The English Gipsies and Their Language Part 17

"Samson was a boro mush, wery hunnalo an' tatto at koorin', so that he nashered saw the mus.h.i.+s avree, an' they were atrash o' lester. He was so surrelo that yeckorus when he poggered avree a ker, an' it had a boro sasterni wuder, he just pet it apre his dumo, an' hookered it avree, an'

jalled kerri an' bikin'd it.

"Yeck divvus he lelled some weshni juckals, an' pandered yagni-trushnees to their poris and mukked 'em jal. And they nashered avree like puro bengis, sig in the sala, when sar the mus.h.i.+s were sutto, 'unsa parl the giv puvius, and hotchered sar the giv.

"Then the krallis b.i.t.c.hered his mus.h.i.+s to lel Samson, but he koshered 'em, an' pash mored the tat of 'em; they couldn't kurry him, and he sillered 'em to praster for their miraben. An' 'cause they couldn't serber him a koorin', they kaired it sidd pre the chingerben drum. Now Samson was a seehiatty mush, wery cammoben to the juvas, so they got a wery rinkeni chi to kutter an' kuzzer him. So yuv welled a laki to a worretty tan, an' she hocussed him with drab till yuv was pilfry o'

sutto, an his sherro hungered hooper side a lacker; an' when yuv was selvered, the mus.h.i.+s welled and chinned his ballos apre an' chivved him adree the sturaben.

"An' yeck divvus the foki hitchered him avree the sturaben to kair pya.s.s for 'em. And as they were gillerin' and huljerin' him, Samson chivved his wasters kettenus the boro chongurs of the sturaben, and bongered his kokerus adree, an sar the ker pet a lay with a boro gudli, an' sar the pooro mus.h.i.+s were mullered an' the ker poggered to bitti cutters."

"Samson was a great man, very fierce and expert at fighting, so that he drove all men away, and they were afraid of him. He was so strong that once when he broke into a house, and it had a great iron door, he just put it on his back, and carried it away and went home and sold it.

"One day he caught some foxes, and tied firebrands to their tails and let them go. And they ran away like old devils, early in the morning, when all the people were asleep, across the field, and burned all the wheat.

"Then the king sent his men to take Samson, but he hurt them, and half killed the whole of them; they could not injure him, and he compelled them to run for life. And because they could not capture him by fighting, they did it otherwise by an opposite way. Now Samson was a man full of life, very fond of the girls, so they got a very pretty woman to cajole and coax him. And he went with her to a lonely house, and she 'hocussed' him with poison till he was heavy with sleep, and his head drooped by her side; and when he was poisoned, the people came and cut his hair off and threw him into prison.

"And one day the people dragged him out of prison to make sport for them.

And as they were making fun of him and teasing him, Samson threw his hands around the great pillars of the prison, and bowed himself in, and all the house fell down with a great noise, and all the poor men were killed and the house broken to small pieces.

"And so he died."

"Do you know what the judgment day is, Puro?"

"Avo, rya. The judgment day is when you _soves alay_ (go in sleep, or dream away) to the boro Duvel."

I reflected long on this reply of the untutored Rommany. I had often thought that the deepest and most beautiful phrase in all Tennyson's poems was that in which the impa.s.sioned lover promised his mistress to love her after death, ever on "into the dream beyond." And here I had the same thought as beautifully expressed by an old Gipsy, who, he declared, for two months hadn't seen three nights when he wasn't as drunk as four fiddlers. And the same might have been said of Carolan, the Irish bard, who lived in poetry and died in whisky.

The soul sleeping or dreaming away to G.o.d suggested an inquiry into the Gipsy idea of the nature of spirits.

"You believe in _mullos_ (ghosts), Puro. Can everybody see them, I wonder?"

"Avo, rya, avo. Every mush can d.i.c.k mullos if it's their cammoben to be d.i.c.kdus. But 'dusta critters can d.i.c.k mullos whether the mullos kaum it or kek. There's grais an' mylas can d.i.c.k mullos by the ratti; an'

yeckorus I had a grai that was trasher 'dree a tem langs the rikkorus of a drum, pash a boro park where a mush had been mullered. He prastered a mee pauli, but pash a cheirus he welled apopli to the wardos. A chinned jucko or a wixen can hunt mullos. Avali, they chase sperits just the sim as anything 'dree the world--dan'r 'em, koor 'em, chinger 'em--'cause the dogs can't be dukkered by mullos."

In English: "Yes, sir, yes. Every man can see ghosts if it is their will to be seen. But many creatures can see ghosts whether the ghosts wish it or not. There are horses and a.s.ses (which) can see ghosts by the night; and once I had a horse that was frightened in a place by the side of a road, near a great park where a man had been murdered. He ran a mile behind, but after a while came back to the waggons. A cut (castrated) dog or a vixen can hunt ghosts. Yes, they chase spirits just the same as anything in the world--bite 'em, fight 'em, tear 'em--because dogs cannot be hurt by ghosts."

"Dogs," I replied, "sometimes hunt men as well as ghosts."

"Avo; but men can fool the juckals avree, and men too, and mullos can't."

"How do they kair it?"

"If a choramengro kaums to ch.o.r.e a covva when the snow is apre the puvius, he jals yeck piro, palewavescro. If you chiv tutes piros pal-o- the-waver--your kusto piro kaired bongo, jallin' with it a rikkorus, an'

the waver piro straightus--your patteran'll d.i.c.k as if a bongo-herroed mush had been apre the puvius. (I jinned a mush yeckorus that had a dui chokkas kaired with the dui tachabens kaired bongo, to jal a-chorin'

with.) But if you're pallered by juckals, and pet lully dantymengro adree the chokkas, it'll dukker the sunaben of the juckos.

"An' if you chiv lully dantymengro where juckos kair panny, a'ter they soom it they won't jal adoi chichi no moreus, an' won't mutter in dovo tan, and you can keep it clea.n.u.s."

That is, "If a thief wants to steal a thing when the snow is on the ground, he goes with one foot behind the other. If you put your feet one behind the other--your right foot twisted, going with it to one side, and the other foot straight--your trail will look as if a crooked-legged man had been on the ground. (I knew a man once that had a pair of shoes made with the two heels reversed, to go a-thieving with.) But if you are followed by dogs, and put red pepper in your shoes, it will spoil the scent of the dogs.

"And if you throw red pepper where dogs make water, they will not go there any more after they smell it, and you can keep it clean."

"Well," I replied, "I see that a great many things can be learned from the Gipsies. Tell me, now, when you wanted a night's lodging did you ever go to a union?"

"Kek, rya; the tramps that jal langs the drum an' mang at the unions are kek Rommany chals. The Rommany never kair dovo--they'd sooner besh in the bavol puv firstus. We'd putch the farming rye for mukkaben to hatch the ratti adree the granja,but we'd sooner suv under the bor in the bishnoo than jal adree the chuvveny-ker. The Rommany chals aint sim to tramps, for they've got a different drum into 'em."

In English: "No, sir; the tramps that go along the road and beg at the unions are not Gipsies. The Rommany never do that--they'd sooner stay in the open field (literally, air-field). We would ask the farmer for leave to stop the night in the barn, but we'd sooner sleep under the hedge in the rain than go in the poorhouse. Gipsies are not like tramps, for they have a different _way_."

The reader who will reflect on the extreme misery and suffering incident upon sleeping in the open air, or in a very scanty tent, during the winter in England, and in cold rains, will appreciate the amount of manly pride necessary to sustain the Gipsies in thus avoiding the union. That the wandering Rommany can live at all is indeed wonderful, since not only are all other human beings less exposed to suffering than many of them, but even foxes and rabbits are better protected in their holes from storms and frost. The Indians of North America have, without exception, better tents; in fact, one of the last Gipsy _tans_ which I visited was merely a bit of ragged canvas, so small that it could only cover the upper portion of the bodies of the man and his wife who slept in it.

Where and how they packed their two children I cannot understand.

The impunity with which any fact might be published in English Rommany, with the certainty that hardly a soul in England not of the blood could understand it, is curiously ill.u.s.trated by an incident which came within my knowledge. The reader is probably aware that there appear occasionally in the "Agony" column of the _Times_ (or in that devoted to "personal" advertis.e.m.e.nts) certain sentences apparently written in some very strange foreign tongue, but which the better informed are aware are made by transposing letters according to the rules of cryptography or secret writing. Now it is estimated that there are in Great Britain at least one thousand lovers of occult lore and quaint curiosa, decipherers of rebuses and adorers of anagrams, who, when one of these delightful puzzles appears in the _Times_, set themselves down and know no rest until it is unpuzzled and made clear, being stimulated in the pursuit by the delightful consciousness that they are exploring the path of somebody's secret, which somebody would be very sorry to have made known.

Such an advertis.e.m.e.nt appeared one day, and a friend of mine, who had a genius for that sort of thing, sat himself down early one Sat.u.r.day morning to decipher it.

First of all he ascertained which letter occurred most frequently in the advertis.e.m.e.nt, for this must be the letter _e_ according to rules made and provided by the great Edgar A. Poe, the American poet-cryptographer.

But to reveal the secret in full, I may as well say, dear reader, that you must take printers' type in their cases, _and follow the proportions according to the size of the boxes_. By doing this you cannot fail to unrip the seam of any of these trans.m.u.tations.

But, alas! this c.o.c.k would not fight--it was a dead bird in the pit. My friend at once apprehended that he had to deal with an old hand--one of those aggravating fellows who are up to cryp--a man who can write a sentence, and be capable of leaving the letter _e_ entirely out. For there _are_ people who will do this.

So he went to work afresh upon now hypotheses, and pleasantly the hours fled by. Quires of paper were exhausted; he worked all day and all the evening with no result. That it was not in a foreign language my friend was well a.s.sured.

"For well hee knows the Latine and the Dutche; Of Fraunce and Toscanie he hath a touche."

Russian is familiar to him, and Arabic would not have been an unknown quant.i.ty. So he began again with the next day, and had been breaking the Sabbath until four o'clock in the afternoon, when I entered, and the mystic advertis.e.m.e.nt was submitted to me. I glanced at it, and at once read it into English, though as I read the smile at my friend's lost labour vanished in a sense of sympathy for what the writer must have suffered. It was as follows, omitting names:--

"MANDY jins of --- ---. Patsa mandy, te b.i.t.c.ha lav ki tu shan. Opray minno lav, mandy'l kek pukka til tute muks a mandi. Tute's di's see se welni poggado. Shom atrash tuti dad'l jal divio. Yov'l fordel sor. For miduvel's kom, muk lesti shoon choomani."

In English: "I know of ---. Trust me, and send word where you are. On my word, I will not tell till you give me leave. Your mother's heart is wellnigh broken. I am afraid your father will go mad. He will forgive all. For G.o.d's sake, let him know something."

This was sad enough, and the language in which it was written is good English Rommany. I would only state in addition, that I found that in the very house in which I was living, and at the same time, a lady had spent three days in vainly endeavouring to ascertain the meaning of these sentences.

It is possible that many Gipsies, be they of high or low degree, in society or out of it, may not be pleased at my publis.h.i.+ng a book of their language, and revealing so much of what they fondly cherish as a secret.

They need be under no apprehension, since I doubt very much whether, even with its aid, a dozen persons living will seriously undertake to study it--and of this dozen there is not one who will not be a philologist; and such students are generally aware that there are copious vocabularies of all the other Gipsy dialects of Europe easy to obtain from any bookseller. Had my friend used the works of Pott or Paspati, Ascoli or Grellman, he would have found it an easy thing to translate this advertis.e.m.e.nt. The truth simply is, that for _scholars_ there is not a single secret or hidden word in English Gipsy or in any other Rommany dialect, and none except scholars will take pains to acquire it. Any man who wished to learn sufficient Gipsy to maintain a conversation, and thereby learn all the language, could easily have done so half a century ago from the vocabularies published by Bright and other writers. A secret which has been for fifty years published in very practical detail in fifty books, is indeed a _secret de Ponchinelle_.

I have been asked scores of times, "Have the Gipsies an alphabet of their own? have they grammars of their language, dictionaries, or books?" Of course my answer was in the negative. I have heard of vocabularies in use among crypto-Rommanies, or those who having risen from the roads live a secret life, so to speak, but I have never seen one. But they have songs; and one day I was told that in my neighbourhood there lived a young Gipsy woman who was a poetess and made Rommany ballads. "She can't write," said my informant; "but her husband's a _Gorgio_, and he can. If you want them, I'll get you some." The offer was of course accepted, and the Gipsy dame, flattered by the request, sent me the following. The lyric is without rhyme, but, as sung, not without rhythm.

"GILLI OF A RUMMANY JUVA.

"Die at the gargers (Gorgios), The gargers round mandy!

Trying to lel my meripon, My meripon (meripen) away.

I will care (kair) up to my chungs (chongs), Up to my chungs in Rat, All for my happy Racler (raklo).

My mush is lelled to sturribon (staripen), To sturribon, to sturribon; Mymush is lelled to sturribon, To the Tan where mandy gins (jins)."