The Gypsies

There is a meaningless rhyme, very common among children.  It is repeated while counting off those who are taking part in a game, and allotting to each a place.  It is as follows:—

“Ekkeri akkery u-kery an
Fillisi’, follasy, Nicolas John
Queebee-quābee—Irishman.
Stingle ’em—stangle ’em—buck!”

With a very little alteration in sounds, and not more than children make of these verses in different places, this may be read as follows:—

“’Ekkeri, akai-ri, you kair—án.
Filissin follasy.  Nakelas jā’n.
Kivi, kavi.  Irishman.
Stini—stani—buck!”

This is nonsense, of course, but it is Romany, or gypsy, and may be translated:—

“First—here—you begin.
Castle—gloves.  You don’t play.  Go on!
Kivi—kettle.  How are you?
Stini—buck—buck.”

The common version of the rhyme begins with:—

“One ’eri—two-ery, ékkeri—án.”

But one-ry is the exact translation of ékkeri; ek or yek being one.  And it is remarkable that in

We have hickory or ekkeri again, followed by a significant one.  It may be observed that while, the first verses abound in Romany words, I can find no trace of any in other child-rhymes of the kind.  It is also clear that if we take from the fourth line the ingle ’em, angle ’em, evidently added for mere jingle, there remains stan or stani, “a buck,” followed by the very same word in English.

The gold and all the spoons are tied up,—for, as the enchantress observes, there may be silver too,—and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word.  It is a good subject for a picture.  Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles give the only light.  The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working.  Could any one look under her cloak he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure.  She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again, and departs, after carefully charging the housewife that the bundle must not be touched or spoken of for three weeks.  “Every word you tell about it, my-deari will be a guinea gone away.”  Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible that nothing shall be said.

Back to the farmer’s wife never again.  After three weeks another Extraordinary instance of gross credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the school-master.  There is wailing and shame in the house,—perhaps great suffering, for it may be that the savings of years have beer swept away.  The charm has worked.

“Intery, mintery, cutery corn”—

or in anything else in Mother Goose.  It is alone in its sounds and sense,—or nonsense.  But there is not a wanderer of the roads who on hearing it would not explain, “Rya, there’s a great deal of Romanes in that ere.”

I should also say that the word na-kelas or né-kelas, which I here translate differently, was once explained to me at some length by a gypsy as signifying “not speaking,” or “keeping quiet.”

The hokkani boro, or great trick, was brought by the gypsies from the East.  It has been practiced by them all over the world, it is still played every day somewhere.  This chapter was written long ago in England.  I am now in Philadelphia, and here I read in the “Press” of this city that a Mrs. Brown, whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine, who walks before the world in other names, was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the grand deception.  And Mrs. Brown, good old Mrs. Brown, went to prison, where she will linger until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is evaded in Pennsylvania, delivers her.

“So good a proficient in one quarter of an hour that I can drink with any tinker in his own language during my life.”—King Henry the Fourth.

One summer day, in the year 1876, I was returning from a long walk in the beautiful country which lies around Bath, when, on the road near the town, I met with a man who had evidently grown up from childhood into middle age as a beggar and a tramp.  I have learned by long experience that there is not a so-called “traveler” of England or of the world, be he beggar, tinker, gypsy, or hawker, from whom something cannot be learned, if one only knows how to use the test-glasses and proper reagents.  Most inquirers are chiefly interested in the morals—or immorals—of these nomads.  My own researches as regards them are chiefly philological.  Therefore, after I had invested twopence in his prospective beer, I addressed him in Romany.  Of course he knew a little of it; was there ever an old “traveler” who did not?

“I can rakker it pretty flick” (talk it tolerably), was my reply.

“Well I should never a penned [thought] sitch a swell gent as you had been down so low in the slums.  Now Romanes is genteel.  I heard there’s actilly a book about Romanes to learn it out of.  But as for this other jib, its wery hard to talk.  It is most all Old Irish, and they calls it Shelter.”

This was all that I could learn at that time.  It did not impress me much, as I supposed that the man merely meant Old Irish.  A year went by, and I found myself at Aberystwith, the beautiful sea-town in Wales, with my friend Professor Palmer—a palmer who has truly been a pilgrim outre-mer, even by Galilee’s wave, and dwelt as an Arab in the desert.  One afternoon we were walking together on that end of the beach which is the antithesis of the old Norman castle; that is, at the other extremity of the town, and by the rocks.  And here there was a little crowd, chiefly of young ladies, knitting and novel-reading in the sun, or watching children playing on the sand.  All at once there was an alarm, and the whole party fled like partridges, skurrying along and hiding under the lee of the rocks.  For a great rock right over our heads was about to be blasted.  So the professor and I went on and away, but as we went we observed an eccentric and most miserable figure crouching in a hollow like a little cave to avoid the anticipated falling stones.

“Yuv’s atrash o’ ye baryia” (He is afraid of the stones), I replied.

The man looked up.  “I know what you’re saying, gentlemen.  That’s Romany.”

“Jump up, then, and come along with us.”

He followed.  We walked from rock to rock, and over the sand by the sea, to a secluded nook under a cliff.  Then, seated around a stone table, we began our conversation, while the ocean, like an importunate beggar, surfed and foamed away, filling up the intervals with its mighty roaring language, which poets only understand or translate:—

  “Thus far, and then no more:”
Such language speaks the sounding sea
  To the waves upon the shore.

Our new acquaintance was ragged and disreputable.  Yet he held in his hand a shilling copy of “Helen’s Babies,” in which were pressed some fern leaves.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked.

“Shelkin gallopas just now,” he replied.

“And what is that?”

“Selling ferns.  Don’t you understand?  That’s what we call it in Minklers Thari.  That’s tinkers’ language.  I thought as you knew Romanes you might understand it.  The right name for it is Shelter or Shelta.”

Out came our note-books and pencils.  So this was the Shelter of which I had heard.  He was promptly asked to explain what sort of a language it was.

“Well, I know a little of rhyming, but not that.”

“Why, it rhymes to bustle.”

“I see.  Bustle is to pick pockets.”

“Yes, or anything like it, such as ringing the changes.”

Here the professor was “in his plate.”  He knows perfectly how to ring the changes.  It is effected by going into a shop, asking for change for a sovereign, purchasing some trifling article, then, by ostensibly changing your mind as to having the change, so bewilder the shopman as to cheat him out of ten shillings.  It is easily done by one who understands it.  The professor does not practice this art for the lucre of gain, but he understands it in detail.  And of this he gave such proofs to the tramp that the latter was astonished.

“A tinker would like to have a wife who knows as much of that as you do,” he remarked.  “No woman is fit to be a tinker’s wife who can’t make ten shillings a day by glantherin.  Glantherin or glad’herin is the correct word in Shelter for ringing the changes.  As for the language, I believe it’s mostly Gaelic, but it’s mixed up with Romanes and canting or thieves’ slang.  Once it was the common language of all the old tinkers.  But of late years the old tinkers’ families are mostly broken up, and the language is perishing.”

This word has a very peculiar pronunciation.

Can you thari Shelter?  Can you bug Shelta?  Can you talk tinkers’ language?

Curious as perhaps indicating an affinity between the Hindustani larki, a girl, and the gypsy rakli.

Our informant declared that there are vulgar forms of certain words.

“No minkler would have a bewr who couldn’t gladdher.”

“I tharied the soobri I sonnied him.”  (I told the man I saw him.)

Mushgraw.

Our informant did not know whether this word, of Romany origin, meant, in Shelta, policeman or magistrate.

Our informant suggested scribe as the origin of this word.

“You’re readered soobri.”  (You are put in the “Police Gazette,” friend.)

Our informant could give only a single specimen of the Shelta literature.  It was as follows:—

“My name is Barney Mucafee,
With my borers and jumpers down to my thee (thigh).
An’ it’s forty miles I’ve come to kerrb yer pee.”

This vocabulary is, as he declared, an extremely imperfect specimen of the language.  He did not claim to speak it well.  In its purity it is not mingled with Romany or thieves’ slang.  Perhaps some student of English dialects may yet succeed in recovering it all.  The pronunciation of many of the words is singular, and very different from English or Romany.

The professor burst out laughing.  But the fern-collector gazed at her in wrath and amazement.

“I say, old woman,” he cried; “do you know who you’re rakkerin [speaking] to?  This here gentleman is one of the deepest Romany ryes [gypsy gentlemen] a-going.  And that there one could gladdher you out of your eye-teeth.”

She gave one look of dismay,—I shall never forget that look,—and ran away.  The witch had chanced upon Arbaces.  I think that the tramp had been in his time a man in better position.  He was possibly a lawyer’s clerk who had fallen into evil ways.  He spoke English correctly when not addressing the beggar woman.  There was in Aberystwith at the same time another fern-seller, an elderly man, as wretched and as ragged a creature as I ever met.  Yet he also spoke English purely, and could give in Latin the names of all the plants which he sold.  I have always supposed that the tinkers’ language spoken of by Shakespeare was Romany; but I now incline to think it may have been Shelta.

“Good-morning!”

“Good-mornin’, sorr!”

“You’re an old traveler?”

“I am, sorr.”

“Can you rakker Romanes?”

“I can, sorr!”

“Pen yer nav.”  (Tell your name.)

“Owen ---, sorr.”

A brief conversation ensued, during which we ascertained that we had many friends in common in the puro tem or Ould Country.  All at once a thought struck me, and I exclaimed,—

“Do you know any other languages?”

“Yes, sorr: Ould Irish an’ Welsh, an’ a little Gaelic.”

“That’s all?”

“Yes, sorr, all av thim.”

“All but one?”

“An’ what’s that wan, sorr?”

“Can you thari shelta, sublī?”

No tinker was ever yet astonished at anything.  If he could be he would not be a tinker.  If the coals in his stove were to turn to lumps of gold in a twinkle, he would proceed with leisurely action to rake them out and prepare them for sale, and never indicate by a word or a wink that anything remarkable had occurred.  But Owen the tinker looked steadily at me for an instant, as if to see what manner of man I might be, and then said,—

“Shelta, is it?  An’ I can talk it.  An’ there’s not six min livin’ as can talk it as I do.”

“Do you know, I think it’s very remarkable that you can talk Shelta.”

“Will you give me a lesson?”

“Troth I will.”

I went into the house and brought out a note-book.  One of the servants brought me a chair.  Owen went on soldering a tin dish, and I proceeded to take down from him the following list of words in Shelta:

There you are, readers!  Make good cheer of it, as Panurge said of what was beyond him.  For what this language really is passeth me and mine.  Of Celtic origin it surely is, for Owen gave me every syllable so garnished with gutturals that I, being even less of one of the Celtes than a Chinaman, have not succeeded in writing a single word according to his pronunciation of it.  Thus even Minklers sounds more like minkias, or pikias, as he gave it.

To the foregoing I add the numerals and a few phrases:—

This was said within hearing of and in reference to a bevy of servants, of every hue save white, who were in full view in the kitchen, and who were manifestly deeply interested and delighted in our interview, as well as in the constant use of my note-book, and our conference in an unknown tongue, since Owen and I spoke frequently in Romany.

I also obtained a verse of a ballad, which I may not literally render into pure English:—

“Cosson kailyah corrum me morro sari,
Me gul ogalyach mir;
Rāhet mānent trasha moroch
Me tu sosti mo dīēle.”

“Coming from Galway, tired and weary,
I met a woman;
I’ll go bail by this time to-morrow,
You’ll have had enough of me.”

Me tu sosti, “Thou shalt be (of) me,” is Romany, which is freely used in Shelta.

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