Chapter 14

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 Fraulein 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 apre 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 grene."

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 naive 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? {209} 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.