The English Gipsies and Their Language Part 4

"Aniseed is better," replied the Gipsy, solemnly. (By the way, another and an older Gipsy afterwards told me that he used caraway-oil and the heads of dried herrings.) "And if you've got a rat, sir, anywhere in this here house, I'll bring it to you in five minutes."

He did, in fact, subsequently bring the artist as models for the picture two very pretty rats, which he had quite tamed while catching them.

"But what does the picture mean, sir?" he inquired, with curiosity.

"Once upon a time," I replied, "there was a city in Germany which was overrun with rats. They teased the dogs and worried the cats, and bit the babies in the cradle, and licked the soup from the cook's own ladle."

"There must have been an uncommon lot of them, sir," replied the tinker, gravely.

"There was. Millions of them. Now in those days there were no Rommanichals, and consequently no rat-catchers."

"'Taint so now-a-days," replied the Gipsy, gloomily. "The business is quite spiled, and not to get a livin' by."

"Avo. And by the time the people had almost gone crazy, one day there came a man--a Gipsy--the first Gipsy who had ever been seen in _dovo tem_ (or that country). And he agreed for a thousand crowns to clear all the rats away. So he blew on a pipe, and the rats all followed him out of town."

"What did he blow on a pipe for?"

"Just for _hokkerben_, to humbug them. I suppose he had oils rubbed on his heels. But when he had drawn the rats away and asked for his money, they would not give it to him. So then, what do you think he did?"

"I suppose--ah, I see," said the Gipsy, with a shrewd look. "He went and drew 'em all back again."

"No; he went, and this time piped all the children away. They all went after him--all except one little lame boy--and that was the last of it."

The Gipsy looked earnestly at me, and then, as if I puzzled, but with an expression of perfect faith, he asked--

"And is that all _tacho_--all a fact--or is it made up, you know?"

"Well, I think it is partly one and partly the other. You see, that in those days Gipsies were very scarce, and people were very much astonished at rat-drawing, and so they made a queer story of it."

"But how about the children?"

"Well," I answered; "I suppose you have heard occasionally that Gipsies used to ch.o.r.e Gorgios' chavis--steal people's children?"

Very grave indeed was the a.s.sent yielded to this explanation. He _had_ heard it among other things.

My dear Mr Robert Browning, I little thought, when I suggested to the artist your poem of the piper, that I should ever retail the story in Rommany to a tinker. But who knows with whom he may a.s.sociate in this life, or whither he may drift on the great white rolling sea of humanity?

Did not Lord Lytton, unless the preface to Pelham err, himself once tarry in the tents of the Egyptians? and did not Christopher North also wander with them, and sing--

"Oh, little did my mother think, The day she cradled me, The lands that I should travel in, Or the death that I should dee; Or gae rovin' about wi' tinkler loons, And sic-like companie"?

"You know, sir," said the Gipsy, "that we have two languages. For besides the Rummany, there's the reg'lar cant, which all tinkers talk."

"_Kennick_ you mean?"

"Yes, sir; that's the Rummany for it. A 'dolly mort' is Kennick, but it's _juva_ or _rakli_ in Rummanis. It's a girl, or a rom's _chi_."

"You say _rom_ sometimes, and then _rum_."

"There's _rums_ and _roms_, sir. The _rum_ is a Gipsy, and a _rom_ is a husband."

"That's your English way of calling it. All the rest of the world over there is only one word among Gipsies, and that is _rom_."

Now, the allusion to _Kennick_ or cant by a tinker, recalls an incident which, though not strictly Gipsy in its nature, I will nevertheless narrate.

In the summer of 1870 I spent several weeks at Spa, in the Ardennes. One day while walking I saw by the roadside a picturesque old tinker, looking neither better nor worse than the grinder made immortal by Teniers.

I was anxious to know if all of his craft in Belgium could speak Gipsy, and addressed him in that language, giving him at the same time my knife to grind. He replied politely in French that he did not speak Rommany, and only understood French and Walloon. Yet he seemed to understand perfectly the drift of my question, and to know what Gipsy was, and its nature, since after a pause he added, with a significant smile--

"But to tell the truth, monsieur, though I cannot talk Rommany, I know another secret language. I can speak _Argot_ fluently."

Now, I retain in my memory, from reading the Memoirs of Vidocq thirty years ago, one or two phrases of this French thieves' slang, and I at once replied that I knew a few words of it myself, adding--

"_Tu sais jaspiner en bigorne_?"--you can talk argot?

"_Oui, monsieur_."

"_Et tu vas roulant de vergne en vergne_?"--and you go about from town to town?

Grave and keen, and with a queer smile, the tinker replied, very slowly--

"Monsieur knows the Gipsies" (here he shook his head), "and monsieur speaks _argot_ very well." (A shrug.) "Perhaps he knows more than he credits himself with. Perhaps" (and here his wink was diabolical)-- "_perhaps monsieur knows the entire tongue_!"

Spa is full not only of gamblers, but of numbers of well-dressed Parisian sharpers who certainly know "the entire tongue." I hastened to pay my tinker, and went my way homewards. Ross Browne was accused in Syria of having "burgled" onions, and the pursuit of philology has twice subjected me to be suspected by tinkers as a flouris.h.i.+ng member of the "dangerous cla.s.ses."

But to return to my rat-catcher. As I quoted a verse of German Gipsy song, he manifested an interest in it, and put me several questions with regard to the race in other lands.

"I wish I was a rich gentleman. I would like to travel like you, sir, and have nothing to do but go about from land to land, looking after our Rummany people as you do, and learnin' everything Rummany. Is it true, sir, we come from Egypt?"

"No. I think not. There are Gipsies in Egypt, but there is less Rommany in their _jib_ (language) than in any other Gipsy tribe in the world. The Gipsies came from India."

"And don't you think, sir, that we're of the children of the lost Ten Tribes?"

"I am quite sure that you never had a drop of blood in common with them.

Tell me, do you know any Gipsy _gilis_--any songs?"

"Only a bit of a one, sir; most of it isn't fit to sing, but it begins--"

And here he sang:

"Jal 'dree the ker my honey, And you shall be my rom."

And chanting this, after thanking me, he departed, gratified with his gratuity, rejoiced at his reception, and most undoubtedly benefited by the beer with which I had encouraged his palaver--a word, by the way, which is not inappropriate, since it contains in itself the very word of words, the _lav_, which means a word, and is most antiquely and excellently Gipsy. Pehlevi is old Persian, and to _pen lavi_ is Rommany all the world over "to speak words."

CHAPTER IV. GIPSY RESPECT FOR THE DEAD.