Chapter 16

"Yes," he continued, "England's a little country, very little, indeed, but it is astonishing how many Romanys come out of it over here. _Do I notice any change in them after coming_? I do. When they first come, they drink liquor or beer all the time. After a while they stop heavy drinking."

I may here observe that even in England the gypsy, although his getting drunk is too often regulated or limited simply by his means, seldom shows in his person the results of long-continued intemperance. Living in the open air, taking much exercise, constantly practicing boxing, rough riding, and other manly sports, he is "as hard as nails," and generally lives to a hearty old age. As he very much prefers beer to spirits, it may be a question whether excess in such drinking is really any serious injury to him. The ancestors of the common English peasants have for a thousand, it may be for two thousand, years or more all got drunk on beer, whenever they could afford it, and yet a more powerful human being than the English peasant does not exist. It may be that the weaklings all die at an early age. This I cannot deny, nor that those who survive are simply so tough that beer cannot kill them. What this gypsy said of the impartial and liberal manner in which he and his kind are received by the farmers is also true. I once conversed on this subject with a gentleman farmer, and his remarks were much like those of the Rom. I inferred from what he said that the coming of a party of gypsy horse-dealers into his neighborhood was welcomed much as the passengers on a Southern steamboat were wont of old to welcome the proprietor of a portable faro bank. "I think," said he, "that the last time the gypsies were here they left more than they took away." An old Rom told me once that in some parts of New Jersey they were obliged to watch their tents and wagons very carefully for fear of the country people. I do not answer for the truth of this. It speaks vast volumes for the cleverness of gypsies that they can actually make a living by trading horses in New Spain.

It is very true that in many parts of America the wanderers are welcomed with _feux de joie_, or with salutes of shot-guns,--the guns, unfortunately, being shotted and aimed at them. I have mentioned in another chapter, on a Gypsy Magic Spell, that once in Tennessee, when an old Romany mother had succeeded in hoaxing a farmer's wife out of all she had in the world, the neighboring farmers took the witch, and, with a view to preventing effectually further depredation, caused her to pass "through flames material and temporal unto flames immaterial and eternal;" that is to say, they burned her alive. But the gypsy would much prefer having to deal with lynchers than with lawyers. Like the hedge-hog, which is typically a gypsy animal, he likes better to be eaten by those of his own kind than to be crushed into dirt by those who do not understand him. This story of the hedge-hog was cited from my first gypsy book by Sir Charles Dilke, in a speech in which he made an application of it to certain conservatives who remained blindly suffering by their own party. It will hold good forever. Gypsies never flourished so in Europe as during the days when every man's hand was against them. It is said that they raided and plundered about Scotland for fifty years before they were definitely discovered to be mere marauders, for the Scots themselves were so much given up to similar pursuits that the gypsies passed unnoticed.

The American gypsies do not beg, like their English brothers, and particularly their English sisters. This fact speaks volumes for their greater prosperity and for the influence which association with a proud race has on the poorest people. Our friends at Oaklands always welcomed us as guests. On another occasion when we went there, I said to my niece, "If we find strangers who do not know us, do not speak at first in Romany. Let us astonish them." We came to a tent, before which sat a very dark, old-fashioned gypsy woman. I paused before her, and said in English,--

"Can you tell a fortune for a young lady?"

"She don't want her fortune told," replied the old woman, suspiciously and cautiously, or it may be with a view of drawing us on. "No, I can't tell fortunes."

At this the young lady was so astonished that, without thinking of what she was saying, or in what language, she cried,--

"_Dordi_! _Can't tute pen dukkerin_?" (Look! Can't you tell fortunes?)

This unaffected outburst had a greater effect than the most deeply studied theatrical situation could have brought about. The old dame stared at me and at the lady as if bewildered, and cried,--

"In the name of God, what kind of gypsies are _you_?"

"Oh! _mendui shom bori chovihani_!" cried L., laughing; "we are a great witch and a wizard, and if you can't tell me my fortune, I'll tell yours. Hold out your hand, and cross mine with a dollar, and I'll tell you as big a lie as you ever _penned_ a _galderli Gorgio_ [a green Gentile]."

"Well," exclaimed the gypsy, "I'll believe that you can tell fortunes or do anything! _Dordi_! _dordi_! but this is wonderful. Yet you're not the first Romany _rani_ [lady] I ever met. There's one in Delaware: a _boridiri_ [very great] lady she is, and true Romany,--_flick o the jib te rinkeni adosta_ [quick of tongue and fair of face]. Well, I am glad to see you." "Who is that talking there?" cried a man's voice from within the tent. He had heard Romany, and he spoke it, and came out expecting to see familiar faces. His own was a study, as his glance encountered mine. As soon as he understood that I came as a friend, he gave way to infinite joy, mingled with sincerest grief that he had not at hand the means of displaying hospitality to such distinguished Romanys as we evidently were. He bewailed the absence of strong drink. Would we have some tea made? Would I accompany him to the next tavern, and have some beer? All at once a happy thought struck him. He went into the tent and brought out a piece of tobacco, which I was compelled to accept. Refusal would have been unkind, for it was given from the very heart. George Borrow tells us that, in Spain, a poor gypsy once brought him a pomegranate as a first acquaintanceship token. A gypsy is a gypsy wherever you find him.

These were very nice people. The old dame took a great liking to L., and showed it in pleasant manners. The couple were both English, and liked to talk with me of the old country and the many mutual friends whom we had left behind. On another visit, L. brought a scarlet silk handkerchief, which she had bound round her head and tied under her chin in a very gypsy manner. It excited, as I anticipated, great admiration from the old dame.

"_Ah kenna tute dikks rinkeni_--now you look nice. That's the way a Romany lady ought to wear it! Don't she look just as Alfi used to look?" she cried to her husband. "Just such eyes and hair!"

Here L. took off the _diklo_, or handkerchief, and passed it round the gypsy woman's head, and tied it under her chin, saying,--

"I am sure it becomes you much more than it does me. Now you look nice:--

"'Red and yellow for Romany, And blue and pink for the Gorgiee.'"

We rose to depart, the old dame offered back to L. her handkerchief, and, on being told to keep it, was greatly pleased. I saw that the way in which it was given had won her heart.

"Did you hear what the old woman said while she was telling your fortune?" asked L., after we had left the tent.

"Now, I think of it, I remember that she or you had hold of my hand, while I was talking with the old man, and he was making merry with my whisky. I was turned away, and around so that I never noticed what you two were saying."

"She _penned_ your _dukkerin_, and it was wonderful. She said that she must tell it."

And here L. told me what the old _dye_ had insisted on reading in my hand. It was simply very remarkable, and embraced an apparent knowledge of the past, which would make any credulous person believe in her happy predictions of the future.

"Ah, well," I said, "I suppose the _dukk_ told it to her. She may be an eye-reader. A hint dropped here and there, unconsciously, the expression of the face, and a life's practice will make anybody a witch. And if there ever was a witch's eye, she has it."

"I would like to have her picture," said L., "in that _lullo diklo_ [red handkerchief]. She looked like all the sorceresses of Thessaly and Egypt in one, and, as Bulwer says of the Witch of Vesuvius, was all the more terrible for having been beautiful."

Some time after this we went, with Britannia Lee a-gypsying, not figuratively, but literally, over the river into New Jersey. And our first greeting, as we touched the ground, was of good omen, and from a great man, for it was Walt Whitman. It is not often that even a poet meets with three sincerer admirers than the venerable bard encountered on this occasion; so, of course, we stopped and talked, and L. had the pleasure of being the first to communicate to Bon Gualtier certain pleasant things which had recently been printed of him by a distinguished English author, which is always an agreeable task. Blessed upon the mountains, or at the Camden ferryboat, or anywhere, are the feet of anybody who bringeth glad tidings.

"Well, are you going to see gypsies?"

"We are. We three gypsies be. By the abattoir. _Au revoir_."

And on we went to the place where I had first found gypsies in America. All was at first so still that it seemed if no one could be camped in the spot.

"_Se kekno adoi_." (There's nobody there.)

"_Dordi_!" cried Britannia, "_Dikkava me o tuv te tan te wardo_. [I see a smoke, a tent, a wagon.] I declare, it is my _puro pal_, my old friend, W."

And we drew near the tent and greeted its owner, who was equally astonished and delighted at seeing such distinguished Romany _tani ranis_, or gypsy young ladies, and brought forth his wife and three really beautiful children to do the honors. W. was a good specimen of an American-born gypsy, strong, healthy, clean, and temperate, none the worse for wear in out-of-dooring, through tropical summers and terrible winters. Like all American Romanys, he was more straightforward than most of his race in Europe. All Romanys are polite, but many of the European kind are most uncomfortably and unconsciously naive. Strange that the most innocent people should be those who most offend morality. I knew a lady once--Heaven grant that I may never meet with such another!--who had been perfectly educated in entire purity of soul. And I never knew any _devergondee_ who could so shock, shame, and pain decent people as this Agnes did in her sweet ignorance.

"I shall never forget the first day you came to my camp," said W. to Britannia. "Ah, you astonished me then. You might have knocked me down with a feather. And I didn't know what to say. You came in a carriage with two other ladies. And you jumped out first, and walked up to me, and cried, '_Sa'shan_!' That stunned me, but I answered, '_Sa'shan_.' Then I didn't speak Romanes to you, for I didn't know but what you kept it a secret from the other two ladies, and I didn't wish to betray you. And when you began to talk it as deep as any old Romany I ever heard, and pronounced it so rich and beautiful, I thought I'd never heard the like. I thought you must be a witch."

"_Awer me shom chovihani_" (but I am a witch), cried the lady. "_Mukka men ja adre o tan_." (Let us go into the tent.) So we entered, and sat round the fire, and asked news of all the wanderers of the roads, and the young ladies, having filled their pockets with sweets, produced them for the children, and we were as much at home as we had ever been in any salon; for it was a familiar scene to us all, though it would, perhaps, have been a strange one to the reader, had he by chance, walking that lonely way in the twilight, looked into the tent and asked his way, and there found two young ladies--_bien mises_--with their escort, all very much at their ease, and talking Romany as if they had never known any other tongue from the cradle.

"What is the charm of all this?" It is that if one has a soul, and does not live entirely reflected from the little thoughts and little ways of a thousand other little people, it is well to have at all times in his heart some strong hold of nature. No matter how much we may be lost in society, dinners, balls, business, we should never forget that there is an eternal sky with stars over it all, a vast, mysterious earth with terrible secrets beneath us, seas, mountains, rivers, and forests away and around; and that it is from these and what is theirs, and not from gas-lit, stifling follies, that all strength and true beauty must come. To this life, odd as he is, the gypsy belongs, and to be sometimes at home with him by wood and wold takes us for a time from "the world." If I express myself vaguely and imperfectly, it is only to those who know not the charm of nature, its ineffable soothing sympathy,--its life, its love. Gypsies, like children, feel this enchantment as the older grown do not. To them it is a song without words; would they be happier if the world brought them to know it as words without song, without music or melody? I never read a right old English ballad of sumere when the leaves are grene or the not-broune maid, with its rustling as of sprays quivering to the song of the wode-wale, without thinking or feeling deeply how those who wrote them would have been bound to the Romany. It is ridiculous to say that gypsies are not "educated" to nature and art, when, in fact, they live it. I sometimes suspect that aesthetic culture takes more true love of nature out of the soul than it inspires. One would not say anything of a wild bird or deer being deficient in a sense of that beauty of which it is a part. There are infinite grades, kinds, or varieties of feeling of nature, and every man is perfectly satisfied that his is the true one. For my own part, I am not sure that a rabbit, in the dewy grass, does not feel the beauty of nature quite as much as Mr. Ruskin, and much more than I do.

No poet has so far set forth the charm of gypsy life better than Lenau has done, in his highly-colored, quickly-expressive ballad of "Die drei Zigeuner," of which I here give a translation into English and another into Anglo-American Romany.

THE THREE GYPSIES.

I saw three gypsy men, one day, Camped in a field together, As my wagon went its weary way, All over the sand and heather.

And one of the three whom I saw there Had his fiddle just before him, And played for himself a stormy air, While the evening-red shone o'er him.

And the second puffed his pipe again Serenely and undaunted, As if he at least of earthly men Had all the luck that he wanted.

In sleep and comfort the last was laid, In a tree his cymbal {238} lying, Over its strings the breezes played, O'er his heart a dream went flying.

Ragged enough were all the three, Their garments in holes and tatters; But they seemed to defy right sturdily The world and all worldly matters.

Thrice to the soul they seemed to say, When earthly trouble tries it, How to fiddle, sleep it, and smoke it away, And so in three ways despise it.

And ever anon I look around, As my wagon onward presses, At the gypsy faces darkly browned, And the long black flying tresses.

TRIN ROMANI CHALIA.

Dikdom me trin geeria Sar yeckno a tacho Rom, Sa miro wardo ghias adur Apre a wafedo drom.

O yeckto sos boshengero, Yuv kellde pes-kokero, O kamlo-dud te perele Sos lullo apre lo.

O duito sar a swagele Dikde 'pre lestes tuv, Ne kamde kumi, penava me 'Dre sar o miduvels puv.

O trinto sovade kushto-bak Lest 'zimbel adre rukk se, O bavol kelld' pre i tavia, O sutto 'pre leskro zi.

Te sar i lengheri rudaben Shan katterdi-chingerdo Awer me penav' i Romani chals Ne kesserden chi pa lo.

Trin dromia lende sikkerden kan Sar dikela wafedo, Ta bosher, tuver te sove-a-le Aja sa bachtalo.

Dikdom palal, sa ghiom adur Talla yeckno Romani chal 'Pre lengheri kali-brauni mui, Te lengheri kali bal.

II. THE CROCUS-PITCHER. {241} (PHILADELPHIA.)

It was a fine spring noon, and the corner of Fourth and Library streets in Philadelphia was like a rock in the turn of a rapid river, so great was the crowd of busy business men which flowed past. Just out of the current a man paused, put down a parcel which he carried, turned it into a table, placed on it several vials, produced a bundle of hand-bills, and began, in the language of his tribe, to _cant_--that is, _cantare_, to sing--the virtues of a medicine which was certainly _patent_ in being spread out by him to extremest thinness. In an instant there were a hundred people round him. He seemed to be well known and waited for. I saw at a glance what he was. The dark eye and brown face indicated a touch of the _diddikai_, or one with a little gypsy blood in his veins, while his fluent patter and unabashed boldness showed a long familiarity with race-grounds and the road, or with the Cheap-Jack and Dutch auction business, and other pursuits requiring unlimited eloquence and impudence. How many a man of learning, nay of genius, might have paused and envied that vagabond the gifts which were worth so little to their possessor! But what was remarkable about him was that instead of endeavoring to conceal any gypsy indications, they were manifestly exaggerated. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and ear-rings and a red embroidered waistcoat of the most forcible old Romany pattern, which was soon explained by his words.

"Sorry to keep you waiting," he said. "I am always sorry to detain a select and genteel audience. But I was detained myself by a very interesting incident. I was invited to lunch with a wealthy German gentleman; a very wealthy German, I say, one of the pillars of your city and front door-step of your council, and who would be the steeple of your exchange, if it had one. And on arriving at his house he remarked, 'Toctor, by tam you koom yust in goot dime, for mine frau und die cook ish bote fall sick mit some-ding in a hoory, und I kess she'll die pooty quick-sudden.' Unfortunately I had with me, gentlemen, but a single dose of my world-famous Gypsy's Elixir and Romany Pharmacopheionepenthe. (That is the name, gentlemen, but as I detest quackery I term it simply the Gypsy's Elixir.) When the German gentleman learned that in all probability but one life could be saved he said, 'Veil, denn, doctor, subbose you gifes dat dose to de cook. For mine frau ish so goot dat it's all right mit her. She's reaty to tie. But de boor gook ish a sinner, ash I knows, und not reaty for de next world. And dere ish no vomans in town dat can gook mine sauer-kraut ash she do.' Fortunately, gentlemen, I found in an unknown corner of a forgotten pocket an unsuspected bottle of the Gypsy's Elixir, and both interesting lives were saved with such promptitude, punctuality, neatness and dispatch that the cook proceeded immediately to conclude the preparation of our meal--(thank you sir,--one dollar, if you please, sir. You say I only charged half a dollar yesterday! That was for a smaller bottle, sir. Same size, as this, was it? Ah, yes, I gave you a large bottle by mistake,--so you owe me fifty cents. Never mind, don't give it back. I'll take the half dollar.")

All of this had been spoken with the utmost volubility. As I listened I almost fancied myself again in England, and at a country fair. Taking in his audience at a glance, I saw his eye rest on me ere it flitted, and he resumed,--

"We gypsies are, as you know, a remarkable race, and possessed of certain rare secrets, which have all been formulated, concentrated, dictated, and plenipotentiarated into this idealized Elixir. If I were a mountebank or a charlatan I would claim that it cures a hundred diseases. Charlatan is a French word for a quack. I speak French, gentlemen; I speak nine languages, and can tell you the Hebrew for an old umbrella. The Gypsy's Elixir cures colds, gout, all nervous affections, with such cutaneous disorders as are diseases of the skin, debility, sterility, hostility, and all the illities that flesh is heir to except what it can't, such as small-pox and cholera. It has cured cholera, but it don't claim to do it. Others claim to cure, but can't. I am not a charlatan, but an Ann-Eliza. That is the difference between me and a lady, as the pig said when he astonished his missus by blushing at her remarks to the postman. (_Better have another bottle_, _sir_. _Haven't you the change_? _Never mind_, _you can owe me fifty cents_. _I know a gentleman when I see one_.) I was recently Down East in Maine, where they are so patriotic, they all put the stars and stripes into their beds for sheets, have the Fourth of July three hundred and sixty-five times in the year, and eat the Declaration of Independence for breakfast. And they wouldn't buy a bottle of my Gypsy's Elixir till they heard it was good for the Constitution, whereupon they immediately purchased my entire stock. Don't lose time in securing this invaluable blessing to those who feel occasional pains in the lungs. This is not taradiddle. I am engaged to lecture this afternoon before the Medical Association of Germantown, as on Wednesday before the University of Baltimore; for though I sell medicine here in the streets, it is only, upon my word of honor, that the poor may benefit, and the lowly as well as the learned know how to prize the philanthropic and eccentric gypsy."

He run on with his patter for some time in this vein, and sold several vials of his panacea, and then in due time ceased, and went into a bar-room, which I also entered. I found him in what looked like prospective trouble, for a policeman was insisting on purchasing his medicine, and on having one of his hand-bills. He was remonstrating, when I quietly said to him in Romany, "Don't trouble yourself; you were not making any disturbance." He took no apparent notice of what I said beyond an almost imperceptible wink, but soon left the room, and when I had followed him into the street, and we were out of ear-shot, he suddenly turned on me and said,--

"Well, you _are_ a swell, for a Romany. How do you do it up to such a high peg?"

"Do what?"

"Do the whole lay,--look so gorgeous?"

"Why, I'm no better dressed than you are,--not so well, if you come to that _vongree_" (waistcoat).