Chapter V: A Gypsy Letter (3)

It has never been pointed out, however, by any writer, that there is in Northern and Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded, even by the Nats and Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly gypsy. There are, however, such wanderers, and the manner in which I became aware of their existence was, to say the least, remarkable. I was going one day along the Marylebone Road when I met a very dark man, poorly clad, whom I took for a gypsy; and no wonder, as his eyes had the very expression of the purest blood of the oldest families. To him I said,--

"_Rakessa tu Romanes_?" (Can you talk gypsy?)

"I know what you mean," he answered in English. "You ask me if I can talk gypsy. I know what those people are. But I'm a Mahometan Hindu from Calcutta. I get my living by making curry powder. Here is my card." Saying this he handed me a piece of paper, with his name written on it: _John Nano_.

"When I say to you, '_Rakessa tu Romanes_?' what does it mean?"

"It means, 'Can you talk Rom?' But _rakessa_ is not a Hindu word. It's Panjabi."

I met John Nano several times afterwards and visited him in his lodgings, and had him carefully examined and cross-questioned and pumped by Professor Palmer of Cambridge, who is proficient in Eastern tongues. He conversed with John in Hindustani, and the result of our examination was that John declared he had in his youth lived a very loose life, and belonged to a tribe of wanderers who were to all the other wanderers on the roads in India what regular gypsies are to the English Gorgio hawkers and tramps. These people were, he declared, "the _real_ gypsies of India, and just like the gypsies here. People in India called them Trablus, which means Syrians, but they were full-blood Hindus, and not Syrians." And here I may observe that this word Trablus which is thus applied to Syria, is derived from Tripoli. John was very sure that his gypsies were Indian. They had a peculiar language, consisting of words which were not generally intelligible. "Could he remember any of these words?" Yes. One of them was _manro_, which meant bread. Now _manro_ is all over Europe the gypsy word for bread. John Nano, who spoke several tongues, said that he did not know it in any Indian dialect except in that of his gypsies. These gypsies called themselves and their language _Rom_. Rom meant in India a real gypsy. And Rom was the general slang of the road, and it came from the Roms or Trablus. Once he had written all his autobiography in a book. This is generally done by intelligent Mahometans. This manuscript had unfortunately been burned by his English wife, who told us that she had done so "because she was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not read."

Reader, think of losing such a life! The autobiography of an Indian gypsy,--an abyss of adventure and darksome mysteries, illuminated, it may be, with vivid flashes of Dacoitee, while in the distance rumbled the thunder of Thuggism! Lost, lost, irreparably lost forever! And in this book John had embodied a vocabulary of the real Indian Romany dialect. Nothing was wanting to complete our woe. John thought at first that he had lent it to a friend who had never returned it. But his wife remembered burning it. Of one thing John was positive: Rom was as distinctively gypsy talk in India as in England, and the Trablus are the true Romanys of India.

What here suggests itself is, how these Indian gypsies came to be called _Syrian_. The gypsies which roam over Syria are evidently of Indian origin; their language and physiognomy both declare it plainly. I offer as an hypothesis that bands of gypsies who have roamed from India to Syria have, after returning, been called Trablus, or Syrians, just as I have known Germans, after returning from the father-land to America, to be called Americans. One thing, however, is at least certain. The Rom are the very gypsies of gypsies in India. They are thieves, fortune-tellers, and vagrants. But whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish. Their language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that the word _rom_, like _dom_, is one of wide dissemination, _dum_ being a Syrian gypsy word for the race. And the very great majority of even English gypsy words are Hindi, with an admixture of Persian, and do not belong to a slang of any kind. As in India, _churi_ is a knife, _nak_ the nose, _balia_ hairs, and so on, with others which would be among the first to be furnished with slang equivalents. And yet these very gypsies are _Rom_, and the wife is a _Romni_, and they use words which are not Hindu in common with European gypsies. It is therefore not improbable that in these Trablus, so called through popular ignorance, as they are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at least of the real stock. It is to be desired that some resident in India would investigate the Trablus. It will probably be found that they are Hindus who have roamed from India to Syria and back again, here and there, until they are regarded as foreigners in both countries.

Next to the word _rom_ itself, the most interesting in Romany is _zingan_, or _tchenkan_, which is used in twenty or thirty different forms by the people of every country, except England, to indicate the gypsy. An incredible amount of far-fetched erudition has been wasted in pursuing this philological _ignis fatuus_. That there are leather-working and saddle-working gypsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a fair basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar gypsies of Jat affinity in the Punjab. Wonderful it is that in this war of words no philologist has paid any attention to what the gypsies themselves say about it. What they do say is sufficiently interesting, as it is told in the form of a legend which is intrinsically curious and probably ancient. It is given as follows in "The People of Turkey," by a Consul's Daughter and Wife, edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, London, 1878: "Although the gypsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to be founded upon a strange legend current in the country. This legend says that when the gypsy nation were driven out of their country (India), and arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a wheel was attached." From the context of this imperfectly told story, it would appear as if the gypsies could not travel farther until this wheel should revolve:--

"Nobody appeared to be able to turn it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only when he had married his sister Guin. The chief accepted the advice, the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident became that of the combined names of the brother and sister, Chenguin, the appellation of all the gypsies of Turkey at the present day."

The legend goes on to state that in consequence of this unnatural marriage the gypsies were cursed and condemned by a Mahometan saint to wander forever on the face of the earth. The real meaning of the myth--for myth it is--is very apparent. _Chen_ is a Romany word, generally pronounced _chone_, meaning the moon; {341a} while _guin_ is almost universally given as _gan_ or _kan_. That is to say, Chen-gan or -kan, or Zin-kan, is much commoner than Chen-guin. Now _kan_ is a common gypsy word for the sun. George Borrow gives it as such, and I myself have heard Romanys call the sun _kan_, though _kam_ is commoner, and is usually assumed to be right. Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun. And it may be remarked in this connection, that the neighboring Roumanian gypsies, who are nearly allied to the Turkish, have a wild legend stating that the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister, was condemned as the sun to wander forever in pursuit of her, after she was turned into the moon. A similar legend exists in Greenland {341b} and in the island of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish. It is in fact a spontaneous myth, or one of the kind which grow up from causes common to all races. It would be natural, to any imaginative savage, to regard the sun and moon as brother and sister. The next step would be to think of the one as regularly pursuing the other over the heavens, and to this chase an erotic cause would naturally be assigned. And as the pursuit is interminable, the pursuer never attaining his aim, it would be in time regarded as a penance. Hence it comes that in the most distant and different lands we have the same old story of the brother and the sister, just as the Wild Hunter pursues his bride.

It was very natural that the gypsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with that of these luminaries. That they have a tendency to assimilate the idea of a wanderer and pilgrim to that of the Romany, or to _Romanipen_, is shown by the assertion once made to me by an English gypsy that his people regarded Christ as one of themselves, because he was always poor, and went wandering about on a donkey, and was persecuted by the Gorgios. It may be very rationally objected by those to whom the term "solar myth" is as a red rag, that the story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek. Everything about it indicates an Indian origin, and if it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted as the possible origin of the greatly disputed word _zingan_. It is quite as plausible as Dr. Miklosich's very far-fetched derivation from the Acingani,--[Greek text],--an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century. The mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon story came from India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name. And if gypsies call themselves or are called Jen-gan, or Chenkan, or Zingan, in the East, especially if they were so called by Persian poets, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name from the Gorgios of Europe. It is really extraordinary that all the philologists who have toiled to derive the word _zingan_ from a Greek or Western source have never reflected that if it was applied to the race at an early time in India or Persia all their speculations must fall to the ground.

One last word of John Nano, who was so called from two similar Indian words, meaning "the pet of his grandfather." I have in my possession a strange Hindu knife, with an enormously broad blade, perhaps five or six inches broad towards the end, with a long handle richly mounted in the purest bronze with a little silver. I never could ascertain till 1 knew him what it had been used for. Even the old ex-king of Oude, when he examined it, went wrong on it. Not so John Nano.

"I know well enough what that knife is. I have seen it before,--years ago. It is very old, and it was long in use; it was the knife used by the public executioner in Bhotan. It is Bhotani."

By the knife hangs the ivory-handled court-dagger which belonged to Francis II. of France, the first husband of Mary Queen of Scots. I wonder which could tell the strangest story of the past!

"It has cut off many a head," said John Nano, "and I have seen it before!"

I do not think that I have gone too far in attaching importance to the gypsy legend of the origin of the word _chen-kan_ or _zingan_. It is their own, and therefore entitled to preference over the theories of mere scholars; it is Indian and ancient, and there is much to confirm it. When I read the substance of this chapter before the Philological Society of London, Prince Lucien Bonaparte,--who is beyond question a great philologist, and one distinguished for vast research,--who was in the chair, seemed, in his comments on my paper, to consider this sun and moon legend as frivolous. And it is true enough that German symbolizers have given us the sun myth to such an extent that the mere mention of it in philology causes a recoil. Then, again, there is the law of humanity that the pioneer, the gatherer of raw material, who is seldom collector and critic together, is always assailed. Columbus always gets the chains and Amerigo Vespucci the glory. But the legend itself is undeniably of the gypsies and Indian.

It is remarkable that there are certain catch-words, or test-words, among old gypsies with which they try new acquaintances. One of these is _kekkavi_, a kettle; another, _chinamangri_, a bill-hook, or chopper (also a letter), for which there is also another word. But I have found several very deep mothers in sorcery who have given me the word for sun, _kam_, as a precious secret, but little known. Now the word really is very well known, but the mystery attached to it, as to _chone_ or _shule_, the moon, would seem to indicate that at one time these words had a peculiar significance. Once the darkest-colored English gypsy I ever met, wishing to sound the depth of my Romany, asked me for the words for sun and moon, making more account of my knowledge of them than of many more far less known.

As it will interest the reader, I will here give the ballad of the sun and the moon, which exists both in Romany and Roumani, or Roumanian, in the translation which I take from "A Winter in the City of Pleasure" (that is Bucharest), by Florence K. Berger,--a most agreeable book, and one containing two Chapters on the Tzigane, or gypsies.

THE SUN AND THE MOON.

Brother, one day the Sun resolved to marry. During nine years, drawn by nine fiery horses, he had rolled by heaven and earth as fast as the wind or a flying arrow.

But it was in vain that he fatigued his horses. Nowhere could he find a love worthy of him. Nowhere in the universe was one who equaled in beauty his sister Helen, the beautiful Helen with silver tresses.

The Sun went to meet her, and thus addressed her: "My dear little sister Helen, Helen of the silver tresses, let us be betrothed, for we are made for one another.

"We are alike not only in our hair and our features, but also in our beauty. I have locks of gold, and thou hast locks of silver. My face is shining and splendid, and thine is soft and radiant."

"O my brother, light of the world, thou who art pure of all stain, one has never seen a brother and sister married together, because it would be a shameful sin."

At this rebuke the Sun hid himself, and mounted up higher to the throne of God, bent before Him, and spoke:--

"Lord our Father, the time has arrived for me to wed. But, alas! I cannot find a love in the world worthy of me except the beautiful Helen, Helen of the silver hair!"

God heard him, and, taking him by the hand, led him into hell to affright his heart, and then into paradise to enchant his soul.

Then He spake to him, and while He was speaking the Sun began to shine brightly and the clouds passed over:--

"Radiant Sun! Thou who art free from all stain, thou hast been through hell and hast entered paradise. Choose between the two."

The Sun replied, recklessly, "I choose hell, if I may have, for a life, Helen, Helen of the shining silver hair."

The Sun descended from the high heaven to his sister Helen, and ordered preparation for his wedding. He put on her forehead the waving gold chaplet of the bride, he put on her head a royal crown, he put on her body a transparent robe all embroidered with fine pearls, and they all went into the church together.

But woe to him, and woe to her! During the service the lights were extinguished, the bells cracked while ringing, the seats turned themselves upside down, the tower shook to its base, the priests lost their voices, and the sacred robes were torn off their backs.

The bride was convulsed with fear. For suddenly, woe to her! an invisible hand grasped her up, and, having borne her on high, threw her into the sea, where she was at once changed into a beautiful silver fish.

The Sun grew pale and rose into the heaven. Then descending to the west, he plunged into the sea to search for his sister Helen, Helen of the shining silver hair.

However, the Lord God (sanctified in heaven and upon the earth) took the fish in his hand, cast it forth into the sky, and changed it anew into the moon.

Then He spoke. And while God was speaking the entire universe trembled, the peaks of the mountains bowed down, and men shivered with fear.

"Thou, Helen of the long silver tresses, and thou resplendent Sun, who are both free from all stain, I condemn you for eternity to follow each other with your eyes through space, without being ever able to meet or to reach each other upon the road of heaven. Pursue one another for all time in traveling around the skies and lighting up the world."

* * * * *

Fallen from a high estate by sin, wicked, and therefore wandering: it was with such a story of being penitent pilgrims, doomed for a certain space to walk the earth, that the gypsies entered Europe from India, into Islam and into Christendom, each time modifying the story to suit the religion of the country which they invaded. Now I think that this sun and moon legend is far from being frivolous, and that it conforms wonderfully well with the famous story which they told to the Emperor Sigismund and the Pope and all Europe, that they were destined to wander because they had sinned. When they first entered Europe, the gypsies were full of these legends; they told them to everybody; but they had previously told them to themselves in the form of the Indian sun and moon story. This was the root whence other stories grew. As the tale of the Wandering Jew typifies the Hebrew, so does this of the sun and moon the Romany.

A GYPSY MAGIC SPELL.

There is a meaningless rhyme, very common among children. It is repeated while counting off those who are taking part in a game, and allotting to each a place. It is as follows:--

"Ekkeri akkery u-kery an
Fillisi', follasy, Nicolas John
Queebee-quabee--Irishman.
Stingle 'em--stangle 'em--buck!"

With a very little alteration in sounds, and not more than children make of these verses in different places, this may be read as follows:--

"'Ekkeri, akai-ri, you kair--an.
Filissin follasy. Nakelas ja'n.
Kivi, kavi. Irishman.
Stini--stani--buck!"

This is nonsense, of course, but it is Romany, or gypsy, and may be translated:--

"First--here--you begin.
Castle--gloves. You don't play. Go on!
_Kivi_--kettle. How are you?
_Stini_--buck--buck."

The common version of the rhyme begins with:--

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

But one-ry is the _exact_ translation of ekkeri; ek or yek being one. And it is remarkable that in

"_Hickory_ dickory dock,
The rat ran up the clock;
The clock struck _one_,
And down he run,
_Hickory_ dickory dock."

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

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

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

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

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

"Intery, mintery, cutery corn"--

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

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

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

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

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

SHELTA, THE TINKERS' TALK.

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

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

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

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

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

This was all that I could learn at that time. It did not impress me much, as I supposed that the man merely meant Old Irish. A year went by, and I found myself at Aberystwith, the beautiful sea-town in Wales, with my friend Professor Palmer--a palmer who has truly been a pilgrim _outre-mer_, even by Galilee's wave, and dwelt as an Arab in the desert. One afternoon we were walking together on that end of the beach which is the antithesis of the old Norman castle; that is, at the other extremity of the town, and by the rocks. And here there was a little crowd, chiefly of young ladies, knitting and novel-reading in the sun, or watching children playing on the sand. All at once there was an alarm, and the whole party fled like partridges, skurrying along and hiding under the lee of the rocks. For a great rock right over our heads was about to be blasted. So the professor and I went on and away, but as we went we observed an eccentric and most miserable figure crouching in a hollow like a little cave to avoid the anticipated falling stones.

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

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

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

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

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

"Thus far, and then no more:"
Such language speaks the sounding sea
To the waves upon the shore.

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

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

"_Shelkin gallopas_ just now," he replied.

"And what is that?"

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

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

"Well, gentlemen, you must know that I have no great gift for languages. I never could learn even French properly. I can conjugate the verb _etre_,--that is all. I'm an ignorant fellow, and very low. I've been kicked out of the lowest slums in Whitechapel because I was too much of a blackguard for 'em. But I know rhyming slang. Do you know Lord John Russell?"

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

"Why, it rhymes to _bustle_."

"I see. _Bustle_ is to pick pockets."

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

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

"A tinker would like to have a wife who knows as much of that as you do," he remarked. "No woman is fit to be a tinker's wife who can't make ten shillings a day by _glantherin_. _Glantherin_ or _glad'herin_ is the correct word in Shelter for ringing the changes. As for the language, I believe it's mostly Gaelic, but it's mixed up with Romanes and canting or thieves' slang. Once it was the common language of all the old tinkers. But of late years the old tinkers' families are mostly broken up, and the language is perishing."

Then he proceeded to give us the words in Shelta, or Minklers Thari. They were as follows:--

Shelkin gallopas Selling ferns. Soobli, Soobri Brother, friend--a man. Bewr Woman. Gothlin or goch'thlin Child. Young bewr Girl. Durra, or derra Bread. Pani Water (Romany). Stiff A warrant (common cant). Yack A watch (cant, _i.e._ bull's eye, _Yack_, an eye in Romany). Mush-faker Umbrella mender. Mithani (mithni) Policeman. Ghesterman (ghesti) Magistrate. Needi-mizzler A tramp. Dinnessy Cat. Stall Go, travel. Biyeghin Stealing. Biyeg To steal. Biyeg th'eenik To steal the thing. Crack A stick. Monkery Country. Prat Stop, stay, lodge. Ned askan Lodging. Glantherin (glad'herin) Money, swindling.

This word has a very peculiar pronunciation.

Sauni or sonni See. Strepuck (reepuck) A harlot. Strepuck lusk, Luthrum's gothlin Son of a harlot. Kurrb yer pee Punch your head or face. Pee Face. Borers and jumpers Tinkers' tools. Borers Gimlets. 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, Tusheroon A crown. Tre-nyock Threepence. Tripo-rauniel A pot of beer. Thari, Bug Talk.

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."

Reesbin Prison. Tre-moon Three months, a 'drag.' Rauniel, Runniel Beer. 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 magistrate.

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 Mucafee,
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 student of English dialects may yet succeed in recovering 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 kind. It seldom happens that gentlemen sit down in familiar friendly converse with vagabonds. When they do they are almost always religious people, anxious 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 beggar 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 always 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 thrice from the trees, and I had crossed the sea and was 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 England. 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; Germans were of course at home; Czechs, or Slavs, supposed 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 Romanys 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 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 ascertained that we had many friends in common in the _puro tem_ 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's all?"

"Yes, sorr, all av thim."

"All but one?"

"An' what's that wan, sorr?"

"Can you _thari shelta_, _subli_?"

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 occurred. 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."

"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 _Shelta_:

Theddy Fire (_theinne_. Irish). Strawn Tin. Blyhunka Horse. Leicheen Girl. Soobli Male, man. Binny soobli Boy. Binny Small. Chimmel Stick. Gh'ratha, grata Hat. Griffin, or gruffin Coat. Respes Trousers. Gullemnocks Shoes. Grascot Waistcoat. Skoich, or skoi Button. Numpa Sovereign, one pound. Gorhead, or godhed Money. Merrih Nose (?). Nyock Head. Graigh Hair. Kaine, or kyni Ears (Romany, _kan_). Melthog Inner shirt. Medthel Black. Cunnels Potatoes. Faihe, or feye Meat (_feoil_. Gaelic). Muogh Pig (_muck_. Irish). Miesli, misli To go (origin of "mizzle"?) Mailyas, or moillhas Fingers (_meirleach_, stealers Gaelic). Shaidyog Policeman. Respun To steal. Shoich Water, blood, liquid. Alemnoch Milk. Raglan, or reglan Hammer. Goppa Furnace, smith (_gobha_, a smith. Gaelic). Terry A heating-iron. Khoi Pincers. Chimmes (compare _chimmel_) Wood or stick. Mailyas Arms. Koras Legs (_cos_, leg. Gaelic). Skoihopa Whisky. Bulla (_ull_ as in _gull_) A letter. Thari Word, language. Mush Umbrella (slang). Lyesken cherps Telling fortunes. Loshools Flowers (_lus_, erb or flower? Gaelic). Dainoch To lose. Chaldroch Knife (_caldock_, sharply pointed. Gaelic). Bog To get. Masheen Cat. Cambra Dog. Laprogh Goose, duck. Kaldthog Hen. Rumogh Egg. Kiena House (_ken_, old gypsy and modern cant). Rawg Wagon. Gullemnoch Shoes. Analt To sweep, to broom. Analken To wash. D'erri Bread. R'ghoglin (gogh'leen) To laugh. Kradyin To stop, stay, sit, lodge, remain. Oura Town. Lashool Nice (_lachool_. Irish). Moinni, or moryeni Good (_min_, pleasant. Gaelic). 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, thedi 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. 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 To me. 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'hyi Slow. Th-mddusk Door. Khaihed Chair (_khahir_. Irish). Bord Table. Grainyog Window. Rumog Egg. Aidh Butter. Okonneh A priest. Thus explained in a very Irish manner: "_Okonneh_, or _Koony_, _is_ a _sacred_ man, and _kuni_ 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. Krepoch Cat. Grannien With child. Loshub Sweet. Shum To own. L'yogh To lose. Crimum Sheep. Khadyog Stone. Nglou Nail. Gial Yellow, red. Talosk Weather. Laprogh Bird. Madel Tail. Carob To cut. Lubran, luber To hit. Thom Violently. Mish it thom 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 heen 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 yedh Thirteen. K'hair yedh, etc. Fourteen, etc. Tat 'th chesin ogomsa That belongs to me. Grannis to my deal It belongs to me. Dioch maa krady in in this nadas I am staying here. Tash emilesh He is staying there. Boghin the brass Cooking the food. My deal is mislin I am going. The nidias of the kiena don't The people of the house don't know granny what we're a tharyin what we're 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 manifestly deeply interested and delighted in our interview, 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'll go bail by this time to-morrow,
You'll 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 informant declares that it is quite independent of Old 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 examination and inquiry have failed to show that it is contained in that language. That it is "the talk of the ould Picts--thim that built the stone houses like beehives"--is, I confess, too conjectural for a philologist. 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 lingoes; 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, however, 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 undiscovered. There is no hint of it in John Camden Hotten'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 Romany, 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 talking toads, and uttered by the Druid stones, which are 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 probable 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, _voila notre affaire_! for then the business would be promptly done. Wizards of the secret spells, I adjure ye, raise me a Pictess for the sake of philology--and the picturesque!

Footnotes:

{19} From 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 India_). I have somewhere met with the statement that the Dom was pre-Aryan, but allowed to rank as Hindoo on account of services rendered to the early conquerors.

{22} Up-stairs in this gentleman's dialect signified up or upon, like _top_ Pidgin-English.

{23} _Puccasa_, Sanskrit. Low, inferior. Given by Pliny E. Chase in his _Sanskrit Analogues_ as the root-word for several inferior animals.

{26} _A Trip up the Volga to the Fair of Nijni-Novgovod_. By H. A. Munro Butler Johnstone. 1875.

{42} _Seven Years in the Deserts of America_.

{61} In Old English Romany this is called _dorrikin_; in common parade, _dukkerin_. Both forms are really old.

{68} Flower-flag-nation man; that is, American.

{69a} _Leadee_, reads.

{69b} _Dly_, dry.

{69c} _Lun_, run.

{82} Diamonds true. _O latcho bar_ (in England, _tatcho bar_), "the true or real stone," is the gypsy for a diamond.

{97} Within a mile, Maginn lies buried, without a monument.

{108} _Mashing_, a word of gypsy origin (_mashdva_), meaning fascination by the eye, or taking in.

{125} Goerres, _Christliche Mystik_, i. 296. 1. 23.

{134} _The Saxons in England_, i. 3.

{159} _Peru urphu_! "Increase and multiply!" _Vide_ Bodenschatz _Kirchliche Verfassung der Juden_, part IV. ch. 4, sect. 2.

{209} _The Past in the Present_, part 2, lect. 3

{222} _Yoma_, fol. 21, col. 2.

{238} _Zimbel_. The cymbal of the Austrian gypsies is a stringed instrument, like the zitter.

{241} _Crocus_, in common slang an itinerant quack, mountebank, or seller of medicine; _Pitcher_, a street dealer.

{270} A brief _resume_ of the most characteristic gypsy mode of obtaining property.

{279} Lady, in gypsy _rani_. The process of degradation is curiously marked in this language. _Rani_ (_rawnee_), in Hindi, is a queen. _Rye_, or _rae_, a gentleman, in its native land, is applicable to a nobleman, while _rashai_, a clergyman, even of the smallest dissenting type, rises in the original _rishi_ to a saint of the highest order.

{280} This was the very same affair and the same gypsies described and mentioned on page 383 of _In Gypsy Tents_, by Francis Hindes Groome, Edinburgh, 1880. I am well acquainted with them.

{285} _Primulaveris_: in German _Schlussel blume_, that is, key flowers; also Mary's-keys and keys of heaven. Both the primrose and tulip are believed in South Germany to be an Open Sesame to hidden treasure.

{292} Omar Khayyam, _Rubaiyat_.