Aberystwith is a little fishing-village, which has of late years
first bloomed as a railway-station, and then fruited into prosperity as
a bathing-place. Like many parvenus, it makes a great display of
its Norman ancestor, the old castle, saying little about the long
centuries of plebeian obscurity in which it was once buried. This
castle, after being woefully neglected during the days when nobody
cared for its early respectability, has been suddenly remembered, now
that better times have come, and, though not restored, has been made
comely with grass banks, benches, and gravel walks, reminding one of an
Irish grandfather in America, taken out on a Sunday with “the
childher,” and looking “gintale” in the clean shirt and whole coat
unknown to him for many a decade in Tipperary. Of course the castle and
the wealth, or the hotels and parade, are well to the fore, or boldly
displayed, as Englishly as possible, while the little Welsh town
shrinks quietly into the hollow behind. And being new to prosperity,
Aberystwith is also a little muddled as to propriety. It would regard
with horror the idea of allowing ladies and gentlemen to bathe
together, even though completely clad; but it sees nothing out of the
way when gentlemen in pre-fig-leaf costume disport themselves, bathing
just before the young ladies' boarding-school and the chief hotel, or
running joyous races on the beach. I shall never forget the amazement
and horror with which an Aberystwithienne learned that in distant lands
ladies and gentlemen went into the water arm in arm, although dressed.
But when it was urged that the Aberystwith system was somewhat
peculiar, she replied, “Oh, that is a very different thing!”
On which words for a text a curious sermon might be preached to the
Philistiny souls who live perfectly reconciled to absurd paradoxes,
simply because they are accustomed to them. Now, of all human beings, I
think the gypsies are freest from trouble with paradoxes as to things
being different or alike, and the least afflicted with moral problems,
burning questions, social puzzles, or any other kind of mental rubbish.
They are even freer than savages or the heathen in this respect, since
of all human beings the Fijian, New Zealander, Mpongwe, or Esquimaux is
most terribly tortured with the laws of etiquette, religion, social
position, and propriety. Among many of these heathen unfortunates the
meeting with an equal involves fifteen minutes of bowing, re-bowing,
surre-bowing, and rejoinder-bowing, with complementary complimenting,
according to old custom, while the worship of Mrs. Grundy through a
superior requires a half hour wearisome beyond belief. “In Fiji,” says
Miss C. F. Gordon Cumming, “strict etiquette rules every action of
life, and the most trifling mistake in such matters would cause as
great dissatisfaction as a breach in the order of precedence at a
European ceremonial.” In dividing cold baked missionary at a dinner,
especially if a chief be present, the host committing the least mistake
as to helping the proper guest to the proper piece in the proper way
would find himself promptly put down in the menu. In Fiji, as in
all other countries, this punctilio is nothing but the direct result of
ceaseless effort on the part of the upper classes to distinguish
themselves from the lower. Cannibalism is a joint sprout from the same
root; “the devourers of the poor” are the scorners of the humble and
lowly, and they are all grains of the same corn, of the devil's
planting, all the world over. Perhaps the quaintest error which haunts
the world in England and America is that so much of this stuff as is
taught by rule or fashion as laws for “the elite” is the very
nucleus of enlightenment and refinement, instead of its being a remnant
of barbarism. And when we reflect on the degree to which this naive and
child-like faith exists in the United States, as shown by the enormous
amount of information in certain newspapers as to what is the latest
thing necessary to be done, acted, or suffered in order to be socially
saved, I surmise that some future historian will record that we, being
an envious people, turned out the Chinese, because we could not endure
the presence among us of a race so vastly our superiors in all that
constituted the true principles of culture and “custom.”
Arthur Mitchell, in inquiring What is Civilization? {209} remarks
that “all the things which gather round or grow upon a high state of
civilization are not necessarily true parts of it. These
conventionalities are often regarded as its very essence.” And it is
true that the greater the fool or snob, the deeper is the conviction
that the conventional is the core of “culture.” “'It is not genteel,'
'in good form,' or 'the mode,' to do this or do that, or say this or
say that.” “Such things are spoken of as marks of a high civilization,
or by those who do not confound civilization with culture as
differentiators between the cultured and the uncultured.” Dr. Mitchell
“neither praises nor condemns these things;” but it is well for a man,
while he is about it, to know his own mind, and I, for myself, condemn
them with all my heart and soul, whenever anybody declares that such
brass counters in the game of life are real gold, and insists that I
shall accept them as such. For small play in a very small way with
small people, I would endure them; but many men and nearly all women
make their capital of them. And whatever may be said in their favor, it
cannot be denied that they constantly lead to lying and heartlessness.
Even Dr. Mitchell, while he says he does not condemn them, proceeds
immediately to declare that “while we submit to them they constitute a
sort of tyranny, under which we fret and secretly pine for escape. Does
not the exquisite of Rotten Row weary for his flannel shirt and
shooting-jacket? Do not 'well-constituted' men want to fish and shoot
or kill something, themselves, by climbing mountains, when they can
find nothing else? In short, does it not appear that these
conventionalities are irksome, and are disregarded when the chance
presents itself? And does it not seem as if there were something in
human nature pulling men back to a rude and simple life?” To find that
men suffer under the conventionalities, “adds, on the whole,” says
our canny, prudent Scot, “to the respectability of human nature.” Tu
ha ragione (right you are), Dr. Mitchell, there. For the
conventional, whether found among Fijians as they were, or in Mayfair
as it is, whenever it is vexatious and merely serves as a cordon to
separate “sassiety” from society, detracts from the respectability of
humanity, and is in itself vulgar. If every man in society were a
gentleman and every woman a lady, there would be no more
conventionalism. Usus est tyrannus (custom is a tyrant), or, as
the Talmud proverb saith, “Custom is the plague of wise men, but is the
idol of fools.” And he was a wise Jew, whoever he was, who declared it.
But let us return to our black sheep, the gypsy. While happy in not
being conventional, and while rejoicing, or at least unconsciously
enjoying freedom from the bonds of etiquette, he agrees with the
Chinese, red Indians, May Fairies, and Fifth Avenoodles in manifesting
under the most trying circumstances that imperturbability which was
once declared by an eminent Philadelphian to be “the Corinthian
ornament of a gentleman.” He who said this builded better than he knew,
for the ornament in question, if purely Corinthian, is simply brass.
One morning I was sauntering with the Palmer in Aberystwith, when we
met with a young and good-looking gypsy woman, with whom we entered
into conversation, learning that she was a Bosville, and acquiring
other items of news as to Egypt and the roads, and then left.
We had not gone far before we found a tinker. He who catches a
tinker has got hold of half a gypsy and a whole cosmopolite, however
bad the catch may be. He did not understand the greeting Sarishan!—he really could not remember to have heard it. He did not know any
gypsies,—“he could not get along with them.” They were a bad lot. He
had seen some gypsies three weeks before on the road. They were curious
dark people, who lived in tents. He could not talk Romany.
This was really pitiable. It was too much. The Palmer informed him
that he was wasting his best opportunities, and that it was a great
pity that any man who lived on the roads should be so ignorant. The
tinker never winked. In the goodness of our hearts we even offered to
give him lessons in the kalo jib, or black language. The grinder
was as calm as a Belgravian image. And as we turned to depart the
professor said,—
“Mandy'd del tute a shahori to pi moro kammaben, if tute
jinned sa mandi pukkers.” (I'd give you a sixpence to drink our
health, if you knew what I am saying.)
With undisturbed gravity the tinker replied,—
“Now I come to think of it, I do remember to have heard somethin' in
the parst like that. It's a conwivial expression arskin' me if I won't
have a tanner for ale. Which I will.”
“Now since you take such an interest in gypsies,” I answered, “it is
a pity that you should know so little about them. I have seen them
since you have. I saw a nice young woman, one of the Bosvilles here,
not half an hour ago. Shall I introduce you?”
“That young woman,” remarked the tinker, with the same immovable
countenance, “is my wife. And I've come down here, by app'intment, to
meet some Romany pals.”
And having politely accepted his sixpence, the griddler went his
way, tinkling his bell, along the road. He did not disturb himself that
his first speeches did not agree with his last; he was not in the habit
of being disturbed about anything, and he knew that no one ever learned
Romany without learning with it not to be astonished at any little
inconsistencies. Serene and polished as a piece of tin in the sunshine,
he would not stoop to be put out by trifles. He was a typical tinker.
He knew that the world had made up proverbs expressing the utmost
indifference either for a tinker's blessing or a tinker's curse, and he
retaliated by not caring a curse whether the world blessed or banned
him. In all ages and in all lands the tinker has always been the type
of this droning indifference, which goes through life bagpiping its
single melody, or whistling, like the serene Marquis de Crabs,
“Toujours Santerre.”
“Es ist und bleibt das alte Lied
Von dem versoff'nen Pfannenschmied,
Und wer's nicht weiter singen kann,
Der fang's von Vorne wieder an.”
'T will ever be the same old song
Of tipsy tinkers all day long,
And he who cannot sing it more
May sing it over, as before.
I should have liked to know John Bunyan. As a half-blood gypsy
tinker he must have been self-contained and pleasant. He had his wits
about him, too, in a very Romanly way. When confined in prison he made
a flute or pipe out of the leg of his three legged-stool, and would
play on it to pass time. When the jailer entered to stop the noise,
John replaced the leg in the stool, and sat on it looking innocent as
only a gypsy tinker could,—calm as a summer morning. I commend the
subject for a picture. Very recently, that is, in the beginning of
1881, a man of the same tinkering kind, and possibly of the same blood
as Honest John, confined in the prison of Moyamensing, Philadelphia,
did nearly the same thing, only that instead of making his stool leg
into a musical pipe he converted it into a pipe for tobacco. But when
the watchman, led by the smell, entered his cell, there was no pipe to
be found; only a deeply injured man complaining that “somebody, had
been smokin' outside, and it had blowed into his cell through the
door-winder from the corridore, and p'isoned the atmosphere. And he
didn't like it.” And thus history repeats itself. 'T is all very well
for the sticklers for Wesleyan gentility to deny that John Bunyan was a
gypsy, but he who in his life cannot read Romany between the lines
knows not the jib nor the cut thereof. Tough was J. B., “and de-vil-ish
sly,” and altogether a much better man than many suppose him to have
been.
The tinker lived with his wife in a “tramps' lodging-house” in the
town. To those Americans who know such places by the abominable dens
which are occasionally reported by American grand juries, the term will
suggest something much worse than it is. In England the average tramp's
lodging is cleaner, better regulated, and more orderly than many
Western “hotels.” The police look closely after it, and do not allow
more than a certain number in a room. They see that it is frequently
cleaned, and that clean sheets are frequently put on the beds. One or
two hand-organs in the hall, with a tinker's barrow or wheel,
proclaimed the character of the lodgers, and in the sitting-room there
were to be found, of an evening, gypsies, laborers with their families
seeking work or itinerant musicians. I can recall a powerful and tall
young man, with a badly expressive face, one-legged, and well dressed
as a sailor. He was a beggar, who measured the good or evil of all
mankind by what they gave him. He was very bitter as to the bad. Yet
this house was in its way upper class. It was not a den of despair,
dirt, and misery, and even the Italians who came there were obliged to
be decent and clean. It would not have been appropriate to have written
for them on the door, “Voi che intrate lasciate ogni speranza.”
(He who enters here leaves soap behind.) The most painful fact which
struck me, in my many visits, was the intelligence and decency of some
of the boarders. There was more than one who conversed in a manner
which indicated an excellent early education; more than one who read
the newspaper aloud and commented on it to the company, as any
gentleman might have done. Indeed, the painful part of life as shown
among these poor people was the manifest fact that so many of them had
come down from a higher position, or were qualified for it. And this is
characteristic of such places. In his “London Labour and the London
Poor,” vol. i. p. 217, Mahew tells of a low lodging-house “in which
there were at one time five university men, three surgeons, and several
sorts of broken-down clerks.” The majority of these cases are the
result of parents having risen from poverty and raised their families
to “gentility.” The sons are deprived by their bringing up of the
vulgar pluck and coarse energy by which the father rose, and yet are
expected to make their way in the world, with nothing but a so-called
“education,” which is too often less a help than a hindrance. In the
race of life no man is so heavily handicapped as a young “gentleman.”
The humblest and raggedest of all the inmates of this house were two
men who got their living by shelkin gallopas (or selling ferns),
as it is called in the Shelta, or tinker's and tramp's slang. One of
these, whom I have described in another chapter as teaching me this
dialect, could conjugate a French verb; we thought he had studied law.
The other was a poor old fellow called Krooty, who could give the Latin
names for all the plants which he gathered and sold, and who would
repeat poetry very appropriately, proving sufficiently that he had read
it. Both the fern-sellers spoke better English than divers Lord Mayors
and Knights to whom I have listened, for they neither omitted h
like the lowly, nor r like the lofty ones of London.
The tinker's wife was afflicted with a nervous disorder, which
caused her great suffering, and made it almost impossible for her to
sell goods, or contribute anything to the joint support. Her husband
always treated her with the greatest kindness; I have seldom seen an
instance in which a man was more indulgent and gentle. He made no
display whatever of his feelings; it was only little by little that I
found out what a heart this imperturbable rough of the road possessed.
Now the Palmer, who was always engaged in some wild act of unconscious
benevolence, bought for her some medicine, and gave her an order on the
first physician in the town for proper advice; the result being a
decided amelioration of her health. And I never knew any human being to
be more sincerely grateful than the tinker was for this kindness.
Ascertaining that I had tools for wood-carving, he insisted on
presenting me with crocus powder, “to put an edge on.” He had a
remarkably fine whetstone, “the best in England; it was worth half a
sovereign,” and this he often and vainly begged me to accept. And he
had a peculiar little trick of relieving his kindly feelings. Whenever
we dropped in of an evening to the lodging-house, he would cunningly
borrow my knife, and then disappear. Presently the whiz-whiz,
st'st of his wheel would be heard without, and then the artful
dodger would reappear with a triumphant smile, and with the knife
sharpened to a razor edge. Anent which gratitude I shall have more to
say anon.
One day I was walking on the Front, when I overtook a gypsy van,
loaded with baskets and mats, lumbering along. The proprietor, who was
a stranger to me, was also slightly or lightly lumbering in his gait,
being cheerfully beery, while his berry brown wife, with a little
three-year-old boy, peddled wares from door to door. Both were amazed
and pleased at being accosted in Romany. In the course of conversation
they showed great anxiety as to their child, who had long suffered from
some disorder which caused them great alarm. The man's first name was
Anselo, though it was painted Onslow on his vehicle. Mr. Anselo, though
himself just come to town, was at once deeply impressed with the duty
of hospitality to a Romany rye. I had called him pal, and this
in gypsydom involves the shaking of hands, and with the better class an
extra display of courtesy. He produced half a crown, and declared his
willingness to devote it all to beer for my benefit. I declined, but he
repeated his offer several times,—not with any annoying display, but
with a courteous earnestness, intended to set forth a sweet sincerity.
As I bade him good-by, he put the crown-piece into one eye, and as he
danced backward, gypsy fashion up the street and vanished in the sunny
purple twilight towards the sea I could see him winking with the other,
and hear him cry, “Don't say no—now's the last chance—do I hear a
bid?”
We found this family in due time at the lodging-house, where the
little boy proved to be indeed seriously ill, and we at once discovered
that the parents, in their ignorance, had quite misunderstood his
malady and were aggravating it by mal-treatment. To these poor people
the good Palmer also gave an order on the old physician, who declared
that the boy must have died in a few days, had he not taken charge of
him. As it was, the little fellow was speedily cured. There was, it
appeared, some kind of consanguinity between the tinker or his wife and
the Anselo family. These good people, anxious to do anything, yet able
to do little, consulted together as to showing their gratitude, and
noting that we were specially desirous of collecting old gypsy words
gave us all they could think of, and without informing us of their
intention, which indeed we only learned by accident a long time after,
sent a messenger many miles to bring to Aberystwith a certain Bosville,
who was famed as being deep in Romany lore, and in possession of many
ancient words. Which was indeed true, he having been the first to teach
us pisali, meaning a saddle, and in which Professor Cowell, of
Cambridge, promptly detected the Sanskrit for sit-upon, the same double
meaning also existing in boshto; or, as old Mrs. Buckland said
to me at Oaklands Park, in Philadelphia, “a pisali is the same
thing with a boshto.”
“What will gain thy faith?” said Quentin Durward to Hayradden
Maugrabhin. “Kindness,” answered the gypsy.
The joint families, solely with intent to please us, although they
never said a word about it, next sent for a young Romany, one of the
Lees, and his wife whom they supposed we would like to meet. Walking
along the Front, I met the tinker's wife with the handsomest Romany
girl I ever beheld. In a London ball-room or on the stage she would
have been a really startling beauty. This was young Mrs. Lee. Her
husband was a clever violinist, and it was very remarkable that when he
gave himself up to playing, with abandon or self-forgetfulness,
there came into his melodies the same wild gypsy expression, the same
chords and tones, which abound in the music of the Austrian Tsigane. It
was not my imagination which prompted the recognition; the Palmer also
observed it, without thinking it remarkable. From the playing of both
Mat Woods and young Lee, I am sure that there has survived among the
Welsh gypsies some of the spirit of their old Eastern music, just as in
the solo dancing of Mat's sister there was precisely the same kind of
step which I had seen in Moscow. Among the hundreds of the race whom I
have met in Great Britain, I have never known any young people who were
so purely Romany as these. The tinker and Anselo with his wife had
judged wisely that we would be pleased with this picturesque couple.
They always seemed to me in the house like two wild birds, and tropical
ones at that, in a cage. There was a tawny-gold, black and scarlet tone
about them and their garb, an Indian Spanish duskiness and glow which I
loved to look at.
Every proceeding of the tinker and Anselo was veiled in mystery and
hidden in the obscurity so dear to such grown-up children, but as I
observed after a few days that Lee did nothing beyond acting as
assistant to the tinker at the wheel, I surmised that the visit was
solely for our benefit. As the tinker was devoted to his poor wife, so
was Anselo and his dame devoted to their child. He was, indeed, a brave
little fellow, and frequently manifested the precocious pluck and
sturdiness so greatly admired by the Romanys of the road; and when he
would take a whip and lead the horse, or in other ways show his
courage, the delight of his parents was in its turn delightful. They
would look at the child as if charmed, and then at one another with
feelings too deep for words, and then at me for sympathetic admiration.
The keeper of the house where they lodged was in his way a character
and a linguist. Welsh was his native tongue and English his second
best. He also knew others, such as Romany, of which he was proud, and
the Shelta or Minklas of the tinkers, of which he was not. The only
language which he knew of which he was really ashamed was Italian, and
though he could maintain a common conversation in it he always denied
that he remembered more than a few words. For it was not as the tongue
of Dante, but as the lingo of organ-grinders and such “catenone” that
he knew it, and I think that the Palmer and I lost dignity in his eyes
by inadvertently admitting that it was familiar to us. “I shouldn't
have thought it,” was all his comment on the discovery, but I knew his
thought, and it was that we had made ourselves unnecessarily familiar
with vulgarity.
It is not every one who is aware of the extent to which Italian is
known by the lower orders in London. It is not spoken as a language;
but many of its words, sadly mangled, are mixed with English as a
jargon. Thus the Italian scappare, to escape, or run away, has
become scarper; and a dweller in the Seven Dials has been heard
to say he would “scarper with the feele of the donna
of the cassey;” which means, run away with the daughter of the
landlady of the house, and which, as the editor of the Slang Dictionary
pens, is almost pure Italian,—scappare colla figlia della donna, della casa. Most costermongers call a penny a saltee,
from soldo; a crown, a caroon; and one half, madza, from mezza. They count as follows:—
ITALIAN. Oney saltee, a penny Uno soldo. Dooey
saltee, twopence Dui soldi. Tray saltee, threepence Tre soldi.
Quarterer saltee, fourpence Quattro soldi. Chinker saltee, fivepence
Cinque soldi. Say saltee, sixpence Sei soldi. Say oney saltee, or
setter Sette soldi. saltee, sevenpence Say dooee saltee, or otter Otto
soldi. saltee, eightpence Say tray saltee, or nobba saltee, Nove soldi.
ninepence Say quarterer saltee, or dacha Dieci soldi. (datsha) saltee,
tenpence Say chinker saltee, or dacha one Dieci uno soldi saltee,
elevenpence Oney beong, one shilling Uno bianco. A beong say saltee,
one shilling Uno bianco sei soldi. and sixpence Madza caroon, half a
crown Mezza corona.
Mr. Hotten says that he could never discover the derivation of
beong, or beonk. It is very plainly the Italian bianco, white, which, like blanc in French and blank in German,
is often applied slangily to a silver coin. It is as if one had said,
“a shiner.” Apropos of which word there is something curious to be
noted. It came forth in evidence, a few years ago in England, that
burglars or other thieves always carried with them a piece of coal; and
on this disclosure, a certain writer, in his printed collection of
curiosities, comments as if it were a superstition, remarking that the
coal is carried for an amulet. But the truth is that the thief has no
such idea. The coal is simply a sign for money; and when the bearer
meets with a man whom he thinks may be a “fence,” or a purchaser of
stolen goods, he shows the coal, which is as much as to say, Have you
money? Money, in vulgar gypsy, is wongur, a corruption of the
better word angar, which also means a hot coal; and braise, in French argot, has the same double meaning. I may be wrong,
but I suspect that rat, a dollar in Hebrew, or at least in
Schmussen, has its root in common with ratzafim, coals, and
possibly poschit, a farthing, with pecham, coal. In the
six kinds of fire mentioned in the Talmud, {222} there is no
identification of coals with money; but in the German legends of
Rubezahl, there is a tale of a charcoal-burner who found them changed
to gold. Coins are called shiners because they shine like glowing
coals, and I dare say that the simile exists in many more languages.
One twilight we found in the public sitting-room of the
lodging-house a couple whom I can never forget. It was an elderly gypsy
and his wife. The husband was himself characteristic; the wife was more
than merely picturesque. I have never met such a superb old Romany as
she was; indeed, I doubt if I ever saw any woman of her age, in any
land or any range of life, with a more magnificently proud expression
or such unaffected dignity. It was the whole poem of “Crescentius”
living in modern time in other form.
When a scholar associates much with gypsies there is developed in
him in due time a perception or intuition of certain kinds of men or
minds, which it is as difficult to describe as it is wonderful. He who
has read Matthew Arnold's “Gipsy Scholar” may, however, find therein
many apt words for it. I mean very seriously what I say; I mean that
through the Romany the demon of Socrates acquires distinctness; I mean
that a faculty is developed which is as strange as divination, and
which is greatly akin to it. The gypsies themselves apply it directly
to palmistry; were they well educated they would feel it in higher
forms. It may be reached among other races and in other modes, and
Nature is always offering it to us freely; but it seems to live, or at
least to be most developed, among the Romany. It comes upon the
possessor far more powerfully when in contact with certain lives than
with others, and with the sympathetic it takes in at a glance that
which may employ it at intervals for years to think out.
And by this duk I read in a few words in the Romany woman an
eagle soul, caged between the bars of poverty, ignorance, and custom;
but a great soul for all that. Both she and her husband were of the old
type of their race, now so rare in England, though commoner in America.
They spoke Romany with inflection and conjugation; they remembered the
old rhymes and old words, which I quoted freely, with the Palmer.
Little by little, the old man seemed to be deeply impressed, indeed
awed, by our utterly inexplicable knowledge. I wore a velveteen coat,
and had on a broad, soft felt hat.
“You talk as the old Romanys did,” said the old man. “I hear you use
words which I once heard from old men who died when I was a boy. I
thought those words were lying in graves which have long been green. I
hear songs and sayings which I never expected to hear again. You talk
like gypsies, and such gypsies as I never meet now; and you look like
Gorgios. But when I was still young, a few of the oldest Romany
chals still wore hats such as you have; and when I first looked at
you, I thought of them. I don't understand you. It is strange, very
strange.”
“It is the Romany soul,” said his wife. “People take to what
is in them; if a bird were born a fox, it would love to fly.”
I wondered what flights she would have taken if she had wings. But I
understood why the old man had spoken as he did; for, knowing that we
had intelligent listeners, the Palmer and I had brought forth all our
best and quaintest Romany curios, and these rural Welsh wanderers were
not, like their English pals, familiar with Romany ryes. And I was
moved to like them, and nobody perceives this sooner than a gypsy. The
old couple were the parents of young Lee, and said they had come to
visit him; but I think that it was rather to see us that we owed their
presence in Aberystwith. For the tinker and Anselo were at this time
engaged, in their secret and owl-like manner, as befitted men who were
up to all manner of ways that were dark, in collecting the most
interesting specimens of Romanys, for our especial study; and whenever
this could be managed so that it appeared entirely accidental and a
surprise, then they retired into their shadowed souls and chuckled with
fiendish glee at having managed things so charmingly. But it will be
long ere I forget how the old man's eye looked into the past as he
recalled,—
“The hat of antique shape and coat of gray,
The same the gypsies wore,”
and went far away back through my words to words heard in the olden
time, by fires long since burnt out, beneath the flame-gilt branches of
forests which have sailed away as ships, farther than woods e'er went
from Dunsinane, and been wrecked in Southern seas. But though I could
not tell exactly what was in every room, I knew into what house his
soul had gone; and it was for this that the scholar-gypsy went from
Oxford halls “to learn strange arts and join a gypsy tribe.” His
friends had gone from earth long since, and were laid to sleep; some,
perhaps, far in the wold and wild, amid the rocks, where fox and wild
bird were their visitors; but for an instant they rose again from their
graves, and I knew them.
“They could do wonders by the power of the imagination,” says
Glanvil of the gypsies; “their fancy binding that of others.”
Understand by imagination and fancy all that Glanvil really meant, and
I agree with him. It is a matter of history that, since the Aryan
morning of mankind, the Romanys have been chiromancing, and, following
it, trying to read people's minds and bind them to belief. Thousands of
years of transmitted hereditary influences always result in something;
it has really resulted with the gypsies in an instinctive, though
undeveloped, intuitive perception, which a sympathetic mind acquires
from them,—nay, is compelled to acquire, out of mere self-defense; and
when gained, it manifests itself in many forms,
“But it needs heaven-sent moments for this skill.”