the air and scenery. The solemn grandeur of groves and the quiet dignity of woodland glades, barred with rays of solid-seeming sunshine, such as the saint of old hung his cloak on, the brook into which the over- hanging chestnuts drop, as if in sport, their creamy 108 ENGLISH GYPSIES. golden little boats of leaves, never seem so beautiful or impressive as immediately after a rush and cry of many men, succeeded by solitude and silence. Little by little the bay of the hounds, the shouts of the hunters, and the occasional sound of the horn grew fainter ; the birds once more appeared, and sent forth short calls to their timid friends. I began again to notice who my neighbors were, as to daisies and heather which resided around the stone on which I sat, and the exclusive circle of a fairy-ring at a little distance, which, like many exclusive circles, consisted entirely of mushrooms. As the beagle-sound died away, and while the hounds were " working around " to the road, I heard footsteps approaching, and looking up saw before me a gypsy woman and a boy. She was a very gypsy woman, an ideal witch, nut-brown, tangle-haired, aquiline of nose, and fierce-eyed ; and fiercely did she beg ! As amid bi'oken Gothic ruins, overhung with unkempt ivy, one can trace a vanished and strange beauty, so in this worn face of the Romany, mantled by neglected tresses, I could see the remains of what must have been once a wonderful though wild loveliness. As I looked into those serpent eyes, trained for a long life to fascinate in fortune-telling simple dove-girls, I could readily understand the implicit faith with which many writers in the olden time spoke of the "fasci- nation" peculiar to female glances. " The multipli- cation of women," said the rabbis, " is the increase of witches," for the belles in Israel were killing girls, with arrows, the bows whereof are formed by pairs of jet-black eyebrows joined in one. And thus it was that these black-eyed beauties, by mashing l men for 1 Mashing, & word of gypsy origin (mashdva), meaning fascination by the eye, or taking in. OATLANDS PARK. 109 many generations, with shafts shot sideways and most wantonly, at last sealed their souls into the cor- ner of their eyes, as you have heard before. Cotton Mather tells us that these witches with peaked eye- corners could never weep but three tears out of their long-tailed eyes. And I have observed that such tears, as they sweep down the cheeks of the brunette witches, are also long-tailed, and recall by their shape and glitter the eyes from which they fell, even as the daughter recalls the mother. For all love's witch- craft lurks in flashing eyes, Ionian del occhio Ionian daT cuor. It is a great pity that the pigeon-eye-peaks, so pretty in young witches, become in the old ones crow's-feet and crafty. When I greeted the woman, she answered in Romany, and said she was a Stan- ley from the North. She lied bravely, and I told her so. It made no difference in any way, nor was she hurt. The brown boy, who seemed like a goblin, umber-colored fungus, growing by a snaky black wild vine, sat by her and stared at me. I was pleased, when he said tober, that she corrected him, exclaim- ing earnestly, " Never say tober for road; that is cant- ing. Always say drom ; that is good Romanes." There is always a way of bringing up a child in the way he should go, though it be a gypsy one, and drom comes from the Greek dromos, which is elegant and classical. Then she began to beg again, to pass the time, and I lectured her severely on the sin and meanness of her conduct, and said, with bitterness, " Do dogs eat dogs, or are all the Gorgios dead in the land, that you cry for money to me ? Oh, you are a fine Stanley ! a nice Beshaley you, to sing mumpin and mongerin, when a half-blood Matthews 110 ENGLISH GYPSIES. * has too much decency to trouble the rye ! And how much will you take? Whatever the gentleman pleases, and thank you, my kind sir, and the bless- ings of the poor gypsy woman on you. Yes, I know that, givelli, you mother of all the liars. You expect a sixpence, and here it is, and may you get drunk on the money, and be well thrashed by your man for it. And now see what I had in my hand all the time to give you. A lucky half crown, my deary; but that 's not for you now. I only give a sixpence to a beggar, but I stand a pash-Jcorauna to any Romany who 's a pal and amal." This pleasing discourse made us very good friends, and, as I kept my eyes sharply fixed on her viper orbs with an air of intense suspicion, everything like ill-feeling or distrust naturally vanished from her mind ; for it is of the nature of the Romanys and all their kind to like those whom they respect, and re- spect those whom they cannot deceive, and to meas- ure mankind exactly by their capacity of being taken in, especially by themselves. As is also the case, in good society, with many ladies and some gentlemen, and much good may it do them ! There was a brief silence, during which the boy still looked wistfully into my face, as if wondering what kind of gentleman I might be, until his mother said, " How do you do with them ryas [swells] ? What do you tell 'em about what do they think you know ? " This was not explicit, but I understood it perfectly. There is a great deal of such loose, disjointed con- versation among gypsies and other half-thinkers. An educated man requires, or pretends to himself to re- OATLANDS PARR. Ill quire, a most accurately-detailed and form-polished statement of anything to understand it. The gypsy is less exacting. I have observed among rural Americans much of this lottery style of conversation, in which one man invests in a dubious question, not knowing exactly what sort of a prize or blank answer he may draw. What the gypsy meant effectively was, " How do you account to the Gorgios for know- ing so much about us, and talking with us? Our life is as different from yours as possible, and you never acquired such a knowledge of all our tricky ways as you have just shown without much experience of us and a double life. You are related to us in some way, and you deceive the Gorgios about it. What is your little game of life, on general principles ? " For the g} 7 psy is so little accustomed to having any congenial interest taken in him that he can clearly explain it only by consanguinity. And as I was questioned, so I answered, " Well, I tell them I like to learn languages, and am trying to learn yours ; and then I 'm a foreigner in the country, anyhow, and they don't know rny droms [ways], and they don't care much what I do, don't you see ? " This was perfectly satisfactory, and as the hounds came sweeping round the corner of the wood she rose and went her way, and I saw her growing less and less along the winding road and up the hill, till she disappeared, with her boy, in a small ale-house. " Bang went the sixpence." When the last red light was in the west I went down to the river, and as I paused, and looked alter- nately at the stars reflected and flickering in the water and at the lights in the little gypsy camp, 112 ENGLISH GYPSIES. I thought that as the dancing, restless, and broken sparkles were to their serene types above, such were the wandering and wild Romany to the men of cult- ure in their settled homes. It is from the house- dweller that the men of the roads and commons draw the elements of their life, but in that life they are as shaken and confused as the starlight in the rippling river. But if we look through our own life we find that it is not the gypsy alone who is merely a reflection and an imitation of the stars above him, and a creature of second-hand fashion. I found in the camp an old acquaintance, named Brown, and also perceived at the first greeting that the woman Stanley had told Mrs. Brown that I would not be mongerdo, or begged from, and that the latter, proud of her power in extortion, and as yet invinci- ble in mendicancy, had boasted that she would suc- ceed, let others weakly fail. And to lose no time she went at me with an abruptness and dramatic earnestness which promptly betrayed the secret. And on the spot I made a vow that nothing should get a farthing from me, though I should be drawn by wild horses. And a horse was, indeed, brought into requi- sition to draw me, or my money, but without suc- cess ; for Mr. Brown, as I very well knew, it being just then the current topic in the best society on the road, had very recently been involved in a tan- gled trouble with a stolen horse. This horse had been figuratively laid at his door, even as a " love- babe " is sometimes placed on the front steps of a virtuous and grave citizen, at least, this is what White George averred, and his very innocence and purity had, like a shining mark, attracted the shafts of the wicked. He had come out unscathed, OATLANDS PARK. 113 / with a package of papers from a lawyer, which es- tablished his character above par ; but all this had cost money, beautiful golden money, and brought him to the very brink of ruin ! Mrs. Brown's attack was a desperate and determined effort, and there was more at stake on its success than the reader may sur- mise. Among gypsy women skill in begging im- plies the possession of every talent which they most esteem, such as artfulness, cool effrontery, and the power of moving pity or provoking generosity by pique or humor. A quaint and racy book might be written, should it only set forth the manner in which the experienced matrons give straight-tips or sug- gestions to the maidens as to the manner and lore of begging ; and it is something worth hearing when several sit together and devise dodges, and tell anec- dotes illustrating the noble art of mendicity, and how it should be properly practiced. Mrs. Brown knew that to extort alms from me would place her on the pinnacle as an artist. Among all the Cooper clan, to which she was allied, there was not one who ever begged from me, they having all found that the ripest nuts are those which fall from the tree of their own accord, or are blown earthward by the soft breezes of benevolence, and not those which are violently beaten down. She began by pitiful appeals ; she was moving, but I did not budge. She grew pathetic ; she touched on the stolen horse ; she paused, and gushed almost to tears, as much as to say, If it must be, you shall know all. Ruin stared them in the face ; poverty was crushing them. It was well acted, rather in the Bernhardt style, which, if M. Oiidit speaks the truth, is also employed rather extensively for acquiring " de mon- 8 114 ENGLISH GYPSIES. ish." I looked at the van, of which the Browns are proud, and inquired if it were true that it had been insured for a hundred pounds, as George had re- cently boasted. Persuasion having failed, Mrs. Brown tried bold defiance, saying that they needed no com- pany who were no good to them, and plainly said to me I might be gone. It was her last card, thinking that a threat to dissolve our acquaintance would drive me to capitulate, and it failed. I laughed, went into the van, sat down, took out my brandy flask, and then accepted some bread and ale, and, to please them, read aloud all the papers acquitting George from all guilt as concerned the stolen horse, papers which, he declared, had cost him full five pounds. This was a sad come-down from the story first told. Then I seriously rated his wife for beg- ging from me. " You know well enough," I said, "that I give all I can spare to your family and your people when they are sick or poor. And here you are, the richest Romanys on the road between Wind- sor and the Boro Gav, begging a friend, who knows all about you, for money ! Now, here is a shilling. Take it. Have half a crown ? Two of 'em ! No ! Oh, you don't want it here in your own house. Well, you have some decency left, and to save your credit I won't make you take it. And you scandalize me, a gentleman and a friend, just to show this tramp of a Stanley juva, who hasn't even got a drag [wagon], that you can beat her a mongerin mandy [begging me]." Mrs. Brown assented volubly to everything, and all the time I saw in her smiling eyes, ever agreeing to all, and heard from her voluble lips nothing but the lie, that lie which is the mental action and OATLANDS PARK. 115 inmost grain of the Romany, and especially of the diddikai, or half-breed. Anything and everything trickery, wheedling or bullying, fawning or threat- ening, smiles, or rage, or tears for a sixpence. All day long flattering and tricking to tell fortunes or sell trifles, and all life one greasy lie, with ready frowns or smiles : as it was in India in the begin- ning, as it is in Europe, and as it will be in America, so long as there shall be a rambler on the roads, amen ! Sweet peace again established, Mrs. Brown became herself once more, and acted the hospitable hostess, exactly in the spirit and manner of any woman who has " a home of her own," and a spark of decent feel- ing in her heart. Like many actors, she was a bad lot on the boards, but a very nice person off them. Here in her rolling home she was neither a beggar nor poor, and she issued her orders grandly. " Boil some tea for the rye cook some coffee for the rye wait a few minutes, my darling gentleman, and I '11 brile you a steak or here 's a fish, if you 'd like it?" But I declined everything except the corner of a loaf and some ale ; and all the time a little brown boy, with great black eyes, a perfect Murillo model, sat con- densed in wondrous narrow space by the fire, baking small apples between the bars of the grate, and roll- ing up his orbs at me as if wondering what could have brought me into such a circle, even as he had done that morning in the greenwood. Now if the reader would know what the interior of a gypsy van, or " drag," or wardo, is like, he may see it in the following diagram. 116 ENGLISH GYPSIES. A is the door ; B is the bed, or rather two beds, each six feet long, like berths, with a vacant space below ; O is a grate cooking-stove ; D is a table, which hangs by hinges from the wall ; E is a chest of drawers; f and /are two chairs. The general ap- pearance of a well-kept van is that of a state-room. Brown's is a very good van, and quite clean. They are admirably well adapted for slow traveling, and it was in such vans, purchased from gypsies, that Sir Samuel Baker and his wife explored the whole of Cyprus. Mrs. Brown was proud of her van and of her little treasures. From the great recess under the bed she raked out as a rare curiosity an old Dolly Varden or damasked skirt, not at all worn, quite pretty, and evi- dently of considerable value to a collector. This had belonged to Mrs. Brown's grandmother, an old gypsy queen. And it may be observed, by the way, that the claims of every Irishman of every degree to be descended from one of the ancient kings of Ire- land fade into nothing before those of the gypsy women, all of whom, with rare exception, are the own daughters of royal personages, granddaughter- hood being hardly a claim to true nobility. Then the bed itself was exhibited with pride, and the princess sang its praises, till she affirmed that the rye himself did not sleep on a better one, for which George reprimanded her. But she vigorously de- fended its excellence, and, to please her, I felt it, OATLANDS PARK. 117 and declared it was indeed much softer than the one I slept on, which was really true, thank Heaven ! and was received as a great compliment, and after- wards proclaimed on the roads even unto the ends of Surrey. " Yes," said Brown, as I observed some osiers in the cupboard, " when I feels like it I sometimes makes a pound a day a-making baskets." "I should think," I said, "that it would be cheaper to buy French baskets of Bulrose [Bulureau^:] in Houndsditch, ready made." " So one would think ; but the ranyor [osiers] costs nothin', and so it 's all profit, any way." Then I urged the greater profit of living in Amer- ica, but both assured me that so long as they could make a good living and be very comfortable, as they considered themselves, in England, it would be non- sense to go to America. For all things are relative, and many a gypsy whom the begged-f rom pity sincerely, is as proud and happy in a van as any lord in the land. A very nice, neat young gypsy woman, camped long before just where the Browns were, once said to me, " It is n't having everything fine and stylish that makes you happy. Now we 've got a van, and have everything so elegant and comfortable, and sleep warm as anybody ; and yet I often say to my husband that we used to be happier when we used to sleep under a hedge, with, may be, only a thin blanket, and wake up covered with snow." Now this woman had only a wretched wagon, and was always tramping in the rain, or cow- ering in a smoky, ragged tent and sitting on the ground, but she had food, fire, and fun, with warm clothes, and believed herself happy. Truly, she had 118 ENGLISH GYPSIES. better reason to think so than any old maid with a heart run to waste on church gossip, or the latest engagements and marriages ; for it is better to be a street-boy in a corner with a crust than one who, without it, discusses, in starvation, with his friend, the sausages and turtle-soup in a cook-shop window, between which and themselves there is a great pane of glass fixed, never to be penetrated. II. WALKING AND VISITING. I NEVER shall forget the sparkling splendor of that frosty morning in December when I went with a younger friend from Oatlands Park for a day's walk. I may have seen at other times, but I do not remember, such winter lace-work as then adorned the hedges. The gossamer spider has within her an in- ward monitor which tells if the weather will be fine ; but it says nothing about sudden changes to keen cold, and the artistic result was that the hedges were hung with thousands of Honiton lamp-mats, instead of the thread fly-catchers which their little artists had intended. And on twigs and dead leaves, grass and rock and wall, were such expenditures of Brussels and Spanish point, such a luxury of real old Venetian run mad, and such deliria of Russian lace as made it evident that Mrs. Jack Frost is a very extravagant faivy, but one gifted with exquisite taste. When I reflect how I have in my time spoken of the taste for lace and diamonds in women as entirely without foundation in nature, I feel that I sinned deeply. For Nature, in this lace-work, displays at times a sympathy with humanity, especially womanity, and coquets and flirts with it, as becomes the sub- ject, in a manner which is merrily awful. There was once in Philadelphia a shop the windows of which were always filled with different kinds of the richest 120 ENGLISH GYPSIES. and rarest lace, and one cold morning I found that the fairies had covered the panes with literal frost fac-similes of the exquisite wares which hunglaehind. This was no fancy ; the copies were as accurate as photographs. Can it be that in the invisible world there are Female Fairy Schools of Design, whose scholars combine in this graceful style Etching on Glass and Art Needlework ? We were going to the village of Hersham to make a call. It was not at any stylish villa or lordly manor- house, though I knew of more than one in the vicin- ity where we would have been welcome, but at a rather disreputable-looking edifice, which bore on its front the sign of " Lodgings for Travellers." Now " traveller " means, below a certain circle of English life, not the occasional, but the habitual wanderer, or one who dwells upon the roads, and gains his living thereon. I have in my possession several cards of such a house. I found them wrapped in a piece of paper, by a deserted gypsy camp, where they had been lost : A NEW HOUSE. Good Lodging for Travellers. With a Large Private Kitchen. THE CROSS KEYS, WEST STREET MAIDENHEAD. BY J. HARRIS. The " private kitchen " indicates that the guests will have facilities for doing their own cooking, as all of them bring their own victuals in perpetual picnic. In the inclosure of the house in Hersham, the tops of two or three gypsy vans could always be seen above the high fence, and there was that gen- WALKING AND VISITING. 121 eral air of mystery about the entire establishment which is characteristic of all places haunted by peo- ple whose ways are not as our ways, and whose little games are not as our little games. I had become acquainted with it and its pi'oprietor, Mr. Hamilton, in that irregular and only way which is usual with such acquaintances. I was walking by the house one summer day, and stopped to ask my way. A handsome dark-brown girl was busy at the wash-tub, two or three older women were clustered at the gate, and in all their faces was the manner of the diddikai or chureni, or half-blood gypsy. As I spoke I dropped my voice, and said, inquiringly, " Romanes ? " " Yes," was the confidential answer. They were all astonished, and kept quiet till I had gone a few rods on my way, when the whole party, recovering from their amazement, raised a gentle cheerj expressive of approbation and sympathy. A few days after, walking with a lady in Weybridge, she said to me, " Who is that man who looked at you so closely ? " " I do not know." " That 's very strange. I am quite sure I heard him utter two words in a strange language, as you passed, as if he only meant them for you. They sounded like sarshaun baw." Which means, " How are you, sir ? " or friend. As we came up the street, I saw the man talking with a well-dressed, sporting- looking man, not quite a gentleman, who sat cheekily in his own jaunty little wagon. As I passed, the one of the wagon said to the other, speaking of me, and in pure Romany, evidently thinking I did not under- stand, 122 ENGLISH GYPSIES. " Dikk'adovo Grorgio, adoi I " (Look at that Gor- gio, there !) Being a Romany rye, and not accustomed to be spoken of as a Gorgio, I looked up at him, angrily, when he, seeing that I understood him, smiled, and bowed politely in apology. I laughed and passed on. But I thought it a little strange, for neither of the men had the slightest indication of gypsiness. I met the one who had said sarishdn bd again, soon after. I found that he and the one of the wagon were not of gypsy blood, but of a class not uncommon in Eng- land, who, be they rich or poor, are affected towards gypsies. The wealthy one lived with a gypsy mis- tress ; the poorer one had a gypsy wife, and was very fond of the language. There is a very large class of these mysterious men everywhere about the country. They haunt fairs ; they pop up unexpectedly as Jack- in-boxes in unsuspected guise ; they look out from under fatherly umbrellas ; their name is Legion ; their mother is Mystery, and their uncle is Old Tom, not of Virginia, but of Gin. Once, in the old town of Canterbury, I stood in the street, under the Old Woman with the Clock, one of the quaintest pieces of drollery ever imagined during the Middle Ages. And by me was a tinker, and as his wheel went siz-z-z-z, uz-uz-uz-z-z ! I talked with him, and there joined us a fat, little, elderly, spectacled, shabby- genteel, but well-to-do-looking sort of a punchy, small tradesman. And, as we spoke, there went by a great, stout, roaring Romany woman, a scarlet- runner of Babylon run to seed, with a boy and a hand-cart to carry the seed in. And to her I cried, " Hav akai te mandy 'II del tute a shdori ! " (Come here, and I '11 stand a sixpence !) But she did not WALKING AND VISITING. 123 believe in my offer, but went her way, like a Burning Shame, through the crowd, and was lost evermore. I looked at the little old gentleman to see what effect my outcry in a strange language had upon him. But he only remarked, soberly, " Well, now, I should V thought a sixpence would 'a' brought her to ! " And the wheel said, " Suz-zuz-zuz-z-z I should 'a' suz-suz 'a' thought a suz-z-zixpence would 'a' suz-zuz 'a' brought her, too-z-z-z ! " And I looked at the Old Woman with the Clock, and she ticked, "A six pence would have brought me two three four " and I began to dream that all Canterbury was Romany. We came to the house, the landlord was up-stairs, ill in bed, but would be glad to see us ; and he wel- comed us warmly, and went deeply into Romany family matters with my friend, the Oxford scholar. Meanwhile, his daughter, a nice brunette, received and read a letter ; and he tried to explain to me the mystery of the many men who are not gypsies, yet speak Romany, but could not do it, though he was one of them. It appeared from his account that they were " a kind of mixed, you see, and dusted in, you know, and on it, out of the family, it peppers up ; but not exactly, you understand, and that 's the way it is. And I remember a case in point, and that was one day, and I had sold a horse, and was with my boy in a moramengro 's buddika [barber's shop], and my boy says to me, in Romanes, ' Father, I 'd like to have my hair cut.' ' It 's too dear here, my son,' said I, Romaneskes ; ' for the bill says threepence.' And then the barber, he ups and says, in Romany, * Since you 're Romanys, I '11 cut it for twopence, though it 's clear out of all my rules.' And he did 124 ENGLISH GYPSIES. it; but why that man rakkered Romanes I don't know, nor how it comes about ; for he had n't no more call to it than a pig has to be a preacher. But I 've known men in Sussex to take to diggin' truffles on the same principles, and one Gorgio in Hastings that adopted sellin' fried fish for his livin', about the town, because he thought it was kind of romantic. That 's it." Over the chimney-piece hung a large engraving of Milton and his daughters. It was out of place, and our host knew it, and was proud. He said he had bought it at an auction, and that it was a picture of Middleton, a poet, he believed ; " anyhow, he was a writing man." But, on second thought, he remem- bered that the name was not Middleton, but Millerton. And on further reflection, he was still more convinced that Millerton was a poet. I once asked old Matthew Cooper the Romany word for a poet. And he promptly replied that he had generally heard such a man called a givellengero or gilliengro, which means a song-master, but that he himself regarded shcreskero-mush, or head-man, as more elegant and deeper ; for poets make songs out of their heads, and are also ahead of all other men in head-work. There is a touching and unconscious tribute to the art of arts in this definition which is worth recording. It has been said that, as people grow polite, they cease to be poetical ; it is certain that in the first circles they do not speak of their poets with such respect as this. Out again into the fresh air and the frost on the crisp, crackling road and in the sunshine. At such a time, when cold inspires life, one can understand why the old poets and mystics believed that there was fire WALKING AND VISITING. 125 in ice. Therefore, Saint Sebaldus, coming into the hut of a poor and pious man who was dying of cold, went out, and, bringing in an armful of icicles, laid them on the andirons and made a good fire. Now this fire was the inner glowing glory of God, and worked both ways, of course you see the connection, as was shown in Adelheid von Sigolsheim, the Holy Nun of Unterlinden, who was so full of it that she passed the night in a freezing stream, and then stood all the morning, ice-clad, in the choir, and never caught cold. And the pious Peroneta, to avoid a sinful suit- or, lived all winter, up to her neck, in ice-water, on the highest Alp in Savoy. 1 These were saints. But there was a gypsy, named Dighton, encamped near Brighton, who told me nearly the same story of an- other gypsy, who was no saint, and which I repeat merely to show how extremes meet. It was that this gypsy, who was inspired with anything but the inner glowing glory of God, but who was, on the contrary, cram full of pure cussedness, being warmed by the same, and the devil, when chased by the constable, took refuge in a river full of freezing slush and broken ice, where he stood up to his neck and defied capture ; for he verily cared no more for it than did Saint Peter of Alcantara, who was both ice and fire proof. " Come out of that, my good man," said the gentleman, whose hen he had stolen, "and I '11 let you go." " No, I won't come out," said the gypsy. " My blood be on your head ! " So the gen- tleman offered him five pounds, and then a suit of clothes, to come ashore. The gypsy reflected, and at last said, " Well, if you '11 add a drink of spirits, I '11 come ; but it 's only to oblige you that I budge." 1 Qoerres, Christliche Mystik, i. 296. 1. 23. 126 ENGLISH GYPSIES. Then we walked in the sober evening, with its gray gathering shadows, as the last western rose light rippled in the river, yet fading in the sky, like a good man who, in dying, speaks cheerfully of earthly things, while his soul is vanishing serenely into heaven. The swans, looking like snowballs, unconscious of cold, were taking their last swim towards the reedy, brake-tangled islets where they nested, gossiping as they went. The deepening darkness, at such a time, becomes more impressive from the twinkling stars, just as the subduing silence is noted only by the far- borne sounds from the hamlet or farm-house, or the occasional whispers of the night-breeze. So we went on in the twilight, along the Thames, till we saw the night-fire of the Romanys and its gleam on the tan. A tan is, strictly speaking, a tent, but a tent is a dwelling, or stopping-place ; and so from earliest Aryan time, the word tan is like Alabama, or " here we rest," and may be found in tun, the ancestor of town, and in stan, as in Hindostan, and if I blun- der, so much the better for the philological gentle- men, who, of all others, most delight in setting erring brothers right, and never miss a chance to show, through others' shame, how much they know. There was a bark of a dog, and a voice said, " The Romany rye ! " They had not seen us, but the dog knew, and they knew his language. " Sarishan ryor ! " " bdro duvel atcK pa leste!" (The great Lord be on you !) This is not a common Romany greeting. It is of ancient days and archaic. Sixty or seventy years ago it was current. Old Gentilla Cooper, the fa- mous fortune-teller of the Devil's Dike, near Brigh- ton, knew it, and when she heard it from me she WALKING AND VISITING. 127 was moved, just as a very old negro in London was, when I said to him, "Sady, uncle." I said it because I had recognized by the dog's bark that it was Sam Smith's tan. Sam likes to be considered as deep Romany. He tries to learn old gypsy words, and he affects old gypsy ways. He is pleased to be called "Petulengro, which means Smith. Therefore, my greeting was a compliment. In a few minutes we were in camp and at home. We talked of many things, and among others of witches. It is remarkable that while the current English idea of a witch is that of an old woman who has sold herself to Satan, and is a distinctly marked character, just like Satan himself, that of the witch among gypsies is general and Oriental. There is no Satan in India. Mrs. Smith since dead held that witches were to be found everywhere. "You may know a natural witch," she said, "by certain signs. One of these is straight hair which curls at the ends. Such women have it in them." It was only recently, as I write, that I was at a very elegant art reception, which was fully reported in the newspapers. And I was very much astonished when a lady called my attention to another young and very pretty lady, and expressed intense disgust at the way the latter wore her hair. It was simply parted in the middle, and fell down on either side, smooth as a water-fall, and then broke into curls at the ends, just as water, after falling, breaks into waves and rapids. But as she spoke, I felt it all, and saw that Mrs. Petulengro was in the right. The girl with the end-curled hair was uncanny. Her hair curled at the ends, so did her eyes ; she was a witch. 128 ENGLISH GYPSIES. " But there 's a many witches as knows clever things," said Mrs. Petulengro. " And I learned from one of them how to cure the rheumatiz. Sup- pose you Ve got the rheumatiz. Well, just you carry a potato in* your pocket. As the potato dries up, your rheumatiz will go away." Sam Smith was always known on the roads as Fighting Sam. Years have passed, and when I have asked after him I have always heard that be was either in prison or had just been let out. Once it happened that, during a fight with a Gorgio, the Gorgio's watch disappeared, and Sam was arrested under suspicion of having got up the fight in order that the watch might disappear. All of his friends declared his in- nocence. The next trouble was for cJiorin a gry, or stealing a horse, and so was the next, and so on. As horse-stealing is not a crime, but only " rough gambling," on the roads, nobody defended him on these counts. He was, so far as this went, only a sporting character. When his wife died he married Athalia, the widow of Joshua Cooper, a gypsy, of whom I shall speak anon. I always liked Sara. Among the travelers, he was always spoken of as genteel, owing to the fact, that whatever the state of his wardrobe might be, he always wore about his neck an immaculate white woolen scarf, and on jours de fete, such as horse-races, sported a boro stardi, or chimney-pot hat. O my friend, Colonel Dash, of the club ! Change but the name, this fable is of thee ! " There 's to be a walgoro, Jcaliko i sala a fair, to-morrow morning, at Cobham," said Sam, as he de- parted. " All right. We '11 be there." WALKING AND VISITING. 129 As I went forth by the river into the night, and the stars looked down like loving eyes, there shot a meteor across the sky, one long trail of light, out of darkness into darkness, one instant bright, then dead forever. And I remembered how I once was told that stars, like mortals, often fall in love. O love, forever in thy glory go ! And that they send their starry angels forth, and that the meteors are their messengers. O love, forever in thy glory go I For love and light in heaven, as on earth, were ever one, and planets speak with light. Light is their lan- guage; as they love they speak. O love, forever in thy glory go ! III. COBHAM FAIR. THE walk from Oatlands Park Hotel to Cobhara is beautiful with memorials of Older England. Even on the grounds there is a quaint brick gateway, which is the only relic of a palace which preceded the present pile. The grandfather was indeed a stately edifice, built by Henry VIII., improved and magnified, according to his lights, by Inigo Jones, and then destroyed during the civil war. The river is here very beautiful, and the view was once painted by Turner. It abounds in " short windings and reaches." Here it is, indeed, the Olerifera Tha- mesis, as it was called by Guillaume le Breton in his " Phillipeis," in the days of Richard the Lion Heart. Here the eyots and banks still recall Nor- man days, for they are " wild and were ; " and there is even yet a wary otter or two, known to the gyp- sies and fishermen, which may be seen of moonlight nights plunging or swimming silently in the haunted water. Now we pass Walton Church, and look in, that my friend may see the massy Norman pillars and arches, the fine painted glass, and the brasses. One of these represents John Selwyn, who was keeper of the royal park of Oatlands in 1587. Tradition, still current in the village, says that Selwyn was a man of wondrous strength and of rare skill in horse- COBHAM FAIR. 131 manship. Once, when Queen Elizabeth was present 'at a stag hunt, he leaped from his horse upon the back of the stag, while both were running at full speed, kept his seat gracefully, guided the animal towards the queen, and stabbed him so deftly that he fell dead at her majesty's feet. It was daintily done, and doubtless Queen Bess, who loved a proper man, was well pleased. The brass plate represents Selwyn as riding on the stag, and there is in the vil- lage a shop where the neat old dame who presides, or her daughter, will sell you for a penny a picture of the plate, and tell you the story into the bargain. In it the valiant ranger sits on the stag, which he is stabbing through the neck with his couteau de chasse, looking meanwhile as solemn as if he were sitting in a pew and listening to De prqfundis. He who is great in one respect seldom fails in some other, and there is in the church another and a larger brass, from which it appears that Selwyn not only had a wife, but also eleven children, who are depicted in successive grandeur or gradation. There are monu- ments by Roubiliac and Chantrey in the church, and on the left side of the altar lies buried William Lilly, the great astrologer, the Sidrophel of Butler's " Hu- dibras." And look into the chancel. There is a tablet to his memory, which was put up by Elias Ashmole, the antiquary, who has left it in print that this "fair black marble stone" cost him <6 4s. Qd. When I was a youth, and used to pore in the old Franklin Library of Philadelphia over Lilly, I never thought that his grave would be so near my home. But a far greater literary favorite of mine lies buried in the church-yard without. This is Dr. Maginn, the author of " Father Tom and the Pope," and many 132 ENGLISH GYPSIES. another racy, subtle jest. A fellow of infinite humor, the truest disciple of Rabelais, and here he lies without a monument ! Summon the sexton, and let us ask him to show us the scold's, or gossip's, bridle. This is a rare curiosity, which is kept in the vestry. It would seem, from all that can be learned, that two hundred years ago there were in England viragoes so virulent, women so gifted with gab and so loaded and primed with the devil's own gunpowder, that all moral sua- sion was wasted on them, and simply showed, as old Reisersberg wrote, that fatue agit qui ignem conatur extinguere sulphure ('t is all nonsense to try to quench fire with brimstone). For such diavolas they had made what the sexton is just going to show you a muzzle of thin iron bars, which pass around the head and are padlocked behind. In front a flat piece of iron enters the mouth and keeps down the tongue. On it is the date 1633, and certain lines, no longer legible : " Chester presents Walton with a bridle, To curb women's tongues that talk too idle." A sad story, if we only knew it all ! What tra- dition tells is that long ago there was a Master Ches- ter, who lost a fine estate through the idle, malicious clack of a gossiping, lying woman. " What is good for a bootless bene ? " What he did was to endow the church with this admirable piece of head-gear. And when any woman in the parish was unanimously adjudged to be deserving of the honor, the bridle was put on her head and tongue, and she was led about town by the beadle as an example to all the scolding sisterhood. Truly, if it could only be applied to the women and men who repeat gossip, rumors, COBHAM FAIR. 133 reports, on dits, small slanders, proved or unproved ; to all gobe-mouches, club-gabblers, tea-talkers and tattlers, chatterers, church-twaddlers, wonderers if- it-be-true-what-they-say ; in fine, to the entire sister and brother hood of tongue-waggers, I for one would subscribe my mite to have one kept in every church in the world, to be zealously applied to their vile jaws. For verily the mere Social Evil is an angel of light on this earth as regards doing evil, compared to the Sociable Evil, and thus endeth the first les- son. We leave the church, so full of friendly memories. In this one building alone there are twenty things known to me from a boy. For from boyhood I have held in my memory those lines by Queen Elizabeth which she uttered here, and have read Lilly and Ash- mole and Maginn ; and this is only one corner in merrie England ! Am I a stranger here ? There is a father-land of the soul, which has no limits to him who, far sweeping on the wings of song and history, goes forth over many lands. We have but a little farther to go on our way be- fore we come to the quaint old manor-house which was of old the home of President Bradshaw, the grim old Puritan. There is an old sailor in the vil- lage, who owns a tavern, and he says, and the po- liceman agrees with him, that it was in this house that the death-warrant of King Charles the First was signed. Also, that there is a subterranean passage which leads from it to the Thames, which was in some way connected with battle, murder, plots, Puri- tans, sudden death, and politics ; though how this was is more than legend can clearly explain. Whether his sacred majesty was led to execution through this 134 ENGLISH GYPSIES. cavity, or whether Charles the Second had it for one of his numerous hiding-places, or returned through it with Nell Gwynn from his exile, are other obscure points debated among the villagers. The truth is that the whole country about Walton is subterrened with strange and winding ways, leading no one knows whither, dug in the days of the monks or knights, from one long-vanished monastery or castle to the other. There is the opening to one of these hard by the hotel, but there was never any gold found in it that ever I heard of. And all the land is full of legend, and ghosts glide o' nights along the alleys, and there is an infallible fairy well at hand, named the Nun, and within a short walk stands the tre- mendous Crouch oak, which was known of Saxon days. Whoever gives but a little of its bark to a lady will win her love. It takes its name from croix (a cross), according to Mr. Kemble, 1 and it is twenty- four feet in girth. Its first branch, which is forty- eight feet long, shoots out horizontally, and is almost as large as the trunk. Under this tree Wickliffe preached, and Queen Elizabeth dined. It has been well said by Irving that the English, from the great prevalence of rural habits throughout every class of society, have been extremely fond of those festivals and holidays which agreeably inter- rupt the stillness of country life. True, the days have gone when burlesque pageant and splendid pro- cession made even villages magnificent. Harp and tabor and viol are no longer heard in every inn when people would be merry, and men have forgotten how to give themselves up to headlong roaring revelry. The last of this tremendous frolicking in Europe 1 Tfie Saxons in England, i. 3. COBHAM FAIR. 135 died out with the last yearly kermess in Amster- dam, and it was indeed wonderful to see with what utter abandon the usually stolid Dutch flung them- selves into a rushing tide of frantic gayety. Here and there in England a spark of the old fire, lit in mediaeval times, still flickers, or perhaps flames, as at Dorking in the annual foot-ball play, which is carried on with such vigor that two or three thousand people run wild in it, while all the windows and street lamps are carefully screened for protection. But not- withstanding the gradually advancing republicanism of the age, which is dressing all men alike, bodily and mentally, the rollicking democracy of these old- fashioned festivals, in which the peasant bonneted the peer without ceremony, and rustic maids ran races en chemise for a pound of tea, is entirely too leveling for culture. There are still, however, numbers of village fairs, quietly conducted, in which there is much that is pleasant and picturesque, and this at Cobham was as pretty a bit of its kind as I ever saw. These are old-fashioned and gay in their little retired nooks, and there the plain people show them- selves as they really are. The better class of the neighborhood, having no sympathy with such sports or scenes, do not visit village fairs. It is, indeed, a most exceptional thing to see any man who is a *' gentleman," according to the society standard, in any fair except Mayfair in London. Cobham is well built for dramatic display. Its White Lion Inn is of the old coaching days, and the lion on its front is a very impressive monster, one of the few relics of the days when signs were signs in spirit and in truth. In this respect the tavern keeper of to-day is a poor snob, that he thinks a sign painted 336 ENGLISH GYPSIES. or earven is degenerate and low, and therefore an- nounces, in a line of letters, that his establishment is the Pig and Whistle, just as his remote predecessor thought it was low, or slow, or old-fashioned to ded- icate his ale-shop to Pigen Wassail or Hail to the Virgin, and so changed it to a more genteel and sec- ular form. In the public place were rows of booths arranged in streets forming imperium in imperio, a town within a town. There was of course the tradi- tional gilt gingerbread, and the cheering but not ine- briating ginger-beer, dear to the youthful palate, and not less loved by the tired pedestrian, when, mixed half and half with ale, it foams before him as shandy gaff. There, too, were the stands, presided over by jaunty, saucy girls, who would load a rifle for you and give you a prize or a certain number of shots for a shilling. You may be a good shot, but the better you shoot the less likely will you be to hit the bull's- eye with the rifle which that black-eyed Egyptian minx gives you ; for it is artfully curved and false- sighted, and the rifle was made only to rifle your pocket, and the damsel to sell you with her smiles, and the doll is stuffed with sawdust, and life is not worth living for, and Miching Mallocko says it, albeit I believe he lives at times as if there might be moments when it was forgot. And we had not been long on the ground before we were addressed furtively and gravely by a man whom it required a second glance to recognize as Samuel Petulengro, so artfully was he disguised as a simple-seeming agriculturalist of the better lower- class. But that there remained in Sam's black eyes that glint of the Romany which nothing could dis- guise, one would have longed to buy a horse of him. COBHAM FAIR. 137 And in the same quiet way there came, one by one, out of the crowd, six others, all speaking in subdued voices, like conspirators, and in Romany, as if it were a sin. And all were dressed rustically, and the same with intent to deceive, and all had the solemn air of very small farmers, who must sell that horse at any sacrifice. But when I saw Sam's horses I marked that his disguise of himself was nothing to the won- drous skill with which he had converted his five-pound screws into something comparatively elegant. They had been curried, clipped, singed, and beautified to the last resource, and the manner in which the finest straw had been braided into mane and tail was a miracle of art. This was a, jour de fete for Sam and his diddikai, or half-blood pals ; his foot was on his native heath in the horse-fair, where all inside the ring knew the gypsy, and it was with pride that he invited us to drink ale, and once in the bar-room, where all assembled were jockeys and sharps, con- versed loudly in Romany, in order to exhibit himself and us to admiring friends. A Romany rye, on such occasions, is to a Sam Petulengro what a scion of royalty is to minor aristocracy when it can lure him into its nets. To watch one of these small horse- dealers at a fair, and to observe the manner in which he conducts his bargains, is very curious. He lounges about all day, apparently doing nothing ; he is the only idler around. Once in a while somebody ap- proaches him and mutters something, to which he gives a brief reply. Then he goes to a tap-room or stable-yard, and is merged in a mob of his mates. But all the while he is doing sharp clicks of business. There is somebody talking to another party about that horse ; somebody telling a farmer that he knows 138 ENGLISH GYPSIES. a young man as has got a likely 'oss at 'arf price, the larst of a lot which he wants to clear out, and it may be 'ad, but if the young man sees 'im [the farmer] he may put it on 'eavy. Then the agent calls in one of the disguised Rom- anys to testify to the good qualities of the horse. They look at it, but the third deguis, who has it in charge, avers that it has just been sold to a gentle- man. But they have another. By this time the farmer wishes he had bought the horse. When any coin slips from between our fingers, and rolls down through a grating into the sewer, we are always sure that it was a sovereign, and not a half-penny. Yes, and the fish which drops back from the line into the river is always the biggest take or mistake of the day. And this horse was a bargain, and the three in disguise say so, and wish they had a hundred like it. But there comes a Voice from the depths, a casual remark, offering to bet that 'ere gent won't close on that hoss. " Bet yer ten bob he will." " Done." " How do yer know he don't take the hoss ? " " He carn't ; he 's too heavy loaded with Bill's mare. Says he '11 sell it for a pound better." The farmer begins to see his way. He is shrewd ; it may be that he sees through all this myth of "the gentleman." But his attention has been attracted to the horse. Perhaps he pays a little more, or " the pound bet- ter ; " in greater probability he gets Sam's horse for the original price. There are many ways among gypsies of making such bargains, but the motive power of them all is tdderin, or drawing the eye of the purchaser, a game not unknown to Gorgios. I have heard of a German yahud in Philadelphia, whose little boy Moses would shoot from the door COBHAM FAIR. 139 with a pop-gun or squirt at passers-by, or abuse them vilely, and then run into the shop for shelter. They of course pursued him and complained to the parent, who immediately whipped his son, to the great solace of the afflicted ones. And then the afflicted seldom failed to buy something in that shop, and the cor- rected son received ten per cent, of the profit. The attention of the public had been drawn. As we went about looking at people and pastimes, a Romany, I think one of the Ayres, said to me, " See the two policemen ? They 're following you two gentlemen. They saw you pallin' with Bowers. That Bowers is the biggest blackguard on the roads between London and Windsor. I don't want to hurt his charackter, but it 's no bad talkin' nor dusherin of him to say that no decent Romanys care to go with him. Good at a mill ? Yes, he 's that. A reg'lar wastimengro, I call him. And that 's why it is." Now there was in the fair a vast institution which proclaimed by a monstrous sign and by an excessive eruption of advertisement that it was THE SENSA- TION OF THE AGE. This was a giant hand-organ in connection with a forty-bicycle merry-go-round, all propelled by steam. And as we walked about the fair, the two rural policemen, who had nothing better to do, shadowed or followed us, their bucolic features expressing the intensest suspicion allied to the ex- tremest stupidity ; when suddenly the Sensation of the Age struck up the Gendarme's chorus, " We '11 run 'em in," from Genevieve de Brabant, and the arrangement was complete. Of all airs ever com- posed this was the most appropriate to the occasion, and therefore it played itself. The whole formed quite a little opera-bouffe, gypsies not being wanting. 140 ENGLISH GYPSIES. And as we came round, in our promenade, the pretty girl, with her rifle in hand, implored us to take a shot, and the walk wound up by her finally letting fly her- self and ringing the bell. That pretty girl might or might not have a touch of Romany blood in her veins, but it is worth noting that among all these show-men and show-women, acrobats, exhibitors of giants, purse-droppers, ginger- bread-wheel gamblers, shilling knife-throwers, pitch- in-his-mouths, Punches, Cheap-Jacks, thimble-rigs, and patterers of every kind there is always a leaven and a suspicion of gypsiness. If there be not descent, there is affinity by marriage, familiarity, knowledge of words and ways, sweethearting and trafficking, so that they know the children of the Rom as the house- world does not know them, and they in some sort belong together. It is a muddle, perhaps, and a puz- zle ; I doubt if anybody quite understands it. No novelist, no writer whatever, has as yet clearly ex- plained the curious fact that our entire nomadic pop- ulation, excepting tramps, is not, as we thought in our childhood, composed of English people like our- selves. It is leavened with direct Indian blood; it has, more or less modified, a peculiar morale. It was old before the Saxon heptarchy. I was very much impressed at this fair with the extensive and unsuspected amount of Romany ex- istent in our rural population. We had to be sat- isfied, as we came late into the tavern for lunch, with cold boiled beef and carrots, of which I did not complain, as cold carrots ai-e much nicer than warm, a fact too little understood in cookery. There were many men in the common room, mostly well dressed, and decent even if doubtful looking. I ob- COBHAM FAIR. 141 served that several used Romany words in casual con- versation. I came to the conclusion at last that all who were present knew something of it. The greatly reprobated Bowers was not himself a gypsy, but he had a gypsy wife. He lived in a cottage not far from Walton, and made baskets, while his wife roamed far and near, selling them ; and I have more than once stopped and sent for a pot of ale, and shared it with Bill, listening meantime to his memories of the road as he caned chairs or " basketed." I think his rep- utation came rather from a certain Bohemian disre- gard of convenances and of appearances than from any deeply-seated sinfulness. For there are Bohemians even among gypsies ; everything in this life being relative and socially-contractive. When I came to know the disreputable William well, I found in him the principles of Panurge, deeply identified with the morale of Falstaff ; a wondrous fund of unbundled humor, which expressed itself more by tones than words ; a wisdom based on the practices of the prize- ring ; and a perfectly sympathetic admiration of my researches into Romany. One day, at Kingston Fair, as I wished to depart, I asked Bill the way to the station. " I will go with you and show you," he said. But knowing that he had business in the fair I declined his escort. He looked at me as if hurt. ''Does tute pen mandy'd chore tute?" (Do you think I would rob you or pick your pockets ?) For he believed I was afraid of it. I knew Bill better. I knew that he was perfectly aware that I was about the only man in England who had a good opinion of him in any way, or knew what good there was in him. When afemme incomprise, a woman not as yet found out, discovers at last the man who is so 142 ENGLISH GYPSIES. much a master of the art of flattery as to satisfy somewhat her inordinate vanity, she is generally grateful enough to him who has thus gratified her desires to refrain from speaking ill of him, and abuse those who do, especially the latter. In like manner, Bill Bowers, who was every whit as interesting as any femme incomprise in Belgravia, or even Russell Square, believing that I had a little better opinion of him than anybody else, would not only have re- frained from robbing me, but have proceeded to lam with his fists anybody else who would have done so, the latter proceeding being, from his point of view, only a light, cheerful, healthy, and invigorating ex- ercise, so that, as he said, and as I believe truthfully, " I 'd rather be walloped than not fight." Even as my friend H. had rather lose than not play " farrer." This was a very pretty little country fair at Cob- ham ; pleasant and purely English. It was very picturesque, with its flags, banners, gayly bedecked booths, and mammoth placards, there being, as usual, no lack of color or objects. I wonder that Mr. Frith, who has given with such idiomatic genius the humors of the Derby, has never painted an old-fashioned ru- ral fair like this. In a few years the last of them will have been closed, and the last gypsy will be there to look on. There was a pleasant sight in the afternoon, when all at once, as it seemed to me there came hundreds of pretty, rosy-cheeked children into the fair. There were twice as many of them as of grown people. I think that, the schools being over for the day, they had been sent a-fairing for a treat. They swarmed in like small bee-angels, just escaped from some upset celestial hive ; they crowded around the booths, buy- COBHAM FAIR. 143 ing little toys, chattering, bargaining, and laughing, when my eye caught theirs, as though to be noticed was the very best joke in the whole world. They soon found out the Sensation of the Age, and the mammoth steam bicycle was forthwith crowded with the happy little creatures, raptured in all the glory of a ride. The cars looked like baskets full of roses. It was delightful to see them : at first like grave and stolid little Anglo-Saxons, occupied seriously with the new Sensation ; then here and there beaming with thawing jollity ; then smiling like sudden sun-gleams ; and then laughing, until all were in one grand chorus, as the speed became greater, and the organ roared out its notes as rapidly as a runaway musical locomo- tive, and the steam-engine puffed in time, until a high-pressure scream told that the penn'orth of fun was up. As we went home in the twilight, and looked back at the trees and roofs of the village, in dark silhouette against the gold-bronze sky, and heard from afar and fitfully the music of the Great Sensation mingled with the beat of a drum and the shouts of the crowd, rising and falling with the wind, I felt a little sad, that the age, in its advancing refinement, is setting itself against these old-fashioned merry-makings, and shrink- ing like a weakling from all out-of-doors festivals, on the plea of their being disorderly, but in reality be- cause they are believed to be vulgar. They come down to us from rough old days ; but they are relics of a time when life, if rough, was at least kind and hearty. We admire that life on the stage, we ape it in novels, we affect admiration and appreciation of its rich picturesqueness and vigorous originality, and we lie in so doing ; for there is not an assthetic prig 144 ENGLISH GYPSIES. in London who could have lived an hour in it. Truly, I should like to know what Francois Villon and Chau- cer would have thought of some of their modern ador- ers, or what the lioness Fair-sinners of the olden time would have had to say to the nervous weaklings who try to play the genial blackguard in their praise ! It is to me the best joke of the age that those who now set themselves up for priests of the old faith are the men, of all others, whom the old gods would have kicked, cum magna injuria, out of the temple. When I sit by Bill Bowers, as he baskets, and hear the bees buzz about his marigolds, or in Plato Buckland's van, or with a few hearty and true men of London town of whom I wot, then I know that the old spirit liveth in its ashes ; but there is little of it, I trow, among its penny prig-trumpeters. IV. THE MIXED FOKTUNES. " Thus spoke the king to the great Master : ' Thou didst bless and ban the people ; thou didst give benison and curse, luck and sorrow, to the evil or the good.' " And the Master said, ' It may be so.' " And the king continued, ' There came two men, and one was good and the other bad. And one thou didst bless, thinking he was good ; but he was wicked. And the other thou didst curse, and thought him bad ; but he was good.' " The Master said, ' And what came of it ? ' " The.king answered, ' All evil came upon the good man, and all happiness to the bad.' " And the Master said, ' I write letters, but I am not the messenger ; I huut the deer, but I am not the cook; I plant the vine, but I do not pour the wine to the guests ; I ordain war, yet do not fight ; I send ships forth on the sea, but do not sail them. There is many a slip between cup and lip, as the chief of the rebel spirits said when he was thrown out of heaven, and I am not greater nor wiser than he was before he fell. Hast thou any more questions, O son ? " " And the king went his way." ONE afternoon I was walking with three ladies. One was married, one was a young widow, and one, no longer very young, had not as yet husbanded her resources. And as we went by the Thames, conversa- tion turned upon many things, and among them the mystery of the future and mediums ; and the widow at last said she would like to have her fortune told. "You need not go far to have it done," I said. " There is a gypsy camp not a mile away, and in it one of the cleverest fortune-tellers in England." " I am almost afraid to go," said the maiden lady. 10 146 ENGLISH GYPSTES- " It seems to me to be really wrong to try to look into the awful secrets of futurity. One can never be certain as to what a gypsy may not know. It 's all very well, I dare say, to declare it 's all rubbish, but then you know you never can tell what may be in a rubbish-heap, and they may be predicting true things all the time while they think they 're humbugging you. And they do often foretell the most wonderful things ; I know they do. My aunt was told that she would marry a man who would cause her trouble, and, sure enough, she did ; and it was such a shame, she was such a sweet-tempered, timid woman, and he spent half her immense fortune. Now was n't that wonderful ? " .It would be a curious matter for those who like studying statistics and chance to find out what pro- portion in England of sweet-tempered, timid women of the medium-middle class, in newly-sprouted fami- lies, with immense fortunes, do not marry men who only want their money. Such heiresses are the nat- ural food of the noble shark and the swell sucker, and even a gypsy knows it, and can read them at a glance. I explained this to the lady ; but she knew what she knew, and would not know otherwise. So we came along the rippling river, watching the darting swallows and light water-gnats, as the sun sank af;ir into the tawny, golden west, and Night, in ever-nearing circles, wove her shades around us. We saw the little tents, like bee-hives, one, indeed, not larger than the hive in which Tyll Eulenspiegel slept his famous nap, and in which he was carried away by the thieves who mistook him for honey and found him vinegar. And the outposts, or advanced pickets of small, brown, black-eyed elves, were tumbling about THE MIXED FORTUNES. 147 as usual, and shouted their glad greeting ; for it was only the day before that I had come down with two dozen oranges, which by chance proved to be just one apiece for all to eat except for little Synfie Cooper, who saved hers up for her father when he should re- turn. I had just an instant in which to give the gypsy sorceress a " straight tip," and this I did, saying in Romany that one of the ladies was married and one a widow. I was indeed quite sure that she must know the married lady as such, since she had lived near at hand, within a mile, for months. And so, with all due solemnity, the sorceress went to her work. " You will come first, my lady, if you please," she said to the married dame, and led her into a hedge- corner, so as to be remote from public view, while we waited by the camp. The hand was inspected, and properly crossed with a shilling, and the seeress began her prediction. " It 's a beautiful hand, my lady, and there 's luck in it. The line o' life runs lovely and clear, just like a smooth river from sea to sea, and that means you '11 never be in danger before you die, nor troubled with much ill. And it 's written that you '11 have another husband very soon." " But I don't want another," said the lady. " Ah, my dear lady, so you '11 say till you get him, but when he comes you '11 be glad enough; so do you just get the first one out of your head as soon as you can, for the next will be the better one. And you '11 cross the sea and travel in a foreign land, and remember what I told you to the end of your life days." 148 ENGLISH GYPSIES. Then the widow had her turn. " This is a lucky hand, and little need you had to have your fortune told. You 've been well married once, and once is enough when it 's all you need. There 's others as is never satisfied and wants every- thing, but you 've had the best, and more you need n't want, though there '11 be many a man who '11 be in love with you. Ay, indeed, there 's fair and dark as will feel the favor of your beautiful eyes, but little good will it do them, and barons and lords as would kiss the ground you tread on ; and no wonder, either, for you have the charm which nobody can tell what it is. But it will do 'em no good, nevermore." " Then I 'm never to have another husband," said the widow. " No, my lady. He that you married was the best of all, and, after him, you '11 never need another ; and that was written in your hand when you were born, and it will be your fate, forever and ever : and that is the gypsy's production over the future, and what she has producted will come true. All the stars in the fermentation of heaven can't change it. But if you ar'n't satisfied, I can set a planet for you, and try the cards, which comes more expensive, for I never do that under ten shillings." There was a comparing of notes among the ladies and much laughter, when it appeared that the priest- ess of the hidden spell, in her working, had mixed up the oracles. Jacob had manifestly got Esau's blessing. It was agreed that the bonnes fortunes should be ex- changed, that the shillings might not be regarded as lost, and all this was explained to the unmarried lady. She said nothing, but in due time was also dukkered, or fortune-told. With the same mystery she was con- THE MIXED FORTUNES. 149 ducted to the secluded corner of the hedge, and a very long, low-murmuring colloquy ensued. What it was we never knew, but the lady had evidently been greatly impressed and awed. All that she would tell was that she had heard things that were "very remarkable, which she was sure no person living could have known," and in fact that she believed in the gypsy, and even the blunder as to the mar- ried lady and the widow, and all my assurances that chiromancy as popularly practiced was all humbug, made no impression. There was once " a disciple in Yabneh " who gave a hundred and fifty reasons to prove that a i - eptile was no more unclean than any other animal. But in those days people had not been converted to the law of turtle soup and the gos- pel of Saint Terrapin, so the people said it was a vain thing. And had I given a hundred and fifty reasons to this lady, they would have all been vain to her, for she wished to believe ; and when our own wishes are served up unto us on nice brown pieces of the well- buttered toast of flattery, it is not hard to induce us to devour them. It is written that when Ashmedai, or Asmodeus, the chief of all the devils of mischief, was being led a captive to Solomon, he did several mysterious things while on the way, among others bursting into ex- travagant laughter, when he saw a magician conjur- ing and predicting. On being questioned by Benaiah, the son of Jehoiada, why he had seemed so much amused, Ashmedai answered that it was because the seer was at the very time sitting on a princely treas- ure, and he did not, with all his magic and promising fortune to others, know this. Yet, if this had been told to all the world, the conjurer's business would 150 ENGLISH GYPSIES. not have suffered. Not a bit of it. Entre Jean, passe Jeannot : one comes and goes, another takes his place, and the poor will disappear from this world before the too credulous shall have departed. It was on the afternoon of the following day that I, by chance, met the gypsy with a female friend, each with a basket, by the roadside, in a lonely, f urzy place, beyond Walton. "You are a nice fortune-teller, aren't you now?" I said to her. " After getting a tip, which made it all as clear as day, you walk straight into the dark. And here you promise a lady two husbands, and she mar- ried already ; but you never promised me two wives, that I might make merry withal. And then to tell a widow that she would never be married again ! You 're a bori chovihani [a great witch], indeed, you are n't," " Rye" said the gypsy, with a droll smile and a shrug, I think I can see it now, " the dukkerin [prediction] was all right, but I pet the right duk- kerins on the wrong ladies." And the Master said, "I write letters, but I am not the messenger." His orders, like the gypsy's, had been all right, but they had gone to the wrong shop. Thus, in all ages, those who affect superior wisdom and foreknowledge absolute have found that a great practical part of the real business consisted in the plausible explanation of failures. The great Canadian weather prophet is said to keep two clerks busy, one in recording his predictions, the other in explaining their failures; which is much the case with the rain-doctors in Africa, who are as ingenious and fortunate in explaining a miss as a hit, as, indeed, they need be, since they must, in case of error, sub- THE MIXED FORTUNES. 151 init to be devoured alive by ants, insects which in Africa correspond in several respects to editors and critics, particularly the stinging kind. "Und ist man bei der Prophezeiung angestellt" as Heine says; " when a man has a situation in a prophecy-office," a great part of his business is to explain to the cus- tomers why it is that so many of them draw blanks, or why the trains of fate are never on time. V. HAMPTON RACES. ON a summer day, when waking dreams softly wave before the fancy, it is pleasant to walk in the noon- stillness along the Thames, for then we pass a series of pictures forming a gallery which I would not ex- change for that of the Louvre, could I impress them as indelibly upon the eye-memory as its works are fixed on canvas. There exists in all of us a spiritual pho- tographic apparatus, by means of which we might retain accurately all we have ever seen, and bring out, at will, the pictures from the pigeon-holes of the memory, or make new ones as vivid as aught we see in dreams, but the faculty must be developed in childhood. So surely as I am now writing this will become, at some future day, a branch of education, to be developed into results of which the wildest imagi- nation can form no conception, and I put the predic- tion on record. As it is, I am sorry that I was never trained to this half-thinking, half-painting art, since, if I had been, I should have left for distant days to come some charming views of Surrey as it appears in this decade. The reedy eyots and the rising hills; the level mead- ows and the little villes, with their antique perpen- dicular Gothic churches, which form the points around which they have clustered for centuries, even as groups of boats in the river are tied around their mooring- HAMPTON RACES. 153 posts ; the bridges and trim cottages or elegant man- sions with their flower-bordered grounds sweeping down to the water's edge, looking like rich carpets with new baize over the centre, make the pictures of which I speak, varying with every turn of the Thames ; while the river itself is, at this season, like a continual regatta, with many kinds of boats, pro- pelled by stalwart young Englishmen or healthy, handsome damsels, of every rank, the better class by far predominating. There is a disposition among the English to don quaint holiday attire, to put on the picturesque, and go to the very limits which custom permits, which would astonish an American. Of late years this is becoming the case, too, in Trans-Atlan- tis, but it has always been usual in England, to mark the fete day with a festive dress, to wear gay- ribbons, and to indulge the very harmless instinct of youth to be gallant and gay. I had started one morning on a walk by the Thames, when I met a friend, who asked, " Are n't you going to-day to the Hampton races ? " " How far is it ? " " Just six miles. On Molesy Hurst." Six miles, and I had only six shillings in my pocket. I had some curiosity to see this race, which is run on the Molesy Hurst, famous as the great place for prize- fighting in the olden time, and which has never been able to raise itself to respectability, inasmuch as the local chronicler says that "the course attracts con- siderable and not very reputable gatherings." In fact, it is generally spoken of as the Costermonger's race, at which a mere welsher is a comparatively respectable character, and every man in a good coat a swell. I was nicely attired, by chance, for the oo- 154 ENGLISH GYPSIES. casion, for I had come out, thinking of a ride, in a white hat, new corduroy pantaloons arid waistcoat, and a velveteen coat, which dress is so greatly ad- mired by the gypsies that it may almost be regarded as their " national costume." There was certainly, to say the least, a rather bour- geois tone at the race, and gentility was conspicuous by its absence ; but I did not find it so outrageously low as I had been led to expect. I confess that I was not encouraged to attempt to increase my little hoard of silver by betting, and the certainty that if I lost I could not lunch made me timid. But the good are never alone in this world, and I found friends whom I dreamed not of. Leaving the crowd, I sought the gypsy vans, and by one of these was old Liz Buck- land. "' 'Sarishan rye ! And glad I am to see you. Why did n't you come down into Kent to see the hoppin' ? Many a time the Roman ys says they expected to see their rye there. Just the other night, your Coopers was a-lyin' round their fire, every one of 'em in a new red blanket, lookin' so beautiful as the light shone on 'em, and I says, * If our rye was to see you, he 'd just have that book of his out, and take all your pict- ures.' " After much gossip over absent friends, I said, " Well, dye, I stand a shilling for beer, and that 's all I can do to-day, for I 've come out with only shove trin-grushi." Liz took the shilling, looked at it and at me with an earnest air, and shook her head. " It '11 never do, rye, never. A gentleman wants more than six shillin's to see a race through, and a reg'lar Romany rye like you ought to slap down his HAMPTON RACES. 155 lovvo with the best of 'em for the credit of his people. And if you want a bar [a pound] or two, I '11 lend you the money, and never fear about your pay- ment." It was kind of the old dye, but I thought that I would pull through on my five shillings, before I would draw on the Romany bank. To be considered with sincere sympathy, as an object of deserving charity, on the lowest race-ground in England, and to be offered eleemosynary relief by a gypsy, was, indeed, touching the hard pan of humiliation. I went my way, idly strolling about, mingling affably with all orders, for my watch was at home. Vacuus viator cantabit. As I stood by a fence, I heard a gentlemanly-looking young man, who was evidently a superior pickpocket, or " a regular fly gonoff," say to a friend, " She 's on the ground, a great woman among the gypsies. What do they call her ? " " Mrs. Lee." " Yes. A swell Romany she is." Whenever one hears an Englishman, not a scholar, speak of gypsies as " Romany," he may be sure that man is rather more on the loose than becomes a steady citizen, and that he walks in ways which, if not of darkness, are at least in a shady demi-jour, with a gentle down grade. I do not think there was anybody on the race-ground who was not familiar with the older word. It began to rain, and before long my new velveteen coat was very wet. I looked among the booths for one where I might dry myself and get something to eat, and, entering the largest, was struck by the ap- pearance of the landlady. She was a young and decidedly pretty woman, nicely dressed, and was un- 156 ENGLISH GYPSIES. mistakably gypsy. I had never seen her before, but I knew who she was by a description I had heard. So I went up to the bar and spoke : " How are you, Agnes ? " " Bloomin'. What will you have, sir ? " " Dui curro levinor, yeckfor tute, yeckfor mandy." (Two glasses for ale, one for you, one for me.) She looked up with a quick glance and a wonder- ing smile, and then said, "You must be the Romany rye of the Coopers. I 'm glad to see you. Bless me, how wet you are. Go to the fire and dry yourself. Here, Bill, I say ! Attend to this gentleman." There was a tremendous roaring fire at the farther end of the booth, at which were pieces of meat, so enormous as to suggest a giant's roast or a political barbecue rather than a kitchen. I glanced with some interest at Bill, who came to aid me. In all my life I never saw a man who looked so thoroughly the regular English bull-dog bruiser of the lowest type, but battered and worn out. His nose, by oft- repeated pummeling, had gradually subsided almost to a level with his other features, just as an ancient British grave subsides, under the pelting storms of centuries, into equality with the plain. His eyes looked out from under their bristly eaves like sleepy wild-cats from a pig-pen, and his physique was tre- mendous. He noticed my look of curiosity. " Old Bruisin' Bill, your honor. I was well knowed in the prize-ring once. Been in the newspapers. Now, you mus' n't dry your coat that way ! New welwe- teen ought always to be wiped afore you dry it. I was a gamekeeper myself for six years, an' wore it- all that time nice and proper, I did, and know how. HAMPTON RACES. 157 May be you 've got a thrip'ny bit for old Bill. Thanky." I will do Mrs. Agnes Wynn the credit to say that in her booth the best and most abundant meal that I ever saw for the price in England was given for eighteen pence. Fed and dried, I was talking with her, when there came up a pretty boy of ten, so neat and well dressed and altogether so nice that he might have passed current for a gentleman's son any- where. " Well, Agnes. You 're Wynn by name and win- some by nature, and all the best you have has gone into that boy. They say you gypsies used to steal children. I think it 's time to turn the tables, and when I take the game up I '11 begin by stealing your chavo." Mrs. Wynn looked pleased. " He is a good boy, as good as he looks, and he goes to school, and don't keep low company." Here two or three octoroon, duodecaroon, or vigin- tiroon Romany female friends of the landlady came up to be introduced to m, and of course to take something at my expense for the good of the house. This they did in the manner specially favored by gypsies; that is to say, a quart of ale, being ordered, was offered first to me, in honor of my social posi- tion, and then passed about from hand to hand. This rite accomplished, I went forth to view the race. The sun had begun to shine again, the damp flags and streamers had dried themselves in its cheering rays, even as I had renewed myself at Dame Wynn's fire, and I crossed the race-course. The scene was lively, picturesque, and thoroughly English. There are certain pleasures and pursuits which, however 158 ENGLISH GYPSIES. they may be perfected in other countries, alwa3 7 s seem to belong especially to England, and chief among these is the turf. As a fresh start was made, as the spectators rushed to the ropes, roaring with excitement, and the horses swept by amid hurrahs, I could realize the sympathetic feeling which had been developed in all present by ancient familiarity and many associations with such scenes. Whatever the moral value of these may be, it is certain that anything so racy with local color and so distinctly fixed in popular affection as the race will always ap- peal to the artist and the student of national scenes. I found Old Liz lounging with Old Dick, her hus- band, on the other side. There was a canvas screen, eight feet high, stretched as a background to stop the sticks hurled by the players at " coker-nuts," while the nuts themselves, each resting on a stick five feet high, looked like disconsolate and starved spectres, waiting to be cruelly treated. In company with the old couple was a commanding-looking, eagle- eyed Romany woman, in whom I at once recognized the remarkable gypsy spoken of by the pickpocket. " My name is Lee," she said, in answer to my greeting. " What is yours ? " " Leland." " Yes, you have added land to the lee. You are luckier than I am. I 'm a Lee without land." As she spoke she looked like an ideal Meg Mer- rilies, and I wished I had her picture. It was very 'strange that I made the wish at that instant, for just then she was within an ace of having it taken, and therefore arose and went away to avoid it. An itin- erant photographer, seeing me talking with the gyp- sies, was attempting, though I knew it not, to take HAMPTON RACES. 159 the group. But the keen eye of the Romany saw it all, and she went her way, because sfre was of the real old kind, who believe it is unlucky to have their portraits taken. I used to think that this aversion was of the same kind as that which many good men evince in a marked manner when requested by the police to sit for their photographs for the rogues' gal- lery. But here I did the gypsies great injustice ; for they will allow their likenesses to be taken if you will give them a shoe-string. That this old superstition relative to the binding and loosing of ill-luck by the shoe-string should exist in this connection is of it- self curious. In the earliest times the shoe-latchet brought luck, just as the shoe itself did, especially when filled with corn or rice, and thrown after the bride. It is a great pity that the ignorant Gentiles, who are so careful to do this at every wedding, do not know that it is all in vain unless they cry aloud in Hebrew, ''Peru urphu!" 1 'with all their might when the shoe is cast, and that the shoe should be filled with rice. She went away, and in a few minutes the photog- rapher came in great glee to show a picture which he had taken. " 'Ere you are, sir. An elegant photograph, sur- roundin' sentimental scenery and horiental coker- nuts thrown in, all for a diminitive little shil- lin'." " Now that time you missed it," I said ; " for on my honor as a gentleman, I have only ninepence in all my pockets." " A gent like you with only ninepence ! " said the artist. 1 Peru urphu! "Increase and multiply!" Vide Bodenschatz, Kirchliche Verfassung der Juden, part IV. ch. 4, seet. 2. 160 ENGLISH GYPSIES. " If he has n't got money in his pocket now," said Old Liz, speaking up in my defense, " he has plenty at home. He has given pounds and pounds to us gypsies." "Dovo's a huckaben" I said to her in Romany. " Mandy kekker delled tute kumin a trin-grushi" (That is untrue. I never gave you more than a shilling.) " Anyhow," said Liz, " ninepence is enough for it." And the man, assenting, gave it to me. It was a very good picture, "and I have since had several copies taken of it. " Yes, rya" said Old Liz, when I regretted the absence of my Lady Lee, and talked with her about shoe-strings and old shoes, and how necessary it was to cry out " Peru urphu ! " when you throw them, " yes. That 's the way the Gorgis always half does things. You see 'em get a horse-shoe off the roads, and what do they do with it ! Goes like dinneli idiots and nails it up with the p'ints down, which, as is well beknown, brings all the bad luck there is flyin' in the air into the house, and taders choviha- necs [draws witches] like anise-seed does rats. Now common sense ought to teach that the shoe ought to be put like horns, with the p'ints up. For if it 's lucky to put real horns up, of course the horse-shoe goes the same drom [road]. And it 's lucky to pick up a red string in the morning, yes, or at any time; but it's sure love from a girl if you do, specially silk. And if so be she gives you a red string or cord, or a strip of red stuff, that means she '11 be bound to you and loves you." VI. STEEET SKETCHES. LONDON, during hot weather, after the close of the wise season, suggests to the upper ten thousand, and to the lower twenty thousand who reflect their ways, and to the lowest millions who minister to them all, a scene of doleful dullness. I call the time which has passed wise, because that which succeeds is uni- versally known as the silly season. Then the editors in town have recourse to the American newspapers for amusing murders, while their rural brethren invent great gooseberries. Then the sea-serpent again lifts his awful head. I am always glad when this ster- ling inheritance of the Northern races reappears ; for while we have him I know that the capacity for swal- lowing a big bouncer, or for inventing one, is not lost. He is characteristic of a fine, bold race. Long may he wave ! It is true that we cannot lie as gloriously as our ancestors did about him. When the great news-dealer of Norse times had no home-news he took his lyre, and either spun a yarn about Vinland such as would smash the " Telegraph," or else sung about " that sea-snake tremendous curled, whose girth en- circles half the world." It is wonderful, it is awful, to consider how true we remain to the traditions of the older time. The French boast that they invented the canard. Let them boast. They also invented the shirt-collar ; but hoary legends say that an Eng- 11 162 ENGLISH GYPSIES. lishman invented the shirt for it, as well as the art of washing it. What the shirt is to the collar, that is the glorious, tough old Northern saga, or maritime- spun yarn, to the canard, or duck. The yarn will wash ; it passes into myth and history ; it fits ex- actly, because it was made to order ; its age and glory illustrate the survival of the fittest. I have, during three or four summers, remained a month in London after the family had taken flight to the sea-side. I stayed to finish books promised for the autumn. It is true that nearly four million of people remain in London during the later summer ; but it is wonderful what an influence the absence of a few exerts on them and on the town. Then you realize by the long lines of idle vehicles in the ranks how few people in this world can afford a cab ; then you find out how scanty is the number of those who buy goods at the really excellent shops; and then you may finally find out by satisfactory experience, if you are inclined to grumble at your lot in life or your fortune, how much better off you are than ninety-nine in a hun- dred of your fellow-murmurers at fate. It was my wont to walk out in the cool of the evening, to smoke my cigar in Regent's Park, seated on a bench, watching the children as they played about the clock-and-bull fountain, for it embraces these objects among its adornments, presented by Cowasie Jehanguire, who added to these magnificent Persian names the prosaic English postscript of Ready Money. In this his name sets forth the history of his Parsee people, who, from being heroic Ghebers, have come down to being bankers, who can "do" any Jew, and who might possibly tackle a Yankee so long as they kept out of New Jersey. One evening I STREET SKETCHES. 163 walked outside of the Park, passing by the Gloucester Bridge to a little walk or boulevard, where there are a few benches. I was in deep moon-shadow, formed by the trees ; only the ends of my boots shone like eyes in the moonlight as I put them out. After a while I saw a nice-looking young girl, of the humble-de- cent class, seated by me, and with her I entered into casual conversation. On the bench behind us were two young Italians, conversing in strongly marked Florentine dialect. They evidently thought that no one could understand them ; as they became more in- terested they spoke more distinctly, letting out se- crets which I by no means wished to hear. At that instant I recalled the famous story of Prince Bismarck and the Esthonian young ladies and the watch-key. I whispered to the girl, " When I say something to you in a language which you do not understand, answer ' Si ' as dis- tinctly as you can." The damsel was quick to understand. An instant after I said, " Ha veduto il mio 'havallo la sera f " VSL" There was a dead silence, and then a rise and a rush. My young friend rolled her eyes up at me, but said nothing. The Italians had departed with their awful mysteries. Then there came by a man who looked much worse. He was a truculent, un- tamable rough, evidently inspired with gin. At a glance I saw by the manner in which he carried his coat that he was a traveler, or one who lived on the roads. Seeing me he stopped, and said, grimly, " Do you love your Jesus ? " This is certainly a pious question ; but it was ut- 164 ENGLISH GYPSIES. uttered in a tone which intimated that if I did not answer it affirmatively I might expect anything but Christian treatment. I knew why the man uttered it. He had just come by an open-air preaching in the Park, and the phrase had, moreover, been recently chalked and stenciled by numerous zealous and busy nonconformists all over northwestern London. I smiled, and said, quietly, " Pal, mor rakker sd drovdn. Jd pukenus on the drum." (Don't talk so loud, brother. Go away quietly.") The man's whole manner changed. As if quite sober, he said, " Mang your shunaben, rye. But tute jins chom- any. Kushti ratti /" (Beg your pardon, sir. But you do know a thing or two. Good-night !) " I was awfully frightened," said the young girl, as the traveler departed. " I 'm sure he meant to pitch into us. But what a wonderful way you have, sir, of sending people away ! I was n't so much as- tonished when you got rid of the Italians. I suppose ladies and gentlemen know Italian, or else they would n't go to the opera. But this man was a com- mon, bad English tramp ; yet I 'm sure he spoke to you in some kind of strange language, and you said something to him that changed him into as peaceable as could be. What was it? " "It was gypsy, young lady, what the gypsies talk among themselves." " Do you know, sir, I think you 're the most mys- terious gentleman I ever met." " Very likely. Good-night." " Good night, sir." STREET SKETCHES. 165 I was walking with my friend the Palmer, one aft- ernoon in June, in one of the several squares which lie to the west of the British Museum. As we went I saw a singular-looking, slightly-built man, lounging at a corner. He was wretchedly clad, and appeared to be selling some rudely-made, but curious contriv- ances of notched sticks, intended to contain flower- pots. He also had flower-holders made of twisted copper wire. But the greatest curiosity was the man himself. He had such a wild, wasted, wistful ex- pression, a face marked with a life of almost uncon- scious misery. And most palpable in it was the un- rest, which spoke of an endless struggle with life, and had ended by goading him into incessant wandering. I cannot imagine what people can be made of who can look at such men without emotion. " That is a gypsy," I said to the Palmer. " SarisJian^ pal!" The wanderer seemed to be greatly pleased to hear Romany. He declared that he was in the habit of talking it so much to himself when alone that his ordinary name was Romany Dick. " But if you come down to the Potteries, and want to find me, you mus' n't ask for Romany Dick, but Divius Dick." " That means Wild Dick." " Yes." " And why?" Because I wander about so, and can never stay more than a night in any one place. I can't help it. I must keep going." He said this with that wistful, sad expression, a yearning as for something which he had never comprehended. Was it rest f " And so I rakker Romany [talk gypsy to myself], when I 'm alone of a night, when the wind blows. It's better company than talkin' Gorginess. More sociable. He says no / say more sensible things 166 ENGLISH GYPSIES. Romaneskas than in English. You understand me ? " he exclaimed suddenly, with the same wistful stare. " Perfectly. It 's quite reasonable. It must be like having two heads instead of one, and being twice as knowing as anybody else." " Yes, that 's it. But everybody don't know it." " What do you ask for one of those flower-stands, Dick?" " A shillin', sir." " Well, here is my name and where I live, on an envelope. And here are two shillings. But if you chore mandy [cheat me] and don't leave it at the house, I '11 look you up in the Potteries, and koor tute [whip you]. He looked at me very seriously. " Ah, yes. You could koor me kennd [whip me now]. But you couldn't have kooredmj dadas [whipped my father]. Leastways not afore he got his leg broken fightin' Lancaster Sam. You must have heard of my father, Single-stick Dick. But if your 're comin' down to the Potteries, don't come next Sunda}'. Come Sunday three weeks. My brother is stardo kennd for chorin a gry [in prison for horse-stealing]. In three weeks he '11 be let out, and we 're goin' to have a great fam- ily party to welcome him, and we'll be glad to see you. Do come." The flower-stand was faithfully delivered, but an- other engagement prevented an acceptance of the invitation, and I have never seen Dick since. I was walking along Marylebone Road, which al- ways seems to be a worn and wind-beaten street, very pretty once, and now repenting it; when just beyond Baker Street station I saw a gypsy van, STREET SKETCHES. 167 hung all round with baskets and wooden - ware. Smoke issued from its pipe, and it went along smok- ing like any careless pedestrian. It always seems strange to think of a family being thus conveyed with its dinner cooking, the children playing about the stove, over rural roads, past common and gorse and hedge, in and out of villages, and through Great Babylon itself, as if the family had a pied d terre, and were as secluded all the time as though they lived in Little Pedlington or Tinnecum. For they have just the same narrow range of gossip, and just the same set of friends, though the set are always on the move. Traveling does not make a cosmopolite. By the van strolled the lord and master, with his wife. I accosted him. "Sarithan?" " Sarishan rye ! " *' Did you ever see me before ? Do you know me?" " No, sir." " I 'm sorry for that. I have a nice velveteen coat which I have been keeping for your father. How 's your brother Frank ? Traveling about Kingston, I suppose. As usual. But I don't care about trusting the coat to anybody who don't know me." " I '11 take it to him, safe enough, sir." " Yes, I dare say. On your back. And wear it yourself six months before you see him." Up spoke his wife : " That he shan't. I '11 take good care that the pooro mush [the old man] gets it all right, in a week." " Well, dye, I can trust you. You remember me. And, Anselo, here is my address. Come to the house in half an hour." 168 ENGLISH GYPSIES. In half an hour the housekeeper, said with a quiet smile, " If you please, sir, there 's a gentleman a gypsy gentleman wishes to see you." It is an English theory that the master can have no " visitors " who are not gentlemen. I must ad- mit that Anselo's dress was not what could be called gentlemanly. From his hat to his stout shoes he looked the impenitent g} r psy and sinful poacher, un- affected and natural. .There was a cutaway, sport- ing look about his coat which indicated that he had grown to it from boyhood " in woodis grene." He held a heavy-handled whip, a regular Romany tcTiupni or ch&ckni) which Mr. Borrow thinks gave rise to the word "jockey." I thought the same once, but have changed my mind, for there were " jockeys " in England before gypsies. Altogether, Anselo (which comes from Wenceslas) was a determined and vigorous specimen of an old-fashioned English gypsy, a type which, with all its faults, is not wanting in sundry manly virtues. I knew that Anselo rarely entered any houses save ale-houses, and that he had probably never before been in a study full of books, arms, and bric-a-brac. And he knew that I was aware of it. Now, if he had been more of a fool, like a red Indian or an old- fashioned fop, he would have affected a stoical indif- ference, for fear of showing his ignorance. As it was, he sat down in an arm-chair, glanced about him, and said just the right thing. "It must be a pleasant thing, at the end of the day, after one has been running about, to come home to such a room as this, so full of fine things, and sit down in such a comfortable chair." " Will I have STREET SKETCHES. 169 a glass of old ale ? Yes, I thank you." " That is kushto levinor [good ale]. I never tasted better." " Would I rather have wine or spirits ? No, I thank you ; such ale as this is fit for a king." Here Anselo's keen eye suddenly rested on some- thing which he understood. " What a beautiful little rifle ! That 's what I call a rinkno yag-engree [pretty gun]." " Has it been a wafedo wen [hard winter], An- selo ? " "It has been a dreadful winter, sir. We have been hard put to it sometimes for food. It 's dread- ful to think of. I 've acti'lly seen the time when I was almost desperated, and if I 'd had such a gun as that I 'm afraid, if I 'd been tempted, I could a-found it in my heart to knock over a pheasant." I looked sympathetically at Anselo. The idea of his having been brought to the very brink of such a terrible temptation and awful crime was touching. He met the glance with the expression of a good man, who had done no more than his duty, closed his eyes, and softly shook his head. Then he took another glass of ale, as if the memory of the pheasants or something connected with the subject had been too much for him, and spoke : " I came here on my horse. But he 's an ugly old white punch. So as not to discredit you, I left him standing before a gentleman's house, two doors off." Here Anselo paused. I acknowledged this touch- ing act of thoughtful delicacy by raising my glass. He drank again, then resumed : " But I feel uneasy about leaving a horse by him- self in the streets of London. He '11 stand like a driven nail wherever you put him but there's al- ways plenty of claw-hammers to draw such nails." 170 ENGLISH GYPSIES. "Don't be afraid, Anselo. The park-keeper will not let anybody take him through the gates. I '11 pay for him if he goes." But visions of a stolen horse seemed to haunt An- selo. One would have thought that something of the kind had been familiar to him. So I sent for the velveteen coat, and, folding it on his arm, he mounted the old white horse, while waving an adieu with the heavy-handled whip, rode away in the mist, and was seen no more. Farewell, farewell, thou old brown velveteen ! I had thee first in by-gone years, afar, hunting fero- cious fox and horrid hare, near Brighton, on the Downs, and wore thee well on many a sketching tour to churches old and castles dark or gray, when whi- ter went with all his raines wete. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite ! I bore thee over France unto Mar- seilles, and on the steamer where we took aboard two hundred Paynim pilgrims of Mahound. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite ! Thou wert in Naples by great Virgil's tomb, and borest dust from Posilippo's grot, and hast been wetted by the dainty spray from bays and shoals of old Etrurian name. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite ! And thou wert in the old Egyptian realm : I had thee on that morning 'neath the palms when long I lingered where of yore had stood the rose-red city, half as old as time. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite! It was a lady called thee into life. She said, Methinks ye need a velvet coat. It is a seemly guise to ride to hounds. Another gave me whip and silvered spurs. Now all have vanished in the darkening past. Ladies and all are gone into the gloom. Farewell, my coat, and benedicite ! Thou 'st had a venturous and traveled life, for thou STREET SKETCHES. 171 wert once in Moscow in the snow. A true Bohemian thou hast ever been, and as a right Bohemian thou wilt die, the garment of a roving Romany. Fain would I see and hear what thou 'rt to know of reck- less riding and the gypsy tan, of camps in dark green lanes, afar from towns. Farewell, mine coat, and benedicite ! VII. OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. ONE morning I was walking with Mr. Thomas Carlyle and Mr. Froude. We weht across Hyde Park, and paused to rest on the bridge. This is a remarkable place, since there, in the very heart of London, one sees a view which is perfectly rural. The old oaks rise above each other like green waves, the houses in the distance are country-like, while over the trees, and far away, a village-looking spire com- pletes the picture. I think that it was Mr. Froude who called my attention to the beauty of the view, and I remarked that it needed only a gypsy tent and the curling smoke to make it in all respects perfectly English. " You have paid some attention to gypsies," said Mr. Carlyle. " They 're not altogether so bad a people as many think. In Scotland, we used to see many of them. I '11 not say that they were not rovers and reivers, but they could be honest at times. The country folk feared them, but those who made friends wi' them had no cause to complain of their conduct. Once there was a man who was persuaded to lend a gypsy a large sum of money. My father knew the man. It was to*be repaid at a certain time. The day came ; the gypsy did not. And months passed, and still the creditor had nothing of money but the memory of it ; and ye remember OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 173 ' nessun maggior dolor e^ that there 's na greater grief than to remember the siller ye once had. Weel, one day the man was surprised to hear that his frien' the gypsy wanted to see him interview, ye call it in America. And the gypsy explained that, having been arrested, and unfortunately detained, by some little accident, in preeson, he had na been able to keep his engagement. 'If ye '11 just gang wi' me,' said the gypsy, ' aw '11 mak' it all right.' ' Mon, aw wull,' said the creditor, they were Scotch, ye know, and spoke in deealect. So the gypsy led the way to the house which he had inhabited, a cottage which belonged to the man himself to whom he owed the money. And there he lifted up the hearthstone ; the hard-stane they call it in Scotland, and it is called so in the prophecy of Thomas of Ercildowne. And un- der the hard-stane there was an iron pot. It was full of gold, and out of that gold the gypsy carle paid his creditor. Ye wonder how 't was come by? Well, ye '11 have heard it 's best to let sleeping dogs lie." " Yes. And what was said of the Poles who had, during the Middle Ages, a reputation almost as good as that of gypsies ? Ad secretas Poll, curas extendere noli.'''' (Never concern your soul as to the secrets of a Pole.) Mr. Carlyle's story reminds me that Walter Simp- son, in his history of them, says that the Scottish gypsies have ever been distinguished for their grati- tude to those who treated them with civility and kindness, anent which he tells a capital story, while other instances sparkle here and there with many brilliant touches in his five hundred-and-fifty-page volume. I have more than once met with Romanys, when 174 ENGLISH GYPSIES. I was in the company of men who, like Carlyle and Bilderdijk, " were also in the world of letters known," or who might say, " We have deserved to be." One of the many memories of golden days, all in the merrie tyrne of summer song in England, is of the Thames, and of a pleasure party in a little steam- launch. It was a weenie affair, just room for six forward outside the cubby, which was called the cabin ; and of these six, one was Mr. Roebuck, " the last Englishman," as some one has called him, but as the late Lord Lytton applies the same term to one of his characters about the time of the Conquest, its accuracy may be doubted. Say the last type of a certain phase of the Englishman ; say that Roebuck was the last of the old iron and oak men, the triplex CBS et robur chiefs of the Gobbet kind, and the phrase may pass. But it will only pass over into a new va- riety of true manhood. However frequently the last Englishman may die, I hope it will be ever said of him, Le roi est mort, vive le roi ! I have had talks with Lord Lytton on gypsies. He, too, was once a Romany rye in a small way, and in the gay May heyday of his young manhood once went off with a band of Romanys, and passed weeks in their tents, no bad thing, either, for anybody. I was more than once tempted to tell him the strange fact that, though he had been among the black people and thought lie had learned their language, what they had im- posed upon him for that was not Romany, but cant, or English thieves' slang. For what is given, in good faith, as the gypsy tongue in "Paul Clifford" and the " Disowned," is only the same old mumping Tcennick which was palmed off on Bampfylde Moore Carew ; or which he palmed on his readers, as the secret of OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 175 the Roms. But what is the use or humanity of disil- lusioning an author by correcting an error forty years old. If one could have corrected it in the proof, d la bonne heure ! Besides, it was of no particular conse- quence to anybody whether the characters in " Paul Clifford " called a clergyman a patter-cove or a rashai. It is a supreme moment of triumph for a man when he discovers that his specialty whatever it be is not of such value as to be worth troubling anybody with it. As for Everybody, he is fair game. The boat went up the Thames, and I remember that the river was, that morning, unusually beautiful. It is graceful, as in an outline, even when leaden with November mists, or iron-gray in the drizzle of December, but under the golden sunlight of June it is lovely. It becomes every year, with gay boating parties in semi-fancy dresses, more of a carnival, in which the carnivalers and their carnivalentines as- sume a more decided character. It is very strange to see this tendency of the age to unfold itself in new festival forms, when those who believe that there can never be any poetry or picturing in life but in the past are wailing over the vanishing of May-poles and old English sports. There may be, from time to time, a pause between the acts ; the curtain may be down a little longer than usual ; but in the long run the world-old play of the Peoples' Holiday will go on, as it has been going ever since Satan suggested that little apple-stealing excursion to Eve, which, as ex- plained by the Talmudists, was manifestly the direct cause of all the flirtations and other dreadful doings in all little outings down to the present day, in the drawing-room or " on the leads," world without end. And as the boat went along by Weybridge we 176 ENGLISH GYPSIES. passed a bank by which was a small gypsy camp ; tents and wagons, donkeys and all, reflected in the silent stream, as much as were the swans in the fore- water. And in the camp was a tall, handsome, wild beauty, named Britannia, who knew me well ; a dam- sel fond of larking, with as much genuine devil's gun- powder in her as would have made an entire pack or a Chinese hundred of sixty-four of the small crack- ers known as fast girls, in or around society. She was a splendid creature, long and lithe and lissom, but well rounded, of a figure suggestive of leaping hedges ; and as the sun shone on her white teeth and burning black eyes, there was a hint of biting, too, about her. She lay coiled and basking, in feline fash- ion, in the sun ; but at sight of me on the boat, up she bounded, and ran along the bank, easily keeping up with the steamer, and crying out to me in Rom- anes. Now it just so happened that I by no means felt certain that all of the company present were such genial Bohemians as to appreciate anything like the joyous intimacy which Britannia was manifesting, as she, Atalanta-like, coursed along. Consequently, I was not delighted with her attentions. " What a fine girl ! " said Mr. Roebuck. " How well she would look on the stage ! She seems to know you." " Certainly," said one of the ladies, " or she would not be speaking her language. Why don't you an- swer her ? Let us hear a conversation." Thus adjured, I answered, " Miri pen, miri kushti pen, beng lei tute, md rak- ker sd drovdn ! Or ma rakker Romaneskas. Man dikesa te rdnia shan akai. Miri kameli man kair OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 177 mandy lodge ! " (My sister, my nice, sweet sister ! devil take you ! don't hallo at me like that ! Or else don't talk Romany. Don't you see there are ladies here ? My dear, don't put me to shame !) " Pen the rani ta wusser mandy a trin-grushi who op,^hallo!" (Tell the lady to shy rne a shil- ling whoop !) cried the fast damsel. " Pa miri duvels kdm, pen o bero se ta duro. Mandy 'II de tute a pash-koraima keratti if tu tevel jd. G-orgie shan i foki kavakoi ! " (For the Lord's sake, sister ! the boat is too far from shore. I '11 give ytiu half a crown this evening if you '11 clear out. These be Gentiles, these here.) " It seems to be a melodious language," said Mr. Roebuck, greatly amused. " What are you saying ? " " I am telling her to hold her tongue, and go." " But how on earth does it happen that you speak such a language ? " inquired a lady. " I always thought that the gypsies only talked a kind of Eng- lish slang, and this sounds like a foreign tongue." All this time Britannia, like the Cork Leg, never tired, but kept on the chase, neck and neck, till we reached a lock, when, with a merry laugh like a child, she turned on her track and left us. " Mr. L.'s proficiency in Romany," said Mr. Roe- buck, " is well known to me. I have heard him spoken of as the successor to George Borrow." " That," I replied, " I do not deserve. There are other gentlemen in England who are by far my su- periors in knowledge of the people." And I spoke very sincerely. Apropos of Mr. George Borrow, I knew him, and a grand old fellow he was, a fresh and hearty giant, holding his six feet two or three inches as uprightly at eighty as he 12 178 ENGLISH GYPSIES. ever had at eighteen. I believe that was his age, but may be wrong. Borrow was like one of the old Norse heroes, whom he so much admired, or an old- fashioned gypsy bruiser, full of craft and merry tricks. One of these he played on me, and I bear him no mal- ice for it. The manner of the joke was this : I had written a book on the English gypsies and their lan- guage ; but before I announced it, I wrote a letter to Father George, telling him that I proposed to print it, and asking his permission to dedicate it to him. He did not answer the letter, but " worked the tip " promptly enough, for he immediately announced in the newspapers on the following Monday his " Word- Book of the Romany Language," " with many pieces in gypsy, illustrative of the way of speaking and thinking of the English gypsies, with specimens of their poetry, and an account of various things relat- ing to gypsy life in England." This was exactly what I had told him that my book would contain ; for I intended originally to publish a vocabulary. Father George covered the track by not answering my letter; but I subsequently ascertained that it had been faith- fully delivered to him by a gentleman from whom I obtained the information. It was like the contest between Hildebrand the elder and his son : " A ready trick tried Hildebrand, That old, gray -bearded man ; For when the younger raised to strike, Beneath his sword he ran." And, like the son, I had no ill feeling about it. My obligations to him for " Lavengro " and the " Rom- any Rye " and his other works are such as I owe to few men. I have enjoyed gypsying more than any OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 179 sport in the world, and I owe my love of it all to George Borrow. I have since heard that a part of Mr. Sorrow's " Romano Lavo-Lil " had been in man- uscript for thirty years, and that it might never have been published but for my own work. I hope that this is true ; for I am sincerely proud to think that I may have been in any way, directly or indi- rectly, the cause of his giving it to the world. I would gladly enough have burnt my own book, as I said, with a hearty laugh, when I saw the announce- ment of the " Lavo-Lil," if it would have pleased the old Romany rye, and I never spoke a truer word. He would not have believed it ; but it would have been true, all the same. I well remember the first time I met George Bor- row. It was in the British Museum, and I was in- troduced to him by Mrs. Estelle Lewis, now dead, the well known-friend of Edgar A. Poe. He was seated at a table, and had a large old German folio open before him. We talked about gypsies, and I told him that I had unquestionably found the word for "green," shelno, in use among the English Rom- any. He assented, and said that he knew it. I mention this as a proof of the manner in which 'the " Romano Lavo-Lil " must have been hurried, be- cause he declares in it that there is no English gypsy word for " green." In this work he asserts that the English gypsy speech does not probably amount to fourteen hundred words. It is a weakness with the Romany rye fraternity to believe that there are no words in gypsy which they do not know. I am sure that my own collection contains nearly four thou- sand Anglo-Romany terms, many of which I feared were doubtful, but which I am constantly verifying. 180 ENGLISH GYPSIES. America is a far better place in which to study the language than England. As an old Scotch gypsy said to me lately, the deepest and cleverest old gyp- sies all come over here to America, where they have grown rich, and built the old language up again. I knew a gentleman in London who was a man of extraordinary energy. Having been utterly ruined, at seventy years of age, by a relative, he left Eng- land, was absent two or three years in a foi'eign coun- try, during which time he made in business some fifty thousand pounds, and, returning, settled down in England. He had been in youth for a long time the most intimate friend of George Borrow, who was, he said, a very wild and eccentric youth. One night, when skylarking about London, Borrow was pursued by the police, as he wished to be, even as Panurge so planned as to be chased by the night-watch. He was very tall and strong in those days, a trained shoulder-hitter, and could run like a deer. He was hunted to the Thames, " and there they thought they had him." But the Romany rye made for the edge, and, leaping into the wan water, like the Squyre in the old ballad, swam to the other side, and escaped. I have conversed with Mr. Borrow on many sub- jects, horses, gypsies, and Old Irish. Anent which latter subject I have heard him declare that he doubted whether there was any man living who could really read an old Irish manuscript. I have seen the same statement made by another writer. My personal im- pressions of Mr. Borrow were very agreeable, and I was pleased to learn afterwards from Mrs. Lewis that he had expressed himself warmly as regarded myself. As he was not invariably disposed to like those whom he met, it is a source of great pleasure to me to OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 181 reflect that I have nothing but pleasant memories of the good old Romany rye, the Nestor of gypsy gen- tlemen. It is commonly reported among gypsies that Mr. Borrow was one by blood, and that his real name was Boro, or great. This is not true. He was of pure English extraction. When I first met "George Eliot" and G. H. Lewes, at their house in North Bank, the lady turned the conversation almost at once to gypsies. They spoke of having visited the Zincali in Spain, and of several very curious meetings with the Chabos. Mr. Lewes, in fact, seldom met me and we met very often about town, and at many places, especially at the Triibners' without conversing on the Romanys. The subject evidently had for him a special fascina- tion. I believe that I have elsewhere mentioned that after I returned from Russia, and had given him, by particular request, an account of my visits to the gyp- sies of St. Petersburg and Moscow, he was much strudk by the fact that I had chiromanced to the Romany clan of the latter city. To tell the fortunes of gypsy girls was, he thought, the refinement of pre- sumption. " There was in this world nothing so im- pudent as a gypsy when determined to tell a fortune ; and the idea of not one, but many gypsy girls be- lieving earnestly in my palmistry was like a right- eous retribution." The late Tom Taylor had, while a student at Cam- bridge, been aficionado, or smitten, with gypsies, and made a manuscript vocabulary of Romany words, which he allowed me to use, and from which I ob- tained several which were new to me. This fact should make all smart gypsy scholars "take tent" and heed as to believing that they know everything. 182 ENGLISH GYPSIES. I have many Anglo-Romany words purely Hindi as to origin which I have verified again and again, yet which have never appeared in print. Thus far the Romany vocabulary field has been merely scratched over. Who that knows London knoweth not Sir Patrick Colquhoun ? I made his acquaintance in 1848, when, coming over from student-life in Paris and the Revo- lution, I was most kindly treated by his family. A glorious, tough, widely experienced man he was even in early youth. For then he already bore the envi- able reputation of being the first amateur sculler on the Thames, the first gentleman light-weight boxer in England, a graduate with honors of Cambridge, a Doctor Ph. of Heidelberg, a diplomat, and a lin- guist who knew Arabic, Persian, and Gaelic, Modern Greek and the Omnium Botherum tongues. They don't make such men nowadays, or, if they do, they leave out the genial element. Years had passed, and I had returned to London in 1870, and found Sir Patrick living, as of yore, in the Temple, where I once and yet again and again dined with him. It was in the early days of this new spring of English life that we found ourselves by chance at a boat-race on the Thames. It was on the Thames, by his invitation, that I had twenty years before first seen an English regatta, and had a place in the gayly decked, superbly luncheoned barge of his club. It is a curious point in English character that the cleverest people do not realize or understand how festive and genial they really are, or how gayly and picturesquely they conduct their sports. It is a gen- erally accepted doctrine with them that they do this kind of thing better in France ; they believe sincerely OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 183 that they take their own amusements sadly ; it is the tone, the style, with the wearily-witty, dreary clowns of the weekly press, in their watery imitations of Thackeray's worst, to ridicule all English festivity and merry-making, as though sunshine had faded out of life, and God and Nature were dead, and in their place a great wind-bag Jesuit-Mallock were crying, in tones tainted with sulphuretted hydrogen, " Ah bah ! " Reader mine, I have seen many a fete in my time, all the way from illuminations of Paris to the Khe- dive's fifteen-million-dollar spree in 1873 and the last grand flash of the Roman-candle carnival of 1846, but for true, hearty enjoyment and quiet beauty give me a merry party on the Thames. Give me, I say, its sparkling waters, its green banks, the joyous, beau- tiful girls, the hearty, handsome men. Give me the boats, darting like fishes, the gay cries. And oh oh ! give me the Alsopp's ale in a quart mug, and not a remark save of approbation when I empty it. I had met Sir Patrick in the crowd, and our conver- sation turned on gypsies. When living before-time in Roumania, he had Romany servants, and learned a little of their language. Yes, he was inclined to be "affected" into the race, and thereupon we went gypsying. Truly, we had not far to seek, for just outside the crowd a large and flourishing community of the black-blood had set itself up in the pivlioi (cocoa-nut) or Jcashta (stick) business, and as it was late in the afternoon, and the entire business-world was about as drunk as mere beer could make it, the scene was not unlively. At that time I was new to England, and unknown to every gypsy on the ground. In after-days I learned to know them well, very well, for they were chiefly Coopers and their congeners, 184 ENGLISH GYPSIES. who came to speak of me as their rye and own spe- cial property or proprietor, an allegiance which in- volved on one side an amount of shillings and beer which concentrated might have set up a charity, but which was duly reciprocated on the other by jocular tenures of cocoa-nuts, baskets, and choice and deep words in the language of Egypt. As we approached the cock-shy, where sticks were cast at cocoa-nuts, a young gypsy chai, whom I learned to know in after-days as Athalia Cooper, asked me to buy some sticks. A penny a throw, all the cocoa-nuts I could hit to be my own. I declined ; she became urgent, jolly, riotous, insistive. I endured it well, for I held the winning cards. Qui minus propere, minus prospere. And then, as her voice rose crescendo into a bawl, so that all the Romanys around laughed aloud to see the green Gorgio so chaffed and bothered, I bent me low, and whispered softly in her ear a single monosyllable. Why are all those sticks dropped so suddenly? Why does Athalia in a second become sober, and stand up staring at me, all her chaff and urgency for- gotten. Quite polite and earnest now. But there is joy behind in her heart. This is a game, a jolly game, and no mistake. And uplifting her voice again, as the voice of one who findeth an exceeding great treasure even in the wilderness, she cried aloud, "It 's a Romany rye!" The spiciest and saltest and rosiest of Sir Patrick's own stories, told after dinner over his own old port to a special conventicle of clergymen about town, was never received with such a roar of delight as that cry of Athalia's was by the Romany clan. Up went three cheers at the find ; further afield went the shout pro- OF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 185 claiming the discovery of an aristocratic stranger of their race, a rye, who was to them as wheat, a gypsy gentleman. Neglecting business, they threw down their sticks, and left their cocoanuts to grin in solitude ; the dyes turned aside from fortune-telling to see what strange fortune had sent such a visitor. In ten minutes Sir Patrick and I were surrounded by such a circle of sudden admirers and vehement applauders, as it seldom happens to any mortal to acquire out of Ireland at such exceedingly short notice and on such easy terms. They were not particular as to what sort of a gypsy I was, or where I came from, or any nonsense of that sort, you know. It was about cerevisia vincit omnia, or the beery time of day with them, and they cared not for anything. I was extremely welcome ; in short, there was poetry in me. I had come down on them by a way that was dark and a trick that was vain, in the path of mystery, and dropped on Athalia and picked her up. It was gypsily done and very creditable to me, and even Sir Patrick was regarded as one to be honored as an accomplice. It is a charm- ing novelty in every life to have the better class of one's own kind come into it, and nobody feels so keenly as a jolly Romany that jucundum nihil est nisi quodreflcit varietas naught pleases us without variety. Then and there I drew to me the first threads of what became in after-days a strange and varied skein of humanity. There was the Thames upon a holiday. Now I look back to it, I ask, Ubi sunt f (Where are they all?) Joshua Cooper, as good and earnest a Rom as ever lived, in his grave, with more than one of those who made my acquaintance by hurrahing for 186 ENGLISH GYPSIES. me. Some in America, some wandering wide. Yet there by Weybridge still the Thames runs on. By that sweet river I made many a song. One of these, to the tune of " Waves in Sunlight Dancing," rises and falls in memory like a fitful fairy coming and going in green shadows, and that it may not perish utterly I here give it a place : AVELLA PAEL PANI. AV kushto parl o pani, Av' kushto mir' akai ! Mi kameli chovihani, Avel ke tiro rye ! Shan raklia rinkenidiri, Mukkellan rinkeni se ; Kek rakli 'dre i temia Se rinkenidiri mi. Shan dudnidiri yakka, Mukkelan dudeni; Kek yakk peshel' sa kushti Pa miro kameli zi. Shan balia longi diri, Mukk 'lende bori 'pre, Kek waveri raklia balia, Te lian man opre". Yoi lela angustrini, I miri tacheni, Kek waver mush jinella, Sa dovo covva se. Adre, adre" o doeyav Patrinia pellelan, Kenna yek chumer ke"rdo O wavero well' au. Te wenna butidiri, Ke jana sig akoi QF CERTAIN GENTLEMEN AND GYPSIES. 187 Sa sig sa yeck si gillo Shan waveri adoi. Avella parl o pani, Avella sig akai ! Mi kamli tani-rani Avell' ke tiro rye ! COME OVER THE EIVEE. love, come o'er the water, love, where'er you be ! My own sweetheart, my darling, Come over the river to me ! If any girls are fairer, Then fairer let them be ; No maid in all the country Is half so fair to me. If other eyes are brighter, Then brighter let them shine ; 1 know that none are lighter Upon this heart of mine. If other's locks are longer, Then longer let them grow ; Hers are the only fish-lines Which ever caught me so. She wears upon her finger A ring we know so well, And we and that ring only Know what the ring can tell. From trees into the water Leaves fall and float away, So kisses come and leave us, A thousand in a day. Yet though they come by thousands, Yet still they show their face ; 188 ENGLISH GYPSIES. As soon as one has left us Another fills its place. love, come o'er the water, O love, where'er you be ! My own sweetheart, my darling, Come over the river to me ! WELSH GYPSIES. I. MAT WOODS THE FIDDLER. THE gypsies of Wales are to those of England what the Welsh themselves are to the English ; more antique and quaint, therefore to a collector of human bric-a-brac more curious. The Welsh Rom is spe- cially grateful for kindness or courtesy ; he is deeper as to language, and preserves many of the picturesque traits of his race which are now so rapidly vanishing. But then he has such excellent opportunity for gypsy- ing. In Wales there are yet thousands of acres of wild land, deep ravines, rocky corners, and roadside nooks, where he can boil the kettle and hatch the tan, or pitch his tent, undisturbed by the rural police- man. For it is a charming country, where no one need weary in summer, when the days are long, or in early autumn, " When the barley is ripe, And the frog doth pipe, In golden stripe And green all dressed ; When the red apples Boll in the chest." Then it is pleasant walking in Wales, and there too at times, between hedge-rows, you may meet with the Romany. 190 WELSH GYPSIES. I was at Aberystwith by the sea, and one afternoon we went, a party of three gentlemen and three ladies, in a char-a-banc, or wagonette, to drive. It was a pleasant afternoon, and we had many a fine view of distant mountains, on whose sides were mines of lead with silver, and of which there were legends from the time of Queen Elizabeth. The hills looked leaden and blue in the distance, while the glancing sea far beyond recalled silver, for the alchemy of imagery, at least, is never wanting to supply ideal metals, though the real may show a sad deficit in the returns. As we drove we suddenly overtook a singular party, the first of whom was the leader, who had lagged be- hind. He was a handsome, slender, very dark young man, carrying a violin. Before him went a little open cart, in which lay an old woman, and by her a harp With it walked a good-looking gypsy girl, and an- other young man, not a gypsy. He was by far the handsomest young fellow, in form and features, whom I ever met among the agricultural class in England ; we called him a peasant Apollo. It be- came evident that the passional affinity which had drawn this rustic to the gypsy girl, and to the roads, was according to the law of natural selection, for they were wonderfully well matched. The young man had the grace inseparable from a fine figure and a handsome face, while the girl was tall, lithe, and pantherine, with the diavolesque charm which, though often attributed by fast-fashionable novelists to their heroines, is really never found except among the low- born beauties of nature. It is the beauty of the Imp and of the Serpent ; it fades with letters ; it dies in the drawing-room or on the stage. You are mistaken MAT WOODS THE FIDDLER. 191 when you think you see it coming out of the syna- gogue, unless it be a very vulgar one. Your Lahova has it not, despite her black eyes, for she is too clever and too conscious ; the devil-beauty never knows how to read, she is unstudied and no actress. Rachel and the Bernhardt have it not, any more than Saint Agnes or Miss Blanche Lapin. It is not of good or of evil, or of culture, which is both ; it is all and only of nature, and it does not know itself. As the wagonette stopped I greeted the young man at first in English, then in Romany. When he heard the gypsy tongue he started, his countenance expressing the utmost surprise and delight. As if he could hardly believe in such a phenomenon he in- quired, "Romany?" and as I nodded assent, he clasped my hand, the tears coming into his eyes. Such manifestations are not common among gypsies, but I can remember how one, the wife of black Ben Lee, was thus surprised and affected. How well I recall the time and scene, by the Thames, in the late twilight, when every tree and twig was violet black against the amber sky, where the birds were chirp- chattering themselves to roost and rest, and the river rippled and murmured a duet with the evening breeze. I was walking homeward to Oatlands when I met the tawny Sinaminta, bearing her little stock of bas- kets to the tent and van which I had just quitted, and where Ben and his beautiful little boy were light- ing the al fresco fire. " I have prayed to see this day ! " exclaimed the gypsy woman. " I have so wanted to see the Romany rye of the Coopers. And I laid by a little delaben, a small present, for you when we should meet. It 's a photograph of Ben and me and our child." I might have forgotten the evening 192 WELSH GYPSIES. and the amber sky, rippling river and dark-green hedge-rows, but for this strange meeting and greeting of an unknown friend, but a few kind words fixed them all for life. That must be indeed a wonderful landscape which humanity does not make more im- pressive. I spoke but a few words to the gypsy with the violin, and we drove on to a little wayside inn, where we alighted and rested. After a while the gypsies came along. "And now, if you will, let us have a real frolic," I said to my friends. A word was enough. A quart of ale, and the fiddle was set going, and I sang in Romany, and the rustic landlord and his household wondered what sort of guests we could be. That they had never before entertained such a mixed party I can well believe. Here, on one hand, were indubi- table swells, above their usual range ; there, on the other, were the dusky vagabonds of the road ; and it could be no common condescending patronage, for I was speaking neither Welsh nor English, and our friendly fraternity was evident. Yes, many a time, in England, have I seen the civil landlady or the neat-handed Phillis awed with bewilderment, as I have introduced Plato Buckland, or the most dis- reputable-looking but oily yea, glycerine-politeful old Windsor Frog, into the parlor, and conversed with him in mystic words. Such an event is a rare joy to the gypsy. For he loves to be lifted up among men ; he will tell you with pride of the times when he was pointed at, and people said, "He 's the man ! " and how a real gentleman once invited him into his house and gave him a glass of wine. But to enter the best room of the familiar tavern, to order, in politest but MAT WOODS THE FIDDLER. 193 imperative tones, "beer" sixpenny beer for him- self and "the other gentleman," is indeed bliss. Then, in addition to the honor of moving in distinguished society, before the very eyes and in the high places of those who have hitherto always considered him as a lowly cuss, the Romany realizes far more than the common peasant the contrast-contradiction, or the humor of the drama, its bit of mystification, and es- pecially the mystification of the house-folk. This is unto him the high hour of the soul, and it is not for- gotten. It passes unto the golden legends of the heart, and you are tenderly enshrined in it. Once, when I was wandering afoot with old Cooper, we stopped at an inn, and in a room by ourselves or- dered luncheon. The gypsy might have had poultry of the best ; he preferred cold pork. While the at- tendant was in the room, he sat with exemplary dig- nity at the table ; but as the girl left, he followed her step sounds with his ears, like a dog, moved his head, glanced at me with a nod, turned sideways from the table, and, putting his plate on his knees, proceeded to eat without a fork. " For it is n't proper for me to eat at the table with you, or as you do." The Welsh gypsy played well, and his sister touched the harp and sang, the ale circulated, and the villagers, assembling, gazed in a crowd into the hall. Then the girl danced solo, just as I have seen her sisters do in Egypt and in Russia, to her brother's fiddling. Even so of old, Syrian and Egyptian girls haunted .gardens and taverns, and danced pas seul all over the Roman empire, even unto Spain, behaving so gypsily that wise men have conjectured that they were gypsies in very truth. And who shall say they were not ? For it is 13 194 WELSH GYPSIES. possible that prehistorically, and beyond all records of Persian Luri and Syrian Ballerine and Egyptian Almeb, there was all over the East an outflowing of these children of art from one common primeval In- dian stock. From one fraternity, in Italy, at the present day, those itinerant pests, the hand-organ players, proceed to the ends of the earth and to the gold-diggings thereof, and time will yet show that before all time, or in its early dawn, there were root- born Romany itinerants singing, piping, and dancing unto all the known world ; yea, and into the unknown darkness beyond, in partibus infidelium. A gentleman who was in our party had been long in the East. I had known him in Alexandria during the carnival, and he had lived long time outre mer, in India. Hearing me use the gypsy numerals yeck, dui, trin, shtor, panj, he proceeded to count in Hindustani or Persian, in which the same words from one to ten are almost identical with Romany. All of this was carefully noted by the old gypsy mother, as, also, that my friend is of dark complexion, with sparkling black eyes. Reduced in dress, or di- luted down to worn corduroy and a red tie, he might easily pass muster, among the Sons of the Road, as one of them. And now the ladies must, of course, have their fort- unes told, and this, I could observe, greatly aston- ished the gypsies in their secret souls, though they put a cool face on it. That we, ourselves, were some kind of a mysterious high-caste Romany they had already concluded, and what faith could we put in dukkerin f But as it would indubitably bring forth shillings to their benefit, they wisely raised no ques- tions, but calmly took this windfall, which had fallen, MAT WOODS THE FIDDLER. 195 as it were, from the skies, even as they had accepted the beer, which had come, like a providential rain, unto them, m the thirst of a dry journey. It is customary for all gypsy sorceresses to take those who are to be fortune-told aside, and, if possible, into a room by themselves. This is done partly to enhance the mystery of the proceeding, and partly to avoid the presence of witnesses to what is really an illegal act. And as the old sorceress led a lady into the little parlor, the gypsy man, whose name was Mat, glanced up at me, with a droll, puzzled expres- sion, and said, " Patchessa tu adovo?" (Do you believe in that ?) With a wink, I answered, " Why not ? I, too, tell fortunes myself." Anch io sono pittore. It seemed to satisfy him, for he replied, with a nod-wink, and proceeded to pour forth the balance of his thoughts, if he had any, into the music of his violin. When the ladies had all been instructed as to their future, my friend, who had been in the East, must needs have his destiny made known unto him. He did not believe in this sort of thing, you know, of course not. But he had lived a long time among Orientals, and he just happened to wish to know how certain speculations would fall out, and he loves, above all things, a lark, or anything out of the com- mon. So he went in. And when alone with the sybil, she began to talk to him in Romany. " Oh, I say, now, old lady, stow that ! " he ex- claimed. " I don't understand you." " You don't understand me ! " exclaimed the for- tune-teller. " Perhaps you did n't understand your own mother when she talked Romany to you. What's the use of your tryin' to make yourself out a Gorgio 196 WELSH GYPSIES. to me ? Don't I know our people ? Did n't your friend there talk Romanes? Isn't he all Romanes- kas ? And did n't I hear you with my own ears count up to ten in Romany ? And now, after that, you would deny your own blood and people ! Yes, you Ve dwelt in Gorgines so long that you think your eyes are blue and your hair is yellow, my son, and you have been far over the sea ; but wherever you went you knew Romanes, if you don't know your own color. But you shall hear your fortune. There is lead in the mines and silver in the lead, and wealth for htm who is to win it, and that will be a dark man who has been nine times over the sea, and eaten his bread under the black tents, and been three times near death, once from a horse, and once from a man, and once through a woman. And you will know something you don't know now before a month is over, and something will be found that is now hid- den, and has been hidden since the world was made. And there 's a good fortune coming to the man it was made for, before the oldest tree that 's a-growing was a seed, and that 's a man as knows how to count Romanes up to ten, and many a more thing beside that, that he 's learned beyond the great water." And so we went our ways, the harp and violin sounds growing fainter as we receded, till they were like the buzzing of bees in drying clover, and the twilight grew rosier brown. I never met Mat Woods again, though I often heard of his fame as a fiddler. Whether my Anglo-Indian friend found the fortune so vaguely predicted is to me as yet unknown. But I believe that the prediction encouraged him. That there are evils in palmistry, and sin in card-drawing, and iniquity in coffee-grounding, and vice in all the MAT WOODS THE FIDDLER. 197 planets, is established by statute, and yet withal I incline to believe that the art of prediction cheers up many a despondent soul, and does some little good, even as good ale, despite the wickedness of drinking, makes some hearts merry and others stronger. If there are foolish maids who have had their heads turned by being told of coming noblemen and pro- spective swells, who loved the ground they trod on, and were waiting to woo and win and wed, and if the same maidens herein described have thereby, in the manner set forth, been led by the aforesaid devices unto their great injury, as written in the above indictment, it may also per contra and on the other hand be pleaded that divers girls, to wit, those who believe in prediction, have, by encouragement and hope to them held out of legally marrying sundry young men of good estate, been induced to behave better than they would otherwise have done, and led by this hope have acted more morally than was their wont, and thereby lifted themselves above the lowly state of vulgarity, and even of vice, in which they would otherwise have groveled, hoveled, or cottaged. And there have been men who, cherishing in their hearts a prediction, or, what amounts to the same thing, a conviction, or a set fancy, have persevered in hope until the hope was realized. You, O Chris- tian, who believe in a millennium, you, O Jew, who expect a Messiah, and await the fulfillment of your dukkerin, are both in the right, for both will come true when you make them do so. II. THE PIOUS WASHERWOMAN. THERE is not much in life pleasanter than a long ramble on the road in leaf-green, sun-gold summer. Then it is Nature's merry-time, when fowls in woods them maken blithe, and the crow preaches from the fence to his friends afield, and the honeysuckle wink- eth to the wild rose in the hedge when she is wooed by the little buzzy bee. In such times it is good for the heart to wander over the hills and far away, into haunts known of old, where perhaps some semi-Saxon church nestles in a hollow behind a hill, where grass o'evgrows each mouldering tomb, and the brook, as it ripples by in a darksome aldered hollow, speaks in a language which man knows no more, but which is answered in the same forgotten tongue by the thou- sand-year yew as it rustles in the breeze. And when there are Runic stones in this garden of God, where He raises souls, I often fancy that this old dialect is written in their rhythmic lines. The yew-trees were planted by law, lang-syne, to yield bows to the realm, and now archery is dead and Martini-Henry has taken its place, but the yews still live, and the Runic fine art of the twisted lines on the tombs, after a thou- sand years' sleep, is beginning to revive. Every- thing at such a time speaks of joy and resurrection, tree and tomb and bird and flower and bee. These are all memories of a walk from the town THE PIOUS WASHERWOMAN. 199 of Aberystwith, in Wales, which walk leads by an ancient church, in the soul garden of which are two Runic cross tombstones. One day I went farther afield to a more ancient shrine, on the top of a high mountain. This was to the summit of Cader Idris, sixteen miles off. On this summit there is a Druid- ical circle, of which the stones, themselves to ruin grown, are strange and death-like old. Legend says that this is the burial-place of Taliesin, the first of Welsh bards, the primeval poet of Celtic time. Who- ever sleeps on the grave will awake either a madman or a poet, or is at any rate unsafe to become one or the other. I went, with two friends, afoot on this little pilgrimage. Both were professors at one of the great universities. The elder is a gentleman of great benevolence, learning, and gentleness; the other, a younger man, has been well polished and sharpened by travel in many lands. It is rumored that he has preached Islam in a mosque unto the Moslem even unto taking up a collection, which is the final test of the faith which reaches forth into a bright eternity. That he can be, as I have elsewhere noted, a Persian unto Persians, and a Romany among Roms, and a professional among the hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as surely as that he knows the roads and all the devices and little games of them that dwell thereon. Though elegant enough in his court dress and rapier when he kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the queen, he appears such an abandoned rough when he goes a-fishing that the innocent and guile- less gypsies, little suspecting that a rye lies perdu in his wrap-rascal, will then confide in him as if he and in-doors had never been acquainted. We had taken with us a sparing lunch of thin 200 WELSH GYPSIES. sandwiches and a frugal flask of modest, blushing brandy, which we diluted at a stingy little fountain spring which dropped economically through a rift in the rock, as if its nymph were conscious that such a delicious drink should not be wasted. As it was, it refreshed us, and we were resting in a blessed repose under the green leaves, when we heard footsteps, and an old woman came walking by. She was the ideal of decent and extreme poverty. I never saw anybody who was at once so poor and so clean. In her face and in her thin garments was marked the mute, resolute struggle between need and self-respect, which, to him who understands it, is as brave as any battle between life and death. She walked on as if she would have gone past without a word, but when we greeted her she paused, and spoke respectfully. Without forwardness she told her sad and simple story : how she belonged to the Wesleyan confession, how her daughter was dying in the hos- pital at Caernarvon ; how she had walked sixty miles to see her, and hoped to get there in time to close her eyes. In reply to a question as to her means, she ad- mitted that they were exhausted, but that she could get through without money ; she did not beg. And then came naturally enough the rest of the little art- less narrative, as it generally happens among the simple annals of the poor : how she had been for forty years a washerwoman, and had a letter from her clergyman. There was a tear in the eye of the elder professor, and his hand was in his pocket. The younger smoked in silence. I was greatly moved myself, perhaps bewildered would be the better word, when, all at once, as the old woman turned in the sunlight, I caught the expression of the corner of an eye! THE PIOUS WASHERWOMAN. 201 My friend Salaman, who boasts that he is of the last of the Sadducees, that strange, ancient, and se- cret sect, who disguise themselves as the Neu Re- formirte, declares that the Sephardim may be dis- tinguished from the Ashkenazim as readily as from the confounded Goyim, by the corners of their eyes. This he illustrated by pointing out to me, as they walked by in the cool of the evening, the difference between the eyes of Fraulein Eleonora Kohn and Senorita Linda Abarbanel and divers and sundry other young ladies, the result being that I received in return thirty-six distinct ceillades, several of which expressed indignation, and in all of which there was evidently an entire misconception of my object in looking at them. Now the eyes of the Sephardesses are unquestionably fascinating; and here it may be recalled that, in the Middle Ages, witches were also recognized by having exactly the same corners, or peaks, to the eye. This is an ancient mystery of darksome lore, that the enchantress always has the bird-peaked eye, which betokens danger to somebody, be she of the Sephardim, or an ordinary witch or enchantress, or a gypsy. Now, as the old Wesley an washerwoman turned around in the sunshine, I saw the witch-pointed eye and the glint of the Romany. And then I glanced at her hands, and saw that they had not been long familiar with wash-tubs ; for, though clean, they were brown, and had never been blanched with an age of soap-suds. And I spoke suddenly, and said, " Can tute raJcJcer Romanes, miri dye ? " (Can you speak Romany, my mother ?) And she answered, as if bewildered, 202 WELSH GYPSIES. " The Lord forbid, sir, that I should talk any of them wicked languages." The younger professor's eyes expressed dawning delight. I followed my shot with, " Tute need n't be attrash to rakker. Mandy's been aprS the drom mi-kokero." (You need n't be afraid to speak. I have been upon the road myself.) And, still more confused, she answered in. Eng- lish, " Why, sir, you be upon the road now ! " "It seems to me, old lady," remarked the younger professor, "that you understand Romany very well for one who has been for forty years in the Method- ist communion." It may be observed that he here confounded wash- ing with worshiping. The face of the true believer was at this point a fine study. All her confidence had deserted her. Whether she thought we were of her kind in dis- guise, or that, in the unknown higher world of re- spectability, there might be gypsies of corresponding rank, even as there might be gypsy angels among the celestial hierarchies, I cannot with confidence assert. About a week ago a philologist and purist told me that there is no exact synonym in English for the word flabbergasted, as it expresses a peculiar state of bewilderment as yet unnamed by scholars, and it ex- actly sets forth the condition in which our virtuous poverty appeared. She was, indeed, flabbergasted. Comix scorpum rapuit, the owl had come down on the rabbits, and lo ! they had fangs. I resumed, " Now, old lady, here is a penny. You are a ver^r poor person, and I pity you so much that I give you this penny for your poverty. But there is a pocket- THE PIOUS WASHERWOMAN. 203 ful where this came from, and you shall have the lot if you '11 rdkker," that is, talk gypsy. And at that touch of the Ithuriel spear the old toad flashed up into the Romany devil, as with gleam- ing eyes and a witch-like grin she cried in a mixture of gypsy and tinker languages, "Gents, I '11 have tute jin when you tharis mandy you rakker a reg'lar fly old bewer." Which means, " Gentlemen, I '11 have you know, when you talk to me, you talk to a reg'lar shrewd old female thief." The face of the elder professor was a study of as- tonishment for Lavater. His fingers relaxed their grasp of the shilling, his hand was drawn from his pocket, and his glance, like Bill Nye's, remarked: " Can this be ? " He tells the story to this day, and always adds, " I never was so astonished in my life." But the venerable washerwoman was also changed, and, the mask once thrown aside, she became as fes- tive as a witch on the Brocken. Truly, it is a great comfort to cease playing a part, particularly a pious one, and be at home and at ease among your like ; and better still if they be swells. This was the de- light of Anderson's ugly duck when it got among the swans, " and, blest sensation, felt genteel." And to show her gratitude, the sorceress, who really seemed to have grown several shades darker, insisted on tell- ing our fortunes. I think it was to give vent to her feelings in defiance of the law that she did this ; cer- tain it was that just then, under the circumstances, it was the only way available in which the law could be broken. And as it was, indeed, by heath and hill that the priestess of the hidden spell bade the Palmer from over the sea hold out his palm. And she began in the usual sing-song tone, mocking the style of 204 WELSH GYPSIES. gypsy fortune-tellers, and satirizing herself. And thus she spoke, " You 're born under a lucky star, my good gentle- man, and you 're a married man ; but there 's a black- eyed young lady that 's in love with you " " Oh, mother of all the thieves ! " I cried, " you 've put the dukkerin on the wrong man. I 'm the one that the dark girls go after." " Yes, my good gentleman. She 's in love with you both." " And now tell my fortune ! " I exclaimed, and with a grim expression, casting up my palm, I said, " Pen mengy if mandy 'II be bitchade pddel for chorin a gry> or nasherdo for mSrin a gav-mush." (Tell me if I am to be transported for stealing a horse, or hung for killing a policeman.) The old woman's face changed. " You '11 never need to steal a horse. The man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who you are now ; you 're not one of these tourists. You 're the boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag about it in your house, and well you may, that Old Moll of the Roads could n't take you in, and that you found her out. Never another rye but you will ever say that again. Never." And she went dancing away in the sunshine, ca- pering backwards along the road, merrily shaking the pennies in her hand for music, while she sang some- thing in gypsy, witch to the last, vanishing as witches only can. And there came over me a feel- ing as of the very olden time, and some memory of another witch, who had said to another man, " Thou art no traveler. Great master, I know thee now ; " THE PIOUS WASHERWOMAN. 205 and who, when he called her the mother of the giants, replied, " Go thy way, and boast at home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never." That was the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time ; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the world away to Romany s and rags when the gods are gone. When I laughed at the younger professor for con- founding forty years in the church with as many at the wash-tub, he replied, " Cleanliness is with me so near to godliness that it is not remarkable that in my hurry I mistook one for the other." So we went on and climbed Cader Idris, and found the ancient grave of rocks in a mystic circle, whose meaning lies buried with the last Druid, who would perhaps have told you they were " Seats of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand But wrocht by Nature as it ane house had bene For Nymphes, goddis of floudes and woodis grene." And we saw afar the beautiful scene, " where fluddes rynnys in the foaming sea," as Gawain Doug- las sings, and where, between the fresh water and salt, stands a village, even where it stood in earliest Cym- ric prehistoric dawn, and the spot where ran the weir in which the prince who was in grief because his weir yielded no fish, at last fished up a poet, even as Pha- raoh's daughter fished out a prophet. I shall not soon forget that summer day, nor the dream-like pano- rama, nor the ancient grave ; nor how the younger professor lay down on the seat of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand, and declared he had a nap, just enough to make him a poet. To prove which he 206 WELSH GYPSIES. wrote a long poem on the finding of Taliesin in the nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be behindhand, wrote another, in imi- tation of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen, which were so greatly admired as tributes to Welsh poetry that they were forthwith translated faithfully into lines of consonants, touched up with so many w's that they looked like saws ; and they circulated even unto Llan- dudno, and, for aught I know, may be sung at Eisted- fodds, now and ever, to the twanging of small harps, in scecula sceculorum. Truly, the day which had begun with a witch ended fitly enough at the tomb of a prophet poet. m. THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. ABEEYSTWITH is a little fishing-village, which has of late years first bloomed as a railway-station, and then fruited into prosperity as a bathing-place. Like many parvenus, it makes a great display of its Nor- man ancestor, the old castle, saying little about the long centuries of plebeian obscurity in which it was once buried. This castle, after being woefully neg- lected during the days when nobody cared for its early respectability, has been suddenly remembered, now that better times have come, and, though not restored, has been made comely with grass banks, benches, and gravel walks, reminding one of an Irish grand- father in America, taken out on a Sunday with " the childher," and looking "gintale" in the clean shirt and whole coat unknown to him for many a decade in Tipperary. Of course the castle and the wealth, or the hotels and parade, are well to the fore, or boldly displayed, as Englishly as possible, while the little Welsh town shrinks quietly into the hollow behind. And being new to prosperity, Aberystwith is also a little muddled as to propriety. It would regard with horror the idea of allowing ladies and gentlemen to bathe together, even though completely clad ; but it sees nothing out of the way when gentlemen in pre- fig-leaf costume disport themselves, bathing just be- fore the young ladies' boarding-school and the chief 208 WELSH GYPSIES. hotel, or running joyous races on the beach. I shall never forget the amazement and horror with which an Aberystwithienne learned that in distant lands ladies and gentlemen went into the water arm in arm, although dressed. But when it was urged that the Aberystwith system was somewhat peculiar, she re- plied, " Oh, that is a very different thing ! " On which words for a text a curious sermon might be preached to the Philistiny souls who live perfectly reconciled to absurd paradoxes, simply because they are accustomed to them. Now, of all human beings, I think the gypsies are freest from trouble with par- adoxes as to things being different or alike, and the least afflicted with moral problems, burning questions, social puzzles, or any other kind of mental rubbish. They are even freer than savages or the heathen in this respect, since of all human beings the Fijian, New Zealander, Mpongwe, or Esquimaux is most ter- ribly tortured with the laws of etiquette, religion, social position, and propriety. Among many of these heathen unfortunates the meeting with an equal in- volves fifteen minutes of bowing, re-bowing, surre- bowing, and rejoinder-bowing, with complementary complimenting, according to old custom, while the worship of Mrs. Grundy through a superior requires a half hour wearisome beyond belief. " In Fiji," says Miss-C. F. Gordon Gumming, "strict etiquette rules every action of life, and the most trifling mistake in such matters would cause as great dissatisfaction as a breach in the order of precedence at a European cer- emonial." In dividing cold baked missionary at a dinner, especially if a chief be present, the host com- mitting the least mistake as to helping the proper guest to the proper piece in the proper way would THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 209 find himself promptly put down in the menu. In Fiji, as in all other countries, this punctilio is noth- ing but the direct result of ceaseless effort on the part of the upper classes to distinguish themselves from the lower. Cannibalism is a joint sprout from the same root ; " the devourers of the poor " are the scorners of the humble and lowly, and they are all grains of the same corn, of the devil's planting, all the world over. Perhaps the quaintest error which haunts the world in England and America is that so much of this stuff as is taught by rule or fashion as laws for " the elite " is the very nucleus of enlight- enment and refinement, instead of its being a remnant of barbarism. And when we reflect on the degree to which this na'ive and child-like faith exists in the United States, as shown by the enormous amount of information in certain newspapers as to what is the latest thing necessary to be done, acted, or suffered in order to be socially saved, I surmise that some future historian will record that we, being an envious peo- ple, turned out the Chinese, because we could not endure the presence among us of a race so vastly our superiors in all that constituted the true principles of culture and " custom." Arthur Mitchell, in inquiring What is Civilization ? l remarks that "all the things which gather round or grow upon a high state of civilization are not neces- sarily true parts of it. These conventionalities are often regarded as its very essence." And it is true that the greater the fool or snob, the deeper is the conviction that the conventional is the core of " cult- ure." " ' It is not genteel,' ' in good form,' or ' the mode,' to do this or do that, or say this or say that." 1 The Past in the Present, part 2, lect. 3. 14 210 WELSH GYPSIES. " Such things are spoken of as marks of a high civili- zation, or by those who do not confound civilization with culture as differentiators between the cultured and the uncultured." Dr. Mitchell " neither praises nor condemns these things;" but it is well for a man, while he is about it, to know his own mind, and I, for myself, condemn them with all my heart and soul, whenever anybody declares that such brass counters in the game of life are real gold, and insists that I shall accept them as such. For small play in a very small way with small people, I would endure them ; but many men and nearly all women make their cap- ital of them. And whatever may be said in their favor, it cannot be denied that they constantly lead to lying and heartlessness. Even Dr. Mitchell, while he says he does not condemn them, proceeds immedi- ately to declare that " while we submit to them they constitute a sort of tyranny, under which we fret and secretly pine for escape. Does not the exquisite of Rotten Row weary for his flannel shirt and shooting- jacket ? Do not ' well-constituted ' men want to fish and shoot or kill something, themselves, by climb- ing mountains, when they can find nothing else ? In short, does it not appear that these conventionalities are irksome, and are disregarded when the chance presents itself? And does it not seem as if there were something in human nature pulling men back to a rude and simple life ? " To find that men suffer un- der the conventionalities, " adds, on the whole," says our canny, prudent Scot, "to the respectability of human nature." Tu ha ragione (right you are), Dr. Mitchell, there. For the conventional, whether found among Fijians as they were, or in Mayfair as it is, whenever it is vexatious and merely serves as a THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 211 cordon to separate " sassiety v from society, detracts from the respectability of humanity, and is in itself vulgar. If every man in society were a gentleman and every woman a lady, there would be no more conventionalism. Usus est tyrannus (custom is a ty- rant), or, as the Talmud proverb saith, "Custom is the plague of wise men, but is the idol of fools." And lie was a wise Jew, whoever he was, who declared it. But let us return to our black sheep, the gypsy. While happy in not being conventional, and while rejoicing, or at least unconsciously enjoying freedom from the bonds of etiquette, he agrees with the Chi- nese, red Indians, May Fairies, and Fifth Avenoodles in manifesting under the most trying circumstances Miat imperturbability which was once declared by an eminent Philadelphian to be "the Corinthian orna- ment of a gentleman." He who said this builded better than he knew, for the ornament in question, if purely Corinthian, is simply brass. One morning I was sauntering with the Palmer in Aberystwith, when we met with a young and good-looking gypsy woman, with whom we entered into conversation, learning that she was a Bosville, and acquiring other items of news as to Egypt and the roads, and then left. We had not gone far before we found a tinker. He who catches a tinker has got hold of half a gypsy and a whole cosmopolite, however bad the catch may be. He did not understand the greeting Sarishan! he really could not remember to have heard it. He did not know any gypsies, "he could not get along with them." They were a bad lot. He had seen some gypsies three weeks before on the road. They were curious dark people, who lived in tents. He could not talk Romany. 212 WELSH GYPSIES. This was really pitiable. It was too much. The Palmer informed him that he was wasting his best opportunities, and that it was a great pity that any man who lived on the roads should be so ignorant. The tinker never winked. In the goodness of our hearts we even offered to give him lessons in the kalo jib, or black language. The grinder was as calm as a Belgravian image. And as we turned to depart the professor said, "Mandy'd del tute a shahori to pi moro kamma- ben, if tute jinned sa mandi pukkers." (I 'd give you a sixpence to drink our health, if you knew what I am saying.) With undisturbed gravity the tinker replied, "Now I come to think of it, I do remember to have heard so methin' in the parst like that. It's a conwivial expression arskin' me if I won't have a tan- ner for ale. Which I will." "Now since you take such an interest in gypsies," I answered, " it is a pity that you should know so lit- tle about them. I have seen them since you have. I saw a nice young woman, one of the Bosvilles here, not half an hour ago. Shall I introduce you?" " That young woman," remarked the tinker, with the same immovable countenance, "is my wife. And I 've come down here, by app'intment, to meet some Romany pals." And having politely accepted his sixpence, the grid- dler went his way, tinkling his bell, along the road. He did not disturb himself that his first speeches did not agree with his last ; he was not in the habit of being disturbed about anything, and he knew that no one ever learned Romany without learning with it not to be astonished at any little inconsistencies. Serene THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 213 and polished as a piece of tin in the sunshine, he would not stoop to be put out by trifles. He was a typical tinker. He knew that the world had made up prov- erbs expressing the utmost indifference either for a tinker's blessing or a tinker's curse, and he retali- ated by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or banned him. In all ages and in all lands the tinker has always been the type of this droning indifference, which goes through life bagpiping its single melody, or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs, " Tou- jours Santerre." " Es ist und bleibt das alte Lied Von dem versoff'nen Pfanuenschmied, Und wer's nicht welter singen kuim, Der fang's von Vorne wieder an." 'T will ever be the same old song Of tipsy tinkers all day long, And he who cannot sing it more May sing it over, as before. I should have liked to know John Bunyan. As a half-blood gypsy tinker he must have been self-con- tained and pleasant. He had his wits about him, too, in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison he made a flute or pipe out of the leg of his three legged-stool, and would play on it to pass time. When the jailer entered to stop the noise, John replaced the leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent as only a gypsy tinker could, calm as a summer morning. I commend the subject for a picture. Very recently, that is, in the beginning of 1881, a man of the same tinkering kind, and possibly of the same blood as Honest John, confined in the prison of Moyamen- sing, Philadelphia, did nearly the same thing, only that instead of making his stool leg into a musical 214 WELSH GYPSIES. pipe he converted it into a pipe for tobacco. But when the watchman, led by the smell, entered his cell, there was no pipe to be found ; only a deeply injured man complaining that "somebody had been smokin' outside, and it had blowed into his cell through the door-winder from the corridore, and p'isoned the at- mosphere. And he did n't like it." And thus history repeats itself. 'T is all very well for the sticklers for Wesleyan gentility to deny that John Bunyan was a gypsy, but he who in his life cannot read Romany between the lines knows not the jib nor the cut thereof. Tough was J. B., "and de-vil-ish sly," and altogether a much better man than many suppose him to have been. The tinker lived with his wife in a "tramps' lodg- ing-house" in the town. To those Americans who know such places by the abominable dens which are occasionally reported by American grand juries, the term will suggest something much worse than it is. In England the average tramp's lodging is cleaner, better regulated, and more orderly than many West- ern " hotels." The police look closely after it, and do not allow more than a certain number in a room. They see that it is frequently cleaned, and that clean sheets are frequently put on the beds. One or two hand-organs in the hall, with a tinker's barrow or wheel, proclaimed the character of the lodgers, and in the sitting-room there were to be found, of an evening, gypsies, laborers with their families seeking work, or itinerant musicians. I can recall a powerful and tall young man, with a badly expressive face, one- legged, and well dressed as a sailor. He was a beg- gar, who measured the good or evil of all mankind by what they gave him. He was very bitter as to THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 215 the bad. Yet this house was in its way upper class. It was not a den of despair, dirt, and misery, and even the Italians who came there were obliged to be decent and clean. It would not have been appropriate to have written for them on the door, " Voi che intrate lasciate ogni speranza." (He who enters here leaves soap behind.) The most painful fact which struck me, in my many visits, was the intelligence and de- cency of some of the boarders. There was more than one who conversed in a manner which indicated an excellent early education; more than one who read the newspaper aloud and commented on it to the com- pany, as any gentleman might have done. Indeed, the painful part of life as shown among these poor people was the manifest fact that so many of them had come down from a higher position, or were qual- ified for it. And this is characteristic of such places. In his " London Labour and the London Poor," vol. i. p. 217, Mahew tells of a low lodging-house " in which there were at one time five university men, three surgeons, and several sorts of broken-down clerks." The majority of these cases are the result of parents having risen from poverty and raised their families to "gentility." The sons are deprived by their bringing up of the vulgar pluck and coarse en- ergy by which the father rose, and yet are expected to make their way in the world, with nothing but a so- called "education," which is too often less a help than a hindrance. In the race of life no man is so heavily handicapped as a young " gentleman." The humblest and raggedest of all the inmates of this house were two men who got their living by shelkin gallopas (or selling ferns), as it is called in the Shelta, or tinker's and tramp's slang. One of these, whom I 216 WELSH GYPSIES. have described in another chapter as teaching me this dialect, could conjugate a French verb ; we thought he had studied law. The other was a poor old fellow called Krooty, who could give the Latin names for all the plants which he gathered and sold, and who would repeat poetry very appropriately, proving suf- ficiently that he had read it. Both the fern-sellers spoke better English than divers Lord Mayors and Knights to whom I have listened, for they neither omitted h like the lowly, nor r like the lofty ones of London. The tinker's wife was afflicted with a nervous dis- order, which caused her great suffering, and made it almost impossible for her to sell goods, or contribute anything to the joint support. Her husband always treated her with the greatest kindness; I have sel- dom seen an instance in which a man was more indul- gent and gentle. He made no display whatever -of his feelings ; it was only little by little that I found out what a heart this imperturbable rough of the road possessed. Now the Palmer, who was always engaged in some wild act of unconscious benevolence, bought for her some medicine, and gave her an order on the first physician in the town for proper advice ; the result being a decided amelioration of her health. And I never knew any human being to be more sin- cerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he in- sisted on presenting me with crocus powder, " to put an edge on." He had a remarkably fine whetstone, " the best in England ; it was worth half a sover- eign," and this he often and vainly begged me to ac- cept. And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 217 evening to the lodging-house, he would cunningly borrow my knife, and then disappear. Presently the whiz-whiz, stfst of his wheel would be heard without, and then the artful dodger would reappear with a triumphant smile, and with the knife sharpened to a razor edge. Anent which gratitude I shall have more to say anon. One day I was walking on the Front, when I over- took a gypsy van, loaded with baskets and mats, lumbering along. The proprietor, who was a stranger to me, was also slightly or lightly lumbering in his gait, being cheerfully beery, while his berry brown wife, with a little three-year-old boy, peddled wares from door to door. Both were amazed and pleased at being accosted in Romany. In the course of con- versation they showed great anxiety as to their child, who had long suffered from some disorder which caused them great alarm. The man's first name was Anselo, though it was painted Onslow on his vehicle. Mr. Anselo, though himself just come to town, was at once deeply impressed with the duty of hospitality to a Romany rye. I had called him pal, and this in gypsydom involves the shaking of hands, and with the better class an extra display of courtesy. He produced half a crown, and declared his willingness to devote it all to beer for my benefit. I declined, but he repeated his offer several times, not with any annoying display, but with a courteous earnestness, intended to set forth a sweet sincerity. As I bade him good-by, he put the crown-piece into one eye, and as he danced backward, gypsy fashion up the street and vanished in the sunny purple twi- light towards the sea I could see him winking with the other, and hear him cry, " Don't say no now 's the last chance do I hear a bid ? " 218 WELSH GYPSIES. We found this family in due time at the lodging- house, where the little boy proved to be indeed seri- ously ill, and we at once discovered that the parents, in their ignorance, had quite misunderstood his malady and were aggravating it by mal-treatment. To these poor people the good Palmer also gave an order on the old physician, who declared that the boy must have died in a few days, had he not taken charge of him. As it was, the little fellow was speedily cured. There was, it appeared, some kind of consanguinity between the tinker or his wife and the Anselo family. These good people, anxious to do anything, yet able to do little, consulted together as to showing their gratitude, and noting that we were specially desir- ous of collecting old gypsy words gave us all they could think of, and without informing us of their in- tention, which indeed we only learned by accident a long time after, sent a messenger many miles to bring to Aberystwith a certain Bosville, who was famed as being deep in Romany lore, and in posses- sion of many ancient words. Which was indeed true, he having been the first to teach us pisdli, meaning a saddle, and in which Professor Cowell, of Cambridge, promptly detected the Sanskrit for sit-upon, the same double meaning also existing in boshto ; or, as old Mrs. Buckland said to me at Oaklands Park, in Philadelphia, "a pisdli is the same thing with a boshto." " What will gain thy faith ? " said Quentin Dur- ward to Hayradden Maugrabhin. "Kindness," an- swered the gypsy. The joint families, solely with intent to please us, although they never said a word about it, next sent for a young Romany, one of the Lees, and his wife, THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 219 whom they supposed we would like to meet. Walk- ing along the Front, I met the tinker's wife with- the handsomest Romany girl I ever beheld. In a Lon- don ball-room or on the stage she would have been a really startling beauty. This was young Mrs. Lee. Her husband was a clever violinist, and it was very remarkable that when he gave himself up to playing, with abandon or self-forgetfulness, there came into his melodies the same wild gypsy expression, the same chords and tones, which abound in the music of the Austrian Tsigane. It was not my imagination which prompted the recognition ; the Palmer also observed it, without thinking it remarkable. From the playing of both Mat Woods and young Lee, I am sure that there has survived among the Welsh gypsies some of the spirit of their old Eastern music, just as in the solo dancing of Mat's sister there was precisely the same kind of step which I had seen in Moscow. Among the hundreds of the race whom I have met in Great Britain, I have never known any young people who were so purely Romany as these. The tinker and Anselo with his wife had judged wisely that we would be pleased with this picturesque couple. They always seemed to me in the house like two wild birds, and tropical ones at that, in a cage. There was a tawny -gold, black and scarlet tone about them and their garb, an Indian Spanish duskiness and glow which I loved to look at. Every proceeding of the tinker and Anselo was veiled in mystery and hidden in the obscurity so dear to such grown-up children, but as I observed after a few days that Lee did nothing beyond acting as as- sistant to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised that the visit was solely for our benefit. As the tinker 220 WELSH GYPSIES. was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo and hia dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave little fellow, and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and sturdiness so greatly admired by the Rom- anys of the road ; and when he would take a whip and lead the horse, or in other ways show his courage, the delight of his parents was in its turn delightful. They would look at the child as if charmed, and then at one another with feelings too deep for words, and then at me for sympathetic admiration. The keeper of the house where they lodged was in his way a character and a linguist. Welsh was his native tongue and English his second best. He also knew others, such as Romany, of which he was proud, and the Shelta or Minklas of the tinkers, of which he was not. The only language which he knew of which he was really ashamed was Italian, and though he could maintain a common conversa- tion in it he always denied that he remembered more than a few words. For it was not as the tongue of Dante, but as the lingo of organ-grinders and such " catenone " that he knew it, and I think that the Palmer and I lost dignity in his eyes by inadvertently admitting that it was familiar to us. " I should n't have thought it," was all his comment on the dis- covery, but I knew his thought, and it was that we had made ourselves unnecessarily familiar with vul- garity. It is not every one who is aware of the extent to which Italian is known by the lower orders in Lon- don. It is not spoken as a language ; but many of its words, sadly mangled, are mixed with English as a jargon. Thus the Italian scappare, to escape, or run away, has become scarper ; and a dweller in the THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH, 221 Seven Dials has been heard to say he would " scarper with the feele of the donna of the cassey ; " which means, run away with the daughter of the landlady of the house, and which, as the editor of the Slang Dic- tionary pens, is almost pure Italian, scappare colla fifflia della donna della casa. Most costermongers call a penny a saltee, from soldo ; a crown, a caroon ; and one half, madza, from mezza. They count as follows : ITALIAN. Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo. Dooey saltee, twopence Dui soldi. Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi. Quarterer saltee, fourpence .... Quattro soldi. Clunker saltee, fivepeuce Cinque soldi. Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi. Say oney saltee, or selter saltee, seven- pence Sette soldi. Say dooee saltee, or otter saltee, eight- pence Otto soldi. Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, nine- pence Nove soldi. Say quarterer saltee, or dacha (datsha) saltee, tenpence Dieci soldi. Say chinker saltee, or dacha one saltee, elevenpence Dieci uno soldi Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco. A beong say saltee, one shilling and sixpence Uno bianco sei soldi. Madza caroon, half a crown .... Mezza corona. Mr. Hotten says that he could never discover the derivation of beong, or beonk. It is very plainly the Italian bianco, white, which, like blanc in French and blank in German, is often applied slangily to a silver coin. It is as if one had said, "a shiner." Apropos 222 WELSH GYPSIES. of which word there is something curious to be noted. It came forth in evidence, a few years ago in England, that burglars or other thieves always carried with them a piece of coal ; and on this disclosure, a certain writer, in his printed collection of curiosities, com- ments as if it were a superstition, remarking that the coal is carried for an amulet. But the truth is that the thief has no such idea. The coal is simply a sign for money ; and when the bearer meets with a man whom he thinks may be a " fence," or a pur- chaser of stolen goods, he shows the coal, which is as much as to say, Have you money? Money, in vulgar gypsy, is wongur, a corruption of the better word angar, which also means a hot coal; and braise, in French argdt, has the same double meaning. I may be wrong, but I suspect that rat, a dollar in Hebrew, or at least in Schmussen, has its root in common with ratzafim, coals, and possibly poschit, a farthing, with pecham, coal. In the six kinds of fire mentioned in the Talmud, 1 there is no identification of coals with money ; but in the German legends of Rubezahl, there is a tale of a charcoal-burner who found them changed to gold. Coins are called shiners because they shine like glowing coals, and I dare say that the simile exists in many more languages. One twilight we found in the public sitting-room of the lodging-house a couple whom I can never for- get. It was an elderly gypsy and his wife. The husband was himself characteristic; the wife was more than merely picturesque. I have never met such a superb old Romany as she was; indeed, I doubt if I ever saw any woman of her age, in any land or any range of life, with a more magnificently proud 1 Yoma, fol. 21, col. 2. THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 223 expression or such unaffected dignity. It was the whole poem of " Crescentius " living in modern time in other form. When a scholar associates much with gypsies there is developed in him in due time a perception or intu- ition of certain kinds of men or minds, which it is as difficult to describe as it is wonderful. He who has read Matthew Arnold's "Gipsy Scholar" may, however, find therein many apt words for it. I mean very seriously what I say ; I mean that through the Romany the demon of Socrates acquires distinctness ; I mean that a faculty is developed which is as strange as divination, and which is greatly akin to it. The gypsies themselves apply it directly to palmistry; were they well educated they would feel it in higher forms. It may be reached among other races and in other modes, and Nature is always offering it to us freely ; but it seems to live, or at least to be most de- veloped, among the Romany. It comes upon the possessor far more powerfully when in contact with certain lives than with others, and with the sympa- thetic it takes in at a glance that which may employ it at intervals for years to think out. And by this duk I read in a few words in the Romany woman an eagle soul, caged between the bars of poverty, ignorance, and custom ; but a great soul for all that. Both she and her husband were of the old type of their race, now so rare in England, though commoner in America. They spoke Romany with inflection and conjugation ; they remembered the old rhymes and old words, which I quoted freely, with the Palmer. Little by little, the old man seemed to be deeply impressed, indeed awed, by our utterly inex- 224 WELSH GYPSIES. plicable knowledge. I wore a velveteen coat, and had on a broad, soft felt hat. " 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 Romany chals still 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 Romany soul," 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 in- telligent 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 pres- ence 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 in- teresting specimens of Romanys, for our especial study ; and whenever this could be managed so that it THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH. 225 appeared 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," 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 havo 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 Ox- ford 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 imag- ination," 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 peo- ple's minds and bind them to belief. Thousands of years of transmitted hereditary influences always re- sult in something ; it has really resulted with the gyp- sies in an instinctive, though undeveloped, intuitive 15 226 WELSH GYPSIES. perception, 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." AMERICAN GYPSIES. I. GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 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 incautiously ported, but, on second thought, say planted. Strangely enough, he is more Romany than ever. I have had many opportunities of studying both the elders from England and the younger gyp- sies, 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. II 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, 'tis 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 a kushto tern for kasht " 228 AMERICAN GYPSIES. (a fair land for timber), as a very decent Romani- chal said 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 chil- dren, in a tent. Hard by was the wagon and the horse, and, after the usual initiatory amazement at being accosted in the kdlo 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 peo- ple 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 travel- ers. 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 'in not on that horse. I hear that the old country 's getting to be a hard GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 229 place for our people. Yes, just as you say, there 's no tan to hatch, no place to stay in there, unless you pay as much as if you went to a hotel. 'T is n'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 old gry [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 Amer- ican 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 a bavolengro [broken- winded horse] on a fellow he comes after you with a chinamdngri [writ]. Here he goes like a man and swindles somebody else with the gry, instead of sneak- ing off to a magistrate. " Yes," he continued, " England 's a little coun- try, 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 gyp- sy, 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. 230 AMERICAN GYPSIES. Living in the open air, taking much exercise, con- stantly 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 proprie- tor 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 care- fully 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 with feux de joie, or with salutes of shot-guns, the guns, unfortunately, being GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 231 shotted 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 suc- ceeded 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 ma- terial and temporal unto flames immaterial and eter- nal ; " that is to say, they burned her alive. But the gypsy would much prefer having to deal with lynch- ers 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 re- mained 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 maraud- ers, for the Scots themselves were so much given up to similar pursuits that the gypsies passed unno- ticed. The American gypsies do not beg, like their Eng- lish 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 Oak- lands 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 not 232 AMERICAN GYPSIES. speak 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 fort- unes." 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 are you ? " " Oh ! mendui shorn bori chovihani ! " cried L., laughing ; " we are a great witch and a wizard, and if you can't tell me my fortune, I '11 tell yours. Hold out your hand, and cross mine with a dollar, and I '11 tell you as big a lie as you ever penned a galderli Giorgio [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 Rom- any rani [lady] I ever met. There 's one in Delaware : a boridiri [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 voice GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 233 from 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 encoun- tered 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 Rom- anys 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 wher- ever 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 Tcennd 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 the diklo, or handkerchief, and passed it round the gypsy woman's head, and tied it under her chin, saying, 234 AMERICAN GYPSIES. " 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.' " 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 no- ticed what you two were saying." " She penned your dukkerin, and it was wonderful. She said that she must tell it." And here L. told me what the old dye had in- sisted 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 the dukk told 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 that lullo 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 Lee, GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 235 a-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 occa- sion ; 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 ferry- boat, or anywhere, are the feet of anybody who bring- eth 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 TceTcno adoi" (There 's nobody there.) " Dordi J '" cried Britannia, " Dikkava me o tuv te tan te wardoJ\ [I see a smoke, a tent, a wagon.] I declare, it is my puro 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 Romany tdni ranis, 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 more 236 AMERICAN GYPSIES. straightforward than most of his race in Europe. All Romanys are polite, but many of the European kind are most uncomfortably and unconsciously naive. 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 any devergondee who could so shock, shame, and pain decent people as this Agnes did in her sweet igno- rance. " 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 did n'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, ' Sd'sTidn ! ' That stunned me, but I answered, ' jSa'shdn.' Then I did n't speak Romanes to you, for I did n't know but what you kept it a secret from the other two ladies, and I did n't wish to be- tray 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 shorn chovihani" (but I am a witch), cried the lady. " Mukka men jd adre 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, had GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 237 he by chance, walking that lonely way in the twi- light, 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, busi- ness, 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 my- self 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 hap- pier 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, with- out 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" 238 AMERICAN GYPSIES. to nature and art, when, in fact, they live it. I sometimes suspect that aesthetic 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 varie- ties 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 an- other 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 there Had 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 again Serenely and undaunted, As if he at least of earthly men Had all the luck that he wanted. In sleep and comfort the last was laid, In a tree his cymbal 1 lying, Over its strings the breezes played, O'er his heart a dream went flying. 1 Zimbd. The cymbal of the Austrian gypsies is a stringed instru- ment, like the zitter. OYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 239 Ragged enough were all the three, Their garments in holes and tatters ; But they seemed to defy right sturdily The 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 geeria Sar yeckno a tacho Rom, Sa miro wardo ghias adur Apre a wafedo drom. O yeckto sos boshengero, Yuv kellde pes-kokero, O kamlo-dud te perele Sos lullo apre lo. duito sar a swagele Dikde 'pre lestes tuv, Ne kamde kumi, penava me' 'Dre' sar o miduvels puv. trinto sovade kushto-bak Lest 'zimbel adre rukk se, bavol kelld' pre i tavia, O sutto 'pre leskro zi. Te sar i lengheri rudaben Shan katterdi-chingerdo Awer me penav' i Romani chals Ne kesserden chi pa lo. 240 AMERICAN GYPSIES. Trin dromia lende sikkerden, kan Sar dikela wafedo, Ta bosher, tuver te sove-a-le Aja sa bachtalo. Dikdom palal, sa ghiom adur Talla yeckno Komani chal 'Pre lengheri kali-brauni mui, Te iengberi kali bal. II. THE CROCUS-PITCHER.* (PHILADELPHIA.) 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, to cant that is, cantare, to sing the virtues of a medicine which was certainly patent in being spread out by him to extremest thin- ness. 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 the diddikai, 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 vag- abond the gifts which were worth so little to their possessor ! But what was remarkable about him was that instead of endeavoring to conceal any gypsy 1 Crocus, in common slang an itinerant quack, mountebank, or seller of medicine ; Pitcher, a street dealer. 16 242 AMERICAN GYPSIES. indications, they were manifestly exaggerated. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and ear-rings and a red embroidered waistcoat of the most forcible old Rom- any pattern, which was soon explained by his words. " Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. " I am al- ways sorry to detain a select and genteel audience. But I was detained myself by a very interesting inci- dent. 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 coun- cil, and who would be the steeple of your exchange, if it had one. And on arriving at his house he re- marked, ' Toctor, by tarn 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 '11 die pooty quick- sudden.' Unfortunately I had with me, gentlemen, but a single dose of my world-famous Gypsy's Elixir and Romany Pharmacopheionepenthe*. (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 vom- ans 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 only THE CROCUS-PITCHER. 243 charged 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 '11 take the half dollar.") All of this had been spoken with the utmost volu- bility. 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 plenipo- tentiarated 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 disor- ders 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. Have n'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 in 244 AMERICAN GYPSIES. the year, and eat the Declaration of Independence for breakfast. And they would n'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 in- valuable blessing to those who feel occasional pains in the lungs. This is not tai-adiddle. I am engaged to lecture this afternoon before the Medical Associa- tion of Germantown, as on Wednesday before the Uni- versity 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 ec- centric 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 Rom- any, "Don't trouble yourself; you were not mak- ing 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 sud- denly turned on me and said, " Well, you are a 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 that vongree 1 ' (waistcoat). " 'T is n't that, 't is n't the clothes. It 's the air THE CROCUS-PITCHER. 245 and 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 you rak- kered, though I spotted you in the crowd for one who was off the color of the common Gorgios, or, as the Yahudi say, the G-oyim. No, I carn't rakker, 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 need n't say you don't know that. I talk 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 his A's. A man can do anything when he must, and I must talk fluently and correctly to succeed in such a business. Would 1 like a drop of something? You paid for the last, now you must take a drop with me. Do I know of any Romany 8 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 can rakker you, I 'm sure. She 's a good lot, too." And while on the way I will explain that my ac- quaintance 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, and 246 AMERICAN GYPSIES. yet 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." For he meant Bohemian in its widest and wildest sense, and to him all that was apart from the world was his world, 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 lit- tle game might also be performed there at all hours, and that, like the fountain of Jupiter Ammon, it be- came 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 shaske- nen" (Beer for me and brandy for him), I said to the landlord, who at once shook my hand and saluted me with tSholem! 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 endeavor- ing to convince me that I ought to give five cents more for it than I had given for a similar case the THE CROCUS-PITCHER. 247 day 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 word kesef (silver). In an instant Ben had taken my hand, and said Sholem cdeichum, and " Can you talk Span- ish ? " 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 cor- rectly, and, above all things, keep his temper, if he would do anything that requires chanting or patter- ing. 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 say laugh, 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 fel- low 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 is n'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 light- ning, ' 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 and wit, the people will buy better ; they always prefer a gen- tleman to a cad. Bless me ! why, a swell in a dress- coat and kid gloves, with good patter and hatter, can 248 AMERICAN GYPSIES. sell 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 'em cocks, 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 [six- pence] 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 a militaire ; We like to see a swell come Who looks so distinguf, So let us bid him welcome, And hope he '11 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. Ton 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 her, THE CROCUS-PITCHER. 249 with 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 illus- trate 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 would talk so 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 so 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 style 250 AMERICAN GYPSIES. Romanys. Go out on the road four miles, and you '11 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 im- prisoned 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 re- public. III. GYPSIES IN CAMP. (NEW JERSEY.) THE Weather had put on his veiy 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 Jerusa- lem fought with, themselves, and both with the Ro- mans, which was the time when the Shaket, 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, how- ever, 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 pos- sible, 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 onlv see him." 252 AMERICAN GYPSIES. 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 to hatch 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 apol- ogize to me with real feeling for the want of a view near his tent, just as any other man might have ex- cused 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 wilder- ness, of pictures in the Louvre, of Arabs and of Wou- vermanns 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 nat- ure and art, which I had never known without it. The Romany, like the red Indian, and all who dwell GYPSIES IN CAMP. 253 by 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," but the presence of the savage who belongs to the scene, and whose being binds 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-look- ing old-country vardo. The whole scene was so Eng- lish 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 fa- ther in the song, " Duro pardel the boro pant," 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 African 254 AMERICAN GYPSIES. reivers, 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 a tan when 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 some- body 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 den- izens 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 apre ye pus " (sit- ting 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 ; GYPSIES IN CAMP. 255 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 not did- dikais, 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. My mise en scene appeared to meet with approbation, and I stood forth and remarked, " Here I am, glad to see you ; and if you want to see a regular Romany 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 from hdbben, 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, how- ever, now took place which went far to promote con- viviality. 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 speaking 256 AMERICAN GYPSIES. Romany ; 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 celeb- rity 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 found tacho, or all right. It being a rule, in fact, with few excep- tions, 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 favor- able 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, never live in 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 which will not be remembered or known to reason, so this music shrinks from it. It is wonderful how beauty perishes like a shade-grown GYPSIES IN CAMP. 257 flower 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 man- liness, 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 morn- ing 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 pani?" (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 gen- tleman like you by telling fortunes." 17 258 AMERICAN GYPSIES. Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum ! " Yes, a five-hundred-dollar hit sometimes. But, dye, I work upon a better lay." Dum, dum, dum, patter, dum ! " Perhaps you are a 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 some- GYPSIES IN CAMP. 259 times met 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 al- ways 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 ! IV. HOUSE GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. THIS chapter was written by ray 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, se- lected for their strength, and were of many hues, from cafe au lait, or coffee much milked, up to the browned or black-scorched berry itself, while the very athletce were 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 the Tiaik or bag-cloak of the East, and it made a won- derfully effective Arab costume. One of them was half leaning, half sitting, on a pile of bags ; his Her- culean 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 countries outre mer, we become artistically eloquent ; but it rarely occurs HOUSE GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 261 to sketchers and word-painters to do much business in the home-market. The mixture of races in our cities is rapidly increas- ing, 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 be- come fuller of Italian fruit dealers and organ-grinders, so that Gives 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 monop- lizing our washing and ironing, while among labor- ing classes are thousands of Scandinavians, Bohemi- ans, 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 Philadel- phia 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 good 262 AMERICAN GYPSIES. e model 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 look- ing not unlike a gypsy. " A Romany ! " I cried with delight. Her red shawl made me think of gyp- sies, and when I caught her eye I saw the indescrib- ble flash of the Icalorat, 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 de HOUSE GYPSIES IN PHILADELPHIA. 263 i Vere writes, " It must not be forgotten that the hu- man 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 re- marked, while looking across the street, " Adovo 's a kushto puro rinkeno kSr 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 Grorgio jinella" (It 's nice to talk a language that no Gen- tile knows.) The red shawl was on the trail. " Je crois que fa 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, " Was n't it Romanes ? " "AvaA," I replied, "mendui rakker sarja adovo jib. Butikumi ryeskro Us se denna G-orgines" (Yes, we always talk that language. Much more genteel it is than English.) " Te adovo wavero rye ? " (And that other gentle- man ?) 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 there 264 AMERICAN GYPSIES. t is a natural sympathy and intelligence between Bo- hemians of every grade, all the world over, and I never knew a gypsy who did not understand an art- ist. One glance satisfied her that he was quite worthy of our society. "And where are you tannin kenna?" (tenting now), I inquired. " We are not tenting at this time of year ; we 're Icairin" i. Soobri, ) Bewr, Gothlin or goch'thlin, Young bewr, Durra, or derra, Pani, Stiff, Yack, Mush-faker, Mithani (mithni), Ghesterman (ghesti), Needi-mizzler, Dinnessy, Stall, Biyeghin, Biyeg th'eenik, Crack, Monkery, Prat, Ned askan, Glantherin (glad'herin), Selling ferns. Brother, friend- a man. Woman. Child. Girl. Bread. Water (Romany). A warrant (common cant). A watch (cant, i. e. bull's eye. Tack, an eye in Romany). Umbrella mender. Policeman. Magistrate. A tramp. Cat. Go, travel. Stealing. To steal. To steal the thing. A stick. Country. Stop, stay, lodge. Lodging. Money, swindling. This word has a very peculiar pronunciation. Sauni or sonni, Strepuck (reepuck), Strepuck lusk, ) Luthrum's gothlin, ) Kurrb yer pee, Pee, Borers and jumpers, Borers, See. A harlot. Son of a harlot. Punch your head or face. Face. Tinkers' tools. Gimlets. SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 359 Jumpers, Cranks. Ogles, Eyes (common slang). Nyock, Head. Nyock, A penny. Odd, Two. Midgic, A shilling. Nyo(d)ghee, A pound. Sai, sy, Sixpence. Charrshom, } Cherrshom, > A crown. Tusheroon, ) Tre-nyock, Threepence. Tripo-rauniel, A pot of beer. hari 'l Talk. Bu g> ) Can you thari Shelter ? Can you bug Shelta ? Can you talk tinkers' language ? Shelter, shelta, Tinker's slang. Larkin, Girl. Curious as perhaps indicating an affinity between the Hindustani larki, a girl, and the gypsy rakli. Snips, Scissors (slang). Dingle fakir, A bell-hanger. Dunnovans, Potatoes. Fay (vulgarly fee), Meat. Our informant declared that there are vulgar forms of certain words. Gladdher, Ring the changes (cheat in change). "No minkler would have a bewr who couldn't gladdher." Eeesbin, Prison. Tre'-moon, Three months, a ' drag.' 360 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. Rauniel, ) T. . ,' [ Beer. Runmel, > Max, Spirits (slang). Chiv, Knife. (Romany, a pointed knife, i. e. tongue.) Thari, To speak or tell. " I tharied the soobri I sonnied him." (I told the man I saw him.) Mushgraw. Our informant did not know whether this word, of Romany origin, meant, in Shelta, policeman or mag- istrate. Scri, scree, To write. Our informant suggested scribe as the origin of this word. Reader, A writ. " You 're readered soobri." (You are put in the "Police Gazette," friend.) Our informant could give only a single specimen of the Shelta literature. It was as follows : " My name is Barney Mucaf ee, With my borers and jumpers down to my thee (thigh), An' it 's forty miles I Ve come to kerrb yer pee." This vocabulary is, as he declared, an extremely imperfect specimen of the language. He did not claim to speak it well. In its purity it is not mingled with Romany or thieves' slang. Perhaps some stu- dent of English dialects may yet succeed in recover- ing it all. The pronunciation of many of the words is singular, and very different from English or Romany. Just as the last word was written down, there came up a woman, a female tramp of the most hardened SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 361 kind. It seldom happens that gentlemen sit down in familiar friendly converse with vagabonds. When they do they are almost always religious people, anx- ious to talk with the poor for the good of their souls. The talk generally ends with a charitable gift. Such was the view (as the vagabond afterwards told us) which she took of our party. I also infer that she thought we must be very verdant and an easy prey. Almost without preliminary greeting she told us that she was in great straits, suffering terribly, and appealed to the man for confirmation, adding that if we would kindly lend her a sovereign it should be faithfully repaid in the morning. The professor burst out laughing. But the fern- collector gazed at her in wrath and amazement. "I say, old woman," he cried ; "do you know who you're rakkerin [speaking] to? This here gentleman is one of the deepest Romany ryes [gypsy gentlemen] a-going. And that there one could gladdher you out of your eye-teeth." She gave one look of dismay, I shall never forget that look, and ran away. The witch had chanced upon Arbaces. I think that the tramp had been in his time a man in better position. He was possibly a lawyer's clerk who had fallen into evil ways. He spoke English correctly when not addressing the beg- gar woman. There was in Aberystwith at the same time another fern-seller, an elderly man, as wretched and as ragged a creature as I ever met. Yet he also spoke English purely, and could give in Latin the names of all the plants which he sold. I have al- ways supposed that the tinkers' language spoken of by Shakespeare was Romany ; but I now incline to think it may have been Shelta. Time passed, and " the levis grene " had fallen 662 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. thrice from the trees, and I had crossed the sea and \vas in my native city of Philadelphia. It was a great change after eleven years of Europe, during ten of which I had " homed," as gypsies say, in Eng- land. The houses and the roads were old-new to me ; there was something familiar-foreign in the voices and ways of those who had been my earliest friends ; the very air as it blew hummed tunes which had lost tones in them that made me marvel. Yet even here I soon found traces of something which is the same all the world over, which goes ever on " as of ever," and that was the wanderer of the road. Near the city are three distinct gypsyries, where in summer-time the wagon and the tent may be found ; and ever and anon, in my walks about town, I found interesting varieties of vagabonds from every part of Europe. Italians of the most Bohemian type, who once had been like angels, and truly only in this, that their visits of old were few and far between, now swarmed as fruit dealers and boot-blacks in every lane ; Ger- mans were of course at home ; Czechs, or Slavs, sup- posed to be Germans, gave unlimited facilities for Slavonian practice ; while tinkers, almost unknown in 1860, had in 1880 become marvelously common, and strange to say were nearly all Austrians of different kinds. And yet not quite all, and it was lucky for me they were not. For one morning, as I went into the large garden which lies around the house wherein I wone, I heard by the honeysuckle and grape-vine a familiar sound, suggestive of the road and Roma- nys and London, and all that is most traveler-esque. It was the tap, tap, tap of a hammer and the clang of tin, and I knew by the smoke that so gracefully curled at the end of the garden a tinker was near. And I advanced to him, and as he glanced up and SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 363 greeted, I read in his Irish face long rambles on the roads. " Good-morning ! " " Good-mornin', sorr ! " " You 're an old traveler ? " "I am, sorr." " Can you rakker Romanes ? " " I can, sorr ! " " Pen yer nav" (Tell your name.) " Owen , sorr." A brief conversation ensued, during which we as- certained that we had many friends in common in the puro tern or Ould Country. All at once a thought struck me, and I exclaimed, " Do you know any other languages ? " " Yes, sorr : Ould Irish an' Welsh, an' a little Gaelic." "That 'sail?" "Yes, sorr, all av thim." "All but one?" " An' what 's that wan, sorr? " "Can you thari shelta, subll?" No tinker was ever yet astonished at anything. If he could be he would not be a tinker. If the coals in his stove were to turn to lumps of gold in a twinkle, he would proceed with leisurely action to rake them out and prepare them for sale, and never indicate by a word or a wink that anything remarkable had oc- curred. But Owen the tinker looked steadily at me for an instant, as if to see what manner of man I might be, and then said, " Shelta, is it ? An' I can talk it. An' there 's not six min livin' as can talk it as I do." " Do you know, I think it 's very remarkable that you can talk Shelta." S HELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. " An' begorra, I think it 's very remarkable, sorr, that ye should know there is such a language." " Will you give me a lesson ? " Troth I will." I went into the house and brought out a note-book. One of the servants brought me a chair. Owen went on soldering a tin dish, and I proceeded to take down from him the following list of words in tShelta : Theddy, Strawn, Blyhunka, Leicheen, Soobli, Binny soobli, Binny, Chimmel, Gh'ratha, grata, Griffin, or gruffin, Respes, Gullemnocks, Grascot, Skoich, or skoi, Numpa, Gorhead, or godhed, Merrih, Nyock, Graigh, Kaine, or kyni, Melthog, Medthel, Gunnels, Faihe, or feye", Muogh, Miesli, misli, Mailyas, or moillhas, Fire (theinne. Irish). Tin. Horse. Girl. Male, man. Boy. Small, Stick. Hat. Coat. Trousers. Shoes. Waistcoat. Button. Sovereign, one pound. Money. Nose (?). Head. Hair. Ears (Romany, lean). Inner shirt. Black. Potatoes. Meat (feoil. Gaelic). Pig (muck. Irish). To go (origin of " mizzle "?). Fingers (meirleach, stealers. Gaelic) . RHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 365 Shaidyog, Respun, Shoich, Alemnoch, Raglan, or reglan, Goppa, Terry, Khoi, Chimmes (compare chimmel), Mailyas, Koras, Skoihopa, Bulla (ull as in gull), Thari, Mush, Lyesken cherps, Loshools, Dainoch, Chaldroch, Bog, Masheen, Cambra, Laprogh, Kaldthog, Rumogh, Kie"na, Rawg, Gullemnoch, An alt, Analken, D'erri, R'ghoglin (gogh'leen), Policeman. To steal. Water, blood, liquid. Milk. Hammer. Furnace, smith (gobha, a smith. Gaelic). A heating-iron. Pincers. Wood or stick. Arms. Legs (cos, leg. Gaelic). Whisky. A letter. Word, language. Umbrella (slang). Telling fortunes. Flowers (lus, herb or flower ? Gaelic). To lose. Knife (caldock, sharply pointed. Gaelic). To get. Cat. Dog. Goose, duck. Hen. Egg- House (ken, old gypsy and modern cant). Wagon. Shoes. To sweep, to broom. To wash. Bread. To laugh. 366 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. Kradyin, To stop, stay, sit, lodge, re- main. Oura, Town. Lashool, Nice (lachool. Irish). Momni, or moryeni, Good (min, pleasant. Gae- lic). Moryenni yook, Good man. Gyami, Bad (cam. Gaelic). Probably the origin of the common canting term gammy, bad. Ishkimmisk, Drunk (misgeach. Gaelic). Roglan, A four-wheeled vehicle. Lorch, A two-wheeled vehicle. Smuggle, Anvil. Granya, Nail. Riaglon, Iron. Gushuk, Vessel of any kind. Tedhi, the'di, Coal ; fuel of any kind. Grawder, Solder. Tanyok, Halfpenny. (Query tani, little, Romany, and nyok, a head.) Chlorhin, To hear. Sunain, To see. Salkaneoch, To taste, take. Mailyen, To feel (cumail, to hold. Gaelic). Crowder, String. Sobye", (?) Mislain, Raining (mizzle ?). Goo-ope, guop, Cold. Skoichen, Rain. Thomyok, Magistrate. Shadyog, Police. Bladhunk, Prison. Bogh, To get. SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 367 Salt, Arrested, taken. Straihmed, A year. Gotherna, guttema, Policeman. [A very rare old word.] Dyukas, or Jukas, Gorgio, Gentile ; one not of the class. Misli, Coming, to come, to send. To my-deal, Tome. Lychyen, People. Grannis, Know. Skolaia, To write. Skolaiyami, A good scholar. Nyok, Head. Lurk, Eye. Menoch, Nose. Glorhoch, Ear. Koris, Feet. Tashi shingomai, To read the newspaper. Gorheid, Money. Tomgarheid (i.e. big money), Gold. Skawfer, skawper, Silver. Tomnumpa, Bank-note. Terri, Coal. Ghoi, Put. Nyadas, Table. Kradyin, Being, lying. Tarryin, Rope. Kor'heh, Box. Miseli, Quick. Krad'hyl, Slow. Th-mddusk, Door. Khaihed, Chair (khahir. Irish). Bord, Table. Grainyog, Window. Rumog, Egg- Aidh, Butter. 368 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. Okonneh, A priest. Thus explained in a very Irish manner : " Okonneh, or Koony, is a sacred man, and kunl in Romany means secret. An' sacret and sacred, sure, are all the same." Shliema, Smoke, pipe. Munches, Tobacco. Khadyogs, Stones. Yiesk, Fish (iasg. Gaelic). Cab, Cabbage. Cherpin, Book. This appears to be vulgar. Llyower was on second thought declared to be the right word. (Leabhar, Gaelic.) Misli dainoch. To write a letter ; to write ; that is, send or go. Misli to my bewr, Write to my woman. Gritche, Dinner. Gruppa, Supper. Goihed, To leave, lay down. Lurks, Eyes. Ainoch, Thing. Clisp, To fall, let fall. Clishpen, To break by letting fall. Guth, gut, Black. Gothni, gachlin, Child. Styemon, Rat. Kre"poch, Cat. Grannien, With child. Loshun, Sweet. Shum, To own. L'yogh, To lose. Crlmum, Sheep. Khadyog, Stone. Nglou, Nail. SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 369 Gial, Yellow, red. Talosk, Weather. Laprogh, 'Bird. Madel, Tail. Carob, To cut. Lubran, luber, To hit. Thorn, Violently. Mish it thorn, Hit it hard. Subli, or soobli, Man (siublach, a vagrant. Gaelic). There you are, readers ! Make good cheer of it, as Panurge said of what was beyond him. For what this language really is passeth me and mine. Of Celtic origin it surely is, for Owen gave me every syllable so garnished with gutturals that I, being even less of one of the Celtes than a Chinaman, have not succeeded in writing a single word according to his pronunciation of it. Thus even Minklers sounds more like minkias, or pikias, as he gave it. To the foregoing I add the numerals and a few phrases : Hain, or been, One. Do, Two. Tri, Three. Ch'air, or k'hair, Four. Cood, Five. She, or shay, Six. Schaacht, or schach', Seven. Ocht, Eight. Ayen, or nai, Nine. Dy'ai, djai, or dai, Ten. Hinniadh, Eleven. Do yed'h, Twelve. Trin yeclh, Thirteen. K'hair yedh, etc., Fourteen, etc. 24 370 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. Tat 'th chesin ogomsa, That belongs to me. Grannis to my deal, It belongs to me. Dioch man krady in in this I am staying here. nadas, Tash emilesh, He is staying there. Boghin the brass, Cooking the food. My deal is mislin, I am going. The nidias of the kiena, The people of the house don't granny what we 're don't know what, we 're a tharyin, . saying. This was said within hearing of and in reference to a bevy of servants, of every hue save white, who were in full view in the kitchen, and who were mani- festly deeply interested and delighted in our inter- view, as well as in the constant use of my note-book, and our conference in an unknown tongue, since Owen and I spoke frequently in Romany. That bhoghd out yer mailya, You let that fall from your. hand. I also obtained a verse of a ballad, which I may not literally render into pure English : " Cosson kailyah corrum me morro sari, Me gul ogalyach mir ; Rahet manent trasha moroch Me tu sosti mo diele." " Coming from Galway, tired and weary, I met a woman ; I '11 go bail by this time to-morrow, You '11 have had enough of me." Me tu sosti, " Thou shalt be (of) me," is Romany, which is freely used in Shelta. The question which I cannot solve is, On which of the Celtic languages is this jargon based ? My in- formant declares that it is quite independent of Old SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. 871 Irish, Welsh, or Gaelic. In pronunciation it appears to be almost identical with the latter; but while there are Gaelic words in it, it is certain that much exam- ination and inquiry have failed to show that it is con- tained in that language. That it is " the talk of the ould Picts thim that built the stone houses like bee- hives " is, I confess, too conjectural for a philolo- gist. I have no doubt that when the Picts were suppressed thousands of them must have become wandering outlaws, like the Romany, and that their language in time became a secret tongue of vagabonds on the roads. This is the history of many such lin- goes ; but unfortunately Owen's opinion, even if it be legendary, will not prove that the Painted People spoke the Shelta tongue. I must call attention, how- ever, to one or two curious points. I have spoken of Shelta as a jargon ; but it is, in fact, a language, for it can be spoken grammatically and without using English or Romany. And again, there is a corrupt method of pronouncing it, according to English, while correctly enunciated it is purely Celtic in sound. More than this I have naught to say. Shelta is perhaps the last Old British dialect as yet existing which has thus far remained undiscov- ered. There is no hint of it in John Camden Hot- ten's Slang Dictionary, nor has it been recognized by the Dialect Society. Mr. Simson, had he known the " Tinklers " better, would have found that not Rom- any, but Shelta, was the really secret language which they employed, although Romany is also more or less familiar to them all. To me there is in it something very weird and strange. I cannot well say why ; it seems as if it might be spoken by witches and talk- ing toads, and uttered by the Druid stones, which are 372 SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK. fabled to come down by moonlight to the water-side to drink, and who will, if surprised during their walk, answer any questions. Anent which I would fain ask my Spiritualist friends one which I have long yearned to put. Since you, my dear ghost- raisers, can call spirits from the vasty deep of the outside-most beyond, will you not having many millions from which ,to call raise up one of the Pictish race, and, having brought it in from the Ewigkeit, take down a vocabulary of the language ? Let it be a lady par preference, the fair being by far the more fluent in words. Moreover, it is prob- able that as the Picts were a painted race, woman among them must have been very much, to the fore, and that Madame Rachels occupied a high position with rouge, enamels, and other appliances to make them young and beautiful forever. According to Southey, the British blue-stocking is descended from these woad-stained ancestresses, which assertion dimly hints at their having been literary. In which case, voild notre affaire ! for then the business would be promptly -done. Wizards of the secret spells, I ad- jure ye, raise me a Pictess for the sake of philology and the picturesque ! f University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.