Romano Lavo-Lil Part 36

Our horses they take, Our waggons they break, And us they fling Into horrid cells, Where hunger dwells And vermin sting.

When the dead swallow The fly shall follow Across the river, O we'll forget The wrongs we've met, But till then O never: Brother, of that be certain.

The English Gypsies call themselves Romany Chals and Romany Chies, that is, Sons and Daughters of Rome. When speaking to each other, they say "Pal" and "Pen"; that is, brother and sister. All people not of their own blood they call "Gorgios," or Gentiles. Gypsies first made their appearance in England about the year 1480. They probably came from France, where tribes of the race had long been wandering about under the names of Bohemians and Egyptians. In England they pursued the same kind of merripen {3} which they and their ancestors had pursued on the Continent. They roamed about in bands, consisting of thirty, sixty, or ninety families, with light, creaking carts, drawn by horses and donkeys, encamping at night in the spots they deemed convenient. The women told fortunes at the castle of the baron and the cottage of the yeoman; filched gold and silver coins from the counters of money-changers; caused the death of hogs in farmyards, by means of a stuff called drab or drao, which affects the brain, but does not corrupt the blood; and subsequently begged, and generally obtained, the carcases. The men plied tinkering and brasiery, now and then stole horses, and occasionally ventured upon highway robbery. The writer has here placed the Chies before the Chals, because, as he has frequently had occasion to observe, the Gypsy women are by far more remarkable beings than the men. It is the Chi and not the Chal who has caused the name of Gypsy to be a sound awaking wonder, awe, and curiosity in every part of the civilised world. Not that there have never been remarkable men of the Gypsy race both abroad and at home. Duke Michael, as he was called, the leader of the great Gypsy horde which suddenly made its appearance in Germany at the beginning of the fifteenth century, was no doubt a remarkable man; the Gitano Condre, whom Martin del Rio met at Toledo a hundred years afterwards, who seemed to speak all languages, and to be perfectly acquainted with the politics of all the Courts of Europe, must certainly have been a remarkable man; so, no doubt, here at home was Boswell; so undoubtedly was Cooper, called by the gentlemen of the Fives Court--poor fellows! they are all gone now--the "wonderful little Gypsy";--but upon the whole the poetry, the sorcery, the devilry, if you please to call it so, are vastly on the side of the women. How blank and inanimate is the countenance of the Gypsy man, even when trying to pa.s.s off a foundered donkey as a flying dromedary, in comparison with that of the female Romany, peering over the wall of a par-yard at a jolly hog!

Sar s.h.i.+n Sinfye?

Koshto divvus, Romany Chi!

So shan tute kairing acoi?

Sinfye, Sinfye! how do you do?

Daughter of Rome, good day to you!

What are you thinking here to do?

After a time the evil practices of the Gypsies began to be noised about, and terrible laws were enacted against people "using the manner of Egyptians"--Chies were scourged by dozens, Chals hung by scores. Throughout the reign of Elizabeth there was a terrible persecution of the Gypsy race; far less, however, on account of the crimes which they actually committed, than from a suspicion which was entertained that they harboured amidst their companies priests and emissaries of Rome, who had come to England for the purpose of sowing sedition and inducing the people to embrace again the old discarded superst.i.tion. This suspicion, however, was entirely without foundation. The Gypsies call each other brother and sister, and are not in the habit of admitting to their fellows.h.i.+p people of a different blood and with whom they have no sympathy. There was, however, a description of wandering people at that time, even as there is at present, with whom the priests, who are described as going about, sometimes disguised as serving-men, sometimes as broken soldiers, sometimes as s.h.i.+pwrecked mariners, would experience no difficulty in a.s.sociating, and with whom, in all probability, they occasionally did a.s.sociate--the people called in Acts of Parliament st.u.r.dy beggars and vagrants, in the old cant language Abraham men, and in the modern Pikers. These people have frequently been confounded with the Gypsies, but are in reality a distinct race, though they resemble the latter in some points. They roam about like the Gypsies, and, like them, have a kind of secret language. But the Gypsies are a people of Oriental origin, whilst the Abrahamites are the scurf of the English body corporate. The language of the Gypsies is a real language, more like the Sanscrit than any other language in the world; whereas the speech of the Abrahamites is a horrid jargon, composed for the most part of low English words used in an allegorical sense--a jargon in which a stick is called a crack; a hostess, a rum necklace; a bar-maid, a dolly-mort; brandy, rum booze; a constable, a h.o.r.n.y. But enough of these Pikers, these Abrahamites.

Sufficient to observe that if the disguised priests a.s.sociated with wandering companies it must have been with these people, who admit anybody to their society, and not with the highly exclusive race the Gypsies.

For nearly a century and a half after the death of Elizabeth the Gypsies seem to have been left tolerably to themselves, for the laws are almost silent respecting them. Chies, no doubt, were occasionally scourged for cauring, that is filching gold and silver coins, and Chals hung for grychoring, that is horse-stealing; but those are little incidents not much regarded in Gypsy merripen. They probably lived a life during the above period tolerably satisfactory to themselves--they are not an ambitious people, and there is no word for glory in their language--but next to nothing is known respecting them. A people called Gypsies are mentioned, and to a certain extent treated of, in two remarkable works--one a production of the seventeenth, the other of the eighteenth century--the first ent.i.tled the 'English Rogue, or the Adventures of Merriton Latroon,' the other the 'Life of Bamfield Moore Carew'; but those works, though clever and entertaining, and written in the raciest English, are to those who seek for information respecting Gypsies entirely valueless, the writers having evidently mistaken for Gypsies the Pikers or Abrahamites, as the vocabularies appended to the histories, and which are professedly vocabularies of the Gypsy language, are nothing of the kind, but collections of words and phrases belonging to the Abrahamite or Piker jargon. At the commencement of the last century, and for a considerable time afterwards, there was a loud cry raised against the Gypsy women for stealing children. This cry, however, was quite as devoid of reason as the suspicion entertained of old against the Gypsy communities of harbouring disguised priests. Gypsy women, as the writer had occasion to remark many a long year ago, have plenty of children of their own, and have no wish to enc.u.mber themselves with those of other people. A yet more extraordinary charge was, likewise, brought against them--that of running away with wenches. Now, the idea of Gypsy women running away with wenches!

Where were they to stow them in the event of running away with them?

and what were they to do with them in the event of being able to stow them? Nevertheless, two Gypsy women were burnt in the hand in the most cruel and frightful manner, somewhat about the middle of the last century, and two Gypsy men, their relations, sentenced to be hanged, for running away with a certain horrible wench of the name of Elizabeth Canning, who, to get rid of a disgraceful burden, had left her service and gone into concealment for a month, and on her return, in order to account for her absence, said that she had been run away with by Gypsies. The men, however, did not undergo their sentence; for, ere the day appointed for their execution arrived, suspicions beginning to be entertained with respect to the truth of the wench's story, they were reprieved, and, after a little time, the atrocious creature, who had charged people with doing what they neither did nor dreamt of doing, was tried for perjury, convicted, and sentenced to transportation. Yet so great is English infatuation that this Canning, this Elizabeth, had a host of friends, who stood by her, and swore by her to the last, and almost freighted the s.h.i.+p which carried her away with goods, the sale of which enabled her to purchase her freedom of the planter to whom she was consigned, to establish herself in business, and to live in comfort, and almost in luxury, in the New World during the remainder of her life.

But though Gypsies have occasionally experienced injustice; though Patricos and Sherengroes were hanged by dozens in Elizabeth's time on suspicion of harbouring disguised priests; though Gypsy women in the time of the Second George, accused of running away with wenches, were scorched and branded, there can be no doubt that they live in almost continual violation of the laws intended for the protection of society; and it may be added, that in this illegal way of life the women have invariably played a more important part than the men. Of them, amongst other things, it may be said that they are the most accomplished swindlers in the world, their princ.i.p.al victims being people of their own s.e.x, on whose credulity and superst.i.tion they practise. Mary Caumlo, or Lovel, was convicted a few years ago at Cardiff of having swindled a surgeon's wife of eighty pounds, under pretence of propitiating certain planets by showing them the money.

Not a penny of the booty was ever recovered by the deluded victim; and the Caumli, on leaving the dock, after receiving sentence of a year's imprisonment, turned round and winked to some brother or sister in court, as much as to say: "Mande has gared the luvvu; mande is kek atugni for the besh's starripen"--"I have hid the money, and care nothing for the year's imprisonment." Young Rawnie P. of N., the daughter of old Rawnie P., suddenly disappeared with the whole capital of an aged and bedridden gentlewoman, amounting to nearly three hundred pounds, whom she had a.s.sured that if she were intrusted with it for a short time she should be able to gather certain herbs, from which she could make decoctions, which would restore to the afflicted gentlewoman all her youthful vigour. Mrs.

Townsley of the Border was some time ago in trouble at Wick, only twenty-five miles distant from Johnny Groat's House, on a charge of fraudulently obtaining from a fisherman's wife one s.h.i.+lling, two half-crowns, and a five-pound note by promising to untie certain witch-locks, which she had induced her to believe were entwined in the meshes of the fisherman's net, and would, if suffered to remain, prevent him from catching a single herring in the Firth. These events occurred within the last few years, and are sufficiently notorious. They form a triad out of dozens of a similar kind, in some of which there are features so odd, so strangely droll, that indignation against the offence is dispelled by an irresistible desire to laugh.

But Gypsyism is declining, and its days are numbered. There is a force abroad which is doomed to destroy it, a force which never sleepeth either by day or night, and which will not allow the Roman people rest for the soles of their feet. That force is the Rural Police, which, had it been established at the commencement instead of towards the middle of the present century, would have put down Gypsyism long ago. But, recent as its establishment has been, observe what it has produced. Walk from London to Carlisle, but neither by the road's side, nor on heath or common, will you see a single Gypsy tent. True Gypsyism consists in wandering about, in preying upon the Gentiles, but not living amongst them. But such a life is impossible in these days; the Rural Force will not permit it.

"It is a hard thing, brother," said old Agamemnon Caumlo to the writer, several years ago; "it is a hard thing, after one has pitched one's little tent, lighted one's little fire, and hung one's kettle by the kettle-iron over it to boil, to have an inspector or constable come up, and say, 'What are you doing here? Take yourself off, you Gypsy dog!'" A hard thing, indeed, old Agamemnon; but there is no help for it. You must e'en live amongst the Gorgios. And for years past the Gypsies have lived amongst the Gorgios, and what has been the result? They do not seem to have improved the Gentiles, and have certainly not been improved by them. By living amongst the Gentiles they have, to a certain extent, lost the only two virtues they possessed. Whilst they lived apart on heaths and commons, and in shadowy lanes, the Gypsy women were paragons of chast.i.ty, and the men, if not exactly patterns of sobriety, were, upon the whole, very sober fellows. Such terms, however, are by no means applicable to them at the present day. Sects and castes, even of thieves and murderers, can exist as long as they have certain virtues, which give them a kind of respect in their own eyes; but, losing those virtues, they soon become extinct. When the salt loses its savour, what becomes of it? The Gypsy salt has not altogether lost its savour, but that essential quality is every day becoming fainter, so that there is every reason to suppose that within a few years the English Gypsy caste will have disappeared, merged in the dregs of the English population.

GYPSY NAMES

There are many curious things connected with the Gypsies, but perhaps nothing more so than what pertains to their names. They have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family having a public and a private name, one by which they are known to the Gentiles, and another to themselves alone. Their public names are quite English; their private ones attempts, some of them highly singular and uncouth, to render those names by Gypsy equivalents. Gypsy names may be divided into two cla.s.ses, names connected with trades, and surnames or family names. First of all, something about trade names.

There are only two names of trades which have been adopted by English Gypsies as proper names, Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English Gypsy dialect by Vardo-mescro and Petulengro. The first of these renderings is by no means a satisfactory one, as Vardo-mescro means a cartwright, or rather a carter. To speak the truth, it would be next to impossible to render the word 'cooper'

into English Gypsy, or indeed into Gypsy of any kind; a cooper, according to the common acceptation of the word, is one who makes pails, tubs, and barrels, but there are no words in Gypsy for such vessels. The Transylvanian Gypsies call a cooper a bedra-kero or pail-maker, but bedra is not Gypsy, but Hungarian, and the English Gypsies might with equal propriety call a cooper a pail-engro. On the whole the English Gypsies did their best when they rendered 'cooper' into their language by the word for 'cartwright.'

Petulengro, the other trade name, is borne by the Gypsies who are known to the public by the English appellation of Smith. It is not very easy to say what is the exact meaning of Petulengro: it must signify, however, either horseshoe-fellow or tinker: petali or petala signifies in Gypsy a horseshoe, and is probably derived from the Modern Greek [Greek: ]; engro is an affix, and is either derived from or connected with the Sanscrit kara, to make, so that with great feasibility Petulengro may be translated horseshoe-maker. But bedel in Hebrew means 'tin,' and as there is little more difference between petul and bedel than between petul and petalon, Petulengro may be translated with almost equal feasibility by tinker or tin-worker, more especially as tinkering is a princ.i.p.al pursuit of Gypsies, and to jal petulengring signifies to go a-tinkering in English Gypsy.

Taken, however, in either sense, whether as horseshoe-maker or tin- worker (and, as has been already observed, it must mean one or the other), Petulengro may be considered as a tolerably fair rendering of the English Smith.

So much for the names of the Gypsies which the writer has ventured to call the trade names; now for those of the other cla.s.s. These are English surnames, and for the most part of a highly aristocratic character, and it seems at first surprising that people so poor and despised as Gypsies should be found bearing names so time-honoured and imposing. There is, however, a tolerable explanation of the matter in the supposition that on their first arrival in England the different tribes sought the protection of certain grand powerful families, and were permitted by them to locate themselves on their heaths and amid their woodlands, and that they eventually adopted the names of their patrons. Here follow the English names of some of the princ.i.p.al tribes, with the Romany translations or equivalents:-

BOSWELL.--The proper meaning of this word is the town of Bui. The initial Bo or Bui is an old Northern name, signifying a colonist or settler, one who tills and builds. It was the name of a great many celebrated Northern kempions, who won land and a home by hard blows.

The last syllable, well, is the French ville: Boswell, Boston, and Busby all signify one and the same thing--the town of Bui--the well being French, the ton Saxon, and the by Danish; they are half- brothers of Bovil and Belville, both signifying fair town, and which ought to be written Beauville and Belville. The Gypsies, who know and care nothing about etymologies, confounding bos with buss, a vulgar English verb not to be found in dictionaries, which signifies to kiss, rendered the name Boswell by Chumomisto, that is, Kisswell, or one who kisses well--choom in their language signifying to kiss, and misto well--likewise by choomomescro, a kisser. Vulgar as the word buss may sound at present, it is by no means of vulgar origin, being connected with the Latin basio and the Persian bouse.

GREY.--This is the name of a family celebrated in English history.

The Gypsies who adopted it, rendered it into their language by Gry, a word very much resembling it in sound, though not in sense, for gry, which is allied to the Sanscrit ghora, signifies a horse. They had no better choice, however, for in Romany there is no word for grey, any more than there is for green or blue. In several languages there is a difficulty in expressing the colour which in English is called grey. In Celtic, for instance, there is no definite word for it; glas, it is true, is used to express it, but glas is as frequently used to express green as it is to express grey.

HEARNE, HERNE.--This is the name of a family which bears the heron for its crest, the name being either derived from the crest, or the crest from the name. There are two Gypsy renderings of the word-- Rossar-mescro or Ratzie-mescro, and Balorengre. Rossar-mescro signifies duck-fellow, the duck being subst.i.tuted for the heron, for which there is no word in Romany. The meaning of Balor-engre is hairy people; the translator or translators seeming to have confounded Hearne with 'haaren,' old English for hairs. The latter rendering has never been much in use.

LEE.--The Gypsy name of this tribe is Purrum, sometimes p.r.o.nounced Purrun. The meaning of Purrurn is an onion, and it may be asked what connection can there be between Lee and onion? None whatever: but there is some resemblance in sound between Lee and leek, and it is probable that the Gypsies thought so, and on that account rendered the name by Purrum, which, if not exactly a leek, at any rate signifies something which is cousin-german to a leek. It must be borne in mind that in some parts of England the name Lee is spelt Legh and Leigh, which would hardly be the case if at one time it had not terminated in something like a guttural, so that when the Gypsies rendered the name, perhaps nearly four hundred years ago, it sounded very much like 'leek,' and perhaps was Leek, a name derived from the family crest. At first the writer was of opinion that the name was Purrun, a modification of pooro, which in the Gypsy language signifies old, but speedily came to the conclusion that it must be Purrum, a leek or onion; for what possible reason could the Gypsies have for rendering Lee by a word which signifies old or ancient?

whereas by rendering it by Purrum, they gave themselves a Gypsy name, which, if it did not signify Lee, must to their untutored minds have seemed a very good subst.i.tute for Lee. The Gypsy word pooro, old, belongs to Hindostan, and is connected with the Sanscrit pura, which signifies the same. Purrum is a modification of the Wallachian pur, a word derived from the Latin porrum, an onion, and picked up by the Gypsies in Roumania or Wallachia, the natives of which region speak a highly curious mixture of Latin and Sclavonian.

LOVEL.--This is the name or t.i.tle of an old and powerful English family. The meaning of it is Leo's town, Lowe's town, or Louis'

town. The Gypsies, who adopted it, seem to have imagined that it had something to do with love, for they translated it by Camlo or Caumlo, that which is lovely or amiable, and also by Camomescro, a lover, an amorous person, sometimes used for 'friend.' Camlo is connected with the Sanscrit Cama, which signifies love, and is the appellation of the Hindoo G.o.d of love. A name of the same root as the one borne by that divinity was not altogether inapplicable to the Gypsy tribe who adopted it: Cama, if all tales be true, was black, black though comely, a Beltenebros, and the Lovel tribe is decidedly the most comely and at the same time the darkest of all the Anglo-Egyptian families. The faces of many of them, male and female, are perfect specimens of black beauty. They are generally called by the race the Kaulo Camloes, the Black Comelies. And here, though at the risk of being thought digressive, the writer cannot forbear saying that the darkest and at one time the comeliest of all the Caumlies, a celebrated fortune-teller, and an old friend of his, lately expired in a certain old town, after attaining an age which was something wonderful. She had twenty-one brothers and sisters, and was the eldest of the family, on which account she was called "Rawnie P., pooroest of bis ta dui," Lady P.--she had married out of the family-- eldest of twenty-two.

MARSHALL.--The name Marshall has either to do with marshal, the t.i.tle of a high military personage, or marches, the borders of contiguous countries. In the early Norman period it was the name of an Earl of Pembroke. The Gypsies who adopted the name seem in translating it to have been of opinion that it was connected with marshes, for they rendered it by mokkado tan engre, fellows of the wet or miry place, an appellation which at one time certainly became them well, for they are a northern tribe belonging to the Border, a country not very long ago full of mosses and miry places. Though calling themselves English, they are in reality quite as much Scotch as English, and as often to be found in Scotland as the other country, especially in Dumfriess.h.i.+re and Galloway, in which latter region, in Saint Cuthbert's churchyard, lies buried 'the old man' of the race,-- Marshall, who died at the age of 107. They sometimes call themselves Bungyoror and Chikkeneymengre, cork-fellows and china people, which names have reference to the occupations severally followed by the males and females, the former being cutters of bungs and corks, and the latter menders of china.

STANLEY.--This is the name or t.i.tle of an ancient English family celebrated in history. It is probably descriptive of their original place of residence, for it signifies the stony lea, which is also the meaning of the Gaelic Auchinlech, the place of abode of the Scottish Boswells. It was adopted by an English Gypsy tribe, at one time very numerous, but at present much diminished. Of this name there are two renderings into Romany; one is Baryor or Baremescre, stone-folks or stonemasons, the other is Beshaley. The first requires no comment, but the second is well worthy of a.n.a.lysis, as it is an example of the strange blunders which the Gypsies sometimes make in their attempts at translation. When they rendered Stanley by Beshaley or Beshley, they mistook the first syllable stan for 'stand,' but for a very good reason rendered it by besh, which signifies 'to sit, and the second for a word in their own language, for ley or aley in Gypsy signifies 'down,' so they rendered Stanley by Beshley or Beshaley, which signifies 'sit down.' Here, of course, it will be asked what reason could have induced them, if they mistook stan for 'stand,' not to have rendered it by the Gypsy word for 'stand'? The reason was a very cogent one, the want of a word in the Gypsy language to express 'stand'; but they had heard in courts of justice witnesses told to stand down, so they supposed that to stand down was much the same as to sit down, whence their odd rendering of Stanley. In no dialect of the Gypsy, from the Indus to the Severn, is there any word for 'stand,' though in every one there is a word for 'sit,' and that is besh, and in every Gypsy encampment all along the vast distance, Beshley or Beshaley would be considered an invitation to sit down.

So much for the double-name system in use among the Gypsies of England. There is something in connection with the Gypsies of Spain which strangely coincides with one part of it--the translation of names. Among the relics of the language of the Gitanos or Spanish Gypsies are words, some simple and some compound, which are evidently attempts to translate names in a manner corresponding to the plan employed by the English Romany. In ill.u.s.tration of the matter, the writer will give an a.n.a.lysis of Brono Aljenicato, the rendering into Gitano of the name of one frequently mentioned in the New Testament, and once in the Apostles' Creed, the highly respectable, but much traduced individual known to the English public as Pontius Pilate, to the Spanish as Poncio Pilato. The manner in which the rendering has been accomplished is as follows: Poncio bears some resemblance to the Spanish puente, which signifies a bridge, and is a modification of the Latin pons, and Pilato to the Spanish pila, a fountain, or rather a stone pillar, from the top of which the waters of a fountain springing eventually fall into a stone basin below, the two words-- the Brono Aljenicato--signifying bridge-fountain, or that which is connected with such a thing. Now this is the identical, or all but the identical, way in which the names Lee, Lovel, and Stanley have been done into English Romany. A remarkable instance is afforded in this Gitano Scripture name, this Brono Aljenicato, of the heterogeneous materials of which Gypsy dialects are composed: Brono is a modification of a Hindoo or Sanscrit, Aljenicato of an Arabic root. Brono is connected with the Sanscrit pindala, which signifies a bridge, and Aljenicato is a modification of the Gypsy aljenique, derived from the Arabic alain, which signifies the fountain. But of whatever materials composed, a fine-sounding name is this same Brono Aljenicato, perhaps the finest sounding specimen of Spanish Gypsy extant, much finer than a translation of Pontius Pilate would be, provided the name served to express the same things, in English, which Poncio Pilato serves to express in Spanish, for then it would be Pudjico Pani or Bridgewater; for though in English Gypsy there is the word for a bridge, namely pudge, a modification of the Persian pul, or the Wallachian podul, there is none for a fountain, which can be only vaguely paraphrased by pani, water.

FORTUNE-TELLING

Gypsy women, as long as we have known anything of Gypsy history, have been arrant fortune-tellers. They plied fortune-telling about France and Germany as early as 1414, the year when the dusky bands were first observed in Europe, and they have never relinquished the practice. There are two words for fortune-telling in Gypsy, bocht and dukkering. Bocht is a Persian word, a modification of, or connected with, the Sanscrit bagya, which signifies 'fate.'

Dukkering is the modification of a Wallaco-Sclavonian word signifying something spiritual or ghostly. In Eastern European Gypsy, the Holy Ghost is called Swentuno Ducos.

Gypsy fortune-telling is much the same everywhere, much the same in Russia as it is in Spain and in England. Everywhere there are three styles--the lofty, the familiar, and the homely; and every Gypsy woman is mistress of all three and uses each according to the rank of the person whose vast she dukkers, whose hand she reads, and adapts the luck she promises. There is a ballad of some antiquity in the Spanish language about the Buena Ventura, a few stanzas of which translated will convey a tolerable idea of the first of these styles to the reader, who will probably with no great reluctance dispense with any ill.u.s.trations of the other two:-

Late rather one morning In summer's sweet tide, Goes forth to the Prado Jacinta the bride:

There meets her a Gypsy So fluent of talk, And jauntily dressed, On the princ.i.p.al walk.

"O welcome, thrice welcome, Of beauty thou flower!

Believe me, believe me, Thou com'st in good hour."

Surprised was Jacinta; She fain would have fled; But the Gypsy to cheer her Such honeyed words said:

"O cheek like the rose-leaf!

O lady high-born!

Turn thine eyes on thy servant, But ah, not in scorn.

"O pride of the Prado!

O joy of our clime!

Thou twice shalt be married, And happily each time.

"Of two n.o.ble sons Thou shalt be the glad mother, One a Lord Judge, A Field-Marshal the other."