The Gypsies Part 17

"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 n.o.body 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 p.r.o.nounced 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, b.a.l.l.s, 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 gra.s.s, 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 st.u.r.dily 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 k.u.mi, 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 prompt.i.tude, 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 blus.h.i.+ng 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 Const.i.tution, 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 a.s.sociation 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).

"'T isn't _that_,--'t isn't the clothes. It's the air and the style.

Anybody'd believe you'd had no end of an education. I could make ten dollars a patter if I could do it as natural as you do. Perhaps you'd like to come in on halves with me as a bonnet. _No_? Well, I suppose you have a better line. You've been lucky. I tell you, you astonished me when you _rakkered_, though I spotted you in the crowd for one who was off the color of the common Gorgios,--or, as the Yahudi say, the _Goyim_.

No, I carn't _rakker_, or none to speak of, and noways as deep as you, though I was born in a tent on Battersea Common and grew up a fly fakir.

What's the drab made of that I sell in these bottles? Why, the old fake, of course,--you needn't say _you_ don't know that. _Italic good English_. Yes, I know I do. A fakir is bothered out of his life and chaffed out of half his business when he drops his _h_'s. A man can do anything when he must, and I must talk fluently and correctly to succeed in such a business. _Would I like a drop of something_? You paid for the last, now you must take a drop with me. _Do I know of any Romany's in town_? Lots of them. There is a ken in Lombard Street with a regular fly mort,--but on second thoughts we won't go there,--_and_--oh, I say--a very nice place in --- Street. The landlord is a Yahud; his wife can _rakker_ you, I'm sure. _She's_ a good lot, too."

And while on the way I will explain that my acquaintance was not to be regarded as a real gypsy. He was one of that large nomadic cla.s.s with a tinge of gypsy blood who have grown up as waifs and strays, and who, having some innate cleverness, do the best they can to live without breaking the law--much. They deserve pity, for they have never been cared for; they owe nothing to society for kindness, and yet they are held even more strictly to account by the law than if they had been regularly Sunday-schooled from babyhood. This man when he spoke of Romanys did not mean real gypsies; he used the word as it occurs in Ainsworth's song of

"Nix my dolly, pals fake away.

And here I am both tight and free, A regular rollicking Romany."

For he meant _Bohemian_ in its widest and wildest sense, and to him all that was apart from the world was _his_ world, whether it was Rom or Yahudi, and whether it conversed in Romany or Schmussen, or any other tongue unknown to the Gentiles. He had indeed no home, and had never known one.

It was not difficult to perceive that the place to which he led me was devoted in the off hours to some other business besides the selling of liquor. It was neat and quiet, in fact rather sleepy; but its card, which was handed to me, stated in a large capital head-line that it was OPEN ALL NIGHT, and that there was pool at all hours. I conjectured that a little game might also be performed there at all hours, and that, like the fountain of Jupiter Ammon, it became livelier as it grew later, and that it certainly would not be on the full boil before midnight.