Chapter 2

As regards the great admixture of Persian with Hindi in good Romany, it is quite unmistakable, though I can recall no writer who has attached sufficient importance to a fact which identifies gypsies with what is almost preeminently the land of gypsies. I once had the pleasure of taking a Nile journey in company with Prince S---, a Persian, and in most cases, when I asked my friend what this or that gypsy word meant, he gave me its correct meaning, after a little thought, and then added, in his imperfect English, "What for you want to know such word?--that _old_ word--that no more used. Only common people--old peasant-woman--use that word--_gentleman_ no want to know him." But I did want to know "him" very much. I can remember that one night, when our _bon prince_ had thus held forth, we had dancing girls, or Almeh, on board, and one was very young and pretty. I was told that she was gypsy, but she spoke no Romany. Yet her panther eyes and serpent smile and _beaute du diable_ were not Egyptian, but of the Indian, _kalo-ratt_,--the dark blood, which, once known, is known forever. I forgot her, however, for a long time, until I went to Moscow, when she was recalled by dancing and smiles, of which I will speak anon.

I was sitting one day by the Thames, in a gypsy tent, when its master, Joshua Cooper, now dead, pointing to a swan, asked me for its name in gypsy. I replied, "_Boro pappin_."

"No, _rya_. _Boro pappin_ is 'a big goose.' _Sakku_ is the real gypsy word. It is very old, and very few Romany know it."

A few days after, when my Persian friend was dining with me at the Langham Hotel, I asked him if he knew what Sakku meant. By way of reply, he, not being able to recall the English word, waved his arms in wonderful pantomime, indicating some enormous winged creature; and then, looking into the distance, and pointing as if to some far-vanishing object, as boys do when they declaim Bryant's address "To a Water-Fowl," said,--

"Sakku--one ver' big bird, like one _swen_--but he _not_ swen. He like the man who carry too much water up-stairs {22} his head in Constantinople. That bird all same that man. He _sakkia_ all same wheel that you see get water up-stairs in Egypt."

This was explanatory, but far from satisfactory. The prince, however, was mindful of me, and the next day I received from the Persian embassy the word elegantly written in Persian, with the translation, "_a pelican_." Then it was all clear enough, for the pelican bears water in the bag under its bill. When the gypsies came to Europe they named animals after those which resembled them in Asia. A dog they called _juckal_, from a jackal, and a swan _sakku_, or pelican, because it so greatly resembles it. The Hindoo _bandarus_, or monkey, they have changed to _bombaros_, but why Tom Cooper should declare that it is _pugasah_, or _pukkus-asa_, I do not know. {23} As little can I conjecture the meaning of the prefix _mod_, or _mode_, which I learned on the road near Weymouth from a very ancient tinker, a man so battered, tattered, seamed, riven, and wrinkled that he looked like a petrifaction. He had so bad a barrow, or wheel, that I wondered what he could do with it, and regarded him as the very poorest man I had ever seen in England, until his mate came up, an _alter ego_, so excellent in antiquity, wrinkles, knobbiness, and rags that he surpassed the vagabond pictures not only of Callot, Dore, and Goya, but even the unknown Spanish maker of a picture which I met with not long since for sale, and which for infinite poverty defied anything I ever saw on canvas. These poor men, who seemed at first amazed that I should speak to them at all, when I spoke Romany at once called me "brother." When I asked the younger his name, he sank his voice to a whisper, and, with a furtive air, said,--

"_Kamlo_,--Lovel, you know."

"What do you call yourself in the way of business?" I asked. "_Katsamengro_, I suppose."

Now _Katsamengro_ means scissors-master.

"That is a very good word. But _chivo_ is deeper."

"_Chivo_ means a knife-man?"

"Yes. But the deepest of all, master, is _Modangarengro_. For you see that the right word for coals isn't _wongur_, as Romanys generally say, but _Angara_."

Now _angara_, as Pott and Benfey indicate, is pure Sanskrit for coals, and _angarengro_ is a worker in coals, but what _mod_ means I know not, and should be glad to be told.

I think it will be found difficult to identify the European gypsy with any one stock of the wandering races of India. Among those who left that country were men of different castes and different color, varying from the pure northern invader to the negro-like southern Indian. In the Danubian principalities there are at the present day three kinds of gypsies: one very dark and barbarous, another light brown and more intelligent, and the third, or _elite_, of yellow-pine complexion, as American boys characterize the hue of quadroons. Even in England there are straight-haired and curly-haired Romanys, the two indicating not a difference resulting from white admixture, but entirely different original stocks.

It will, I trust, be admitted, even from these remarks, that Romanology, or that subdivision of ethnology which treats of gypsies, is both practical and curious. It deals with the only race except the Jew, which has penetrated into every village which European civilization has ever touched. He who speaks Romany need be a stranger in few lands, for on every road in Europe and America, in Western Asia, and even in Northern Africa, he will meet those with whom a very few words may at once establish a peculiar understanding. For, of all things believed in by this widely spread brotherhood, the chief is this,--that he who knows the _jib_, or language, knows the ways, and that no one ever attained these without treading strange paths, and threading mysteries unknown to the Gorgios, or Philistines. And if he who speaks wears a good coat, and appears a gentleman, let him rest assured that he will receive the greeting which all poor relations in all lands extend to those of their kin who have risen in life. Some of them, it is true, manifest the winsome affection which is based on great expectations, a sentiment largely developed among British gypsies; but others are honestly proud that a gentleman is not ashamed of them. Of this latter class were the musical gypsies, whom I met in Russia during the winter of 1876 and 1877, and some of them again in Paris during the Exposition of 1878.

ST. PETERSBURG.

There are gypsies and gypsies in the world, for there are the wanderers on the roads and the secret dwellers in towns; but even among the _aficionados_, or Romany ryes, by whom I mean those scholars who are fond of studying life and language from the people themselves, very few have dreamed that there exist communities of gentlemanly and lady-like gypsies of art, like the Bohemians of Murger and George Sand, but differing from them in being real "Bohemians" by race. I confess that it had never occurred to me that there was anywhere in Europe, at the present day, least of all in the heart of great and wealthy cities, a class or caste devoted entirely to art, well-to-do or even rich, refined in manners, living in comfortable homes, the women dressing elegantly; and yet with all this obliged to live by law, as did the Jews once, in Ghettos or in a certain street, and regarded as outcasts and _cagots_. I had heard there were gypsies in Russian cities, and expected to find them like the _kerengri_ of England or Germany,--house-dwellers somewhat reformed from vagabondage, but still reckless semi-outlaws, full of tricks and lies; in a word, _gypsies_, as the world understands the term. And I certainly anticipated in Russia something _queer_,--the gentleman who speaks Romany seldom fails to achieve at least that, whenever he gets into an unbroken haunt, an unhunted forest, where the Romany rye is unknown,--but nothing like what I really found. A recent writer on Russia {26} speaks with great contempt of these musical Romanys, their girls attired in dresses by Worth, as compared with the free wild outlaws of the steppes, who, with dark, ineffable glances, meaning nothing more than a wild-cat's, steal poultry, and who, wrapped in dirty sheep-skins, proudly call themselves _Mi dvorane Polaivii_, Lords of the Waste. The gypsies of Moscow, who appeared to me the most interesting I have ever met, because most remote from the Surrey ideal, seemed to Mr. Johnstone to be a kind of second-rate Romanys or gypsies, gypsified for exhibition, like Mr. Barnum's negro minstrel, who, though black as a coal by nature, was requested to put on burnt cork and a wig, that the audience might realize that they were getting a thoroughly good imitation. Mr. Johnstone's own words are that a gypsy maiden in a long _queue_, "which perhaps came from Worth," is "horrible," "_corruptio optimi pessima est_;" and he further compares such a damsel to a negro with a cocked hat and spurs. As the only negro thus arrayed who presents himself to my memory was one who lay dead on the battle-field in Tennessee, after one of the bravest resistances in history, and in which he and his men, not having moved, were extended in "stark, serried lines" ("ten cart-loads of dead niggers," said a man to me who helped to bury them), I may be excused for not seeing the wit of the comparison. As for the gypsies of Moscow, I can only say that, after meeting them in public, and penetrating to their homes, where I was received as one of themselves, even as a Romany, I found that this opinion of them was erroneous, and that they were altogether original in spite of being clean, deeply interesting although honest, and a quite attractive class in most respects, notwithstanding their ability to read and write. Against Mr. Johnstone's impressions, I may set the straightforward and simple result of the experiences of Mr. W. R. Ralston. "The gypsies of Moscow," he says, "are justly celebrated for their picturesqueness and for their wonderful capacity for music. All who have heard their women sing are enthusiastic about the weird witchery of the performance."

When I arrived in St. Petersburg, one of my first inquiries was for gypsies. To my astonishment, they were hard to find. They are not allowed to live in the city; and I was told that the correct and proper way to see them would be to go at night to certain _cafes_, half an hour's sleigh-ride from the town, and listen to their concerts. What I wanted, however, was not a concert, but a conversation; not gypsies on exhibition, but gypsies at home,--and everybody seemed to be of the opinion that those of "Samarcand" and "Dorot" were entirely got up for effect. In fact, I heard the opinion hazarded that, even if they spoke Romany, I might depend upon it they had acquired it simply to deceive. One gentleman, who had, however, been much with them in other days, assured me that they were of pure blood, and had an inherited language of their own. "But," he added, "I am sure you will not understand it. You may be able to talk with those in England, but not with ours, because there is not a single word in their language which resembles anything in English, German, French, Latin, Greek, or Italian. I can only recall," he added, "one phrase. I don't know what it means, and I think it will puzzle you. It is _me kamava tut_."

If I experienced internal laughter at hearing this it was for a good reason, which I can illustrate by an anecdote: "I have often observed, when I lived in China," said Mr. Hoffman Atkinson, author of "A Vocabulary of the Yokohama Dialect," "that most young men, particularly the gay and handsome ones, generally asked me, about the third day after their arrival in the country, the meaning of the Pidgin-English phrase, 'You makee too muchee lov-lov-pidgin.' Investigation always established the fact that the inquirer had heard it from 'a pretty China girl.' Now _lov-pidgin_ means love, and _me kamava tut_ is perfectly good gypsy anywhere for 'I love you;' and a very soft expression it is, recalling _kama-deva_, the Indian Cupid, whose bow is strung with bees, and whose name has two strings to it, since it means, both in gypsy and Sanskrit, Love-God, or the god of love. 'It's _kama-duvel_, you know, _rya_, if you put it as it ought to be,' said Old Windsor Froggie to me once; 'but I think that Kama-_devil_ would by rights come nearer to it, if Cupid is what you mean.'"

I referred the gypsy difficulty to a Russian gentleman of high position, to whose kindness I had been greatly indebted while in St. Petersburg. He laughed.

"Come with me to-morrow night to the _cafes_, and see the gypsies; I know them well, and can promise that you shall talk with them as much as you like. Once, in Moscow, I got together all in the town--perhaps a hundred and fifty--to entertain the American minister, Curtin. That was a very hard thing to do,--there was so much professional jealousy among them, and so many quarrels. Would you have believed it?"

I thought of the feuds between sundry sturdy Romanys in England, and felt that I could suppose such a thing, without dangerously stretching my faith, and I began to believe in Russian gypsies.

"Well, then, I shall call for you to-morrow night with a _troika_; I will come early,--at ten. They never begin to sing before company arrive at eleven, so that you will have half an hour to talk to them."

It is on record that the day on which the general gave me this kind invitation was the coldest known in St. Petersburg for thirty years, the thermometer having stood, or rather having lain down and groveled that morning at 40 degrees below zero, Fahr. At the appointed hour the _troika_, or three-horse sleigh, was before the Hotel d'Europe. It was, indeed, an arctic night, but, well wrapped in fur-lined _shubas_, with immense capes which fall to the elbow or rise far above the head, as required, and wearing fur caps and fur-lined gloves, we felt no cold. The beard of our _istvostshik_, or driver, was a great mass of ice, giving him the appearance of an exceedingly hoary youth, and his small horses, being very shaggy and thoroughly frosted, looked in the darkness like immense polar bears. If the general and myself could only have been considered as gifts of the slightest value to anybody, I should have regarded our turn-out, with the driver in his sheep-skin coat, as coming within a miracle of resemblance to that of Santa Claus, the American Father Christmas.

On, at a tremendous pace, over the snow, which gave out under our runners that crunching, iron sound only heard when the thermometer touches zero. There is a peculiar fascination about the _troika_, and the sweetest, saddest melody and most plaintive song of Russia belong to it.

THE TROIKA.

_Vot y'dit troika udalaiya_.

Hear ye the troika-bell a-ringing, And see the peasant driver there? Hear ye the mournful song he's singing, Like distant tolling through the air?

"O eyes, blue eyes, to me so lonely, O eyes--alas!--ye give me pain; O eyes, that once looked at me only, I ne'er shall see your like again.

"Farewell, my darling, now in heaven, And still the heaven of my soul; Farewell, thou father town, O Moscow, Where I have left my life, my all!"

And ever at the rein still straining, One backward glance the driver gave; Sees but once more a green low hillock, Sees but once more his loved one's grave.

"_Stoi_!"--Halt! We stopped at a stylish-looking building, entered a hall, left our _skubas_, and I heard the general ask, "Are the gypsies here?" An affirmative being given, we entered a large room, and there, sure enough, stood six or eight girls and two men, all very well dressed, and all unmistakably Romany, though smaller and of much slighter or more delicate frame than the powerful gypsy "travelers" of England. In an instant every pair of great, wild eyes was fixed on me. The general was in every way a more striking figure, but I was manifestly a fresh stranger, who knew nothing of the country, and certainly nothing of gypsies or gypsydom. Such a verdant visitor is always most interesting. It was not by any means my first reception of the kind, and, as I reviewed at a glance the whole party, I said within myself:--

"Wait an instant, you black snakes, and I will give you something to make you stare."

This promise I kept, when a young man, who looked like a handsome light Hindoo, stepped up and addressed me in Russian. I looked long and steadily at him before I spoke, and then said:--

"_Latcho divvus prala_!" (Good day, brother.)

"What is _that_?" he exclaimed, startled.

"_Tu jines latcho adosta_." (You know very well.) And then, with the expression in his face of a man who has been familiarly addressed by a brazen statue, or asked by a new-born babe, "What o'clock is it?" but with great joy, he cried:--

"_Romanichal_!"

In an instant they were all around me, marveling greatly, and earnestly expressing their marvel, at what new species of gypsy I might be; being in this quite unlike those of England, who, even when they are astonished "out of their senses" at being addressed in Romany by a gentleman, make the most red-Indian efforts to conceal their amazement. But I speedily found that these Russian gypsies were as unaffected and child-like as they were gentle in manner, and that they compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy-begging, always-suspecting Romany roughs and _rufianas_ as a delicate greyhound might compare with a very shrewd old bull-dog, trained by an unusually "fly" tramp.

That the girls were first to the fore in questioning me will be doubted by no one. But we had great trouble in effecting a mutual understanding. Their Romany was full of Russian; their pronunciation puzzled me; they "bit off their words," and used many in a strange or false sense. Yet, notwithstanding this, I contrived to converse pretty readily with the men,--very readily with the captain, a man as dark as Ben Lee, to those who know Benjamin, or as mahogany, to those who know him not. But with the women it was very difficult to converse. There is a theory current that women have a specialty of tact and readiness in understanding a foreigner, or in making themselves understood; it may be so with cultivated ladies, but it is my experience that, among the uneducated, men have a monopoly of such quick intelligence. In order fully to convince them that we really had a tongue in common, I repeated perhaps a hundred nouns, giving, for instance, the names of various parts of the body, of articles of apparel and objects in the room, and I believe that we did not find a single word which, when pronounced distinctly by itself, was not intelligible to us all. I had left in London a Russo-Romany vocabulary, once published in "The Asiatic Magazine," and I had met with Bohtlinghk's article on the dialect, as well as specimens of it in the works of Pott and Miklosich, but had unfortunately learned nothing of it from them. I soon found, however, that I knew a great many more gypsy words than did my new friends, and that our English Romany far excels the Russian in _copia verborum_.

"But I must sit down." I observed on this and other occasions that Russian gypsies are very naif. And as it is in human nature to prefer sitting by a pretty girl, these Slavonian Romanys so arrange it according to the principles of natural selection--or natural politeness--that, when a stranger is in their gates, the two prettiest girls in their possession sit at his right and left, the two less attractive next again, _et seriatim_. So at once a damsel of comely mien, arrayed in black silk attire, of faultless elegance, cried to me, pointing to a chair by her side, "_Bersh tu alay_, _rya_!" (Sit down, sir),--a phrase which would be perfectly intelligible to any Romany in England. I admit that there was another damsel, who is generally regarded by most people as the true gypsy belle of the party, who did not sit by me. But, as the one who had "voted herself into the chair," by my side, was more to my liking, being the most intelligent and most gypsy, I had good cause to rejoice.

I was astonished at the sensible curiosity as to gypsy life in other lands which was displayed, and at the questions asked. I really doubt if I ever met with an English gypsy who cared a farthing to know anything about his race as it exists in foreign countries, or whence it came. Once, and once only, I thought I had interested White George, at East Moulsey, in an account of Egypt, and the small number of Romanys there; but his only question was to the effect that, if there were so few gypsies in Egypt, wouldn't it be a good place for him to go to sell baskets? These of Russia, however, asked all kinds of questions about the manners and customs of their congeners, and were pleased when they recognized familiar traits. And every gypsyism, whether of word or way, was greeted with delighted laughter. In one thing I noted a radical difference between these gypsies and those of the rest of Europe and of America. There was none of that continually assumed mystery and Romany freemasonry, of superior occult knowledge and "deep" information, which is often carried to the depths of absurdity and to the height of humbug. I say this advisedly, since, however much it may give charm to a novel or play, it is a serious impediment to a philologist. Let me give an illustration.

Once, during the evening, these Russian gypsies were anxious to know if there were any books in their language. Now I have no doubt that Dr. Bath Smart, or Prof. E. H. Palmer, or any other of the initiated, will perfectly understand when I say that by mere force of habit I shivered and evaded the question. When a gentleman who manifests a knowledge of Romany among gypsies in England is suspected of "dixonary" studies, it amounts to _lasciate ogni speranza_,--give up all hope of learning any more.

"I'm glad to see you here, _rya_, in my tent," said the before-mentioned Ben Lee to me one night, in camp near Weybridge, "because I've heard, and I know, you didn't pick up _your_ Romany out of books."

The silly dread, the hatred, the childish antipathy, real or affected, but always ridiculous, which is felt in England, not only among gypsies, but even by many gentlemen scholars, to having the Romany language published is indescribable. Vambery was not more averse to show a lead pencil among Tartars than I am to take notes of words among strange English gypsies. I might have spared myself any annoyance from such a source among the Russian Romanys. They had not heard of Mr. George Borrow; nor were there ugly stories current among them to the effect that Dr. Smart and Prof. E. H. Palmer had published works, the direct result of which would be to facilitate their little paths to the jail, the gallows, and the grave.