CHAPTER IX

SCOTTISH-TINKER STORIES

NO. 73.—THE BROWN BEAR OF THE GREEN GLEN

There was a king in Erin once who had a leash of sons. John was the name of the youngest one, and it was said that he was not wise enough. And this good, worldly king lost the sight of his eyes and the strength of his feet. The two eldest brothers said that they would go seek three bottles of the water of the green isle that was about the heaps of the deep. And so it was that these two brothers went away. Now the fool said that he would not believe but that he himself would go also. And the first big town he reached in his father’s kingdom, there he sees his two brothers there, the blackguards.

‘Oh! my boys,’ says the young one, ‘is it thus you are?’

‘With swiftness of foot,’ said they, ‘take thyself home, or we will have thy life.’

‘Don’t be afraid, lads. It is nothing to me to stay with you.’

Now John went away on his journey till he came to a great desert of a wood. ‘Hoo, hoo!’ says John to himself, ‘it is not canny for me to walk this wood alone.’ The night was coming now, and growing pretty dark. John ties the cripple white horse to the root of a tree, and he went up in the top himself. He was but a very short time in the top, when he saw a bear coming with a fiery cinder in his mouth.

‘Come down, son of the King of Erin,’ says he.

‘Indeed, I won’t come. I am thinking I am safer where I am.’

‘But if thou wilt not come down, I will go up,’ said the bear.

‘Art thou, too, taking me for a fool?’ says John. ‘A shaggy, shambling creature like thee, climbing a tree.’

‘But if thou wilt not come down, I will go up,’ says the bear, as he fell out of hand to climbing the tree.

‘Lord! thou canst do that same!’ said John; ‘keep back from the root of the tree, then, and I will go down to talk to thee.’

And when the son of Erin’s king drew down, they came to chatting. The bear asked him if he was hungry.

‘Weel, by your leave,’ said John, ‘I am a little at this very same time.’

The bear took that wonderful watchful turn, and he catches a roebuck. ‘Now, son of Erin’s king,’ says the bear, ‘whether wouldst thou like thy share of the buck boiled or raw?’

‘The sort of meat I used to get would be kind of plotted boiled,’ says John. And thus it fell out; John got his share roasted.

‘Now,’ said the bear, ‘lie down between my paws, and thou hast no cause to fear cold or hunger till morning.’

Early in the morning the bear asked, ‘Art thou asleep, son of Erin’s king?’

‘I am not very heavily,’ said he.

‘It is time for thee to be on thy soles, then. Thy journey is long—two hundred miles. But art thou a good horseman, John?’

‘There are worse than me at times,’ said he.

‘Thou hadst best get on top of me, then.’

He did this, and at the first leap John was to earth. ‘Foil! foil!’ says John. ‘What! thou art not bad at the trade thyself. Thou hadst best come back till we try thee again.’

And with nails and teeth he fastened on the bear, till they reached the end of the two hundred miles and a giant’s house.

‘Now, John,’ said the bear, ‘thou shalt go to pass the night in this giant’s house. Thou wilt find him pretty grumpy, but say thou that it was the Brown Bear of the Green Glen that set thee here for a night’s share, and don’t thou be afraid that thou wilt not get share and comfort.’

And he left the bear to go to the giant’s house.

‘Son of Erin’s king,’ says the giant, ‘thy coming was in the prophecy; but if I did not get thy father, I have got his son. I don’t know whether I will put thee in the earth with my feet or in the sky with my breath.’

‘Thou wilt do neither of either,’ said John, ‘for it is the Brown Bear of the Green Glen that set me here.’

‘Come in, son of Erin’s king,’ said he, ‘and thou shalt be well taken to this night.’

And as he said, it was true. John got meat and drink without stint. But to make a long tale short, the bear took John day after day to the third giant. ‘Now,’ says the bear, ‘I have not much acquaintance with this giant, but thou wilt not be long in his house when thou must wrestle with him. And if he is too hard on thy back, say then, “If I had the Brown Bear of the Green Glen here, that was thy master.”’

As soon as John went in, ‘Ai! ai!! or ee! ee!!’ says the giant. ‘If I did not get thy father, I have got his son.’

And to grips they go. They would make the boggy bog of the rocky rock. In the hardest place they would sink to the knee, in the softest up to the thighs; and they would bring wells of spring water from the face of every rock. [141] The giant gave John a sore wrench or two.

‘Foil! foil!!’ says he. ‘If I had here the Brown Bear of the Green Glen, thy leap would not be so hearty.’

And no sooner spoke he the word than the worthy bear was at his side.

‘Yes! yes!’ says the giant, ‘son of Erin’s king, now I know thy matter better than thou dost thyself.’

So it was that the giant ordered his shepherd to bring home the best wether he had in the hill, and to throw his carcass before the great door. ‘Now, John,’ says the giant, ‘an eagle will come and she will settle on the carcass of this wether, and there is a wart on the ear of this eagle which thou must cut off with this sword, but a drop of blood thou must not draw.’

The eagle came, but she was not long eating when John drew close to her, and with one stroke he cut the wart of her without drawing one drop of blood. (Och! is not that a fearful lie?) ‘Now,’ said the eagle, ‘come on the root of my two wings, for I know thy matter better than thou dost thyself.’

He did this, and they were now on sea and now on land, and now on the wing, till they reached the Green Isle.

‘Now, John,’ says she, ‘be quick and fill thy three bottles. Remember that the black dogs are away just now.’ (‘What dogs?’—Black dogs. Dost thou not know that they always had black dogs chasing the Gregorach?)

When he filled the bottles with the water out of the well, he sees a little house beside him. John said to himself that he would go in, and that he would see what was in it. And the first chamber he opened, he saw a full bottle. (‘And what was in it?’ What should be in it but whisky.) He filled a glass out of it, and he drank it; and when he was going, he gave a glance, and the bottle was as full as it was before. ‘I will have this bottle along with the bottles of water,’ says he. Then he went into another chamber, and he saw a loaf. He took a slice out of it, but the loaf was as whole as it was before. ‘Ye gods! I won’t leave thee,’ says John. He went on thus till he came to another chamber. He saw a great cheese; he took a slice of the cheese, but it was as whole as ever. ‘I will have this along with the rest,’ says he. Then he went to another chamber, and he saw laid there the very prettiest little jewel of a woman he ever saw. ‘It were a great pity not to kiss thy lips, my love,’ says John.

Soon after John jumped on top of the eagle, and she took him on the self-same steps till they reached the house of the big giant. And they went paying rent to the giant, and there was the sight of tenants and giants and meat and drink.

‘Well, John,’ says the giant, ‘didst thou see such drink as this in thy father’s house in Erin?’

‘Pooh!’ says John, ‘hoo! my hero, thou other man, I have a drink this is unlike it.’ He gave the giant a glass out of the bottle, but the bottle was as full as it was before.

‘Well!’ said the giant, ‘I will give thee myself two hundred notes, [142] a bridle, and a saddle for the bottle.’

‘It is a bargain, then,’ says John; ‘but that the first sweetheart I ever had must get it if she comes the way.’

‘She will get that,’ says the giant.

But to make the long story short, he left each loaf and cheese with the two other giants, with the same covenant that the first sweetheart he ever had should get them if she came the way. Now John reached his father’s big town in Erin, and he sees his two brothers as he left them, the blackguards. ‘You had best come with me, lads,’ says he, ‘and you will get a dress of cloth and a saddle and bridle each.’ And so they did; but when they were near to their father’s house, the brothers thought that they had better kill him, and so it was that they set on him. And when they thought he was dead, they threw him behind a dyke; and they took from him the three bottles of water, and they went home.

John was not too long here, when his father’s smith came the way with a cart-load of rusty iron. John called out, ‘Whoever the Christian is that is there, oh! that he should help him.’ The smith caught him, and he threw John amongst the iron. And because the iron was so rusty, it went into each wound and sore that John had; and so it was that John became rough-skinned and bald.

Here we will leave John, and we will go back to the pretty little jewel that John left in the Green Isle. She became pale and heavy, and at the end of three quarters she had a fine lad son. ‘Oh! in all the great world,’ says she, ‘how did I find this?’

‘Foil! foil!’ says the hen-wife, ‘don’t let that set thee thinking. Here’s for thee a bird, and as soon as he sees the father of thy son, he will hop on the top of his head.’

The Green Isle was gathered from end to end, and the people were put in at the back door and out at the front door; but the bird did not stir, and the babe’s father was not found. Now here she said she would go through the world altogether till she should find the father of the babe. Then she came to the house of the big giant and sees the bottle. ‘Ai! ai!’ said she, ‘who gave thee this bottle?’

Said the giant, ‘It was young John, son of Erin’s king, that left it.’

‘Well, then, the bottle is mine,’ said she.

But to make a long story short, she came to the house of each giant, and she took with her each bottle and each loaf and each cheese, till at last she came to the house of the king of Erin. Then the five-fifths of Erin were gathered, and the bridge of nobles of the people; they were put in at the back door and out at the front door, but the bird did not stir. Then she asked if there was one other or any one else at all in Erin that had not been here.

‘I have a bald rough-skinned gillie in the smithy,’ said the smith, ‘but——’

‘Rough on or off, send him here,’ says she.

No sooner did the bird see the head of the bald rough-skinned gillie than he took a flight and settles on the bald top of the rough-skinned lad. She caught him and kissed him: ‘Thou art the father of my babe.’

‘But, John,’ says the great king of Erin, ‘it is thou that gottest the bottles of water for me.’

‘Indeed ‘twas I,’ says John.

‘Weel, then, what art thou willing to do to thy two brothers?’

‘The very thing they wished to do to me, do for them.’

And that same was done. John married the daughter of the king of the Green Isle, and they made a great rich wedding that lasted seven days and seven years. And thou couldst but hear Leeg, leeg, and Beeg, beeg, solid sound and peg-drawing. Gold a-crushing from the soles of their feet to the tips of their fingers, the length of seven years and seven days.

A variant clearly of John Roberts’ Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘An Old King and his Three Sons in England’ (No. 55, pp. 220–234), but I expect that Matthew Wood’s variant, ‘The Bottle of Black Water,’ would come closer still. Some day Mr. Sampson must give us that with its fellows. Which is the better story—that of John Roberts, the Welsh harper, or this of John MacDonald, the travelling tinker—is hard to determine; in some respects each is immeasurably superior. John Roberts’ is the more coherent and intelligible; but it lacks that splendid wrestling match, with which compare the much poorer one in the Bohemian-Gypsy story of ‘The Three Dragons’ (No. 44, p. 152). And then while it preserves the handkerchief ordeal, it has not the inexhaustible whisky-bottle, loaf, and cheese. The occurrence of a bear in each version, though with marked differences, can hardly be accidental. For a long while after I got John Roberts’ story, I believed that its close was largely of his own invention; but that belief now seems to be inadmissible. The Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Golden Bird and the Good Hare’ (No. 49, pp. 182–8), and its Scottish-Tinker version, ‘The Fox’ (No. 75), should be carefully studied.

NO. 74.—THE TALE OF THE SOLDIER

There was an old soldier once, and he left the army. He went to the top of a hill that was at the upper end of the town-land, and he said, ‘Well, may it be that the Mischief may come and take me with him on his back the next time that I come again in sight of this town.’

Then he was walking till he came to the house of a gentleman that was there. John asked the gentleman if he would get leave to stay in his house that night.

‘Well, then,’ said the gentleman, ‘since thou art an old soldier, and hast the look of a man of courage, without dread or fear in thy face, there is a castle at the side of yonder wood, and thou mayest stay in it till day. Thou shalt have a pipe and baccy, a cogie full of whisky, and a Bible to read.’ [143]

When John got his supper, he took himself to the castle. He set on a great fire, and when a while of the night had come, there came two tawny women in, and a dead man’s kist between them. They threw it at the fireside, and they sprang out. John arose, and with the heel of his foot he drove out its end, and he dragged out an old hoary bodach. And he set him sitting in the great chair; he gave him a pipe and baccy, and a cogie of whisky; but the bodach let them fall on the floor.

‘Poor man,’ said John, ‘the cold is on thee.’

John laid himself stretched in the bed, and he left the bodach to toast himself at the fireside; but about the crowing of the cock he went away.

The gentleman came well early in the morning. ‘What rest didst thou find, John?’

‘Good rest,’ said John. ‘Thy father was not the man that would frighten me.’

‘Right, good John, thou shalt have two hundred pund, and lie to-night in the castle.’

‘I am the man that will do that,’ said John.

And that night it was the very like. There came three tawny women, and a dead man’s kist with them amongst them. They threw it up to the side of the fireplace, and they took their soles out of that. John arose, and with the heel of his boot he broke the head of the kist, and he dragged out of it the old hoary man. And, as he did the night before, he set him sitting in the big chair, and gave him pipe and baccy; and he let them fall.

‘Oh! poor man,’ said John, ‘cold is on thee.’

Then he gave him a cogie of drink, and he let that fall also.

‘Oh! poor man, thou art cold.’

The bodach went as he did the night before. ‘But,’ said John to himself, ‘if I stay here this night, and that thou shouldst come, thou shalt pay my pipe and baccy, and my cogie of drink.’

The gentleman came early enough in the morning, and he asked, ‘What rest didst thou find last night, John?’

‘Good rest,’ said John. ‘It was not the hoary bodach, thy father, that would put fear on me.’

‘Och!’ said the gentleman, ‘if thou stayest to-night thou shalt have three hundred pund.’

‘It’s a bargain,’ said John.

When it was a while of the night there came four tawny women, and a dead man’s kist with them amongst them. And they set that down at the side of John. John arose, and he drew his foot, and he drove the head out of the kist. And he dragged out the old hoary man, and he set him in the big chair. He reached him the pipe and the baccy, the cup and the drink; but the old man let them fall, and they were broken.

‘Och!’ said John, ‘before thou goest this night, thou shalt pay me all thou hast broken.’

But word came there not from the head of the bodach. Then John took the belt of his abersgaic, [144] and he tied the bodach to his side, and he took him with him to bed. When the heath-cock crowed, the bodach asked him to let him go.

‘Pay what thou hast broken first,’ said John.

‘I will tell thee, then,’ said the old man, ‘there is a cellar of drink under, below me, in which there is plenty of drink, tobacco, and pipes. There is another little chamber beside the cellar, in which there is a caldron full of gold. And under the threshold of the big door there is a crocky full of silver. Thou sawest the women that came with me to-night?’

‘I saw,’ said John.

‘Well, there thou hast four women from whom I took the cows, and they in extremity. They are going with me every night thus, punishing me. But go thou and tell my son how I am being wearied out. Let him go and pay the cows, and let him not be heavy on the poor. Thou thyself and he may divide the gold and silver between you; and marry thyself my old girl. But mind, give plenty of gold of what is left to the poor, on whom I was too hard. And I will find rest in the world of worlds.’

The gentleman came, and John told him as I have told thee. But John would not marry the old girl of the hoary bodach. At the end of a day or two John would not stay longer. He filled his pockets full of the gold, and he asked the gentleman to give plenty of gold to the poor. He reached the house, [145] but he was wearying at home, and he had rather be back with the regiment. He took himself off on a day of days, and he reached the hill above the town, from which he went away. But who should come to him but the Mischief.

‘Hoth! hoth! John, thou hast come back?’

‘Hoth on thyself!’ quoth John, ‘I came. Who art thou?’

‘I am the Mischief, the man to whom thou gavest thyself when thou was here last.’

‘Ai! ai!’ said John, ‘it’s long since I heard tell of thee, but I never saw thee before. There is glamour on my eyes; I will not believe that it is thou at all. But make a snake of thyself, and I will believe thee.’

The Mischief did this.

‘Make now a lion of roaring.’

The Mischief did this.

‘Spit fire now seven miles behind thee and seven miles before thee.’

The Mischief did this.

‘Well,’ said John, ‘since I am to be a servant with thee, come into my abersgaic, and I will carry thee. But thou must not come out till I ask thee, or else the bargain’s broke.’

The Mischief promised, and he did this.

‘Now,’ said John, ‘I am going to see a brother of mine that is in the regiment. But keep thou quiet.’

So now John went into the town; and one yonder and one here would cry, ‘There is John the desairtair.’ There was gripping of John, and a court held on him; and so it was that he was to be hanged about mid-day on the morrow. And John asked no favour but to be floored with a bullet.

The Coirneal said, ‘Since he was an old soldier, and in the army so long, that he should have his asking.’

On the morrow, when John was to be shot, and the soldiers foursome round all about him, ‘What is that they are saying?’ said the Mischief. ‘Let me amongst them, and I won’t be long scattering them.’

‘Cuist! cuist!’ said John.

‘What’s that speaking to thee?’ said the Coirneal.

‘Oh! it’s but a white mouse,’ said John.

‘Black or white,’ said the Coirneal, ‘don’t thou let her out of the abersgaic, and thou shalt have a letter of loosing, and let’s see no more of thee.’

John went away, and in the mouth of night he went into a barn where there were twelve men threshing. ‘Oh! lads,’ said John, ‘here’s for you my old abersgaic; and take a while threshing it, it is so hard that it is taking the skin off my back.’

They took as much as two hours of the watch at the abersgaic with the twelve flails; and at last, every blow they gave it, it would leap to the top of the barn, and it was casting one of the threshers now and again on his back. When they saw that, they asked him to be out of that, himself and his abersgaic; they would not believe but that the Mischief was in it.

Then he went on his journey, and he went into a smithy where there were twelve smiths striking their great hammers. ‘Here’s for you, lads, an old abersgaic, and I will give you half-a-crown, and take a while at it with the twelve great hammers; it is so hard that it is taking the skin off my back.’

But that was fun for the smiths; it was good sport for them, the abersgaic of the soldier. But every sgaile it got, it was bounding to the top of the smithy. ‘Go out of this, thyself and it,’ said they; ‘we will not believe that the Bramman [146] is in it.’

So then John went on, and the Mischief on his back; and he reached a great furnace that was there.

‘Where art thou going now, John?’ said the Mischief.

‘Patience a little, and thou’lt see that,’ said John.

‘Let me out,’ said the Mischief, ‘and I will never put trouble on thee in this world.’

‘Nor in the next?’ said John.

‘That’s it,’ said the Mischief.

‘Stop, then,’ said John, ‘till thou get a smoke.’

And so saying, John cast the abersgaic and the Mischief into the middle of the furnace: and himself and the furnace went as a green flame of fire to the skies.

The first half is a variant, and a good one, of the Welsh-Gypsy story of ‘Ashypelt’ (No. 57, p. 235); the second half is a variant, a better one, of the latter part of the Welsh-Gypsy ‘Old Smith’ (No. 59, p. 247), and of the confused and imperfect Slovak-Gypsy ‘Old Soldier’ (No. 60, p. 250). The prominence given to tobacco-smoking in both ‘Ashypelt’ and in the Scottish-Tinker story suggests that the forebears of Cornelius Price and those of John MacDonald must have parted company at some time later than the beginning of the seventeenth century, unless, indeed, this resemblance is accidental. About the beginning of the nineteenth century English Gypsies must have visited Scotland much more than they did in 1870–80, when a few of the Smiths or Reynolds, Maces, and Lees, all closely connected, were the only English Gypsies who ‘travelled’ north of the Tweed. Since 1880, again, there has been a great influx of English Gypsydom,—one reason that fortune-telling seems to be not illegal in Scotland. In his notes upon Campbell’s story in Orient und Occident (ii. 1864, pp. 679–680), Reinhold Köhler makes an odd slip, very unusual with him. He renders ‘the Mischief’ by ‘das Unglück,’ and is puzzled why poor Unglück should be so scurvily handled.

NO. 75.—THE FOX

Brian, the son of the king of Greece, fell in love with the hen-wife’s daughter, and he would marry no other but she. His father said to him on a day of days, before that should happen that he must get first for him the most marvellous bird that there was in the world. Then here went Brian, and he put the world under his head, till he came much further than I can tell, or you can think, till he reached the house of the Carlin of Buskins. [147] He got well taken to by the carlin that night; and in the morning she said to him, ‘It is time for thee to arise. The journey is far.’

When he rose to the door, what was it but sowing and winnowing snow. He looked hither and thither, and what should he see but a fox drawing on his shoes and stockings. ‘Sha! beast,’ said Brian, ‘thou hadst best leave my lot of shoes and stockings for myself.’

‘Och!’ said the fox, ‘it’s long since a shoe or a stocking was on me; and I’m thinking that I shall put them to use this day itself.’

‘Thou ugly beast, art thou thinking to steal my foot-webs, and I myself looking at thee?’

‘Well,’ said the fox, ‘if thou wilt take me to be thy servant, thou shalt get thy set of shoes and stockings.’

‘O poor beast!’ said he, ‘thou wouldst find death with me from hunger.’

‘Ho! hoth!’ said the fox, ‘there is little good in the servant that will not do for his own self and for his master at times.’

‘Yes, yes,’ said he, ‘I don’t mind; at all events thou mayst follow me.’

They had not gone far on their journey when the fox asked him if he was good at riding. He said he was, if it could be known what on.

‘Come on top of me a turn of a while,’ said the fox.

‘On top of thee! Poor beast, I would break thy back.’

‘Ho! huth! son of the king of Greece,’ said the fox, ‘thou didst not know me so well as I know thee. Take no care but that I am able to carry thee.’

But never mind. When Brian went on top of the fox, they would drive spray from each puddle, spark from each pebble. And they took no halt nor rest till they reached the house of the Giant of Five Heads, Five Humps, and Five Throttles.

‘Here’s for thee,’ said the fox, ‘the house of the giant who has the marvellous bird. And what wilt thou say to him when thou goest in?’

‘What should I say but that I came to steal the marvellous bird?’

‘Hu! hu!’ said the fox, ‘thou wilt not return. But,’ said the fox, ‘take thou service with this giant to be a stable-lad. And there is no sort of bird under the seven russet rungs of the world that he has not got. And when he brings out the marvellous bird, say thou, “Fuith! fuith! the nasty bird, throw it out of my sight. I could find braver birds than that on the middens at home.”’

Brian did thus.

‘S’tia!’ said the big one, ‘then I must go to thy country to gather a part of them.’

But Brian was pleasing the giant well. But on a night of the nights Brian steals the marvellous bird, and drags himself out with it. When he was a good bit from the giant’s house, ‘S’tia!’ said Brian to himself, ‘I don’t know if it is the right bird I have after every turn.’ Brian lifts the covering off the bird’s head, and he lets out one screech, and the screech roused the giant.

‘Oh! oh! son of the king of Greece,’ said the giant, ‘that I have coming to steal the marvellous bird. The prophet was saying that he would come to his gird.’

Then here the giant put on the shoes that could make nine miles at every step, and he wasn’t long catching poor Brian. They returned home to the giant’s house, and the giant laid the binding of the three smalls on him, and he threw Brian into the peat-corner, and he was there till the morning on the morrow’s day.

‘Now,’ said the giant, ‘son of the king of Greece, thou hast thy two rathers—Whether wouldst thou rather thy head to be on yonder stake, or go to steal the White Glaive of Light that is in the realm of Big Women?’

‘A man is kind to his life,’ said Brian. ‘I will go to steal the White Glaive of Light.’

But never mind. Brian had not gone far from the giant’s house when the fox met with him. ‘O man without mind or sense, thou didst not take my counsel, and what will now arise against thee? Thou art going to the realm of Big Women to steal the White Glaive of Light. That is twenty times as hard for thee as the marvellous bird of that carl of a giant.’

‘But what help for it now but that I must betake myself to it?’ said poor Brian.

‘Well, then,’ said the fox, ‘come thou on top of me, and I am in hopes thou wilt be wiser the next time.’

They went then further than I can remember, till they reached the knoll of the country at the back of the wind and the face of the sun, that was in the realm of Big Women.

‘Now,’ said the fox, ‘thou shalt sit here, and thou shalt begin at blubbering and crying; and when the Big Women come out where thou art, they will lift thee in their oxters; and when they reach the house with thee, they will try to coax thee. But never thou cease of crying until thou get the White Glaive of Light; and they will leave it with thee in the cradle the length of the night, to keep thee quiet.’

Worthy Brian was not long blubbering and crying when the Big Women came, and they took Brian with them as the fox had said. And when Brian found the house quiet, he went away with the White Glaive of Light. And when he thought he was a good way from the house, he thought he would see if he had the right sword. He took it out of the sheath, and the sword gave out a ring. This awoke the Big Women, and they were on their soles. ‘Whom have we here,’ said they, ‘but the son of the king of Greece coming to steal the White Glaive of Light.’

They took after Brian, and they were not long bringing him back. They tied him roundly (like a ball), and they threw him into the peat-corner till the white morrow’s day was. When the morning came, they asked him to be under the sparks of the bellows, [148] or to go to steal the Sun Goddess, daughter of the king of the gathering of Fionn.

‘A man is kind to his life,’ said Brian. ‘I will go steal the Sun Goddess.’

Never mind. Brian went, but he was not long on the path when the fox met him. ‘O poor fool,’ said the fox, ‘thou art as silly as thou wert ever. What good for me to be giving thee counsel? Thou art now going to steal the Sun Goddess. Many a better thief than thou went on the same journey, but ever a man came never back. There are nine guards guarding her, and there is no dress under the seven russet rungs of the world that is like the dress that is on her but one other dress, and here is that dress for thee. And mind,’ said the fox, ‘that thou dost as I ask thee, or, if thou dost not, thou wilt not come to the next tale.’

Never mind. They went, and when they were near the guard, the fox put the dress on Brian, and he said to him to go forward straight through them, and when he reached the Sun Goddess to do as he bid him. ‘And, Brian, if thou gettest her out, I will not be far from you.’

But never mind. Brian took courage, and he went on, and each guard made way for him, till he went in where the Sun Goddess, daughter of the king of the gathering of Fionn, was. She put all-hail and good-luck on him, and she it was who was pleased to see him, for her father was not letting man come near her. And there they were.

‘But how shall we get away at all, at all?’ said she in the morning.

Brian lifted the window, and he put out the Sun Goddess through it.

The fox met them. ‘Thou wilt do yet,’ said he. ‘Leap you on top of me.’

And when they were far, far away, and near the country of Big Women, ‘Now, Brian,’ said the fox, ‘is it not a great pity for thyself to give away this Sun Goddess for the White Glaive of Light?’

‘Is it not that which is wounding me at this very time?’ said Brian.

‘It is that I will make a Sun Goddess of myself, and thou shalt give me to the Big Women,’ said the fox.

‘I had rather part with the Sun Goddess herself than thee.’

‘But never thou mind, Brian, they won’t keep me long.’

Here Brian went in with the fox as a Sun Goddess, and he got the White Glaive of Light. Brian left the fox with the Big Women, and he went forward. In a day or two the fox overtook them, and they got on him. And when they were nearing the house of the big giant, ‘Is it not a great pity for thyself, O Brian, to part with the White Glaive of Light for that filth of a marvellous bird?’

‘There is no help for it,’ said Brian.

‘I will make myself a White Glaive of Light,’ said the fox; ‘it may be that thou wilt yet find a use for the White Glaive of Light.’

Brian was not so much against the fox this time, since he saw that he had got off from the Big Women.

‘Thou art come with it,’ said the big man. ‘It was in the prophecies that I should cut this great oak-tree at one blow, which my father cut two hundred years ago with the same sword.’

Brian got the marvellous bird, and he went away. He had gone but a short distance from the giant’s house when the fox made up to him with his pad to his mouth.

‘What’s this that befell thee?’ said Brian.

‘Oh! the son of the great one,’ said the fox, ‘when he seized me, with the first blow he cut the tree all but a small bit of bark. And look thyself, there is no tooth in the door of my mouth which that filth of a Bodach has not broken.’

Brian was exceedingly sorrowful that the fox had lost the teeth, but there was no help for it. They were going forward, walking at times, and at times riding, till they came to a spring that there was by the side of the road. ‘Now, Brian,’ said the fox, ‘unless thou dost strike off my head with one blow of the White Glaive of Light into this spring, I will strike off thine.’

‘S’tia,’ said Brian, ‘a man is kind to his own life.’

And he swept the head off him with one blow, and it fell into the well. And in the wink of an eye what should rise up out of the well but the son of the king that was father to the Sun Goddess.

They went on till they reached his father’s house. And his father made a great wedding with joy and gladness, and there was no word about marrying the hen wife’s daughter when I parted from them.

‘On the 25th of April 1859, [at Inverary], John [MacDonald] the tinker gave the beginning of this as part of his contribution to the evening’s entertainment. He not only told the story, but acted it, dandling a fancied baby when it came to the adventure of the Big Women, and rolling his eyes wildly. The story which he told varied from that which he dictated in several particulars. It began:—

‘“There was a king and a knight, as there was and will be, and as grows the fir-tree, some of it crooked and some of it straight. And it was the King of Eirinn, it was. And the queen died with her first son, and the king married another woman. Oh! bad straddling queen, thou art not like the sonsy, cheery queen that we had ere now.”

‘And here came a long bit which the tinker put into another story, and which he seems to have condensed into the first sentence of the version which I have got and translated. He has also transferred the scene from Ireland to Greece, perhaps because the latter country sounds better, and is further off, or perhaps because he had got the original form of the story from his old father in the meantime.

‘Some of the things mentioned in the tinker’s version have to do with Druidical worship—the magic well, the oak-tree, the bird. For the Celtic tribes, as it is said, were all guided in their wanderings by the flight of birds. The Sun Goddess, for the Druids are supposed to have worshipped the sun, and the sun is feminine in Gaelic. These are all mixed up with Fionn and the Sword of Light and the Big Women, personages and things which do not appear out of the Highlands.’

The whole of this last paragraph seems to me more than questionable, for ‘The Fox’ is beyond all question identical with the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Golden Bird and the Good Hare’ (No. 49, pp. 182–8), in the excellent Servian version of which it is a fox, not a hare. Druidism is hardly to be looked for in either Poland or Servia. In some respects the Polish-Gypsy story is better than the Tinker one, but in others the Tinker version is greatly superior. Each, indeed, supplies the other’s deficiencies. The original beginning, given by Campbell, seems to point to a form of the story where, as in the Indian versions of ‘The Bad Mother,’ cited on p. 35, note, the hero is sent on his quest by a stepmother. In his notes on the Gaelic story in Orient und Occident (ii. 1864, pp. 685–6), Reinhold Köhler cites an interesting Wallachian version.

NO. 76.—THE MAGIC SHIRT [149]

‘There was a king and a knight, as there was and will be, and as grows the fir-tree, some of it crooked and some of it straight; and he was a king of Eirinn,’ said the old tinker, and then came a wicked stepmother, who was incited to evil by a wicked hen-wife. The son of the first queen was at school with twelve comrades, and they used to play at shinny every day with silver shinnies and a golden ball. The hen-wife, for certain curious rewards, gave the step-dame a magic shirt, and she sent it to her stepson, ‘Sheen Billy,’ and persuaded him to put it on. He refused at first, but complied at last, and the shirt was a great snake about his neck. Then he was enchanted and under spells, and all manner of adventures happened; but at last he came to the house of a wise woman who had a beautiful daughter, who fell in love with the enchanted prince, and said she must and would have him.

‘It will cost thee much sorrow,’ said the mother.

‘I care not,’ said the girl, ‘I must have him.’

‘It will cost thee thy hair.’

‘I care not.’

‘It will cost thee thy right breast.’

‘I care not if it should cost me my life,’ said the girl.

And the old woman agreed to help her to her will. A caldron was prepared and filled with plants; and the king’s son was put into it and stripped to the magic shirt, and the girl was stripped to the waist. And the mother stood by with a great knife, which she gave to her daughter. Then the king’s son was put down in the caldron; and the great serpent, which appeared to be a shirt about his neck, changed into its own form, and sprang on the girl and fastened on her; and she cut away the hold, and the king’s son was freed from the spells. Then they were married, and a golden breast was made for the lady.

‘And then,’ adds Mr. Campbell, ‘they went through more adventures which I do not well remember, and which the old tinker’s son vainly strove to repeat in August 1860, for he is far behind his father in the telling of old Highland tales. The serpent, then, would seem to be an emblem of evil and wisdom in Celtic popular mythology.’

APPENDIX

P. 249.—The following nigger folk-tale, first printed by me in the Athenæum for 20th August 1887, p. 245, was taken down by an American acquaintance, Mr. J. P. Suverkrop, C.E., in 1871, at Sand Mountain, Alabama, from the recitation of his negro servant, Dick Brown, a ‘boy’ about thirty years old, who was a native of Petersburg, Virginia, and there had got it from his granny. It seems to be clearly a variant of ‘The Master Smith’ (Clouston, ii. 409) and of Grimm’s No. 147, ‘The Old Man made Young Again’ (ii. 215, 444). If so, it must be a comparatively recent transmission from one race (Aryan) to another (non-Aryan), yet it is as thoroughly localised as folk-tale well could be.

DE NEW HAN’.

Wunst dar wer a sawmill on de aige of a wood not a thousan mili from heah, wid a branch a-runnin by a-turnin de wheel. An ole colored man, he kep de mill an wer a very fine kine of man; but he son Sam, what help him, didn’ take arter de ole man, but wer a triflin, no account sort o’ young nigger; an de ole man had to wuk right sharp to git along. One day ’long come a poor-lookin sort o’ man, sayin he wanted to larn de saw-millin, an he wuk fur a yeah fur nuffin. De ole man wer glad to git his help, an de young ’un ’lowed he could shif some o’ his wuk on to de New Han’. So de New Han’ he went to totin boads and doin chores round de mill. De ole man he like de New Han’ fus class, an allus gin he jes as good as he git hisself; but de son he make hisself big to de New Han’ behind de ole man back, an order him roun to do dis an dat. De New Han’ he never say nuffin, but jes go ’long ’bout he own bisness. De ole man he cotch Sam ’busin an a-bossin de New Han’ aroun, and he club he good fur hit more’n a few times. One day an ole man come fur a load o’ plank, and he war a-groanin wid de misery in de back, an a-wishin he were young an spry like as he used to.

Den up speak de New Han’, an he say, ‘Ef you all go in de woods ’ceptin dis man an me, whar you can’t see nuffin goin on, an wait till I holler, I’ll fix dis man right up good; but you all mus promis not to peek, for suffin bad happen ef yo do.’

So dey promis. An de ole man an he son go in de woods wher dey can’t see nuffin. An de New Han’ he say to de man wid de misery in he back, ‘Go lay down on de saw-frame.’

Den he up wid de saw, an cut he in two. Den he up wid de two pieces of de man, an trow em into de branch, an de pieces jine togidder, an de ole man wid de misery in he back come outer de branch a live an well man an quite young like an frisky. Den he fell a-thankin de New Han’, but he jest tole he to shet up. An den he hollerd. Sam and he fader come a-runnin, an was mighty exprised when dey seen de young-lookin nigger in de place of de ole limpin man. But de New Han’ wouldn’t say nuffin ’bout it. So dey jest shet up, an things carried on same as usual till de ole man he got word his mudder very bad, an he must start right off fur to see her. Befo he go he dun tole Sam not fur to ac obstropolus wid de New Han’, case ef he did, so sho’ would he git a dubbin soon ez he got back. But Sam he forgit jes so soon de ole man gone, an behave wery overbearin an obstropolus.

Finally de New Han’ say to Sam, ‘Ef you don’ quit behavin, I’se gwine to leave when my yeah up, an dat’s to-morrer.’

Den Sam ac real owdashus, an tole him, ‘Go along now, yo fool.’

Sho’ enuff nex dey de New Han’ dun gone, an no one seed him go, an no one pass he in de road or in de wood. Well, de wery nex day ’long come de nigger what was made young an likely by de New Han’, an ’long wid him come he ole woman totin a baskit wid a elegant fat possum an sweet taters dat fairly made Sam mouf water. After passin de time o’ day an so on, de man ax arter de New Han’, sayin he want him fix up de ole woman same like he do him.

Sam say, ‘O, he be back to-morrer. Jes leave de possum, an come agin. I’ll gin it to him when he come.’

But de man too smart fur dat, an wouldn’ leave hit.

So Sam ’fraid he gwine to lose de possum, so he say, ‘De New Han’ dun gone off fur to see he sic fader, an dun tole me fo’ he go for to ax you an do same what he done to you.’

So den de man tole Sam, an Sam tell de man to go in de wood an shet he eyes. Den Sam he saw de ole woman in two, an frow de pieces in de branch; but dar dey stay. Den Sam git skeered, an go down to de branch, an try to jine de pieces, but dey wont jine. An de ole ’oman’s husban come a-runnin and a-hollerin outer de wood case he see suffin wrong; an de neighbers come, an dey take Sam an try he, an fin’ he guilty.

An de judge he put on he black hat an say, ‘Hang Sam by de neck ontil he mus be quite ded, an de Lor hab mussy on pore Sam.’

Den Sam’s ole fader come a-runnin, an he fall down, an beg for Sam; but do’ he roll in de dus, an cry, de judge won’ let Sam go. Den dey all go ’way solemn like to de gallus. An de judge ax Sam, do he got anything to say for hisself. An Sam see de New Han’ stan a-laffin in de crowd. An he think how bad he dun treated de pore man.

So he say, ‘Brudren an sistren, min’ what I gwine tell you. Don’ ac highminded an biggity wid no one, case ef I hadn’ ac dat way to a man in dis here very crowd, I’d a been heavin saw-logs instid o’ gwine to be hung dis day.’

’Den all he frinds fall a-cryin an a-rollin, but de New Han’ jump up longside Sam, an say quick like to he, ‘Do you shore enuff sorry for you acshuns?’

Den Sam say, ‘Deed an deed I’s sorry, an I ax pardon an hope yo’ll forgive me when I’s gone.’

Den de New Han’ speak out big an loud to de crowd, an say, ‘How come yo gwine to hang dis heah man when de ole ’oman he kill is a-standin right dar?’

Sho’ enuff dar was she standin long o’ her ole man. So dey let Sam down, an dey had great jollification; but dey never see de New Han’ from dat day to dis nowhar.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Folk-tales are scarcely literature, but a question affecting the world’s literature arises out of these Gypsy folk-tales. Was the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress an English peasant or a Gypsy half-breed? The Rev. J. Brown, in John Bunyan: his Life, Times, and Work (1885), shows that the family of Bunyan—a name spelt in thirty-four different ways—was established in Bedfordshire as early at least as 1199, and that in 1327 a William Bownon was living at Elstow on the very spot where John Bunyan was born in 1628. There is a gap in the Bunyan annals between 1327 and 1542, when one finds a William Bonyon of Elstow, as in 1548 a Thomas Bonyon, aged forty-six or more. Next come a Thomas Bunyon, ‘Pettie Chapman,’ who died in 1641, and his son, also Thomas Bunyon (1603–76), who, says Mr. Brown, is ‘usually spoken of as a tinker, but describes himself as a “braseyer.”’ This second Thomas took for his second wife in 1627 an Elstow woman, Margaret Bentley (1603–44), and John was the first child of that marriage. He, as every one knows, was an itinerant though house-dwelling tinker (Brown, pp. 64, 119, 158, etc); and his eldest son, John, ‘was brought up to the ancestral trade of a brazier, and carried on business in Bedford till his death in 1728’ (id. pp. 201–2). That is all of the essential to be gleaned about Bunyan’s pedigree; we know nothing as to his grandmother or great-grandmother.

With this evidence, then, before him, Canon Venables pronounced, in the Dictionary of National Biography (vii., 1886, p. 276), that ‘the antiquity of the family in Bunyan’s native county effectually disposes of the strange hallucination, which even Sir Walter Scott was disposed to favour, that the Bunyans, “though reclaimed and settled,” may have sprung from the Gipsy tribe.’ By no means necessarily, as may be seen from a single example. During 1870–75 I often came across members of the Bunce family in Oxfordshire, Wilts, Herts, and Somerset. Stephen Bunce, of Wiltshire yeoman ancestry, had thirty years earlier married Phœbe Buckland, a thorough-bred Gypsy woman, had himself turned tent-dweller, and ‘travelled’ the southern counties till his death. They had a largish family; and many, perhaps most, of their sons and daughters have married Gypsies of more or less purity. One son was (and maybe is still) a small farmer and horse-dealer, living in a house of his own at Pewsey. Now, if a son or a grandson of his rose to eminence, he could not by Canon Venables’ argument be a Gypsy, because, forsooth! the Bunces are an old Wiltshire family.

The chief upholder of Bunyan’s Gypsy ancestry was Mr. James Simson, a Scoto-American of New York, the editor of Walter Simson’s History of the Gipsies (1865), and author of John Bunyan and the Gipsies (1882) and a whole host of similar pamphlets. He pointed out that Bunyan writes in his Grace Abounding: ‘For my descent, it was, as is well known to many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my father’s house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land.’ And again: ‘After I had been thus for some considerable time, another thought came into my mind, and that was, whether we were of the Israelites or no. For, finding in the Scriptures that they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were one of this race, my soul must needs be happy. Now, again, I found within me a great longing to be resolved about this question, but could not tell how I should. At last, I asked my father, who told me, No, we were not.’ And yet again: ‘I often, when these temptations had been with force upon me, did compare myself to the case of such a child whom some Gipsy hath by force took up in her arms, and is carrying from friend and country.’

Kidnapping has never been a Gypsy practice (In Gypsy Tents, pp. 244–46), nor, though it were, would a Gypsy, even a converted Gypsy, be likely to use it as an illustration. But Mr. Simson’s two first passages are really pertinent. The Anglo-Israelite craze was not devised till 1793; and it is hard to conceive why about 1645 an English peasant-boy should have speculated on a Jewish origin for himself and his kindred. But with a Gypsy it would not the least surprise me. I hardly ever see Frampton Boswell, an English Gypsy of fifty, but he returns to the question, ‘And there’s one thing, Mr. Groome, I’ve been wanting to ask you about, and that is where you think our people originated.’ Hindoos, Jews, and Egyptians are regularly passed in review, but Frampton cannot make up his mind, as neither can he about Rómani, except that ‘for certain ’tisn’t one of the Seven Languages.’

Tinker in Bunyan’s day indubitably carried a suggestion at least of Gypsydom. I have not been able to see The Tinker of Turvey, [150] or Canterbury Tales (Lond. 1630, ed. by J. O. Halliwell), to which Mr. Brown refers, but from his few quotations on p. 34 it seems evident that that ‘strolling Tincker and brave mettle-man’ regarded himself as something widely different from an ordinary English artificer. Sir Thomas Overbury in his well-known Characters (1614) describes ‘The Tinker,’ the companion of whose travels ‘is some foul sun-burnt quean, that since the terrible statute recanted gypsism and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England with his bag and baggage,’ etc. In an article by A. H. A. Hamilton on ‘Quarter Sessions under Charles I. from original records of Devon’ (Fraser’s Mag., Jan. 1877) is a quotation concerning ‘sundry suspect persons, Roagues both sturdy and begging vagrant, some whereof pretend to be petty chapmen [like Bunyan’s grandfather], others peddlers, others glassmen, tynckers, others palmesters, fortune readers, Egiptians, and the like.’ Brazier is a frequent designation of Gypsies at the present day—e.g. the baptismal register of Hill, Sutton Coldfield, has ‘Jan. 27, 1866, Miriam Kate Agnes, daughter of Benjamin and Mira Boswell, cutler and brazier’; and that of Boothroyd, Dewsbury, has ‘Mary Jane dr of Thomas and Mary Green, Dewsbury Moor, Brazier of the Gipsey tribe.’ The occurrence in the Bunyan pedigree of such Gypsy ‘Christian’ names as Mantis and Perun, Delarīfa and Meralíni, would be a strong point, but is entirely lacking. On the other hand, ‘gaujified’ or gentilised Gypsies often drop such names; two brothers of my acquaintance, Oti and Lazzy, became thus plain William and George. A contemporary description of Bunyan (Brown, p. 399) as ‘tall of stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent, somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes ... his hair reddish,’ runs rather against the theory of Bunyan’s Gypsy ancestry, but not conclusively, for I have known two Gypsy brothers, one very swarthy, the other red-haired.

The strongest corroboration of that theory was unknown to both Mr. Simson and Mr. Brown. In Notes and Queries for January 24, 1891, p. 67, ‘R.’ cited an entry from the parish register of St. Mary’s, Launceston: ‘1586, March the ivth daie was christened Nicholas, sonne of James Bownia, an Egiptia rogue.’ Here ‘Egiptia’ (? Egiptiā) must stand for ‘Egiptian’; ‘Bownia’ similarly should be ‘Bownian,’ and, if so, we have veritable Gypsy Bunyans. It may seem a far cry from Launceston in Cornwall to Elstow in Bedfordshire, were nomads not in case; in time, the interval between this baptism and the birth of ‘the inspired tinker’ is but forty-two years.

But, anyhow, whether Bunyan was Gypsy [151] or Gentile, folk-tales (plus the Bible) seem to me quite as likely a source of inspiration for his Pilgrim’s Progress and Holy War as (say) the fourteenth century Pélerinage de l’Homme or the siege of the Anabaptists at Münster. I do not believe this has ever before been suggested; I will merely suggest it, and leave the working out of it to folklorists.

NOTES

[1] According to the Spectator (24th December 1897) ten thousand Gypsies wintered in Surrey in 1896–97!

[2] I shall have frequent occasion to refer to the Gypsy Lore Journal (3 vols. 1888–92), which should in time be one of the libri rarissimi, as the issue was limited to 150 copies, many of which are sure to have perished. There are complete sets, however, at the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Edinburgh Advocates’ Library, Leyden, Berlin, Munich, Cracow, Rome, Madrid, Harvard, and twelve other public libraries.

[3] Aliqui in the Latin may stand for either some of the Gypsies or some of the townsfolk, more probably the latter. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.) speaks, a very few years after this, of the Northumbrian women staring at him ‘as in Italy the people stare at an Ethiopian or an Indian.’

[4] This passage was cited as far back as 1785 by Jacob Bryant in Archæologia, vii. 393; but another on p. 57 of the Itinerarium has hitherto escaped Gypsiologists. I give it in the original Latin:—‘Item sciendum est, quod in sæpedictis civitatibus [Alexandria and Cairo] de omni secta alia ab illorum viri mulieres lactantes juvenes et cani pravæ venditioni exponuntur ad instar bestiarum; et signanter indiani schismatici et danubiani, qui omnes utriusque sexus in colore cum corvis et carbonibus multum participant; quia hii cum arabis et danubianis semper guerram continuant, atque cum capiuntur redemptione vel venditione evadunt.... Prædicti autem Danubiani, quamvis ab Indianis non sunt figura et colore distincti, tamen ab eis distinguuntur per cicatrices longas quas habent in facie et cognoscuntur; comburunt enim sibi cum ferro ignito facies illas vilissimas terribiliter in longum, credentes se sic flamine [? flammis] baptizari ut dicitur, et a peccatorum sordibus igne purgari. Qui postquam ad legem Machometi fuerunt conversi christianis deteriores sunt Saracenis, sicut et sunt Radiani renegati, et plures molestias inferunt.... Item sciendum, quod in præfatis civitatibus tanta est eorum multitudo, quod nequaquam numerari possunt.’ There is much in this passage that remains obscure; but it seems clear from it that in 1322 there were in Egypt large numbers of captives, male and female, old and young, from the Danubian territories. They were black as crows and coal, and in complexion and features differed little from Indians, except that their faces bore long scars produced by burning (? a kind of tattooing, like that of the Gypsy women in 1427 at Paris on p. xii.). On conversion to Mohammedanism these Danubians were worse to the Christians than the Saracens. Were these Danubians, or some at least of them, Gypsies, prisoners of war, from the Danubian territories? and did some of them buy back their freedom and return to Europe? If so, perhaps one has here an explanation of the hitherto unexplained names ‘Egyptian,’ ‘Gypsy,’ ‘Gitano,’ etc., and of the story told by the western immigrants of 1417–34 of renegacy from the Christian faith.

[5] E. A. Sophocles in the Introduction to his Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Boston, U.S., 1870, p. 32) regards Mazaris as probably an imaginary character of an anonymous writer of the fourteenth century, according to whom ‘Peloponnesus was at that time inhabited by a mongrel population, the principal elements being Lacedæmonians, Italians, Peloponnesians, Slavs, Illyrians, Egyptians (Αἰγύπτιοι), and Jews.’

[6] Of the Gypsies of Cyprus, as indeed those of Crete, Modern Greece, Lesbos, etc., we know practically nil. A writer in the Saturday Review for 12th January 1878, p. 52, quoted, without giving date or source, these words of a Cretan poet:—‘Franks and Saracens, Corsairs and Germans, Turks and Atzingani, they have tried them all, and cannot say who were better, who worse.’

[7] According to Captain Newbold, the Gypsies of Syria and Palestine ‘vend charms, philtres, poisons, and drugs of vaunted efficacy’; in 1590 Katherene Roiss, Lady Fowlis, was ‘accusit for sending to the Egyptianis, to haif knawledge of thame how to poysoun the young Laird of Fowlis and the young Lady Balnagoune.’

[8] It is just worth noting that St. Columbanus (543–615) was accustomed to celebrate the Eucharist in vessels of bronze (aeris), alleging as a reason for so doing that Our Lord was affixed to the cross by brazen nails.—Smith’s Dict. Christ. Antiqs., s.v. Chalice.

[9] Cf. supra, p. xi., line 13.

[10] Information supplied by M. Omont of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and by Prof. von Dobschütz of Jena, shows that the komodromos passage is to be found in neither of these two MSS. It has still to be sought for, then.

[11] In his Beiträge zur Kenntniss der deutschen Zigeuner (Halle, 1894, pp. 5–6), Herr Richard Pischel maintains, as it seems to me, successfully, that the ‘Bemische lute’ (Boehmische Leute) at Würzburg between 1372 and 1400 were real Bohemians and not Gypsies.

[12] No Greek loan-word has more interest for us than paramísi or paramísa, a story (Mod. Gk. παραμύθι). It occurs in the dialects of the Roumanian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, German, and English Gypsies. I heard it myself first in 1872 near Oxford, from old Lolli Buckland, in the curious sense of stars:—‘As you kistas kérri ke-ráti, réia, túti’ll dik the paramíshis vellin’ avri adré the leeline’ (As you ride home this evening, sir, you’ll see the stars coming out in the darkness). How she came to apply the word thus, I cannot say, perhaps from the mere jingle of stars and stories, perhaps from the notion of the stars foretelling the future. Again, in 1879, from one of the Boswells, I heard the verb páramis, ‘to talk scandal, tell tales.’ And lastly, Mr. Sampson got paramissa in its proper sense of ‘story’ from the old tinker Philip Murray, who, though no Gypsy himself, had an unrivalled knowledge of Gypsydom and Rómani (Gyp. Lore Jour., iii. 77).

[13] In Chronicles of a Virgin Fortress (1896), Mr. W. V. Herbert gives an extraordinary story of one of the Stanleys, who, forced to fly Hampshire for some offence, found his way to Bulgaria, and as ‘Istanli’ became a Gypsy chieftain and public executioner of Widdin about 1874. Tom Taylor’s returned ‘lag’ of p. xvii recurs also to memory, and John Lee, the Gypsy recruit of ‘John Company,’ from whom on the outward voyage in 1805 Lieut. Francis Irvine of the Bengal Native Infantry took down a Rómani vocabulary of 138 words (Trans. Lit. Soc. Bombay, 1819).

[14] In 1894 there was a small band of Bosnian Gypsies at St. Jean de Luz on their way to Spain. They were evidently well-off.

[15] The tented Gypsies in Calabria in May 1777, described in Henry Swinburne’s Travels in the Two Sicilies (2nd ed. ii. 168–172), were almost certainly not Italian Gypsies, but Caldarari. Borrow speaks of the foreign excursions of the Hungarian Gypsies, which frequently endure for three or four years, and extend to France, even to Rome (The Zincali, 1841, i. 13); and Adriano Colocci tells in Gli Zingari (Turin, 1889), p. 181, how in the Apennines of Fossato he encountered Hungarian Gypsies who seemed quite at home there, as also how at Kadi Köi in Asia Minor he had discourse with a band of Neapolitan Gypsies.

[16] Against this statement I must set what was quite a typical remark of an English Gypsy, a Boswell:—‘That’s a thing, sir, I should be disdainful of, to be júvalo’ (verminous).

[17] Query, Solomon Jones? Jones I know for a real Gypsy surname.

[18] I take some little pride in having myself been a means of preserving two of our best—I had almost said, our only two really good—English folk-tales. These are ‘Cap o’ Rushes’ and ‘Tom Tit Tot,’ which were told by an old Suffolk servant to Miss Lois Fison when a child, and which she communicated to Nos. 23 and 43 of a series of ‘Suffolk Notes and Queries,’ edited by me for the Ipswich Journal in 1876–77. Thence my friend, Mr. Clodd, unearthed them a dozen years afterwards; and on the latter he has just issued a masterly monograph.

[19] The London tinker’s story, however, seems more closely to resemble ‘The Claricaune’ in Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (ed. by Thos. Wright, N.D. pp. 98–112).

[20] Since writing this, I have learned, through the kindness of Mr. Rufus B. Richardson of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, that ‘nothing remains of Paspati’s collections except a few notes, which will be brought out in a new edition of his works.’

[21] Cf. the Indian story of ‘Prince Lionheart and his Three Friends’ (F. A. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, p. 59):—‘In front of the horse lies a heap of bones, and in front of the dog a heap of grass,’ etc.

[22] The notes of that story are unfortunately lost, but it is a version of Grimm’s No. 36, ‘The Wishing-table, the Gold-ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack,’ Basile’s first tale in the Pentamerone (1637), etc. No European folk-tale is more widely spread than this in India, where we find ‘The Story of Foolish Sachuli’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy-tales, p. 27), ‘The Indigent Brahman’ (Rev. Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 53), and ‘The Jackal, the Barber, and the Brahman’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, p. 174). A fragment of the story comes into our Slovak-Gypsy one of ‘The Old Soldier’ (No. 60).

[23] See for this Celtic secret jargon the article ‘Shelta,’ by Mr. J. Sampson, in vol. ix. of Chambers’s Encyclopædia (1892), p. 389.

[24] So I had written when I learned, through the kindness of Lord Archibald Campbell, that John MacDonald the younger, known variously as ‘John Fyne,’ ‘Long John,’ and ‘Baboon,’ got a cottage on the Argyll estate, but was never either a keeper or an under-keeper in the Duke’s employ. He was, however, a keeper for a short while on the neighbouring estate of Ardkinlas. ‘Long John,’ writes Lord Archibald, ‘as far as I know, had no Rómani. His daughters still tramp the country.’ I may add here that Mr. Arthur Morgan, of the Crofters’ Commission, who knows the Highlands as few, is strongly of opinion that the tinkers are not Celts: ‘the Highlanders never regard them as such.’ This though they speak Gaelic, but much intermixed with odd words.

[25] Kounavine apart, we have but one hint of story-telling by Gypsies in Asia. In Blackwood’s for March 1891, pp. 388–9, the late Mr. Theodore Bent had an article on an archæological tour in ‘Cilicia Aspera,’ a district lying on the southern slopes of the Taurus Mountains, in which was this passage: ‘Periodically a travelling tinker comes among them [the mountain tribes], the great newsmonger of the mountain. He chooses a central spot to pitch his tent, and the most wonderful collection of decrepit copper utensils is soon brought from the neighbouring tents and piled around. He usually brings with him a young assistant to look after the mule and blow the bellows; and with nitre heated at his fire he mends the damaged articles, gossiping the while, and filling the minds of the simple Yourouks who stand around with wonderful tales, not always within the bounds of veracity. When his work is done, he removes to another central point, and after he has amassed as many fees as his mule can carry, for they usually pay in cheese and butter, he returns to his town, and realises a handsome profit.’ I have not seen a small work on the Yourouks by M. Tsakyroglou (Athens, 1891), giving their popular songs, etc.

[26] Not unique; occurs also in Wratislaw’s Bohemian story, No. 2, p. 21. But I let the lines stand for a warning against the vanity of dogmatising.

[27] According to the Archduke Josef’s great Czigány Nyelvatan (1888), p. 342, ‘chronological reasons force us to the conclusion that Solario was not a Gypsy. He came by the name of Zingaro as being the son of a travelling smith (farrier), and as having himself first engaged in that calling.... Since the Gypsies only made their appearance in Italy in 1422, it is clear that Solario could not be of Gypsy parentage.’ If it could be proved that Italy in 1382 had its travelling smiths, called Zingari, it would be clear that then there were Italian Gypsies. A similar instance of arguing from a foregone conclusion occurs in the remark of a German lexicographer of 1749, that, ‘the common people gave the name Zihegan to land-tramps before Gypsies ever were heard of.’ The said Zihegan could not of course be Gypsies, because Gypsies were then non-existent.

[28] Some one will be sure to point out, if I do not, that most or all of these incidents occur also in non-Gypsy European folk-tales, and that therefore they are not peculiar to the Gypsies. Precisely: that is a possible confirmation of my theory.

[29] To which add the slang pal, a comrade, from the Rómani, pral, brother.

[30] I have discussed the subject-matter of the last two pages more fully in my paper, ‘The Influence of the Gypsies on the Superstitions of the English Folk’ (Trans. Internat. Folklore Congress, 1891, pp. 292–308).

[31] That, however, is a vulgar error; the Gypsies are one of the purest races in Europe.

[32] I have sometimes wondered, what if a folklorist, making a little tour in Wales, in a Welsh inn-garden had come on a venerable Welsh harper, playing ancient Welsh airs, and speaking Welsh more fluently than English? He would have drawn him, of course, for folk-tales, and lo! a perfect mine of them—long, unpublished stories, all about magic snuff-boxes and magic balls of yarn, the kings of the mice and the frogs and the fowls of the air, griffins of the greenwood, golden apples and golden castles, sleeping princesses, and all the rest of it. ‘Eureka!’ that folklorist would have shouted, and straightway meditated a new Welsh Mabinogion. Welsh—Celtic—not at all necessarily; his old Welsh bard might have been just John Roberts the Gypsy.

[33] It is a great pity Mr. Curtin has not specified when, where, and from whom he got his stories; all we are told is that they were collected by him ‘personally in the West of Ireland, in Kerry, Galway, and Donegal, during the year 1887.’ It is almost incomprehensible that he never alludes once to Campbell’s collection.

[34] These two birds, which recur also in Norse, Swedish, and German versions of the story (Orient und Occ. ii. 108–9), at once recall the parrot and the mainá in ‘The Bél-Princess’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 149–150) whose discourse revives the prince’s recollections. See also p. 412 of Mrs. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories.

[35] For an excursus, of true German erudition, on Gypsies and hedgehogs, see R. Pischel’s Beiträge zur Kenntniss der deutschen Zigeuner (Halle, 1894, pp. 26–30). He shows that hedgehogs are a Gypsy delicacy from Wales to Odessa, and that the Gypsies probably brought the taste from the foothills of the Himalayas, where hedgehogs are plentiful.

[36] ‘Γυφτικά,’ says Hahn in a footnote. ‘The sedentary Gypsies as a rule are smiths, therefore Gypsy and Locksmith are synonymous in the towns.’

[37] Only four years ago Mr. Joseph Jacobs wrote: ‘It is at any rate clear, that the only considerable addition to our folklore knowledge in these isles must come from the Gaelic area.’ And since then a folklorist has expressed himself in the Athenæum as ‘pretty certain that as to complete stories of any length there are none such to be found in Wales at the present day.’

[38] Told by an old sedentary Gypsy woman of Adrianople.

[39] Lit. ‘the lad there became dry’; but that is how an English Gypsy would put it.

[40] Kláka. ‘Claca,’ says Grenville Murray, ‘signifies a species of assembly very popular in Wallachia. If any family has some particular work to do on any particular account, they invite the neighbourhood to come and work for them. When the work is completed there is high glee, singing and dancing, and story-telling.’—Doine; or, Songs and Legends of Roumania (Lond. 1854), p. 109 n.

[41] In Wlislocki, p. 104 note, the devil has a duck’s foot. In F. A. Steel’s Indian Wide-awake Stories, p. 54, the hero detects a ghost by her feet being set on hind part before.

[42] On p. 110 Dr. Barbu Constantinescu gives a long and terrific formula for bewitching with the evil eye.

[43] The notion of a dead girl turning into a flower is very common in Indian folk-tales. Cf. Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 145, 149, 244, 247, 248, 252, etc.; and Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 6, ‘Little Surya Bai,’ pp. 79–93.

[44] Dá pes pe sherésti, lit. gave, or threw, herself on her head. In Gypsy stories this undignified proceeding almost invariably precedes every transformation. Cf. ‘The Red King and the Witch,’ ‘The Snake who became the King’s Son-in-law,’ ‘Tropsyn,’ etc.

[45] For golden boy cf. Dr. Barbu Constantinescu’s own ‘The Golden Children,’ No. 18, also Hahn, ii. 293. The two apples seem to be birth-marks.

[46] For the bursting of monsters, cf. Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, pp. 27, 240; and Ralston, p. 130.

[47] Our queen’s great-great-great-grandfather, George I., was a firm believer in the vampire superstition (Horace Walpole’s Letters, vol. i. p. cix.).

[48] Cf. Grimm, No. 56, ‘Sweetheart Roland,’ i. 226.

[49] i.e. Pretend to be ill. English Gypsies employ the same phrase alike in Rómani and in English.

[50] Lit. ‘put himself.’

[51] See note on No. 6, ‘God’s Godson.’

[52] Baldpate makes the same remark in No. 2, p. 8, but the conventional answer is wanting there.

[53] So I had written; but I have since read Maive Stokes’ story of ‘The Demon conquered by the King’s Son’ (Indian Fairy Tales, No. 24, pp. 173 and 288). Here it is the demon step-mother, who, pretending her eyes are bad, sends the hero to fetch tigress’s milk, an eagle’s feather, night-growing rice and water from the Glittering Well. He speaks, however, of her as his ‘mother.’ e.g. on p. 180. Compare ‘The Son of Seven Mothers’ in F. A. Steel’s Indian Wide-awake Stories, pp. 98–110, and Knowles’ Folk-tales of Kashmir, pp. 1 and 42.

[54] There is obviously an omission, at this point, of a wager or something of that sort.

[55] See note on No. 46.

[56] See footnote 2 on p. 16.

[57] Clearly Mr. Mayhew was no folklorist. The boy’s claim to have invented the story is worth noting.

[58] The Roumanian-Gypsy word is Baht, which in one form or another (bakht, bahi, bok, bachí, etc.) occurs in every Gypsy dialect—Turkish, Russian, Scandinavian, German, English, Spanish, etc., and which Pott derives from the Sanskrit (ii. 398–9). But the curious point is that in Dozon’s Contes Albanais (1881), p. 60, we get ‘Va trouver ma Fortune,’ and a footnote explains, ‘Fortune, en turc bakht, espèce de génie protecteur.’ Paspati, again, in his Turkish-Gypsy vocabulary (1870), p. 155, gives—‘Bakht, n.f. fortune, sort, hasard.... Les Grecs et les Turcs se servent très souvent du même mot’; and Miklosich, too, cites the Modern Greek μπάκτι (Ueber die Mundarten, vii. 14). The occurrence of this Gypsy word as a loan-word in Modern Greek and Turkish is suggestive of a profound influence of the Gypsies on the folklore of the Balkan Peninsula. Bakht, fortune, is also good Persian.

[59] This is a little puzzling, but it must mean that all the speeches seemingly by the princess were really made by the watchmaker—that he maintained the dialogue.

[60] Lit. Greek.

[61] This is the first real remark on the part of the princess, who, woman-like, cannot stand a stupid male remark about the price of a dress.

[62] This change from the third to the second person is in the original.

[63] What ‘pearly hay’ is I know not, but it stands so in the original.

[64] The last four words fairly beat me, but such seems their literal meaning. In the Roumanian rendering, ‘le-a facut doue mere.’

[65] See footnote 2 on p. 16.

[66] The meaning of these three words is obscure. According to Miklosich, they are a magic formula with which the boy summons the empress from her grave behind the door. Or, perhaps, at this point the boy shows his pearly teeth.

[67] Slov. Vah, Ger. Waag, a river of Northern Hungary.

[68] By rights this question should be put to the grand-parents.

[69] Zenele, a Roumanian loan-word, is rendered ‘zenæ’ in the Latin translation; ‘böse weibliche Genien,’ ‘evil feminine spirits,’ in the vocabulary.

[70] She says much worse in the original.

[71] This phrase occurs also in our No. 24, in a Wallachian story cited by Hahn (ii. 312), and, if I mistake not, in Ralston, but I have mislaid the exact reference. The Romani trúshul, cross, is from the Sanskrit trisula, the trident of Siva.

[72] Bowdlerised.

[73] Cf. the very curious ‘Story of Lelha’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 80:—Boots, the youngest brother, presses his three brothers ‘to attempt the removal of the stone, so they and others to the number of fifty tried their strength, but the stone remained immovable. Then Lelha said, “Stand by, and allow me to try.” So putting to his hand, he easily removed it, and revealed the entrance to the mansion of the Indarpuri Kuri.’

[74] Cf. Hahn, i. 140, lines 4–7.

[75] Anastasia.

[76] Ruthenian mountaineers of the Carpathians.

[77] With this episode of the horse compare that of the pony in ‘Brave Seventee Bai’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 3, p. 30).

[78] That is, of course, the prince’s poor little blow had seemed to her like a caress.

[79] Cf. footnote on p. 80.

[80] This, it seems, is the comrade’s name.

[81] A very Gypsy touch this, for the fiddlers of course would be Gypsies, so the meanness of dispensing with their services would appeal to the Gypsy mind.

[82] Observe, he had become a seer already.

[83] Lit. they raised him on the hands.

[84] See footnotes on p. 16.

[85] No use is made of these. Was the ship to be made of them?

[86] Hahn has the selfsame story up to this point, only not so well told, ‘Von dem Schönen und vom Drakos’ (No. 3, i. 75–79, and ii. 178–86).

[87] As a kind of block evidently. I do not remember this elsewhere.

[88] It should be remembered that Austro-Hungarian Gypsies have all to serve in the army.

[89] The text runs, ‘So he, the king’s son,’ etc., but this makes nonsense.

[90] This inquiry as to the secret of the hero’s strength should by rights be made, not by the emperor, but by a former lover.

[91] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33, 35.

[92] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33.

[93] This suggests that the cat and the princess really were one. Cf. footnote on No. 46.

[94] Cf. footnote 2, p. 16.

[95] Cf. note on the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Brigands and the Miller’s Daughter,’ No 47, p. 171.

[96] Urme.

[97] He threw the hat in the direction of the light, so that when he had descended, and could no longer discern the light, he might know by the hat in which direction to find it. So in Grimm, No. 111 (ii. 103).

[98] The idea may be far-fetched (literally), but this passage has a very Oriental flavour. Cf. ‘A Simple Thief’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 126.—The thieves ‘went to a rich man’s house, and dug a hole through the wall. They then said, “You creep in.”’

[99] The text for the next ten lines is very corrupt, like the narrative. I have Bowdlerised much, and omitted a good deal more.

[100] This is wrong; and from this point onward there is some confusion—the son, not the mother, seeming to become the narrator.

[101] Cf. Hahn, i. 186 and ii. 52.

[102] Now first mentioned. The whole story is confused.

[103] This answer presupposes the presence of at least three robbers.

[104] This method of killing the robbers is exactly the same as that followed by the youth in the Moravian-Gypsy story of ‘The Princess and the Forester’s Son’ (No. 43, p. 147). Cf. too, No. 8, ‘The Bad Mother,’ pp. 25, 30, where the lad kills eleven of twelve dragons, and Hahn, vol. ii. p. 279.

[105] For cutting three red stripes out of back, cf. ‘Osborn’s Pipe’ (Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 3), which = the Welsh-Gypsy tale of ‘The Ten Rabbits’ (No. 64); also Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, ‘The Seven Foals,’ p. 380. Cutting three strips out of the back occurs also in a Russian story epitomised by Ralston, p. 145; and cutting a strip of skin from head to foot in Campbell’s West Highland tale, No. 18 (cf. supra, p. 124), which Reinhold Köhler connects with the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice (Orient und Occident, 1864, pp. 313–316).

[106] Our story here has a curious resemblance with pp. 122–3 of ‘Le Trimmatos ou l’Ogre aux Trois Yeux,’ a vampire story from Cyprus, in Legrand’s Contes Grecs (1881). Query: Was ‘Mr. Fox’ originally a vampire story?

[107] It is the general custom among pious people in Poland, on entering a house, or when meeting one another, to give the greeting, ‘Jesus Christ be praised.’ To which the response is, ‘From age to age.’

[108] Albanian folk-tales open with a similar formula (Dozon’s Contes Albanais, 1881, p. 1).

[109] The Gypsy word, rashani, originally means ‘priestess.’

[110] Cf. Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands, i. 61, and iv. 283; and Dozon’s Contes Albanais, 27, note.

[111] It should by rights be a drake; still, the swan is suggestive of ‘swan-maidens.’ Nor does she strictly adhere to her self-prescribed rules of metamorphosis.

[112] Apparel.

[113] So in the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Mother’s Chastisement,’ No. 9, p. 29. Cf. Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 245.

[114] God.

[115] Liege.

[116] Poverty = poor, possibly confused with paltry, is very common among English Gypsies.

[117] Cf. footnote, p. 212.

[118] Cf. Noah Young’s name for elder, mi-duvel’s kandlo ruk (‘God’s stinking tree’); some other Gypsies, including Isaac Herren, call it wuzén. Oliver Lee’s name for ivy is chirikléskro ruk (‘bird’s tree’), because it was the tree brought back by the dove into the ark, and this is the reason that birds are fond of clustering round it. Holly is mi-duveléskro ruk (‘God’s tree’; cf. Cornish Aunt Mary’s Tree); and Gypsies pitching their tent against a holly-bush are under divine protection.—J. S.

[119] ‘As cunning as a bushel o’ monkeys’ is a favourite figure of a Gypsy friend of mine.

[120] Cf. also Hahn, Nos. 22, 70, 98, and i. 308.

[121] Cf. footnote on p. 118. John Roberts also was an old soldier.

[122] Much the same phrase recurs in ‘An Old King and his three Sons in England’ (No. 55), and in ‘Ashypelt’ (No. 57). Cf. also Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield chapter xiii.:—‘They now travelled far, and farther than I can tell, till they met with a company of robbers.’

[123] Cf. notes on ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land,’ No. 62.

[124] Gypsies have different kinds of whistles, one peculiar to each family, by which they can recognise one another at a distance or in the dark.

[125] Dordi = ‘look-ye,’ a common Gypsy exclamation.

[126] Valentine and Oliver are both Welsh-Gypsy Christian names.

[127] See footnote on p. 212.

[128] This point is lost, of course, in my English rendering of the Rómani portions of this story. In the original MS. the youngest brother uses the broken dialect put by John Roberts in the mouths of all English Gypsies, while the two others speak in the very deepest Rómani.

[129] The Jacobite engraver, Sir Robert Strange, thus tethered his horse on the eve of Culloden (Life, i. 59).

[130] Presumably the royal arms of England would be engraved on his watch, and his princely initials embroidered on his pocket-handkerchief.

[131] In another Welsh-Gypsy story, ‘Jack the Robber,’ summarised on pp. 48–9, the master says, ‘If you can’t do that, Jack, I’ll be behead you.’

[132] That story is of very wide and seemingly recent dispersion. It occurs in Norway (‘The Three Lemons,’ Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 158); Sicily (‘Die Schöne mit den sieben Schleiern,’ Laura Gonzenbach, No. 13, i. 73, which offers striking analogies to ‘An Old King’ and ‘The Accursed Garden’); Zacynthus (‘Die drei Citronen,’ Bernhard Schmidt, No. 5, p. 71), etc.; also in India (‘The Bel Princess,’ Maive Stokes, No. 21, p. 138).

[133] See note on p. 212.

[134] The next eight Welsh-Gypsy stories were told, like the last, in Rómani, by Matthew Wood to Mr. Sampson; and the English summaries of them given here are by Mr. Sampson.

[135] I am reminded of Poly Mace, the champion’s cousin. He was camping at Golden Acre near Granton, and told me one Sunday that he knew a sea-captain who had a familiar: would I care to see it? Of course I would; had he seen it? what was it like, then? ‘Well, it’s a very curious kind of a little, wee, teeny dragon, that is, Mr. Groome; changes colour, it does, according to where you puts it.’ I found Poly meant a chameleon.

[136] I Shuvali Râni is the Rómani title of this story.

[137] The first half of this story, which, like the next, was told to Mr. Sampson in English by Cornelius Price, is here omitted, having been already summarised on pp. 48–9.

[138] Montford Bridge, over the Severn, near Shrewsbury.

[139] Valiant.

[140] A corruption probably of ‘Welcome.’

[141] A passage in ‘The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island’ (Curtin’s Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland, p. 98) offers a curious parallel:—‘They fought an awful battle that day from sunrise to sunset. They made soft places hard, and hard places soft; they made high places low, and low places high; they brought water out of the centre of hard grey rocks, and made dry rushes soft in the most distant parts of Erin till sunset.’

[142] Of course, £1 notes in Scotland.

[143] In the Welsh-Gypsy story Ashypelt gets no whisky, also no Bible.

[144] Haversack.

[145] Went home.

[146] ‘This word,’ says Campbell, ‘I have never met before.’

[147] A sock, a brogue of untanned leather or skin, commonly worn with the hairy side outward; Lat. cothurnus, Welsh cwaran, French cothurne.—J. F. C.

[148] ‘Bolg seididh, bag of blowing. The bellows used for melting copper in the mint at Tangier in 1841 consisted of two sheepskins worked by two men. The neck of the hide was fastened to the end of an iron tube, and the legs sewed up. The end of each bag opened with two flat sticks; and the workmen, by a skilful action of the hand, filled the bag with air as they raised it, and then squeezed it out by pressing downwards. By working the two bags turn-about, a constant steady blast was kept on a crucible in the furnace, and the copper was soon melted. The Gaelic word clearly points to the use of some such apparatus. I believe something of the kind is used in India; but I saw the Tangier mint at work.’—J. F. C.

Were Mr. Campbell still living I would call his attention to ‘something of the kind’ much nearer home than India or Tangiers, viz. the Scottish-Gypsy method of smelting iron in a furnace of stone, turf, and clay, three feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter: ‘the materials in the furnace are powerfully heated by the blasts of a large hand-bellows, generally wrought by females, admitted at a small hole a little from the ground’ (Walter Simson’s History of the Gipsies, 1865, p. 234). In the Gypsy Lore Journal for January 1892, pp. 134–142, is an article by Henri van Elven on ‘The Gypsies of Belgium,’ with excellent illustrations of a Hungarian-Gypsy furnace and bellows, corresponding to Simson’s description. And there are also illustrations and minute descriptions of the Gypsy furnace and bellows in Kopernicki’s masterly monograph on ‘Les Zlotars ou Dzvonkars, Tsiganes fondeurs en bronze dans la Galicie Orientale et la Bukovine,’ communicated by Bataillard to the Société d’Anthropologie (Paris, 1878). From a footnote here on p. 519 we learn that ‘the Calderari often use two of these bellows at once, making them work turn-about to right and to left, so as to produce a constant blast.’ One is tempted to conclude that the mint at Tangiers in 1841 was worked by Gypsies, that here we get an explanation of those mysterious visits of the Hungarian Calderari to Northern Africa, referred to in the Introduction. It sounds surprising, but Mr. Campbell, I doubt not, would have been quite as surprised to learn that the church bell of Edzell in Forfarshire was cast in the woods by Gypsies in 1726; that about 1740 the Border Gypsies practised engraving on pewter, lead, and copper, as well as rude drawing and painting; that about the beginning of this century the Gypsies had a small foundry near St. Andrews, which the country-folk called ‘Little Carron’; that Killin in 1748 had its tinker silversmith, whose secret of enamel inlaying died with him; or that the silver Celtic Lochbuy Brooch, a pound in weight, was made by a Mull tinker ‘in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, about the year 1600’ (Strand Magazine, January 1897, p. 115). I myself have sat and watched a Gypsy lad, a Boswell, fashion a pretty silver finger-ring out of a shilling I had given him, and have thought of the hoard of a travelling silversmith which in 1858 was unearthed on Skaill Links in Orkney. It comprised brooches, neck-rings, arm-rings, silver ingots, and Cufic coins, struck at Bagdad between 887 and 945. ‘It seems most unlikely,’ says Mr. Lang, ‘that tales which originated in India could have reached the Hebrides within the historic period.’ Perhaps; but where coins could come, so surely also could folk-tales.—A desperate footnote this, but nothing to what has some day to be written on the subject of Gypsy metallurgy.

[149] I have furnished a name to this nameless story, a long one, which Campbell got from ‘Old MacDonald, travelling tinker.’ Else I give it just as he gives it.

[150] Turvey, a parish near Elstow, was a Gypsy abode long after Bunyan’s day; at it, in 1822–25, Legh Richmond buried two Gypsies—James Smith, and his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Robinson, both of the reputed age of 105. Robinson was a surname of descendants of Bunyan.

[151] There are those to whom the notion will seem monstrous that the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress should have been ‘a gipsy!’ I would remind such that at the present day there is Mr. George Smith, the Converted Gypsy, of the Potteries, who conducts missions in Edinburgh and other large cities. I have never heard him myself, but I am assured by a competent judge that he is a really eloquent preacher. Then there was William Mitchel (1672–1740), the Edinburgh ‘Tinklarian Doctor,’ author of a score of prophetical pamphlets. There was Thomas Wright, the tinker Berean of Barnsley, who baptized Ebenezer Elliott in 1781. And there was the founder of the American Shakers, ‘Mother’ Ann Lee (1736–86), a Manchester blacksmith’s illiterate daughter, who married in 1762 the blacksmith Abraham Stanley. The conjunction of the surnames Lee and Stanley, of the smith’s craft, and of the illiteracy, renders it almost certain in my mind that these were Gypsies.