I. MAT WOODS THE FIDDLER.
The gypsies of Wales are to those
of England what the Welsh themselves are to the English;
more antique and quaint, therefore to a collector of
human bric-a-brac more curious. The Welsh
Rom is specially grateful for kindness or courtesy;
he is deeper as to language, and preserves many of
the picturesque traits of his race which are now so
rapidly vanishing. But then he has such excellent
opportunity for gypsying. In Wales there are
yet thousands of acres of wild land, deep ravines,
rocky corners, and roadside nooks, where he can boil
the kettle and hatch the tan, or pitch his
tent, undisturbed by the rural policeman. For
it is a charming country, where no one need weary
in summer, when the days are long, or in early autumn,
“When the barley is
ripe,
And the frog doth pipe,
In golden stripe
And green all dressed;
When the red apples
Roll in the chest.”
Then it is pleasant walking in Wales,
and there too at times, between hedge-rows, you may
meet with the Romany.
I was at Aberystwith by the sea, and
one afternoon we went, a party of three gentlemen
and three ladies, in a char-a-banc, or wagonette, to
drive. It was a pleasant afternoon, and we had
many a fine view of distant mountains, on whose sides
were mines of lead with silver, and of which there
were legends from the time of Queen Elizabeth.
The hills looked leaden and blue in the distance,
while the glancing sea far beyond recalled silver, for
the alchemy of imagery, at least, is never wanting
to supply ideal metals, though the real may show a
sad deficit in the returns.
As we drove we suddenly overtook a
singular party, the first of whom was the leader,
who had lagged behind. He was a handsome, slender,
very dark young man, carrying a violin. Before
him went a little open cart, in which lay an old woman,
and by her a harp. With it walked a good-looking
gypsy girl, and another young man, not a gypsy.
He was by far the handsomest young fellow, in form
and features, whom I ever met among the agricultural
class in England; we called him a peasant Apollo.
It became evident that the passional affinity which
had drawn this rustic to the gypsy girl, and to the
roads, was according to the law of natural selection,
for they were wonderfully well matched. The young
man had the grace inseparable from a fine figure and
a handsome face, while the girl was tall, lithe, and
pantherine, with the diavolesque charm which, though
often attributed by fast-fashionable novelists to their
heroines, is really never found except among the lowborn
beauties of nature. It is the beauty of the
Imp and of the Serpent; it fades with letters; it dies
in the drawing-room or on the stage. You are
mistaken when you think you see it coming out of the
synagogue, unless it be a very vulgar one. Your
Lahova has it not, despite her black eyes, for she
is too clever and too conscious; the devil-beauty
never knows how to read, she is unstudied and no actress.
Rachel and the Bernhardt have it not, any more than
Saint Agnes or Miss Blanche Lapin. It is not
of good or of evil, or of culture, which is both;
it is all and only of nature, and it does not know
itself.
As the wagonette stopped I greeted
the young man at first in English, then in Romany.
When he heard the gypsy tongue he started, his countenance
expressing the utmost surprise and delight. As
if he could hardly believe in such a phenomenon he
inquired, “Romany?” and as I nodded
assent, he clasped my hand, the tears coming into his
eyes. Such manifestations are not common among
gypsies, but I can remember how one, the wife of black
Ben Lee, was thus surprised and affected. How
well I recall the time and scene, by the
Thames, in the late twilight, when every tree and
twig was violet black against the amber sky, where
the birds were chirp-chattering themselves to roost
and rest, and the river rippled and murmured a duet
with the evening breeze. I was walking homeward
to Oatlands when I met the tawny Sinaminta, bearing
her little stock of baskets to the tent and van which
I had just quitted, and where Ben and his beautiful
little boy were lighting the al fresco fire.
“I have prayed to see this day!” exclaimed
the gypsy woman. “I have so wanted to
see the Romany rye of the Coopers. And I laid
by a little delaben, a small present, for you
when we should meet. It’s a photograph
of Ben and me and our child.” I might have
forgotten the evening and the amber sky, rippling
river and dark-green hedge-rows, but for this strange
meeting and greeting of an unknown friend, but a few
kind words fixed them all for life. That must
be indeed a wonderful landscape which humanity does
not make more impressive.
I spoke but a few words to the gypsy
with the violin, and we drove on to a little wayside
inn, where we alighted and rested. After a while
the gypsies came along.
“And now, if you will, let us
have a real frolic,” I said to my friends.
A word was enough. A quart of ale, and the fiddle
was set going, and I sang in Romany, and the rustic
landlord and his household wondered what sort of guests
we could be. That they had never before entertained
such a mixed party I can well believe. Here,
on one hand, were indubitable swells, above their
usual range; there, on the other, were the dusky vagabonds
of the road; and it could be no common condescending
patronage, for I was speaking neither Welsh nor English,
and our friendly fraternity was evident. Yes,
many a time, in England, have I seen the civil landlady
or the neat-handed Phillis awed with bewilderment,
as I have introduced Plato Buckland, or the most disreputable-looking
but oily yea, glycerine-politeful old
Windsor Frog, into the parlor, and conversed with
him in mystic words. Such an event is a rare
joy to the gypsy. For he loves to be lifted
up among men; he will tell you with pride of the times
when he was pointed at, and people said, “He’s
the man!” and how a real gentleman once invited
him into his house and gave him a glass of wine.
But to enter the best room of the familiar tavern,
to order, in politest but imperative tones, “beer” sixpenny
beer for himself and “the other gentleman,”
is indeed bliss. Then, in addition to the honor
of moving in distinguished society, before the very
eyes and in the high places of those who have hitherto
always considered him as a lowly cuss, the Romany
realizes far more than the common peasant the contrast-contradiction,
or the humor of the drama, its bit of mystification,
and especially the mystification of the house-folk.
This is unto him the high hour of the soul, and it
is not forgotten. It passes unto the golden
legends of the heart, and you are tenderly enshrined
in it.
Once, when I was wandering afoot with
old Cooper, we stopped at an inn, and in a room by
ourselves ordered luncheon. The gypsy might have
had poultry of the best; he preferred cold pork.
While the attendant was in the room, he sat with
exemplary dignity at the table; but as the girl left,
he followed her step sounds with his ears, like a dog,
moved his head, glanced at me with a nod, turned sideways
from the table, and, putting his plate on his knees,
proceeded to eat without a fork.
“For it isn’t proper for
me to eat at the table with you, or as you
do.”
The Welsh gypsy played well, and his
sister touched the harp and sang, the ale circulated,
and the villagers, assembling, gazed in a crowd into
the hall. Then the girl danced solo, just as
I have seen her sisters do in Egypt and in Russia,
to her brother’s fiddling. Even so of old,
Syrian and Egyptian girls haunted gardens and taverns,
and danced pas seul all over the Roman empire,
even unto Spain, behaving so gypsily that wise men
have conjectured that they were gypsies in very truth.
And who shall say they were not? For it is
possible that prehistorically, and beyond all records
of Persian Luri and Syrian Ballerine and Egyptian
Almeh, there was all over the East an outflowing of
these children of art from one common primeval Indian
stock. From one fraternity, in Italy, at the
present day, those itinerant pests, the hand-organ
players, proceed to the ends of the earth and to the
gold-diggings thereof, and time will yet show that
before all time, or in its early dawn, there were root-born
Romany itinerants singing, piping, and dancing unto
all the known world; yea, and into the unknown darkness
beyond, in partibus infidelium.
A gentleman who was in our party had
been long in the East. I had known him in Alexandria
during the carnival, and he had lived long time outre
mer, in India. Hearing me use the gypsy numerals yeck,
dui, trin, shtor, panj, he
proceeded to count in Hindustani or Persian, in which
the same words from one to ten are almost identical
with Romany. All of this was carefully noted
by the old gypsy mother, as, also, that
my friend is of dark complexion, with sparkling black
eyes. Reduced in dress, or diluted down to worn
corduroy and a red tie, he might easily pass muster,
among the Sons of the Road, as one of them.
And now the ladies must, of course,
have their fortunes told, and this, I could observe,
greatly astonished the gypsies in their secret souls,
though they put a cool face on it. That we, ourselves,
were some kind of a mysterious high-caste Romany they
had already concluded, and what faith could we put
in dukkerin? But as it would indubitably
bring forth shillings to their benefit, they wisely
raised no questions, but calmly took this windfall,
which had fallen as it were, from the skies, even as
they had accepted the beer, which had come, like a
providential rain, unto them, in the thirst of a dry
journey.
It is customary for all gypsy sorceresses
to take those who are to be fortune-told aside, and,
if possible, into a room by themselves. This
is done partly to enhance the mystery of the proceeding,
and partly to avoid the presence of witnesses to what
is really an illegal act. And as the old sorceress
led a lady into the little parlor, the gypsy man, whose
name was Mat, glanced up at me, with a droll, puzzled
expression, and said, “Patchessa tu adovo?”
(Do you believe in that?) With a wink, I
answered, “Why not? I, too, tell fortunes
myself.” Anch io sono pittore.
It seemed to satisfy him, for he replied, with a nod-wink,
and proceeded to pour forth the balance of his thoughts,
if he had any, into the music of his violin.
When the ladies had all been instructed
as to their future, my friend, who had been in the
East, must needs have his destiny made known unto
him. He did not believe in this sort of thing,
you know, of course not. But he had
lived a long time among Orientals, and he just
happened to wish to know how certain speculations
would fall out, and he loves, above all things, a
lark, or anything out of the common. So he went
in. And when alone with the sybil, she began
to talk to him in Romany.
“Oh, I say, now, old lady, stow
that!” he exclaimed. “I don’t
understand you.”
“You don’t understand
me!” exclaimed the fortune-teller. “Perhaps
you didn’t understand your own mother when she
talked Romany to you. What’s the use of
your tryin’ to make yourself out a Gorgio to
me? Don’t I know our people?
Didn’t your friend there talk Romanes?
Isn’t he all Romaneskas? And didn’t
I hear you with my own ears count up to ten in Romany?
And now, after that, you would deny your own blood
and people! Yes, you’ve dwelt in Gorgines
so long that you think your eyes are blue and your
hair is yellow, my son, and you have been far over
the sea; but wherever you went you knew Romanes, if
you don’t know your own color. But you
shall hear your fortune. There is lead in the
mines and silver in the lead, and wealth for him who
is to win it, and that will be a dark man who has
been nine times over the sea, and eaten his bread under
the black tents, and been three times near death,
once from a horse, and once from a man, and once through
a woman. And you will know something you don’t
know now before a month is over, and something will
be found that is now hidden, and has been hidden since
the world was made. And there’s a good
fortune coming to the man it was made for, before the
oldest tree that’s a-growing was a seed, and
that’s a man as knows how to count Romanes up
to ten, and many a more thing beside that, that he’s
learned beyond the great water.”
And so we went our ways, the harp
and violin sounds growing fainter as we receded, till
they were like the buzzing of bees in drying clover,
and the twilight grew rosier brown. I never
met Mat Woods again, though I often heard of his fame
as a fiddler. Whether my Anglo-Indian friend
found the fortune so vaguely predicted is to me as
yet unknown. But I believe that the prediction
encouraged him. That there are evils in palmistry,
and sin in card-drawing, and iniquity in coffee-grounding,
and vice in all the planets, is established by statute,
and yet withal I incline to believe that the art of
prediction cheers up many a despondent soul, and does
some little good, even as good ale, despite the wickedness
of drinking, makes some hearts merry and others stronger.
If there are foolish maids who have had their heads
turned by being told of coming noblemen and prospective
swells, who loved the ground they trod on, and were
waiting to woo and win and wed, and if the same maidens
herein described have thereby, in the manner set forth,
been led by the aforesaid devices unto their great
injury, as written in the above indictment, it may
also per contra and on the other hand be pleaded
that divers girls, to wit, those who believe in prediction,
have, by encouragement and hope to them held out of
legally marrying sundry young men of good estate,
been induced to behave better than they would otherwise
have done, and led by this hope have acted more morally
than was their wont, and thereby lifted themselves
above the lowly state of vulgarity, and even of vice,
in which they would otherwise have groveled, hoveled,
or cottaged. And there have been men who, cherishing
in their hearts a prediction, or, what amounts to
the same thing, a conviction, or a set fancy, have
persevered in hope until the hope was realized.
You, O Christian, who believe in a millennium, you,
O Jew, who expect a Messiah, and await the fulfillment
of your dukkerin, are both in the right, for
both will come true when you make them do so.
II. THE PIOUS WASHERWOMAN.
There is not much in life pleasanter
than a long ramble on the road in leaf-green, sun-gold
summer. Then it is Nature’s merry-time,
when fowls in woods them maken blithe, and the crow
preaches from the fence to his friends afield, and
the honeysuckle winketh to the wild rose in the hedge
when she is wooed by the little buzzy bee. In
such times it is good for the heart to wander over
the hills and far away, into haunts known of old,
where perhaps some semi-Saxon church nestles in a hollow
behind a hill, where grass o’ergrows each mouldering
tomb, and the brook, as it ripples by in a darksome
aldered hollow, speaks in a language which man knows
no more, but which is answered in the same forgotten
tongue by the thousand-year yew as it rustles in the
breeze. And when there are Runic stones in this
garden of God, where He raises souls, I often fancy
that this old dialect is written in their rhythmic
lines. The yew-trees were planted by law, lang-syne,
to yield bows to the realm, and now archery is dead
and Martini-Henry has taken its place, but the yews
still live, and the Runic fine art of the twisted
lines on the tombs, after a thousand years’
sleep, is beginning to revive. Every thing at
such a time speaks of joy and resurrection tree
and tomb and bird and flower and bee.
These are all memories of a walk from
the town of Aberystwith, in Wales, which walk leads
by an ancient church, in the soul garden of which are
two Runic cross tombstones. One day I went farther
afield to a more ancient shrine, on the top of a high
mountain. This was to the summit of Cader Idris,
sixteen miles off. On this summit there is a
Druidical circle, of which the stones, themselves
to ruin grown, are strange and death-like old.
Legend says that this is the burial-place of Taliesin,
the first of Welsh bards, the primeval poet of Celtic
time. Whoever sleeps on the grave will awake
either a madman or a poet, or is at any rate unsafe
to become one or the other. I went, with two
friends, afoot on this little pilgrimage. Both
were professors at one of the great universities.
The elder is a gentleman of great benevolence, learning,
and gentleness; the other, a younger man, has been
well polished and sharpened by travel in many lands.
It is rumored that he has preached Islam in a mosque
unto the Moslem even unto taking up a collection, which
is the final test of the faith which reaches forth
into a bright eternity. That he can be, as I
have elsewhere noted, a Persian unto Persians, and
a Romany among Roms, and a professional among
the hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as
surely as that he knows the roads and all the devices
and little games of them that dwell thereon.
Though elegant enough in his court dress and rapier
when he kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the
queen, he appears such an abandoned rough when he
goes a-fishing that the innocent and guileless gypsies,
little suspecting that a rye lies perdu
in his wrap-rascal, will then confide in him as if
he and in-doors had never been acquainted.
We had taken with us a sparing lunch
of thin sandwiches and a frugal flask of modest, blushing
brandy, which we diluted at a stingy little fountain
spring which dropped economically through a rift in
the rock, as if its nymph were conscious that such
a delicious drink should not be wasted. As it
was, it refreshed us, and we were resting in a blessed
repose under the green leaves, when we heard footsteps,
and an old woman came walking by.
She was the ideal of decent and extreme
poverty. I never saw anybody who was at once
so poor and so clean. In her face and in her
thin garments was marked the mute, resolute struggle
between need and self-respect, which, to him who understands
it, is as brave as any battle between life and death.
She walked on as if she would have gone past without
a word, but when we greeted her she paused, and spoke
respectfully. Without forwardness she told her
sad and simple story: how she belonged to the
Wesleyan confession, how her daughter was dying in
the hospital at Caernarvon; how she had walked sixty
miles to see her, and hoped to get there in time to
close her eyes. In reply to a question as to
her means, she admitted that they were exhausted,
but that she could get through without money; she
did not beg. And then came naturally enough the
rest of the little artless narrative, as it generally
happens among the simple annals of the poor:
how she had been for forty years a washerwoman, and
had a letter from her clergyman.
There was a tear in the eye of the
elder professor, and his hand was in his pocket.
The younger smoked in silence. I was greatly
moved myself, perhaps bewildered would
be the better word, when, all at once,
as the old woman turned in the sunlight, I caught the
expression of the corner of an eye!
My friend Salaman, who boasts that
he is of the last of the Sadducees, that
strange, ancient, and secret sect, who disguise themselves
as the Neu Reformirte, declares that
the Sephardim may be distinguished from the Ashkenazim
as readily as from the confounded Goyim, by the
corners of their eyes. This he illustrated by
pointing out to me, as they walked by in the cool
of the evening, the difference between the eyes of
Fräulein Eleonora Kohn and Senorita Linda Abarbanel
and divers and sundry other young ladies, the
result being that I received in return thirty-six
distinct oeillades, several of which expressed
indignation, and in all of which there was evidently
an entire misconception of my object in looking at
them. Now the eyes of the Sephardesses are unquestionably
fascinating; and here it may be recalled that, in
the Middle Ages, witches were also recognized by having
exactly the same corners, or peaks, to the eye.
This is an ancient mystery of darksome lore, that
the enchantress always has the bird-peaked eye, which
betokens danger to somebody, be she of the Sephardim,
or an ordinary witch or enchantress, or a gypsy.
Now, as the old Wesleyan washerwoman
turned around in the sunshine, I saw the witch-pointed
eye and the glint of the Romany. And then I glanced
at her hands, and saw that they had not been long
familiar with wash-tubs; for, though clean, they were
brown, and had never been blanched with an age of
soap-suds. And I spoke suddenly, and said,
“Can tute rakker Romanes,
miri dye?” (Can you speak Romany, my
mother?) And she answered, as if bewildered,
“The Lord forbid, sir, that
I should talk any of them wicked languages.”
The younger professor’s eyes
expressed dawning delight. I followed my shot
with,
“Tute needn’t be attrash
to rakker. Mandy’s been âpre the drom
mi-kokero.” (You needn’t be afraid
to speak. I have been upon the road myself.)
And, still more confused, she answered in English,
“Why, sir, you be upon the road now!”
“It seems to me, old lady,”
remarked the younger professor, “that you understand
Romany very well for one who has been for forty years
in the Methodist communion.”
It may be observed that he here confounded washing
with worshiping.
The face of the true believer was
at this point a fine study. All her confidence
had deserted her. Whether she thought we were
of her kind in disguise, or that, in the unknown higher
world of respectability, there might be gypsies of
corresponding rank, even as there might be gypsy angels
among the celestial hierarchies, I cannot with confidence
assert. About a week ago a philologist and purist
told me that there is no exact synonym in English
for the word flabbergasted, as it expresses
a peculiar state of bewilderment as yet unnamed by
scholars, and it exactly sets forth the condition
in which our virtuous poverty appeared. She
was, indeed, flabbergasted. Cornix scorpum rapuit, the
owl had come down on the rabbits, and lo! they had
fangs. I resumed,
“Now, old lady, here is a penny.
You are a very poor person, and I pity you so much
that I give you this penny for your poverty.
But there is a pocketful where this came from, and
you shall have the lot if you’ll rakker,” that
is, talk gypsy.
And at that touch of the Ithuriel
spear the old toad flashed up into the Romany devil,
as with gleaming eyes and a witch-like grin she cried
in a mixture of gypsy and tinker languages,
“Gents, I’ll have tute
jin when you tharis mandy you rakker a reg’lar
fly old bewer.” Which means, “Gentlemen,
I’ll have you know, when you talk to me, you
talk to a reg’lar shrewd old female thief.”
The face of the elder professor was
a study of astonishment for Lavater. His fingers
relaxed their grasp of the shilling, his hand was drawn
from his pocket, and his glance, like Bill Nye’s,
remarked: “Can this be?” He
tells the story to this day, and always adds, “I
never was so astonished in my life.”
But the venerable washerwoman was also changed, and,
the mask once thrown aside, she became as festive as
a witch on the Brocken. Truly, it is a great
comfort to cease playing a part, particularly a pious
one, and be at home and at ease among your like; and
better still if they be swells. This was the
delight of Anderson’s ugly duck when it got
among the swans, “and, blest sensation, felt
genteel.” And to show her gratitude, the
sorceress, who really seemed to have grown several
shades darker, insisted on telling our fortunes.
I think it was to give vent to her feelings in defiance
of the law that she did this; certain it was that
just then, under the circumstances, it was the only
way available in which the law could be broken.
And as it was, indeed, by heath and hill that the
priestess of the hidden spell bade the Palmer from
over the sea hold out his palm. And she began
in the usual sing-song tone, mocking the style of
gypsy fortune-tellers, and satirizing herself.
And thus she spoke,
“You’re born under a lucky
star, my good gentleman, and you’re a married
man; but there’s a black-eyed young lady that’s
in love with you.”
“Oh, mother of all the thieves!”
I cried, “you’ve put the dukkerin
on the wrong man. I’m the one that the
dark girls go after.”
“Yes, my good gentleman. She’s in
love with you both.”
“And now tell my fortune!”
I exclaimed, and with a grim expression, casting up
my palm, I said,
“Pen mengy if mandy’ll
be bitchade padel for chorin a gry, or nasherdo
for merin a gav-mush.” (Tell me if I am
to be transported for stealing a horse, or hung for
killing a policeman.)
The old woman’s face changed.
“You’ll never need to steal a horse.
The man that knows what you know never need be poor
like me. I know who you are now;
you’re not one of these tourists. You’re
the boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman].
And go your way, and brag about it in your house, and
well you may, that Old Moll of the Roads
couldn’t take you in, and that you found her
out. Never another rye but you will ever
say that again. Never.”
And she went dancing away in the sunshine,
capering backwards along the road, merrily shaking
the pennies in her hand for music, while she sang
something in gypsy, witch to the last, vanishing
as witches only can. And there came over me a
feeling as of the very olden time, and some memory
of another witch, who had said to another man, “Thou
art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;”
and who, when he called her the mother of the giants,
replied, “Go thy way, and boast at home that
no man will ever waken me again with spells.
Never.” That was the parting of Odin
and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest
time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered
parody, and thus runs the world away to Romanys and
rags when the gods are gone.
When I laughed at the younger professor
for confounding forty years in the church with as
many at the wash-tub, he replied,
“Cleanliness is with me so near
to godliness that it is not remarkable that in my
hurry I mistook one for the other.”
So we went on and climbed Cader Idris,
and found the ancient grave of rocks in a mystic circle,
whose meaning lies buried with the last Druid, who
would perhaps have told you they were
“Seats of stone nevir
hewin with mennes hand
But wrocht by Nature as it
ane house had bene
For Nymphes, goddis
of floudes and woodis grène.”
And we saw afar the beautiful scene,
“where fluddes rynnys in the foaming sea,”
as Gawain Douglas sings, and where, between the fresh
water and salt, stands a village, even where it stood
in earliest Cymric prehistoric dawn, and the spot
where ran the weir in which the prince who was in
grief because his weir yielded no fish, at last fished
up a poet, even as Pharaoh’s daughter fished
out a prophet. I shall not soon forget that
summer day, nor the dream-like panorama, nor the ancient
grave; nor how the younger professor lay down on the
seat of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand, and declared
he had a nap, just enough to make him a
poet. To prove which he wrote a long poem on
the finding of Taliesin in the nets, and sent it to
the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be behindhand,
wrote another, in imitation of the triplets of Llydwarch
Hen, which were so greatly admired as tributes to
Welsh poetry that they were forthwith translated faithfully
into lines of consonants, touched up with so many
w’s that they looked like saws; and they
circulated even unto Llandudno, and, for aught I know,
may be sung at Eistedfodds, now and ever, to the twanging
of small harps, in soecula saeculorum.
Truly, the day which had begun with a witch ended
fitly enough at the tomb of a prophet poet.
III. THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH.
Aberystwith is a little fishing-village,
which has of late years first bloomed as a railway-station,
and then fruited into prosperity as a bathing-place.
Like many parvenus, it makes a great display
of its Norman ancestor, the old castle, saying little
about the long centuries of plebeian obscurity in
which it was once buried. This castle, after
being woefully neglected during the days when nobody
cared for its early respectability, has been suddenly
remembered, now that better times have come, and,
though not restored, has been made comely with grass
banks, benches, and gravel walks, reminding one of
an Irish grandfather in America, taken out on a Sunday
with “the childher,” and looking “gintale”
in the clean shirt and whole coat unknown to him for
many a decade in Tipperary. Of course the castle
and the wealth, or the hotels and parade, are well
to the fore, or boldly displayed, as Englishly as
possible, while the little Welsh town shrinks quietly
into the hollow behind. And being new to prosperity,
Aberystwith is also a little muddled as to propriety.
It would regard with horror the idea of allowing
ladies and gentlemen to bathe together, even though
completely clad; but it sees nothing out of the way
when gentlemen in pre-fig-leaf costume disport themselves,
bathing just before the young ladies’ boarding-school
and the chief hotel, or running joyous races on the
beach. I shall never forget the amazement and
horror with which an Aberystwithienne learned that
in distant lands ladies and gentlemen went into the
water arm in arm, although dressed. But when
it was urged that the Aberystwith system was somewhat
peculiar, she replied, “Oh, that is a
very different thing!”
On which words for a text a curious
sermon might be preached to the Philistiny souls who
live perfectly reconciled to absurd paradoxes, simply
because they are accustomed to them. Now, of
all human beings, I think the gypsies are freest from
trouble with paradoxes as to things being different
or alike, and the least afflicted with moral problems,
burning questions, social puzzles, or any other kind
of mental rubbish. They are even freer than savages
or the heathen in this respect, since of all human
beings the Fijian, New Zealander, Mpongwe, or Esquimaux
is most terribly tortured with the laws of etiquette,
religion, social position, and propriety. Among
many of these heathen unfortunates the meeting with
an equal involves fifteen minutes of bowing, re-bowing,
surre-bowing, and rejoinder-bowing, with complementary
complimenting, according to old custom, while the
worship of Mrs. Grundy through a superior requires
a half hour wearisome beyond belief. “In
Fiji,” says Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, “strict
etiquette rules every action of life, and the most
trifling mistake in such matters would cause as great
dissatisfaction as a breach in the order of precedence
at a European ceremonial.” In dividing
cold baked missionary at a dinner, especially if a
chief be present, the host committing the least mistake
as to helping the proper guest to the proper piece
in the proper way would find himself promptly put
down in the menu. In Fiji, as in all other
countries, this punctilio is nothing but the direct
result of ceaseless effort on the part of the upper
classes to distinguish themselves from the lower.
Cannibalism is a joint sprout from the same root; “the
devourers of the poor” are the scorners of the
humble and lowly, and they are all grains of the same
corn, of the devil’s planting, all the world
over. Perhaps the quaintest error which haunts
the world in England and America is that so much of
this stuff as is taught by rule or fashion as laws
for “the elite” is the very nucleus
of enlightenment and refinement, instead of its being
a remnant of barbarism. And when we reflect on
the degree to which this naïve and child-like faith
exists in the United States, as shown by the enormous
amount of information in certain newspapers as to
what is the latest thing necessary to be done, acted,
or suffered in order to be socially saved, I surmise
that some future historian will record that we, being
an envious people, turned out the Chinese, because
we could not endure the presence among us of a race
so vastly our superiors in all that constituted the
true principles of culture and “custom.”
Arthur Mitchell, in inquiring What
is Civilization? remarks that “all the
things which gather round or grow upon a high state
of civilization are not necessarily true parts of
it. These conventionalities are often regarded
as its very essence.” And it is true that
the greater the fool or snob, the deeper is the conviction
that the conventional is the core of “culture.”
“‘It is not genteel,’ ’in
good form,’ or ‘the mode,’ to do
this or do that, or say this or say that.”
“Such things are spoken of as marks of a high
civilization, or by those who do not confound civilization
with culture as differentiators between the cultured
and the uncultured.” Dr. Mitchell “neither
praises nor condemns these things;” but it is
well for a man, while he is about it, to know his
own mind, and I, for myself, condemn them with all
my heart and soul, whenever anybody declares that
such brass counters in the game of life are real gold,
and insists that I shall accept them as such.
For small play in a very small way with small people,
I would endure them; but many men and nearly all women
make their capital of them. And whatever may
be said in their favor, it cannot be denied that they
constantly lead to lying and heartlessness. Even
Dr. Mitchell, while he says he does not condemn them,
proceeds immediately to declare that “while
we submit to them they constitute a sort of tyranny,
under which we fret and secretly pine for escape.
Does not the exquisite of Rotten Row weary for his
flannel shirt and shooting-jacket? Do not ‘well-constituted’
men want to fish and shoot or kill something, themselves,
by climbing mountains, when they can find nothing else?
In short, does it not appear that these conventionalities
are irksome, and are disregarded when the chance presents
itself? And does it not seem as if there were
something in human nature pulling men back to a rude
and simple life?” To find that men suffer
under the conventionalities, “adds, on the whole,”
says our canny, prudent Scot, “to the respectability
of human nature.” Tu ha ragione (right
you are), Dr. Mitchell, there. For the conventional,
whether found among Fijians as they were, or in Mayfair
as it is, whenever it is vexatious and merely serves
as a cordon to separate “sassiety” from
society, detracts from the respectability of humanity,
and is in itself vulgar. If every man in society
were a gentleman and every woman a lady, there would
be no more conventionalism. Usus est tyrannus
(custom is a tyrant), or, as the Talmud proverb saith,
“Custom is the plague of wise men, but is the
idol of fools.” And he was a wise Jew,
whoever he was, who declared it.
But let us return to our black sheep,
the gypsy. While happy in not being conventional,
and while rejoicing, or at least unconsciously enjoying
freedom from the bonds of etiquette, he agrees with
the Chinese, red Indians, May Fairies, and Fifth Avenoodles
in manifesting under the most trying circumstances
that imperturbability which was once declared by an
eminent Philadelphian to be “the Corinthian ornament
of a gentleman.” He who said this builded
better than he knew, for the ornament in question,
if purely Corinthian, is simply brass. One morning
I was sauntering with the Palmer in Aberystwith, when
we met with a young and good-looking gypsy woman,
with whom we entered into conversation, learning that
she was a Bosville, and acquiring other items of news
as to Egypt and the roads, and then left.
We had not gone far before we found
a tinker. He who catches a tinker has got hold
of half a gypsy and a whole cosmopolite, however bad
the catch may be. He did not understand the
greeting Sarishan! he really could
not remember to have heard it. He did not know
any gypsies, “he could not get along
with them.” They were a bad lot.
He had seen some gypsies three weeks before on the
road. They were curious dark people, who lived
in tents. He could not talk Romany.
This was really pitiable. It
was too much. The Palmer informed him that he
was wasting his best opportunities, and that it was
a great pity that any man who lived on the roads should
be so ignorant. The tinker never winked.
In the goodness of our hearts we even offered to give
him lessons in the kalo jib, or black language.
The grinder was as calm as a Belgravian image.
And as we turned to depart the professor said,
“Mandy’d del tute a
shahori to pi moro kammaben, if tute jinned
sa mandi pukkers.” (I’d give you
a sixpence to drink our health, if you knew what I
am saying.)
With undisturbed gravity the tinker replied,
“Now I come to think of it,
I do remember to have heard somethin’ in the
parst like that. It’s a conwivial expression
arskin’ me if I won’t have a tanner for
ale. Which I will.”
“Now since you take such an
interest in gypsies,” I answered, “it is
a pity that you should know so little about them.
I have seen them since you have. I saw a nice
young woman, one of the Bosvilles here, not half an
hour ago. Shall I introduce you?”
“That young woman,” remarked
the tinker, with the same immovable countenance, “is
my wife. And I’ve come down here, by app’intment,
to meet some Romany pals.”
And having politely accepted his sixpence,
the griddler went his way, tinkling his bell, along
the road. He did not disturb himself that his
first speeches did not agree with his last; he was
not in the habit of being disturbed about anything,
and he knew that no one ever learned Romany without
learning with it not to be astonished at any little
inconsistencies. Serene and polished as a piece
of tin in the sunshine, he would not stoop to be put
out by trifles. He was a typical tinker.
He knew that the world had made up proverbs expressing
the utmost indifference either for a tinker’s
blessing or a tinker’s curse, and he retaliated
by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or
banned him. In all ages and in all lands the
tinker has always been the type of this droning indifference,
which goes through life bagpiping its single melody,
or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs, “Toujours
Santerre.”
“Es ist und
bleibt das alte Lied
Von dem versoff’nen
Pfannenschmied,
Und wer’s nicht
weiter singen kann,
Der fang’s von Vorne
wieder an.”
’T will ever be the
same old song
Of tipsy tinkers all day long,
And he who cannot sing it
more
May sing it over, as before.
I should have liked to know John Bunyan.
As a half-blood gypsy tinker he must have been self-contained
and pleasant. He had his wits about him, too,
in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison
he made a flute or pipe out of the leg of his three
legged-stool, and would play on it to pass time.
When the jailer entered to stop the noise, John replaced
the leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent
as only a gypsy tinker could, calm as a
summer morning. I commend the subject for a picture.
Very recently, that is, in the beginning of 1881, a
man of the same tinkering kind, and possibly of the
same blood as Honest John, confined in the prison
of Moyamensing, Philadelphia, did nearly the same thing,
only that instead of making his stool leg into a musical
pipe he converted it into a pipe for tobacco.
But when the watchman, led by the smell, entered
his cell, there was no pipe to be found; only a deeply
injured man complaining that “somebody, had been
smokin’ outside, and it had blowed into his
cell through the door-winder from the corridore,
and p’isoned the atmosphere. And he didn’t
like it.” And thus history repeats itself.
’T is all very well for the sticklers for Wesleyan
gentility to deny that John Bunyan was a gypsy, but
he who in his life cannot read Romany between the
lines knows not the jib nor the cut thereof.
Tough was J. B., “and de-vil-ish sly,”
and altogether a much better man than many suppose
him to have been.
The tinker lived with his wife in
a “tramps’ lodging-house” in the
town. To those Americans who know such places
by the abominable dens which are occasionally reported
by American grand juries, the term will suggest something
much worse than it is. In England the average
tramp’s lodging is cleaner, better regulated,
and more orderly than many Western “hotels.”
The police look closely after it, and do not allow
more than a certain number in a room. They see
that it is frequently cleaned, and that clean sheets
are frequently put on the beds. One or two hand-organs
in the hall, with a tinker’s barrow or wheel,
proclaimed the character of the lodgers, and in the
sitting-room there were to be found, of an evening,
gypsies, laborers with their families seeking work
or itinerant musicians. I can recall a powerful
and tall young man, with a badly expressive face,
one-legged, and well dressed as a sailor. He
was a beggar, who measured the good or evil of all
mankind by what they gave him. He was very bitter
as to the bad. Yet this house was in its way
upper class. It was not a den of despair, dirt,
and misery, and even the Italians who came there were
obliged to be decent and clean. It would not
have been appropriate to have written for them on the
door, “Voi che intrate lasciate ogni speranza.”
(He who enters here leaves soap behind.) The most
painful fact which struck me, in my many visits, was
the intelligence and decency of some of the boarders.
There was more than one who conversed in a manner
which indicated an excellent early education; more
than one who read the newspaper aloud and commented
on it to the company, as any gentleman might have
done. Indeed, the painful part of life as shown
among these poor people was the manifest fact that
so many of them had come down from a higher position,
or were qualified for it. And this is characteristic
of such places. In his “London Labour
and the London Poor,” vol. i. , Mahew
tells of a low lodging-house “in which there
were at one time five university men, three surgeons,
and several sorts of broken-down clerks.”
The majority of these cases are the result of parents
having risen from poverty and raised their families
to “gentility.” The sons are deprived
by their bringing up of the vulgar pluck and coarse
energy by which the father rose, and yet are expected
to make their way in the world, with nothing but a
so-called “education,” which is too often
less a help than a hindrance. In the race of
life no man is so heavily handicapped as a young “gentleman.”
The humblest and raggedest of all the inmates of this
house were two men who got their living by shelkin
gallopas (or selling ferns), as it is called in
the Shelta, or tinker’s and tramp’s slang.
One of these, whom I have described in another chapter
as teaching me this dialect, could conjugate a French
verb; we thought he had studied law. The other
was a poor old fellow called Krooty, who could give
the Latin names for all the plants which he gathered
and sold, and who would repeat poetry very appropriately,
proving sufficiently that he had read it. Both
the fern-sellers spoke better English than divers Lord
Mayors and Knights to whom I have listened, for they
neither omitted h like the lowly, nor r
like the lofty ones of London.
The tinker’s wife was afflicted
with a nervous disorder, which caused her great suffering,
and made it almost impossible for her to sell goods,
or contribute anything to the joint support.
Her husband always treated her with the greatest
kindness; I have seldom seen an instance in which a
man was more indulgent and gentle. He made no
display whatever of his feelings; it was only little
by little that I found out what a heart this imperturbable
rough of the road possessed. Now the Palmer,
who was always engaged in some wild act of unconscious
benevolence, bought for her some medicine, and gave
her an order on the first physician in the town for
proper advice; the result being a decided amelioration
of her health. And I never knew any human being
to be more sincerely grateful than the tinker was
for this kindness. Ascertaining that I had tools
for wood-carving, he insisted on presenting me with
crocus powder, “to put an edge on.”
He had a remarkably fine whetstone, “the best
in England; it was worth half a sovereign,”
and this he often and vainly begged me to accept.
And he had a peculiar little trick of relieving his
kindly feelings. Whenever we dropped in of an
evening to the lodging-house, he would cunningly borrow
my knife, and then disappear. Presently the
whiz-whiz, st’st of his wheel would
be heard without, and then the artful dodger would
reappear with a triumphant smile, and with the knife
sharpened to a razor edge. Anent which gratitude
I shall have more to say anon.
One day I was walking on the Front,
when I overtook a gypsy van, loaded with baskets and
mats, lumbering along. The proprietor, who was
a stranger to me, was also slightly or lightly lumbering
in his gait, being cheerfully beery, while his berry
brown wife, with a little three-year-old boy, peddled
wares from door to door. Both were amazed and
pleased at being accosted in Romany. In the course
of conversation they showed great anxiety as to their
child, who had long suffered from some disorder which
caused them great alarm. The man’s first
name was Anselo, though it was painted Onslow on his
vehicle. Mr. Anselo, though himself just come
to town, was at once deeply impressed with the duty
of hospitality to a Romany rye. I had called
him pal, and this in gypsydom involves the
shaking of hands, and with the better class an extra
display of courtesy. He produced half a crown,
and declared his willingness to devote it all to beer
for my benefit. I declined, but he repeated
his offer several times, not with any annoying
display, but with a courteous earnestness, intended
to set forth a sweet sincerity. As I bade him
good-by, he put the crown-piece into one eye, and as
he danced backward, gypsy fashion up the street and
vanished in the sunny purple twilight towards the
sea I could see him winking with the other, and hear
him cry, “Don’t say no now’s
the last chance do I hear a bid?”
We found this family in due time at
the lodging-house, where the little boy proved to
be indeed seriously ill, and we at once discovered
that the parents, in their ignorance, had quite misunderstood
his malady and were aggravating it by mal-treatment.
To these poor people the good Palmer also gave an
order on the old physician, who declared that the boy
must have died in a few days, had he not taken charge
of him. As it was, the little fellow was speedily
cured. There was, it appeared, some kind of
consanguinity between the tinker or his wife and the
Anselo family. These good people, anxious to
do anything, yet able to do little, consulted together
as to showing their gratitude, and noting that we were
specially desirous of collecting old gypsy words gave
us all they could think of, and without informing
us of their intention, which indeed we only learned
by accident a long time after, sent a messenger many
miles to bring to Aberystwith a certain Bosville,
who was famed as being deep in Romany lore, and in
possession of many ancient words. Which was
indeed true, he having been the first to teach us pisali,
meaning a saddle, and in which Professor Cowell, of
Cambridge, promptly detected the Sanskrit for sit-upon,
the same double meaning also existing in boshto;
or, as old Mrs. Buckland said to me at Oaklands Park,
in Philadelphia, “a pisali is the same
thing with a boshto.”
“What will gain thy faith?”
said Quentin Durward to Hayradden Maugrabhin.
“Kindness,” answered the gypsy.
The joint families, solely with intent
to please us, although they never said a word about
it, next sent for a young Romany, one of the Lees,
and his wife whom they supposed we would like to meet.
Walking along the Front, I met the tinker’s
wife with the handsomest Romany girl I ever beheld.
In a London ball-room or on the stage she would have
been a really startling beauty. This was young
Mrs. Lee. Her husband was a clever violinist,
and it was very remarkable that when he gave himself
up to playing, with abandon or self-forgetfulness,
there came into his melodies the same wild gypsy expression,
the same chords and tones, which abound in the music
of the Austrian Tsigane. It was not my imagination
which prompted the recognition; the Palmer also observed
it, without thinking it remarkable. From the
playing of both Mat Woods and young Lee, I am sure
that there has survived among the Welsh gypsies some
of the spirit of their old Eastern music, just as
in the solo dancing of Mat’s sister there was
precisely the same kind of step which I had seen in
Moscow. Among the hundreds of the race whom I
have met in Great Britain, I have never known any
young people who were so purely Romany as these.
The tinker and Anselo with his wife had judged wisely
that we would be pleased with this picturesque couple.
They always seemed to me in the house like two wild
birds, and tropical ones at that, in a cage.
There was a tawny-gold, black and scarlet tone about
them and their garb, an Indian Spanish duskiness and
glow which I loved to look at.
Every proceeding of the tinker and
Anselo was veiled in mystery and hidden in the obscurity
so dear to such grown-up children, but as I observed
after a few days that Lee did nothing beyond acting
as assistant to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised
that the visit was solely for our benefit. As
the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so was Anselo
and his dame devoted to their child. He was,
indeed, a brave little fellow, and frequently manifested
the precocious pluck and sturdiness so greatly admired
by the Romanys of the road; and when he would take
a whip and lead the horse, or in other ways show his
courage, the delight of his parents was in its turn
delightful. They would look at the child as if
charmed, and then at one another with feelings too
deep for words, and then at me for sympathetic admiration.
The keeper of the house where they
lodged was in his way a character and a linguist.
Welsh was his native tongue and English his second
best. He also knew others, such as Romany, of
which he was proud, and the Shelta or Minklas of the
tinkers, of which he was not. The only language
which he knew of which he was really ashamed was Italian,
and though he could maintain a common conversation
in it he always denied that he remembered more than
a few words. For it was not as the tongue of
Dante, but as the lingo of organ-grinders and such
“catenone” that he knew it, and I think
that the Palmer and I lost dignity in his eyes by inadvertently
admitting that it was familiar to us. “I
shouldn’t have thought it,” was all his
comment on the discovery, but I knew his thought, and
it was that we had made ourselves unnecessarily familiar
with vulgarity.
It is not every one who is aware of
the extent to which Italian is known by the lower
orders in London. It is not spoken as a language;
but many of its words, sadly mangled, are mixed with
English as a jargon. Thus the Italian scappare,
to escape, or run away, has become scarper;
and a dweller in the Seven Dials has been heard to
say he would “scarper with the feele
of the donna of the cassey;” which
means, run away with the daughter of the landlady
of the house, and which, as the editor of the Slang
Dictionary pens, is almost pure Italian, scappare
colla figlia della donna, della casa.
Most costermongers call a penny a saltee,
from soldo; a crown, a caroon; and one
half, madza, from mezza. They
count as follows:
Italian. Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo. Dooey saltee, twopence Dui soldi. Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi. Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi. Chinker saltee, fivepence Cinque soldi. Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi. Say oney saltee, or setter saltee, sevenpence Sette soldi. Say dooee saltee, or otter saltee, eightpence Otto soldi. Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, ninepence Nove soldi. Say quarterer saltee, or dacha (datsha) saltee, tenpence Dieci soldi. Say chinker saltee, or dacha one saltee, elevenpence Dieci uno soldi Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco. A beong say saltee, one shilling and sixpence Uno bianco sei soldi. Madza caroon, half a crown Mezza corona. Mr. Hotten says that he could never
discover the derivation of beong, or beonk.
It is very plainly the Italian bianco, white,
which, like blanc in French and blank
in German, is often applied slangily to a silver coin.
It is as if one had said, “a shiner.”
Apropos of which word there is something curious
to be noted. It came forth in evidence, a few
years ago in England, that burglars or other thieves
always carried with them a piece of coal; and on this
disclosure, a certain writer, in his printed collection
of curiosities, comments as if it were a superstition,
remarking that the coal is carried for an amulet.
But the truth is that the thief has no such idea.
The coal is simply a sign for money; and when the
bearer meets with a man whom he thinks may be a “fence,”
or a purchaser of stolen goods, he shows the coal,
which is as much as to say, Have you money?
Money, in vulgar gypsy, is wongur, a corruption
of the better word angar, which also means a
hot coal; and braise, in French argot,
has the same double meaning. I may be wrong,
but I suspect that rat, a dollar in Hebrew,
or at least in Schmussen, has its root in common with
ratzafim, coals, and possibly poschit,
a farthing, with pecham, coal. In the
six kinds of fire mentioned in the Talmud, there
is no identification of coals with money; but in the
German legends of Rübezahl, there is a tale of
a charcoal-burner who found them changed to gold.
Coins are called shiners because they shine like
glowing coals, and I dare say that the simile exists
in many more languages. One twilight we found in the public
sitting-room of the lodging-house a couple whom I
can never forget. It was an elderly gypsy and
his wife. The husband was himself characteristic;
the wife was more than merely picturesque. I
have never met such a superb old Romany as she was;
indeed, I doubt if I ever saw any woman of her age,
in any land or any range of life, with a more magnificently
proud expression or such unaffected dignity.
It was the whole poem of “Crescentius”
living in modern time in other form. When a scholar associates much with
gypsies there is developed in him in due time a perception
or intuition of certain kinds of men or minds, which
it is as difficult to describe as it is wonderful.
He who has read Matthew Arnold’s “Gipsy
Scholar” may, however, find therein many apt
words for it. I mean very seriously what I say;
I mean that through the Romany the demon of Socrates
acquires distinctness; I mean that a faculty is developed
which is as strange as divination, and which is greatly
akin to it. The gypsies themselves apply it
directly to palmistry; were they well educated they
would feel it in higher forms. It may be reached
among other races and in other modes, and Nature is
always offering it to us freely; but it seems to live,
or at least to be most developed, among the Romany.
It comes upon the possessor far more powerfully when
in contact with certain lives than with others, and
with the sympathetic it takes in at a glance that
which may employ it at intervals for years to think
out. And by this duk I read in a
few words in the Romany woman an eagle soul, caged
between the bars of poverty, ignorance, and custom;
but a great soul for all that. Both she and
her husband were of the old type of their race, now
so rare in England, though commoner in America.
They spoke Romany with inflection and conjugation;
they remembered the old rhymes and old words, which
I quoted freely, with the Palmer. Little by
little, the old man seemed to be deeply impressed,
indeed awed, by our utterly inexplicable knowledge.
I wore a velveteen coat, and had on a broad, soft
felt hat. “You talk as the old Romanys
did,” said the old man. “I hear you
use words which I once heard from old men who died
when I was a boy. I thought those words were
lying in graves which have long been green. I
hear songs and sayings which I never expected to hear
again. You talk like gypsies, and such gypsies
as I never meet now; and you look like Gorgios.
But when I was still young, a few of the oldest Romany
chals still wore hats such as you have; and
when I first looked at you, I thought of them.
I don’t understand you. It is strange,
very strange.” “It is the Romany soul,”
said his wife. “People take to what is
in them; if a bird were born a fox, it would love
to fly.” I wondered what flights she would
have taken if she had wings. But I understood
why the old man had spoken as he did; for, knowing
that we had intelligent listeners, the Palmer and
I had brought forth all our best and quaintest Romany
curios, and these rural Welsh wanderers were not,
like their English pals, familiar with Romany ryes.
And I was moved to like them, and nobody perceives
this sooner than a gypsy. The old couple were
the parents of young Lee, and said they had come to
visit him; but I think that it was rather to see us
that we owed their presence in Aberystwith.
For the tinker and Anselo were at this time engaged,
in their secret and owl-like manner, as befitted men
who were up to all manner of ways that were dark,
in collecting the most interesting specimens of Romanys,
for our especial study; and whenever this could be
managed so that it appeared entirely accidental and
a surprise, then they retired into their shadowed
souls and chuckled with fiendish glee at having managed
things so charmingly. But it will be long ere
I forget how the old man’s eye looked into the
past as he recalled, “The hat of antique
shape and coat of gray,
The same
the gypsies wore,” and went far away back through my
words to words heard in the olden time, by fires long
since burnt out, beneath the flame-gilt branches of
forests which have sailed away as ships, farther than
woods e’er went from Dunsinane, and been wrecked
in Southern seas. But though I could not tell
exactly what was in every room, I knew into what house
his soul had gone; and it was for this that the scholar-gypsy
went from Oxford halls “to learn strange arts
and join a gypsy tribe.” His friends had
gone from earth long since, and were laid to sleep;
some, perhaps, far in the wold and wild, amid the
rocks, where fox and wild bird were their visitors;
but for an instant they rose again from their graves,
and I knew them. “They could do wonders by the
power of the imagination,” says Glanvil of the
gypsies; “their fancy binding that of others.”
Understand by imagination and fancy all that Glanvil
really meant, and I agree with him. It is a
matter of history that, since the Aryan morning of
mankind, the Romanys have been chiromancing, and,
following it, trying to read people’s minds
and bind them to belief. Thousands of years of
transmitted hereditary influences always result in
something; it has really resulted with the gypsies
in an instinctive, though undeveloped, intuitive perception,
which a sympathetic mind acquires from them, nay,
is compelled to acquire, out of mere self-defense;
and when gained, it manifests itself in many forms, “But it needs heaven-sent
moments for this skill.”
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