There is not much in life pleasanter than a long ramble on the road
in leaf-green, sun-gold summer. Then it is Nature's merry-time, when
fowls in woods them maken blithe, and the crow preaches from the fence
to his friends afield, and the honeysuckle winketh to the wild rose in
the hedge when she is wooed by the little buzzy bee. In such times it
is good for the heart to wander over the hills and far away, into
haunts known of old, where perhaps some semi-Saxon church nestles in a
hollow behind a hill, where grass o'ergrows each mouldering tomb, and
the brook, as it ripples by in a darksome aldered hollow, speaks in a
language which man knows no more, but which is answered in the same
forgotten tongue by the thousand-year yew as it rustles in the breeze.
And when there are Runic stones in this garden of God, where He raises
souls, I often fancy that this old dialect is written in their rhythmic
lines. The yew-trees were planted by law, lang-syne, to yield bows to
the realm, and now archery is dead and Martini-Henry has taken its
place, but the yews still live, and the Runic fine art of the twisted
lines on the tombs, after a thousand years' sleep, is beginning to
revive. Every thing at such a time speaks of joy and resurrection—tree
and tomb and bird and flower and bee.
These are all memories of a walk from the town of Aberystwith, in
Wales, which walk leads by an ancient church, in the soul garden of
which are two Runic cross tombstones. One day I went farther afield to
a more ancient shrine, on the top of a high mountain. This was to the
summit of Cader Idris, sixteen miles off. On this summit there is a
Druidical circle, of which the stones, themselves to ruin grown, are
strange and death-like old. Legend says that this is the burial-place
of Taliesin, the first of Welsh bards, the primeval poet of Celtic
time. Whoever sleeps on the grave will awake either a madman or a poet,
or is at any rate unsafe to become one or the other. I went, with two
friends, afoot on this little pilgrimage. Both were professors at one
of the great universities. The elder is a gentleman of great
benevolence, learning, and gentleness; the other, a younger man, has
been well polished and sharpened by travel in many lands. It is rumored
that he has preached Islam in a mosque unto the Moslem even unto taking
up a collection, which is the final test of the faith which reaches
forth into a bright eternity. That he can be, as I have elsewhere
noted, a Persian unto Persians, and a Romany among Roms, and a
professional among the hanky-pankorites, is likewise on the cards, as
surely as that he knows the roads and all the devices and little games
of them that dwell thereon. Though elegant enough in his court dress
and rapier when he kisses the hand of our sovereign lady the queen, he
appears such an abandoned rough when he goes a-fishing that the
innocent and guileless gypsies, little suspecting that a rye
lies perdu in his wrap-rascal, will then confide in him as if he
and in-doors had never been acquainted.
We had taken with us a sparing lunch of thin sandwiches and a frugal
flask of modest, blushing brandy, which we diluted at a stingy little
fountain spring which dropped economically through a rift in the rock,
as if its nymph were conscious that such a delicious drink should not
be wasted. As it was, it refreshed us, and we were resting in a blessed
repose under the green leaves, when we heard footsteps, and an old
woman came walking by.
She was the ideal of decent and extreme poverty. I never saw anybody
who was at once so poor and so clean. In her face and in her thin
garments was marked the mute, resolute struggle between need and
self-respect, which, to him who understands it, is as brave as any
battle between life and death. She walked on as if she would have gone
past without a word, but when we greeted her she paused, and spoke
respectfully. Without forwardness she told her sad and simple story:
how she belonged to the Wesleyan confession, how her daughter was dying
in the hospital at Caernarvon; how she had walked sixty miles to see
her, and hoped to get there in time to close her eyes. In reply to a
question as to her means, she admitted that they were exhausted, but
that she could get through without money; she did not beg. And then
came naturally enough the rest of the little artless narrative, as it
generally happens among the simple annals of the poor: how she had been
for forty years a washerwoman, and had a letter from her clergyman.
There was a tear in the eye of the elder professor, and his hand was
in his pocket. The younger smoked in silence. I was greatly moved
myself,—perhaps bewildered would be the better word,—when, all at
once, as the old woman turned in the sunlight, I caught the expression
of the corner of an eye!
My friend Salaman, who boasts that he is of the last of the
Sadducees,—that strange, ancient, and secret sect, who disguise
themselves as the Neu Reformirte,—declares that the Sephardim
may be distinguished from the Ashkenazim as readily as from the
confounded Goyim, by the corners of their eyes. This he illustrated by
pointing out to me, as they walked by in the cool of the evening, the
difference between the eyes of Fraulein Eleonora Kohn and Senorita
Linda Abarbanel and divers and sundry other young ladies,—the result
being that I received in return thirty-six distinct oeillades,
several of which expressed indignation, and in all of which there was
evidently an entire misconception of my object in looking at them. Now
the eyes of the Sephardesses are unquestionably fascinating; and here
it may be recalled that, in the Middle Ages, witches were also
recognized by having exactly the same corners, or peaks, to the eye.
This is an ancient mystery of darksome lore, that the enchantress
always has the bird-peaked eye, which betokens danger to somebody, be
she of the Sephardim, or an ordinary witch or enchantress, or a gypsy.
Now, as the old Wesleyan washerwoman turned around in the sunshine,
I saw the witch-pointed eye and the glint of the Romany. And then I
glanced at her hands, and saw that they had not been long familiar with
wash-tubs; for, though clean, they were brown, and had never been
blanched with an age of soap-suds. And I spoke suddenly, and said,—
“Can tute rakker Romanes, miri dye?” (Can you speak
Romany, my mother?) And she answered, as if bewildered,—
“The Lord forbid, sir, that I should talk any of them wicked
languages.”
The younger professor's eyes expressed dawning delight. I followed
my shot with,—
“Tute needn't be attrash to rakker. Mandy's been apre the
drom mi-kokero.” (You needn't be afraid to speak. I have been upon
the road myself.)
And, still more confused, she answered in English,—
“Why, sir, you be upon the road now!”
“It seems to me, old lady,” remarked the younger professor, “that
you understand Romany very well for one who has been for forty years in
the Methodist communion.”
It may be observed that he here confounded washing with worshiping.
The face of the true believer was at this point a fine study. All
her confidence had deserted her. Whether she thought we were of her
kind in disguise, or that, in the unknown higher world of
respectability, there might be gypsies of corresponding rank, even as
there might be gypsy angels among the celestial hierarchies, I cannot
with confidence assert. About a week ago a philologist and purist told
me that there is no exact synonym in English for the word
flabbergasted, as it expresses a peculiar state of bewilderment as
yet unnamed by scholars, and it exactly sets forth the condition in
which our virtuous poverty appeared. She was, indeed, flabbergasted.
Cornix scorpum rapuit,—the owl had come down on the rabbits, and
lo! they had fangs. I resumed,—
“Now, old lady, here is a penny. You are a very poor person, and I
pity you so much that I give you this penny for your poverty. But there
is a pocketful where this came from, and you shall have the lot if
you'll rakker,”—that is, talk gypsy.
And at that touch of the Ithuriel spear the old toad flashed up into
the Romany devil, as with gleaming eyes and a witch-like grin she cried
in a mixture of gypsy and tinker languages,—
“Gents, I'll have tute jin when you tharis mandy you rakker a
reg'lar fly old bewer.” Which means, “Gentlemen, I'll have you know,
when you talk to me, you talk to a reg'lar shrewd old female thief.”
The face of the elder professor was a study of astonishment for
Lavater. His fingers relaxed their grasp of the shilling, his hand was
drawn from his pocket, and his glance, like Bill Nye's, remarked: “
Can this be?” He tells the story to this day, and always adds, “I
never was so astonished in my life.” But the venerable washerwoman
was also changed, and, the mask once thrown aside, she became as
festive as a witch on the Brocken. Truly, it is a great comfort to
cease playing a part, particularly a pious one, and be at home and at
ease among your like; and better still if they be swells. This was the
delight of Anderson's ugly duck when it got among the swans, “and,
blest sensation, felt genteel.” And to show her gratitude, the
sorceress, who really seemed to have grown several shades darker,
insisted on telling our fortunes. I think it was to give vent to her
feelings in defiance of the law that she did this; certain it was that
just then, under the circumstances, it was the only way available in
which the law could be broken. And as it was, indeed, by heath and hill
that the priestess of the hidden spell bade the Palmer from over the
sea hold out his palm. And she began in the usual sing-song tone,
mocking the style of gypsy fortune-tellers, and satirizing herself. And
thus she spoke,—
“You're born under a lucky star, my good gentleman, and you're a
married man; but there's a black-eyed young lady that's in love with
you.”
“Oh, mother of all the thieves!” I cried, “you've put the
dukkerin on the wrong man. I'm the one that the dark girls go
after.”
“Yes, my good gentleman. She's in love with you both.”
“And now tell my fortune!” I exclaimed, and with a grim expression,
casting up my palm, I said,—
“Pen mengy if mandy'll be bitchade padel for chorin a gry,
or nasherdo for merin a gav-mush.” (Tell me if I am to be
transported for stealing a horse, or hung for killing a policeman.)
The old woman's face changed. “You'll never need to steal a horse.
The man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who
you are now; you're not one of these tourists. You're the
boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag
about it in your house,—and well you may,—that Old Moll of the Roads
couldn't take you in, and that you found her out. Never another rye
but you will ever say that again. Never.”
And she went dancing away in the sunshine, capering backwards along
the road, merrily shaking the pennies in her hand for music, while she
sang something in gypsy,—witch to the last, vanishing as witches only
can. And there came over me a feeling as of the very olden time, and
some memory of another witch, who had said to another man, “Thou
art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;” and who, when he
called her the mother of the giants, replied, “Go thy way, and boast at
home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never.” That was
the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of
oldest time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody,
and thus runs the world away to Romanys and rags—when the gods are
gone.
When I laughed at the younger professor for confounding forty years
in the church with as many at the wash-tub, he replied,—
“Cleanliness is with me so near to godliness that it is not
remarkable that in my hurry I mistook one for the other.”
So we went on and climbed Cader Idris, and found the ancient grave
of rocks in a mystic circle, whose meaning lies buried with the last
Druid, who would perhaps have told you they were—
“Seats of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand
But wrocht by Nature as it ane house had bene
For Nymphes, goddis of floudes and woodis grene.”
And we saw afar the beautiful scene, “where fluddes rynnys in the
foaming sea,” as Gawain Douglas sings, and where, between the fresh
water and salt, stands a village, even where it stood in earliest
Cymric prehistoric dawn, and the spot where ran the weir in which the
prince who was in grief because his weir yielded no fish, at last
fished up a poet, even as Pharaoh's daughter fished out a prophet. I
shall not soon forget that summer day, nor the dream-like panorama, nor
the ancient grave; nor how the younger professor lay down on the seat
of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand, and declared he had a nap,—just
enough to make him a poet. To prove which he wrote a long poem on the
finding of Taliesin in the nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith
newspaper; while I, not to be behindhand, wrote another, in imitation
of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen, which were so greatly admired as
tributes to Welsh poetry that they were forthwith translated faithfully
into lines of consonants, touched up with so many w's that they
looked like saws; and they circulated even unto Llandudno, and, for
aught I know, may be sung at Eistedfodds, now and ever, to the twanging
of small harps,—in soecula saeculorum. Truly, the day which had
begun with a witch ended fitly enough at the tomb of a prophet poet.