The Gypsies Part 21

Patserava dikk tute akai talla o prasterin o ye graia. Kushto bak te kushto ratti.

Sarja tiro pen,

BRITANNIA LEE.

TRANSLATION.

_February_ 1_st_.

MY DEAR FRIEND,--You will be glad to learn that I, within the week, found a real Romany family (place) here in this town. Charming it was to find our folk again; pleasant it was to listen to our tongue.

The Lord be on me! but I was half sick of Gentiles and their ways till this occurred. The other day, as I was returning from a highly aristocratic breakfast, where we had winter strawberries with the _creme de la creme_, I saw two gypsy women sitting on a bench in --- Square. Black eyes, black hair, red kerchiefs on their heads, their baskets on the ground before their feet. Dear Lord! but I was half wild with delight at seeing them. Aye, I made the coachman stop the horses, and cried aloud, "Come here!" They thought I was a lady to fortune-tell, and came quickly. But I laughed, and said in Romany, "How are you, my dears? You don't know that I am a gypsy." They could not trust their very ears or eyes! At length one said, "My G.o.d! what _is_ your name?" "My name's Britannia Lee," and, at a glance, they saw that I was to be trusted, and a Romany. Their names, they said, were M. and D. It was hard (far) for them to understand how a Romany lady _could_ live among Gentiles, and look so Gorgious, and yet be a true gypsy withal, and proud of her dark blood. Much they talked about our people; much news I heard,--much as to who was married and born and buried, who was come from the old country, and much more. Oh, _never_ was such news so sweet to me!

M. said, "I don't know how you _can_ live among the Gentiles." I answered, "I don't live; I _die_, living in their houses with them."

They begged me then to come and see them in their home, upon the hill, where they are wintering. M. said, "Come, my sister, and eat a little with us. You know that the women are only at home at night and on Sunday."

Sunday morning, sister and I went there, and found the house. It was a little place, but, as they said, after the life in wagons it seemed large. M. was there, and her husband's mother, a nice old woman; also A., with four children. M. was cooking as we entered. The old mother was glad to see us; she wished to know all about us. All talked, indeed, and that quite rapidly, and she said that I was the first Romany lady {279} she had ever seen. I said to her that in society are many gypsy ladies to be found, but that the wretched Gentiles do not know it.

She said that my sister looked like Lusha Cooper, and showed her dark blood more than I do. "You don't favor the Coopers, my dearie. You say your mother married a Smith. Was that the Smith who kept a dancing and boxing place near London Bridge? Were you born in England?" I told the old mother all I knew about myself and my relations. You know that no Gorgios are so long-winded on genealogies as old mothers in Rom. When people don't write them down in their family Bibles, they carry them, extended, in their heads.

_Que la main droit perd recueille la gauche_.

"Do you know any of the ---'s?" said M. "You look like ---'s wife."

"No; she's too pale," said A. "It's something in the look of her,"

said M.

Reflect, my brother. You know that --- was the woman who "cleaned out" a man named --- of a very large sum {280} by "dukkeripen" and "dudikabin." "When she was arrested, the justice made her dress like any Gorgio, and placed her among twelve Gentile women. The man who had been robbed was to point out who among them had stolen his money.

When she came into the room, he went at once to her, and said, 'I know her by her long skinny fingers and handsome face.' She was imprisoned for two years, but the Gorgio never recovered his money."

What time we reasoned thus, the door undid, and three men entered.

After their greetings, M. cried, "Come to table; bring your chairs with you!" "Mrs. Lee, why didn't you bring your husband?" "Because I am not married." "Lord! Britannia! Why, M. told me that you were." "Ah, M. didn't fortune right when she fortuned that. She's a fool," quoth I. And then we all laughed like children. The food was good: chickens and ham and fried potatoes, with a gla.s.s of sound ale.

We were gay as flies in summer, in the real old Romany way. 'T was "Britannia" here, "Britannia" there, as in the merry days when we were young. Little do I believe in Dante's words,--

"Nessun maggior dolore, Che ricordarsi dei tempi felici."

"There is no greater grief Than to remember by-gone happy days."

For it is always happiness to me to think of good old times when I was glad. All drank my health, _Romaneskaes_, together, with a shout,--all save H., who said he had already had too much.

Good-looking gypsy, that! You'd know him anywhere for Romany, he is so dark,--_avec l'air indefinissable du vrai Bohemien_. He promised to drink my health another time.

As we sat, a gentleman came in below, wis.h.i.+ng to have his fortune told. I remember to have read that the Pythoness of Delphian oracle prepared herself for _dukkerin_, or presaging, by taking a few drops of cherry-laurel water. (I have had it prescribed for my eyes as R _aq. laur. cerasi. fiat lotio_,--possibly to enable me to see into the future.) Perhaps it was the cherry-brandy beloved of British matrons and Brighton school-girls, taken at Mutton's. _Mais revenons a nos moutons_. The old mother had taken, not cherry-laurel water, nor even cherry-brandy, but joly good ale, and olde, which, far from fitting her to reveal the darksome lore of futurity, had rendered her loath to leave the festive board of the present. Wrathful was the sybil, furious as the Vala when waked by Odin, angry as Thor when he missed his hammer, to miss her merriment. "May the devil take the old dog for coming when we are eating, and when thou art here, my Britannia! Little good fortune will he hear this day. Evil shall be the best I'll promise him." Thus spake the sorceress, and out she went to keep her word. Truly it was a splendid picture this of "The Enraged Witch," as painted by Hexenmeister von Teufel, of Hollenstadt,--her viper eyes flas.h.i.+ng infernal light and most unchristian fire, shaking _les noirs serpents de ses cheveux_, as she went forth. I know how, in an instant, her face was beautiful with welcome, smiling like a Neapolitan at a cent; but the poor believer caught it hot, all the same, and had a sleepless night over his future fate. I wonder if the Pythoness of old, when summoned from a _pet.i.t souper_, or a holy prophet called out of bed of a cold night, to decide by royal command on the fate of Israel, ever "took it out"

on the untimely king by promising him a lively, unhappy time of it.

Truly it is fine to be behind the scenes and see how they work the oracle. For the gentleman who came to consult my witch was a man of might in the secrets of state, and one whom I have met in high society. And, oh! _if_ he had known who it was that was up-stairs, laughing at him for a fool!

While she was forth, A. asked me, "Do you tell fortunes, or _what_?"

"My sister," I replied, "I'll tell thee the truth. I do tell fortunes. I keep a house for the purchase of stolen goods. I am largely engaged in making counterfeit money and all kinds of forgery.

I am interested in burglary. I lie, swear, cheat, and steal, and get drunk on Sunday. And I do many other things. I am a real Romany witch." This little confession of faith brought down the house.

"Bravo! bravo!" they cried, laughing.

Sister and I had brought a great tipsy-cake for the children, and they were all sitting under a table, eating it. It was a pretty picture. I thought I saw in it myself and all my sisters and brothers as we were once. Just such little gypsies and duckling Romanys! And now! And then! What a comedy some lives are,--yea, such lives as mine! And now it is _you_ who are behind the scenes; anon, I shall change with you. _Va Pierre_, _vient Pierette_. Then I surprised a little brown maiden imp of five summers stealing my beer, and as she was caught in the act, and tore away shrieking with laughter, she looked, with her great black eyes and flowing jetty curling locks, like a perfect little Bacchante.

Then we said, "Thank you for the happy time!" "Good luck!" and "Good day!" giving our promises to come again. So we went home all well.

I hope to see you at the races here. Good luck and good-night also to you.

Always your friend,

BRITANNIA LEE

I have somewhat abbreviated the Romany text of this letter, and Miss Lee herself has somewhat polished and enlarged the translation, which is strictly fit and proper, she being a very different person in English from what she is in gypsy, as are most of her kind. This letter may be, to many, a strange lesson, a quaint essay, a social problem, a fable, an epigram, or a frolic,--just as they choose to take it. To me it is a poem. Thou, my friend, canst easily understand why all that is wild and strange, out-of-doors, far away by night, is worthy of being Tennysoned or Whitmanned. If there be given unto thee stupendous blasted trees, looking in the moonlight like the pillars of a vast and ghostly temple; the fall of cataracts down awful rocks; the wind wailing in wondrous language or whistling Indian melody all night on heath, rocks, and hills, over ancient graves and through lonely caves, bearing with it the hoot of the night-owl; while over all the stars look down in eternal mystery, like eyes reading the great riddle of the night which thou knowest not,--this is to thee like Ariel's song. To me and to us there are men and women who are in life as the wild river and the night-owl, as the blasted tree and the wind over ancient graves. No man is educated until he has arrived at that state of thought when a picture is quite the same as a book, an old gray-beard jug as a ma.n.u.script, men, women, and children as libraries. It was but yester morn that I read a cuneiform inscription printed by doves' feet in the snow, finding a meaning where in by-gone years I should have seen only a quaint resemblance. For in this by the _ornithomanteia_ known of old to the Chaldean sages I saw that it was neither from arrow-heads or wedges which gave the letters to the old a.s.syrians. When thou art at this point, then Nature is equal in all her types, and the city, as the forest, full of endless beauty and piquancy,--_in saecula saeculorum_.

I had written the foregoing, and had enveloped and directed it to be mailed, when I met in a lady-book ent.i.tled "Magyarland" with the following pa.s.sages:--

"The gypsy girl in this family was a pretty young woman, with ma.s.ses of raven hair and a clear skin, but, notwithstanding her neat dress and civilized surroundings, we recognized her immediately. It is, in truth, not until one sees the Romany translated to an entirely new form of existence, and under circ.u.mstances inconsistent with their ordinary lives, that one realizes how completely different they are from the rest of mankind in form and feature. Instead of disguising, the garb of civilization only enhances the type, and renders it the more apparent. No matter what dress they may a.s.sume, no matter what may be their calling, no matter whether they are dwellers in tents or houses, it is impossible for gypsies to disguise their origin. Taken from their customary surroundings, they become at once an anomaly and an anachronism, and present such an instance of the absurdity of attempting to invert the order of nature that we feel more than ever how utterly different they are from the human race; that there is a key to their strange life which we do not possess,--a secret free masonry that renders them more isolated than the veriest savages dwelling in the African wilds,--and a hidden mystery hanging over them and their origin that we shall never comprehend. They are indeed a people so entirely separate and distinct that, in whatever clime or quarter of the globe they may be met with, they are instantly recognized; for with them forty centuries of a.s.sociation with civilized races have not succeeded in obliterating one single sign."

"Alas!" cried the princess; "I can never, never find the door of the enchanted cavern, nor enter the golden cavern, nor solve its wonderful mystery. It has been closed for thousands of years, and it will remain closed forever."

"What flowers are those which thou holdest?" asked the hermit.

"Only primroses or Mary's-keys, {285} and tulips," replied the princess.

"Touch the rock with them," said the hermit, "and the door will open."

The lady writer of "Magyarland" held in her hand all the while, and knew it not, a beautiful primrose, which might have opened for her the mysterious Romany cavern. On a Danube steamboat she saw a little blind boy sitting all day all alone: only a little Slavonian peasant boy, "an odd, quaint little specimen of humanity, with loose brown garments, cut precisely like those of a grown-up man, and his bits of feet in little raw-hide moccasins." However, with a tender, gentle heart she began to pet the little waif. And the captain told her what the boy was. "He is a _guslar_, or minstrel, as they call them in Croatia. The Yougo-Slavs dedicate all male children who are born blind, from infancy, to the Muses. As soon as they are old enough to handle anything, a small mandolin is given them, which they are taught to play; after which they are taken every day into the woods, where they are left till evening to commune in their little hearts with nature. In due time they become poets, or at any rate rhapsodists, singing of the things they never saw, and when grown up are sent forth to earn their livelihood, like the troubadours of old, by singing from place to place, and asking alms by the wayside.

"It is not difficult for a Slav to become a poet; he takes in poetic sentiment as a river does water from its source. The first sounds he is conscious of are the words of his mother singing to him as she rocks his cradle. Then, as she watches the dawning of intelligence in his infant face, her mother language is that of poetry, which she improvises at the moment, and though he never saw the flowers nor the snow-capped mountains, nor the flowing streams and rivers, he describes them out of his inner consciousness, and the influence which the varied sounds of nature have upon his mind."

Rock and river and greenwood tree, sweet-spiced spring flower, rustling gra.s.s, and bird-singing nature and freedom,--this is the secret of the poets' song and of the Romany, and there is no other mystery in either.

He who sleeps on graves rises mad or a poet; all who lie on the earth, which is the grave and cradle of nature, and who live _al fresco_, understand gypsies as well as my lady Britannia Lee. Nay, when some natures take to the Romany they become like the Norman knights of the Pale, who were more Paddyfied than the Paddies themselves. These become leaders among the gypsies, who recognize the fact that one renegade is more zealous than ten Turks. As for the "mystery" of the history of the gypsies, it is time, sweet friends, that 't were ended. When we know that there is to-day, in India, a sect and set of Vauriens, who are there considered Gipsissimae, and who call themselves, with their wives and language and being, Rom, Romni, and Romnipana, even as they do in England; and when we know, moreover, that their faces proclaim them to be Indian, and that they have been a wandering caste since the dawn of Hindu history, we have, I trow, little more to seek. As for the rest, you may read it in the great book of Out-of Doors, _capitulo nullo folio nigro_, or wherever you choose to open it, written as distinctly, plainly, and sweetly as the imprint of a school-boy's knife and fork on a mince-pie, or in the uprolled rapture of the eyes of Britannia when she inhaleth the perfume of a fresh bunch of Florentine violets. _Ite missa est_.

GYPSIES IN THE EAST.

Noon in Cairo.

A silent old court-yard, half sun and half shadow in which quaintly graceful, strangely curving columns seem to have taken from long companions.h.i.+p with trees something of their inner life, while the palms, their neighbors, from long in-door existence, look as if they had in turn acquired household or animal instincts, if not human sympathies. And as the younger the race the more it seeks for poets and orators to express in thought what it only feels, so these dumb pillars and plants found their poet and orator in the fountain which sang or spoke for them strangely and sweetly all night and day, uttering for them not only their waking thoughts, but their dreams. It gave a voice, too, to the ancient Persian tiles and the Cufic inscriptions which had seen the caliphs, and it told endless stories of Zobeide and Mesrour and Haroun al Raschid.

Beyond the door which, when opened, gave this sight was a dark ancient archway twenty yards long, which opened on the glaring, dusty street, where camels with their drivers and screaming _sais_, or carriage-runners and donkey-boys and crying venders, kept up the wonted Oriental din. But just within the archway, in its duskiest corner, there sat all day a living picture, a dark and handsome woman, apparently thirty years old, who was unveiled. She had before her a cloth and a few sh.e.l.ls; sometimes an Egyptian of the lower cla.s.s stopped, and there would be a grave consultation, and the sh.e.l.ls would be thrown, and then further solemn conference and a payment of money and a departure. And it was world-old Egyptian, or Chaldean, as to custom, for the woman was a Rhagarin, or gypsy, and she was one of the diviners who sit by the wayside, casting sh.e.l.ls for auspices, even as sh.e.l.ls and arrows were cast of old, to be cursed by Israel.

It is not remarkable that among the myriad _manteias_ of olden days there should have been one by sh.e.l.ls. The sound of the sea as heard in the nautilus or conch, when

"It remembers its august abode And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there,"

is very strange to children, and I can remember how in childhood I listened with perfect faith to the distant roaring, and marveled at the mystery of the ocean song being thus forever kept alive, inland. Sh.e.l.ls seem so much like work of human hands, and are often so marked as with letters, that it is not strange that faith soon found the supernatural in them. The magic sh.e.l.l of all others is the cowrie. Why the Roman ladies called it _porcella_, or little pig, because it has a pig's back, is the objective explanation of its name, and how from its gloss that name, or porcellana, was transferred to porcelain, is in books. But there is another side to the sh.e.l.l, and another or esoteric meaning to "piggy,"

which was also known to the _dames du temps jadis_, to Archipiada and Thais, _qui fut la belle Romaine_,--and this inner meaning makes of it a type of birth or creation. Now all that symbolizes fertility, birth, pleasure, warmth, light, and love is opposed to barrenness, cold, death, and evil; whence it follows that the very sight of a sh.e.l.l, and especially of a cowrie, frightens away the devils as well as a horse-shoe, which by the way has also its cryptic meaning. Hence it was selected to cast for luck, a world-old custom, which still lingers in the game of props; and for the same reason it is hung on donkeys, the devil being still scared away by the sight of a cowrie, even as he was scared away of old by its prototype, as told by Rabelais.