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Title: Gypsy Coppersmiths in Liverpool and Birkenhead

Author: R. A. Scott Macfie

Release date: May 29, 2020 [eBook #62269]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Credits: Transcribed from the 1913 Henry Young and Sons edition by David Price

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GYPSY COPPERSMITHS IN LIVERPOOL AND BIRKENHEAD ***

Transcribed from the 1913 Henry Young and Sons edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org

GYPSY COPPERSMITHS
IN LIVERPOOL AND
BIRKENHEAD

BY
ANDREAS
(MUI SHUKO)

LIVERPOOL
HENRY YOUNG AND SONS
1913

Printed by Robert McGee & Co., Ltd.,
34 South Castle Street, Liverpool.

To E. O. W.,

as amends for his annoyance when the railway-officials refused to allow the donkey to travel with a dog-ticket, and

To B. G.-S.,

in gratitude for comforting portions of St. Luke and scrambled eggs administered in hours of depression, these sketches are dedicated.

December, 1913.

TABLE SHOWING THE RELATION OF THE GYPSIES MENTIONED. [v]

Tomo.

Gunia = Binka (f.)

Grantsha (b. 1825) = Lolodzhi (f.).

Descendants of Gunia:

Gunia = Binka (f.)

Kokoi (Fanaz). = Vorzha (f.)

Worsho (Garaz) b. 1881. = Saliska (Anastasi).

Luba, a widow.

Descendants of Grantsha:

Grantsha (b. 1825) = Lolodzhi (f.).

Worsho (Nikola or Kola Tshoron) the chief. = Tinka (f.).

Fardi (Andreas) b. 1860. = Lotka (f.).

Yishwan. = Parashiva (f.).

Yantshi. = Worsha (f.).

Vorzha (f.). = Yono.

3 other daughters

Worsho (Vasili).  4 other children.

5 children.

6 children.

2 married sons.

Milanko.

4 other children.

Descendants of Worsho (Nikola or Kola Tshoron) the chief:

Worsho (Nikola or Kola Tshoron) the chief. = Tinka (f.).

Kola (Nikola) the younger. = Liza (f.).

Yanko b. 1893. = Vola (f.).

Terka (f.). = Burda (Morkosh).

Zhawzha (Sophie). = Pudamo (Adam Kirpatsh).

2 other daughters.

CONTENTS [vi]

PAGE

1.

Everywhere strangers: everywhere at home

1

2.

Imperium in imperio

7

3.

Gypsy bagmen

13

4.

The tale of a tub

20

5.

Parliaments

26

6.

The photograph

32

7.

The sick boy

38

8.

A good work

44

9.

The revelation

50

10.

An unwritten tongue

57

1.  EVERYWHERE STRANGERS: EVERYWHERE AT HOME. [1]

When you want to find a Gypsy the police are more likely to be able to give you his address than directories, bankers, or ministers of religion; and it was a Liverpool policeman who sent me to the back of the municipal slaughter-house to seek a horde of “Hungarian” Roms whose arrival had been announced by the evening papers.  In a squalid street, at a corner where insanitary dwellings had been demolished, I found a vacant plot of brick-strewn ground surrounded by high walls.  There, evidently, were my Gypsies, for a crowd of boys had gathered round the one door, struggling for a glance through its keyhole.  Mistaking me for a detective, they made way, and I knocked loudly and long.

The boys were not mistaken.  There was a scene within which was worth looking at.  The strangers had journeyed so rapidly from Marseilles to Liverpool that they had outstripped their heavy baggage, and, arriving before their tents, were obliged to bivouac under tiny extemporized shelters propped against the windowless house-walls which formed two sides of the square.  They were making the best of circumstances with considerable success, for they had with them countless beds of eiderdown in brilliantly coloured covers, and they had their all-important samovars.  The men were out, but the women, protected by a police-serjeant from the inhospitable attentions of their neighbours, were in the camp, and into that shabby yard they had brought an unaccustomed glory which was altogether foreign and oriental.

He who stepped through the battered door in St. Andrew Street travelled fifteen hundred miles in a second.  Without, the slaughter-house and slums—dull, drab Liverpool; within, the glorious East—strange dark faces of exotic beauty, a blaze of scarlet gowns and yellow gold.  For the women were bedizened with much jewellery: rings shone on their fingers, barbaric bracelets on their arms, chains and corals dangled from their necks, heavy pendants from their ears, and on their blouses sparkled many trinkets and brooches.  Their jet-black hair hung in two plaits over their shoulders, and in each plait was woven a cord to which were attached six or seven great gold medals, generally Continental coins of 100 francs, but often our own magnificent five-pound pieces.  And everywhere children gambolled—pictures of health and happiness, fawn-like creatures whose scanty shifts scarcely concealed their lithe brown bodies.

Centuries ago man’s inhumanity taught Gypsies the lesson that language is given them for the purpose of concealing their thoughts, and even now a Gypsy invitation, especially if it be pressing and cordial, often proves to have been a device for preventing a second visit.  I was assured that carts had been ordered for seven o’clock to effect the removal of the band to two houses they had rented in Pitt Street.  Wishing to see the flitting, I returned earlier than the time stated, found that they had departed at six, tracked them with difficulty, and overtook them, not in Pitt Street, but on the Landing-stage, awaiting the Birkenhead luggage-boat.  At the head of the procession was a large tilted cart in which squatted all the women and children, from elderly and angular Mothers of Egypt to beautiful Vola, the chief’s daughter-in-law, carrying her little baby.  Two waggons followed, loaded with luggage, over which, high piled, was the bedding, and on top of all, dressed in the costume of theatrical brigands, the black-bearded men carrying long staves elaborately decorated with silver.

There were full forty souls in the party, but when the boat arrived at Birkenhead, Kola, the chief, held up the traffic by engaging the ticket-collector in an altercation as to the exact number.  Since he spoke in Russian and the official in English, neither convinced the other.  The chief maintained that there were only fourteen; the collector set the figure considerably higher, but as no two of his repeated attempts at enumeration agreed with one another, while the chiefs estimate never varied, Kola may be said to have had, on the whole, the best of the argument.  At all events the management preferred giving way to being detained all night, and Uncle Kola triumphantly led his procession up the bridge.

Meanwhile a spectator passing along Green Lane, Tranmere, might have seen a very curious spectacle in the English Gypsies’ camp, for that was the destination of the aliens.  On a bare patch of cindery earth between the dark brown tents of the Boswells and Robinsons, a piece of carpet had been spread, and on it, as advanced guard awaiting the main body, sat portly Tinka, the chief’s wife.  Cross-legged, motionless, aloof, her eyes fixed on a distant infinity, quite alone yet totally unconcerned, she smoked her cigarette calmly in a long meerschaum holder.  Red-robed as ever, wearing an immense weight of solid gold, brilliant as a flame, she contrasted strangely with the dingy colouring of the place: a Chinese idol in a Methodist chapel would have been less incongruous.  But the English Gypsies, aping her detachment, feigned absence of interest; no one was visible—nevertheless many an eye was eagerly pressed to a hole in the tent-blanket.

This invasion by foreign Gypsies was not relished by the old inhabitants of the pitch, and they threatened to drive the aliens out.  But the aliens neither valued popularity nor feared the Sinte, as they contemptuously called their British brethren; with scarce a glance towards, or a thought of, their neighbours, they went diligently to work to make themselves comfortable.  First they removed, without permission, all the carts from stables near the camp, and set them, shafts in air, to make shelters for the night, one for each family.  Then, needing coke, and brooms, and water, and other necessaries, they turned to the despised Sinte and borrowed what they required from them.  And then the English Gypsy women fell in love with Vola’s baby, and the English Gypsy men were impressed by Kola’s size and ability, and the gorgeous display of gold touched a responsive chord in all their hearts.  And so in an incredibly short space of time the strangers became completely at home.

2.  IMPERIUM IN IMPERIO. [7]

Many kinds of foreigner tread the streets of Liverpool, and thus, when Uncle Kola and his tribe appeared on the banks of the Mersey from nowhere in particular the little boys put him down as a new species of “Dago,” and did not embarrass him with unwelcome attention.  Yet Kola is an extraordinary man, and even his costume is conspicuous.  His trousers, superfluously baggy and decorated with wide stripes of bright green and red, are thrust into great top-boots elaborately stitched.  The complicated braiding of his dark blue coat and waistcoat would be remarkable were it not eclipsed by the glory of his enormous buttons, splendid examples of the silversmith’s craft.  Kola is tall and powerfully built, and he wears his finery with effect, supporting himself by a five-foot staff almost covered with silver, on which shine countless little images of Buddha.  His keen eye, aquiline nose, strong mouth, and venerable beard tinged with grey make derision impossible; and he walked our thoroughfares with dignity, slowly, gravely scrutinizing the town as if it owed him money.

And Kola intended that it should—before he left it.  That was why he had come.  He was already rich; his pockets contained bank-notes which he could have exchanged anywhere for several hundred golden sovereigns, and his relations believe that he is worth £30,000.  On great occasions he can decorate his table, which stands only fourteen inches high, with lordly plate; a silver samovar weighing twenty-three pounds is matched by a huge salver and an immense bucket of the same precious metal decorated in high relief.  The weight of solid gold which his wife carries in her hair, on her blouse, and round her neck and wrists is nothing less than royal.  Kola is, in fact, a ruler; and, if the citizens of Liverpool took but little interest in him and his subjects, he reciprocated their contempt, regarding them simply as so many more or less stupid persons who were destined to provide for him and his tribe what they were then seeking—copper pots to mend.

Kola is suave and courtly, and if you had asked him what were his name and nationality he would have replied at once that he was Nicolas Tshoron, a Caucasian, Russian, Ruthenian, Galitsian, or Hungarian.  He has now removed his kingdom to Brazil, and if you were to follow him across the Atlantic and repeat the question it is probable that he would elect to call himself Italian, French, or English.  He may be all of these if a short period of residence is sufficient qualification; but, though he knows it not, Rumania has stronger claims to him, and India stronger claims still.  Sitting on the carpeted floor of his great pedimental tent, surrounded by his family and connexions, you would have found that he is really Worsho, son of Grantsha, and that he is a Gypsy.  Not, of course, exactly the kind we know; he would call our Gypsies scornfully Sinte, and claim that he and his tribe alone are the Roma.  Intellectually he is a giant.  In the morning his subjects would set out to solicit orders, returning despondently as night fell with empty hands or single pans on their shoulders.  But Kola would march triumphantly to the camp followed by a lorry heavily laden with cauldrons he had collected for repair.  It was Kola who directed the work, and when any special difficulty arose it was he who sat down and overcame it.  He was completely illiterate; yet he used a complicated form of contract which he dictated and his patrons wrote and signed.  It concealed artfully the extortionate charges he proposed to make, and hoodwinked not only the authorities of a great political club but even those of a municipal kitchen.  And it was Kola who faced the indignant customer who came to protest against the charge, and either browbeat him into submission or put him into court.

The craft of the Gypsies was magnificent, and they wielded their hammers sensitively, as if there were nerve-endings in the heads.  They were admittedly more skilful than British coppersmiths, ready to undertake and execute successfully work that would elsewhere be refused as impossible.  But their ideas of remuneration were grandiose, and in a country where bargaining is a neglected science they retained an oriental habit of demanding ten times as much as they were prepared to accept.  It mattered not if his customers were offended—Kola never intended to see them again.  And so he and his subjects spent a few weeks in each town collecting work, a few weeks in doing it, and a few turbulent and glorious weeks in exacting payment.  Then they shook the dust from off the soles of their feet, and departed for ever from the city they had exhausted.

Kola’s policy is successful; it has made him rich.  Other Gypsies have attached themselves to his family, married his relations, and placed him at the head of an important tribe, whose activities he regulates, whose well-being he cares for, whose movements he directs, which he governs as “king.”  When dissatisfaction arises the malcontents are free to migrate to another monarchy; but so long as Kola is successful and so long as his subjects share his success, thus long will his kingdom endure.

Kola’s kingdom should be impossible.  It is contrary to reason, contrary at all events to what we call reason, that a community should prefer the primitive ways of the Middle Ages to the latest improvements of modern civilization.  His bellows were old-fashioned even in the fifteenth century and survive now only among savages; yet in his eyes they are still the best bellows, and if out of curiosity he were to purchase a mechanical blower he would probably hand it over to his grandchildren for a toy.  With pockets well lined with money he neglects to buy table cutlery, tears his portion of bread from the loaf and scrapes it clumsily in the butter-dish.  The luxurious chairs and sofas with which he furnishes his royal tent are vain ostentation; guests may use them, but Kola himself prefers to sit, as his ancestors have sat for countless centuries, cross-legged on the ground.  Us and all that we value, with the single exception of money, he despises even more cordially than we despise him.  Like a drop of oil in a glass of water he and his tribe live in our midst untouched, strangely aloof and alien, a wonderful spectacle of an Imperium in Imperio.

3.  GYPSY BAGMEN. [13]

The commercial traveller is more truly born to his profession than the poet, unless an unreasonably exacting definition of poet be accepted; and to those who are not thus born, it seems inexplicable that any sane person should willingly adopt so toilsome and disagreeable, yet thankless and inglorious, an occupation, and even learn to like it.  Paradoxically the Gypsy coppersmiths, in travelling, combined the methods of a raw apprentice, foredoomed to failure, with diligence, enthusiasm—and success—which proved them born bagmen.  They evidently enjoyed being “on the road” in this very un-Gypsylike sense; yet, Gypsylike, retained their independence, differing from the common “drummer” in that they represented, not an exacting master, but their own still more exacting selves.  The fact that they travelled was not remarkable—travelling was the necessary prelude to their industry.  What was astonishing was the versatility which enabled them both to beat our native coppersmiths in smithcraft and to rival British agents in the energy with which they canvassed for the orders they were themselves to execute.

With patience anybody can become a fairly good commercial traveller who has a respectable appearance and good address, carries a useful article, and asks a reasonable price.  The Gypsies certainly carried a useful article, inasmuch as their repairs were skilful and thorough, but all the other circumstances were against them.  Their extravagant costume reminded those on whom they called of brigands rather than of sober business-men, and brigands are not welcome in offices or factories.  In combination with their black hair and glittering eyes it was apt to betray their nationality.  If it did, so much the worse, for a commercial transaction with a Gypsy is several degrees more unpopular than a commercial transaction with a Jew.

As for address, it mattered not at first whether they possessed it or not, for they spoke no English.  They soon discovered and engaged threadbare ungrammatical aliens to talk for them, but until they obtained such assistance they were content to carry tattered scraps of soiled paper on which their qualifications were set forth in a handwriting and dialect which were very far from commanding the respect of possible customers.  Here again they reared an unnecessary obstacle against their own success, for it is an axiom that the worse the business, the better must be the quality of the stationery.  Even when they had learned a little English—and, belying Gypsy reputation, they learnt it very slowly—they scorned to use ingratiating behaviour, delicate compliment, or even funny stories; their whole persuasive stock-in-trade was a whine, a dogged and irritating perseverance, inability to recognize the moment when it is more profitable to go than to stay, and stone-deafness to the most emphatic “no.”  In short, their method was simply the endless importunity which their wives and children devoted to shameless and successful begging.

It is easy to give goods away; only an expert bagman can get a high price.  Price is the real criterion of the traveller.  In this respect the Gypsies were nothing if not ambitious, for they set out with the intention of exacting remuneration so exorbitant that their repairs often cost more than a pot new from the maker.  Thus their only practicable policy was to conceal carefully the sum they proposed to ask, and escape at all costs from the danger of giving the estimate which was always demanded.  The form of their contract was ingeniously designed to serve this purpose, and they also attempted to disarm natural suspicion by offering to mend—or insisting on mending, for they were very masterful—the first article for nothing as a proof of their skill.  The latter device was generally unsuccessful, for in Great Britain the offer of something for nothing, or the pretence that it is work, not wages, that is wanted, is apt rather to increase than diminish mistrust.  Moreover their conduct was in other respects far from reassuring.  When the owner of a pot, wearied by their persistence and, if convinced of nothing else, convinced at least that his only hope of getting back to business lay in surrender, had resolved reluctantly to entrust the vessel to their care, they would reawaken his slumbering suspicions by suggesting that he would require surety for its safe return.  And the unhappy man was obliged to postpone his relief from torture, and set his tired wits to work devising non-committal receipts for gold coins and foreign bank-notes in the genuineness of which he very shrewdly disbelieved.

The deposit was part of a game which the Gypsies refused to play otherwise than by rule.  And so humble Worsho Kokoiesko would fish out the single gold piece which represented all his fortune which his wife did not wear, and the great Kola would brandish bundles of French notes in the face of his victim.  Kola was accustomed—perhaps wisely—to flaunt his wealth, but some of his relations who were also well-to-do used professions of poverty as arguments when soliciting work.  To their strangely illogical minds simulated indigence was not inconsistent with the exhibition of large sums of money.  I have myself assisted, as dragoman, in their negotiations with an important manufacturer of jam.  “Tell him,” they said, “that we are Hungarian coppersmiths.”  This I did, without serious scruples, adding at their command, and with a clear conscience, that their work was excellent.  To their next instructions, “Tell him that our wives are starving and our children crying for bread,” I was inclined to demur, but was sternly overruled.  The jam-manufacturer was visibly affected, and pity for these strangers within our inhospitable gates appeared for a moment in his face.  But only for a moment; hurriedly thrusting a bundle covered with red silk into my hands, the Gypsies added: “Show him this; tell him not to be afraid to trust us.”  And as I untied the knots twenty great yellow coins appeared—£80 in solid gold!

No less conspicuous than their want of finesse was their want of organization.  They neither divided the city into districts to parcel them out among their members, nor even the users of copper vessels into classes.  Collecting addresses from strangers they met casually, they visited factories and institutions at random, wasting much time in long tramps from one extreme end of the town to the other and then immediately back to the first district.  Lucky the man who discovered a new, unvisited manufactory; a courteous reception and patient hearing were generally given him.  The patience of most manufacturers had been early exhausted by the repeated and lengthy invasions of other members of the tribe, and they were in no mood for further interviews.  Some of the more enterprising and wealthy Gypsies seemed to realize this, for they made expensive journeys from Birkenhead to Manchester, Leeds, and even the Isle of Man.  The disappointingly small results would have disheartened an ordinary commercial traveller, but the Gypsies were anything but ordinary travellers.  And gradually their patience was rewarded, and the camp became littered with cauldrons and pots awaiting repair, striking evidence of the almost miraculous power of sheer, unreasoning tenacity.

4.  THE TALE OF A TUB.

Milanko, son of Yono, was an impertinent lad, but good-humoured, rather ugly and always grinning.  I had assured him repeatedly that in the sugar-refinery to which I have the misfortune to be attached all the “pots” were as big as houses and in perfect repair, so that to my deep regret I was unable to take advantage of the offer of his professional services.  Milanko, however, with the incredulity of an habitual liar, made an independent reconnaissance through a window and caught sight of an ancient copper tub, some six feet in diameter and about a quarter of a ton in weight.  Moreover he ascertained, by means best known to himself, that it was cracked and patched; and I was weak enough to admit, under his searching cross-examination, that it would be an advantage to have its inner surface coated with tin.  It was a huge vessel, but Milanko was ambitious, and thereafter called regularly at inconvenient hours to present a series of petitions: first, for the order to mend and tin the pan; second, for the loan of a pound to purchase solder; third, for half a sovereign to get boots; fourth, for five shillings to buy a hat; and fifth, for three pence, the price of a packet of cigarettes.  He accepted the emphatic refusal of his larger requests philosophically and without resentment.  To the last I gave a favourable hearing, even at our first interview, and we parted with a friendly exchange of Zha Devlesa (Go with God) and Ash Devlesa (Remain with God), well understanding that a second rehearsal was ordered for the morrow and that it would be succeeded by daily performances.  The play had not a long run.  One ill-starred afternoon I granted the main petition, and the cauldron was carted to Birkenhead to be deposited in the camp.

Knowing that the Gypsies’ policy was always to do as much work as possible, and generally far more than their customer expected or required, I sent the chief engineer to Green Lane to make plain to them that the vessel was only to be tinned, and that the cracks and patches were to be left unmended.  No contract was signed, though there was a distinct verbal agreement that the cost was to be one pound.  I was, however, prepared to pay as much as three, the price for which a Liverpool firm had offered to do the same work, because I recognized that the pan was large and heavy and was interested to see how the coppersmiths would handle it without either blocks and tackle or large fires.  To my great disappointment I was allowed to see nothing.  When I visited the camp the cauldron was always discreetly covered with a sheet, and the Gypsies found ingenious means to keep me and it as far apart as possible.  But occasionally they would draw me aside and expatiate alarmingly on the amount of tin, acid and labour that were needed, and, ignoring their estimate, talk tentatively of forty pounds as a just and probable charge.

At last, one morning, a messenger arrived to report that the cauldron was ready for delivery, and on the afternoon of the same day the chief engineer, instructed that he might pay three pounds but not a penny more, took with him a cart and crossed the river to Birkenhead.  He found the pan turned upside down on the cindery ground of the camp and proposed to remove it to the refinery in order that the quality of the work might be examined.  But the Gypsies, holding that possession is nine-tenths of the law, refused to permit the removal before payment was made.  The wisdom of their decision became evident when bargaining began, for the engineer offered one pound while they, with fierce indignation, demanded twenty-five, making the sum unmistakably clear by placing a sovereign on the pan and indicating the numeral by means of their outstretched fingers.  The discrepancy between claim and tender was too wide for easy or rapid adjustment, and neither side showed any willingness to compromise.  The engineer, accustomed to dealing with Orientals, stuck to his terms, but finding the Gypsies equally stubborn and much noisier, and convinced as tea-time approached that no settlement was then possible, he ordered the cart back to Liverpool and himself withdrew from the conference.

And then the Gypsies made a false step.  The engineer had scarcely settled down to his evening meal when, to his amazement, word was sent from the refinery that the cauldron and the coppersmiths were at the gate.  They had changed their minds, hastened to overtake the cart aboard the luggage-boat, and persuaded the carter to return to the tents and bring the pan away.  The office being closed when they arrived, settlement of their little account was out of the question, and, obliged to surrender the only security they had for payment, they could but protest loudly and depart with an invitation to call again the next day.

Other duties kept me away from business, and I was not a spectator of their visit.  But I heard afterwards long, eloquent and indignant stories of how Milanko, apparelled like a mountebank, with his father and the deformed dwarf Burda or Morkosh, his cousin’s husband, dared to profane the solemnity of the counting-house, a sanctuary where the cumulative respectability of five generations of sugar-boilers is devoutly worshipped.  Never during the whole course of its long business experience had that chamber entertained guests so unwelcome.  They arrived at ten in the morning and stayed until half-past two, demanding payment from the cashier and relenting gradually from twenty-five to seven pounds, less than which they long refused to accept.  Nobody knew what to do with them—the situation was unprecedented.  When tired of standing and worrying busy clerks with the question “Master, what you do now?” they scandalized the whole staff by sitting cross-legged on the floor.  It was a contest of endurance; and, thanks to the definite orders I had left, we won.  Just as the problem of what was to happen at closing time, if they were still in possession, was becoming insistent, the Gypsies gave way, accepted three pounds and retired, after desecrating the office for four hours and a half.

It would have been absurd to expect Kola’s disciples to rest content with a reasonable reward, and indeed they often begged for supplementary payments.  Even the chief’s wife condescended to interest herself in the matter and complained to me about the character of the engineer—a bad man, as she said; and I had to explain that it was partly for this particular fault of character that we valued him.  Yono never forgave me, but Milanko resumed friendly relationships at once, and I believe that the tribe in general respected me the more for my victory.

5.  PARLIAMENTS.

The profession of the Gypsies, according to a reverend Spanish professor, whom Borrow quotes, is idleness; and by their proverb Butin hi dinilenge (Work is for fools) the German Gypsies plead guilty to the charge.  In this respect the coppersmiths were exceptional, for among them diligence raged almost as an epidemic fever.  The missionary of the eight-hours day would not have found a welcome in their camp, nor the agent of a Sabbath-observance society any encouragement.  On all days of the week, at all hours of the day, the rhythmic tap of their hammers and the muffled gust of their bellows preached eloquent sermons on industry, while knots of busy women, sewing, washing and cooking, gave an equally striking object-lesson in the same subject.

Nor did they seek to compensate by recreation for long hours of labour.  The young people showed a certain skill in games like knuckle-bones or pitch-and-toss, and took a slight interest in boxing and wrestling but seldom practised them.  Only on rare occasions did they and their elders play cards or visit music-halls, and the gramophones which several families possessed were little heard.  If they danced it was when there was a prospect of extorting baksheesh from visitors, and the ill-remembered tales and songs which they sold to collectors of such curiosities seemed to be rather what they had heard others tell or sing than what they cherished for their own amusement.  Unlike many of their brethren they were not entertainers, and they had no strong desire to be themselves entertained.

Judged from a trade-union point of view, or even from that of a picture-palace proprietor, this excessive devotion to work would be regarded as a symptom of savagery; yet, as increasing productiveness and wealth, it might with equal justice be taken as a sign of advanced civilization.  In one respect, however, the Gypsies were undoubtedly primitive, and that was in their faith in parliaments.  When day had faded into night and toil had ceased, if they were not eating their irregular meals or drinking glasses of tea made in samovars whose hours of work were scarcely less than their own, the coppersmiths were holding interminable divans.  In wet or cold weather parliament assembled within a tent; but on warm evenings sessions were held in the open air, the members sitting in a ring cross-legged on the ground or lolling on beds of eiderdown.  Although the children were kept at a distance these meetings were not councils of elders, since the young men as well as the old were present.  Their wives and daughters sat apart engaged in womanly occupations, for there was in the tribe no need to blow a “trumpet against the monstrous regiment of women.”

Probably Kola, the chief, would not have permitted the constant presence of inquisitive visitors when important matters were under discussion, or would have changed the subject on their arrival.  In any case to have sat evening after evening, as it were in the distinguished strangers’ gallery, listening to debates which were only half intelligible, was an entertainment drearier than any of his visitors was prepared to face.  Thus it is impossible to decide whether these parliaments had legislative and judicial functions, or whether, as Kola’s privy council, they were only deliberative and advisory.  When strangers were present Fardi sometimes improved the occasion by producing a little ragged map of the world to question them about the amenities of different countries.  It was a projection after the method of Mercator, in which Greenland appeared, grossly exaggerated, as an attractive patch of bright colour equal in size to the whole of Europe and pleasantly unspotted by the names of icy mountains or any other geographical complexities.  This image of Greenland had for Fardi the same attraction as the bellman’s chart for the Snark-hunting crew, and he was convinced only with difficulty that, the climate being intolerable and the natives poor, he was unlikely to do there a great trade in mending copper pots.  To parliament, too, Kola exhibited his first large payment in British money, a big bundle of Bank of England notes.  His subjects passed them from grimy hand to grimy hand, tugged them viciously, held them up to the light, and then delivered judgment: “Ugly notes, but tough paper.”

The discussions were as solemn as those of the mother of parliaments at Westminster, and much more sincere, although they were neither opened with prayer nor encumbered by any decorative formalities.  If the chief was chairman—and he sometimes enthroned himself upon an upturned cauldron—his services were seldom required either to keep order, which was amply secured by the native dignity of the members, or to direct a debate that had no tendency to stray from the one subject which was uppermost in all their minds.  Generalities that had no concrete application to their trade did not interest them, and they would have refused to send a representative to the congress which was held in Hungary in 1879 to deliberate on the common interests of Gypsies everywhere.  Sometimes when Russians visited the camp the coppersmiths would listen so eagerly to long accounts of events in the outside world that it seemed as though the divan was their newspaper or club, and stood to them in the same relation as the “crack i’ the kirkyard” to Scottish farm-folk a century ago, or as his favourite public-house to the British workman.  But in truth only those facts really interested them which affected their work and industry, and most of what they heard passed in at one ear and out at the other.  They were greedy for knowledge of the wealth of nations, the size of cities, or the trades by which towns prospered; they collected scraps of paper on which chance acquaintances had scribbled the addresses of factories; and in fact all their conversation and all their thoughts were concerned with the problem of work and where to find it.

6.  THE PHOTOGRAPH. [32]

Conversation was difficult, not because there was nothing to talk about, but because Lotka, Fardi’s comely wife, returned at every opportunity to the subject of my study carpet.  I had invited them to afternoon tea and they were taking it in my room, behaving with the perfect propriety Gypsies always observe under circumstances in which the manners and self-possession of a British workman would fail.  But my carpet was thick and soft, catholic in its colour-taste though red in the main, and decorated with a large angular sprawling Indian pattern—and Lotka had fallen in love with it.  She had proposed to take it up at once and transfer it to her tent at Tranmere, waiving aside my objected fear of cold feet with the reply that I could go to bed then and buy a new one in the morning.  All will sympathize with my eagerness to change the subject who know what serious Gypsy begging means: it is dangerous as oratory, convincing a man against his reason, and leading to bitterly repented sacrifices.  But those who have experienced it will know also the impossibility of escape.  Like a skiff in a whirlpool our talk might seem to be sailing pleasantly North, South, East or West, and yet be tending inevitably towards the central peril.  No matter what conversational subject was started it led relentlessly back to the carpet.

Amongst other fruitless devices for escape which ingenuity, quickened by despair, suggested, was the production of albums of Gypsy pictures, the leaves of which my guests turned indifferently, punctuating their talk with contemptuous exclamations of “Sinte”—but the talk was still of carpets.  There were photographs of real Gypsies from everywhere on earth, engravings of artists’ Gypsies such as have never been seen anywhere in the world, highly coloured illustrations of camps, and ancient woodcuts of the costume Gypsies wore of old; but none represented “Our Roma” and for Fardi and his spouse all were devoid of any kind of interest.  In the middle of a page, however, was a somewhat mean picture-postcard which had reached me through several hands, but came originally from Lemberg in Galitsia.  It represented a troop of elaborately costumed performers, whom I had always taken for “counterfeit Egyptians,” dancing and playing huge accordions on an artistically decorated stage, and the subscription was “Gypsies from the Caucasus.”  Fardi never allowed his emotions to appear conspicuously, but it was evident from the close scrutiny he and Lotka made of the postcard that they were genuinely interested: “Our Roma,” they said, approvingly, but without surprise.  Then they gave me the names of some of the party, and apropos of the stage-drapery, reverted to the subject of carpets.

During the next few days occasional questions showed that my guests had carried news of the picture to the camp, and that the tribe hid beneath their affected indifference some curiosity as to how it came to be in my possession.  But I was totally unprepared for the demonstration of deep concern which the paltry print was to wring from the great Kola’s dignified wife.  Taking me quietly aside she invited me to sit near her, told me that she had heard about the photograph, and expressed a desire to see it.  I gladly seized the opportunity to give her a cordial invitation to come with her husband to tea.  Without such an excuse I should not have dared to suggest a visit; for, absurd as it may seem to those who do not know these people, I felt instinctively that the chief and his lady were personages of rank so high that it would have been presumptuous to ask them to my poor house.  My instinct was probably just, for Tinka refused politely, alleging as excuse the weakness of her chest.  Unwilling to renounce the honour of entertaining royalty, I offered to take her and the chief by rail to Liverpool and thence to Alfred Street in a taxicab; and, when this proposal was rejected, to bring the taxicab to the camp, cross the river on the luggage-boat, and take them all the way without change.  But Tinka was adamant and demanded that the book should be brought to the tents.  The idea of subjecting my treasured album to the eager unwashed hands of working coppersmiths did not commend itself to me, and I replied that the book was too large and too heavy to bring.  “Tear the page out” she ordered, royally regardless; but I refused to mutilate the volume.  Then she begged, the queenly Tinka, begged just as Lotka had begged for my carpet—earnestly, eloquently, passionately, almost irresistibly.  Hardening my heart to withstand this more than usually distressing exhibition of skill in the ancient Gypsy accomplishment, I turned to look at my tormentor—she was weeping bitterly!  Instead of a typical case of adroit Gypsy imposture I had found an equally typical case of Gypsy family affection.  With a voice broken by sobs she offered in exchange for a brief glance at the picture, first a silver plate a foot in diameter, and then a great gold ring such as she herself wore.  For among those whose portraits appeared on the card was her brother, and she had not seen him for twenty years.

Need I add that in my book a blank space, of which I am prouder than of my rarest Callot, bears witness to-day to the fact that Tinka had her will?  “Aunt,” I said, “you have been very hospitable to me.  I do not want your silver plate, I will not take your gold ring; but to-morrow you shall have the little picture.”  And when I brought it, framed gaudily, to give it some semblance of a gift for presentation to royalty, the Gypsies crowded excitedly round, and Tinka, almost in tears again, raised her proud hands to Heaven, and called down blessings on my head in showers so liberal that, if but a tithe be sent, I shall be among the most fortunate of men.

7.  THE SICK BOY. [38]

Sedateness was characteristic of the coppersmiths’ camp.  Even when the air reverberated with the tapping of many hammers there was no bustle; work went on steadily, certainly, slowly, and with dignity.  The arrival of a stranger was the pretext for an animated and noisy chorus of begging by the women, but on ordinary occasions the foreign Gypsies applied themselves solemnly to labour, or still more solemnly to interminable divans.  Blood-curdling oaths in gentle Romani were hurled even at the spoiled children when they manifested their spirits and happiness too noisily; yet among them there was one who was privileged to be as troublesome as he chose without reproof, and he was the sick boy.

His exceptional position seemed to have had a malign influence on his character, for he was not a nice child.  With the want of their robust health he lacked also the sturdy independence of his playmates.  They were self-reliant, forward, often impertinent, but always lovable—he was petulant, fretful, even peevish, and instinctively one pitied rather than liked him.  Yet in all the tribe there was nobody—man, woman, or child, from the great chief Kola himself to the half-naked little ones—who would have hesitated to make any effort or any sacrifice by which to mitigate the sick boy’s distress.  To his mother he was more than all the world.  She was Zhawzha, the chief’s daughter (though to those who were not of the afición, she would have called herself Sophie), a strangely pathetic figure in whose face one could see traces of great beauty marred by bitter anxiety for her son.  Among our first duties as friendly visitors to the camp were those of acting as her dragoman in the local surgery and bringing an eminent specialist from Liverpool to visit the patient.  But we discovered gradually not only that she had consulted other doctors in Birkenhead, but also that she had prescriptions and drugs, enough to have stocked a pharmacy, which she had obtained from continental physicians.  And all had prescribed bromides, prohibited excitement, and bidden the distracted mother wait patiently and hope—for the boy was epileptic.

He was the one disturbing influence in the tribe, and when the illness seized him, always suddenly and unexpectedly, frantic crises of shrill emotion broke the tranquillity of the camp.  From all sides gesticulating women would rush screaming wildly, and the men would leave their work to return soon after in gloomy silence bending their heads to an inevitable fate, while the poor little figure in all the ridiculous bravery of his gaudy clothes and pale blue plush hat would be carried under shelter and nursed tenderly.  The distracted mother, meanwhile, would pace the ground, her face distorted with agony, clutching convulsively at her hair and singing a wild lament; and even the queenly Tinka would sink to the ashes where she stood, raise her kindly face to heaven and weep aloud.  Such scenes were frequent and very painful.  Even more painful was one’s sense of impotence afterwards, when Zhawzha offered all she had, even the gold coins from her hair, in exchange for her boy’s health.  Time alone could give what she demanded; but she scorned patience and would not wait.

No cure which anybody recommended was left untried, it mattered not what it was nor how much it cost.  And so the child wore amulets, and to the tent-pole mysterious bunches of thorn-twigs were tied.  But the malady was stubborn, and recourse was had to quacks who poisoned the little fellow with excessive doses so that he ceased even to speak, and wandered aimlessly in a comatose condition.  And then, most wonderfully—for which of us in our own land could find, at need, a sorceress?—they discovered that there was a witch-doctor in Bradford.  Letters were dictated, symptoms described, medicine bought at exorbitant prices, and Harley Street fees paid.  A lock of hair was cut and sent, untouched by human hands, for some kind of sympathetic magic.  But this, like everything else, failed to effect the instantaneous cure the mother demanded, and she and her lad, with his father, a very black and rather stupid little Gypsy named Adam Kirpatsh, journeyed to Bradford for a personal interview.

Adam was not wealthy in the same sense as Kola, the chief, might have been called wealthy; but he had savings, and it was pitiable to watch him squander them in vain efforts to gratify the sick boy’s whims and set the anxious mother’s mind at rest.  Protest was useless—equally useless to urge a longer trial of rational treatment; he was determined that no stone should be left unturned.  His confidence in the witch-doctor lasted longer than his faith in any legitimate practitioner had lasted, but it crumbled away gradually, undermined by the obvious failure of her treatment.  And then Adam heroically resolved to incur the great expense of taking his wife and child for a pilgrimage all the way to Czenstochowa in Russian Poland.  The celebrated shrine has since become notorious, for the dissolute priests robbed the holy image of its gems; but in July, 1911, it was in high repute among the Gypsies, and some of them had pictures of the Virgin of Czenstochowa in their tents.  The journey must have been a trying one for the invalid, but on their way home the family rested for a while at Berlin, and Adam sent triumphant telegrams to Birkenhead announcing that the boy was cured.

Alas!  As I approached the camp on the occasion of my first visit after their return, the little lad saw me from a distance, and ran forward to take my hand.  He looked well and happy, and we walked on gaily towards the tents.  But suddenly the weight on my wrist increased, the child seemed to stumble, and looking down I saw that he was unconscious.

Misfortune dogged that unhappy family.  Poor Zhawzha, enervated by constant solicitude, died at Mitcham, and was buried with ceremonies the barbaric extravagance of which was probably without parallel in this country.  There followed unseemly bickerings about the possession of her property and the custody of the children, and Adam parted from the band to return to his own tribe.  But it is comforting to know that, whatever may have happened during these days of grief, whatever sorrows the future may hold in store, that little afflicted boy will not be allowed to suffer unnecessarily.  May his health be restored gradually as the years pass!  But should fate decree that he must remain infirm during all the days of his life, it is certain that the tender care which was lavished on the sick Gypsy by his warm-hearted compatriots when he was a child will not be withdrawn when he becomes a grown man.

8.  A GOOD WORK. [44]

I do not think the old Drill Hall in Birkenhead has ever been a cheerful place: deserted by the military and transformed into a boxing booth, it is now positively dismal.  But for two months during the summer of 1911 it was ablaze with Oriental colour.  Kola, the Gypsy chieftain, with his tribe of coppersmiths, had taken possession of it, having left the English Romany camp at Tranmere to make room for his brothers, Yantshi and Yishwan, who had arrived from Marseilles with their wives, children and followers.  The ruling family had established itself upon the high platform where once bruisers proved their mettle, and from it the royal tenant looked down a crooked lane bordered on either side by the tents of his subjects.  From irregular skylights in the black roof dusty, mysterious sunbeams fell upon gay drapery and piles of eiderdown beds gaudily covered with scarlet and yellow stuff, on black-bearded men and strange groups of dark women in bright red dresses loaded with gold, on the little low round tables at which they sat cross-legged, and on the blue tendrils of smoke that rose from their brass samovars.  In the yard outside was the din of many hammers beating cauldrons of copper, but it was almost drowned by a babel of shrill voices quarrelling in a strange and strongly aspirated tongue.

For all was not well in Kola’s kingdom: disaffection was brewing, and a schism was imminent.  And in the midst of all the trouble the wife of young Worsho Kokoiesko presented her husband with a little brown girl, his first child.  No stranger ever knew what secret rites were practised in the distant corner of the great barn where Worsho, as a poor relation, lived humbly.  Mother and child were screened carefully from observation, and the first token of the arrival of a new recruit was the healthy voice of a crying baby.  There was no general rejoicing, no excitement; but Worsho slipped shyly to my side and, in his rich mellow voice which resembled singing rather than speaking, invited me to be godfather.

Thus it happened four days afterwards that I made a morning visit to the camp ready to add to the solemnity of the occasion such dignity as a frock-coat and top-hat could lend.  Knowing the ancient and universal Gypsy fondness for baptism I had hoped that there would have been a tribal festival.  It was therefore disappointing to find that the appearance of the hall was normal, and that Worsho himself was still in bed, although the time appointed for the ceremony was near at hand.  After some exhortation he got up, stretched himself, breakfasted leisurely, and dressed in his ordinary clothes: but Saveta, daughter of Michael, who was to be godmother, kept me in countenance by putting on a white dress gaudy with floral patterns.  At last the little procession set out for St. Werburgh’s Church—the strikingly handsome Worsho, his young widowed sister Luba, the two godparents, Saveta’s pretty little niece Liza, an assistant librarian from the Bodleian, and the indispensable baby.

We were shockingly late, and on our arrival found that the christening ceremony had already begun for the benefit of another infant.  But the good priest left the font, came politely to the door to receive us, put us in our places, and recommenced the service.  Although unprepared for the solemnity and thoroughness of my godchild’s reception into the Church, I played my unrehearsed part to the best of my ability, stumbling only once when, some ancient memory of a grammar school in the Midlands awaking suddenly at the command, “Say the Paternoster,” I said it bravely—in Latin!  And indeed this fault causes my conscience less trouble than the problem of how to fulfil my godparental obligations when my wandering goddaughter may be anywhere at all in either hemisphere.

All Gypsies have two names, one for public, the other for private use; and it may be that the baptismal name is the one they value least.  At all events the duty of choosing it devolved, in this instance, on me, and the parents gave no indication as to what were their wishes.  Unable on the spur of the moment to remember anything really monumental, I called the child Saveta after her godmother, and thus she was registered in the great book when our picturesque little party withdrew to the sacristy.  The mother’s name, Anastasi Fiodorana Shodoro, was also placed on record, the last element being probably that of the child’s maternal grandfather.  But when I began to dictate W-O-R-S-H-O, Worsho excitedly plucked my sleeve and protested.  I had never heard him called by any other name, and was amazed; but he produced documents and passports to prove that he was, officially, Garaz son of Fanaz, the son of Zigano, and as “Garaz Fanaz Zigano” he was written down.  The absence of a surname caused no difficulties with our sympathetic Irish priest; but it was quite otherwise when we paid a necessary visit to an ignorant registrar.  He declared, “The man must have a surname,” and regarded the want of so necessary a distinction as little less serious than the want of a head or heart.  There was a column for surnames in his register, and it would have been a scandal to leave it empty.  We filled it.

Of all the pleasant recollections associated with this adventure, one lingers in my memory as especially bright and comforting.  When we left the church the kindly and venerable Father, who had shepherded us so lovingly through the ceremony, conducted us courteously to the door, held up his hands in benediction and exclaimed in a voice that quivered with sincerity, “You have done a good work this day.”

9.  THE REVELATION.

Almost a year after the arrival of the coppersmiths, old Grantsha, his sons Fardi, Yantshi and Yishwan, and his son-in-law Yono, with their wives and children reappeared in Liverpool, meaning to take ship and follow Kola, who had already gone to Monte Video.  But no boat could be found to convey them, and after waiting a week in an emigrants’ lodging-house in Duke Street, they were obliged to go by rail to Dover and embark there.  It was a gloomy, undecorated dwelling in which they stayed, a warren of scantily-furnished rooms, in each of which one family camped like bears in an overcrowded menagerie.  Since there was nothing else to do, their idle misery found expression in begging.  At home and abroad, in season and out of season, whenever there was anybody to beg from, they begged immoderately—all except Fardi.  He and his family were exceptional, cultivating little courtly airs and holding themselves somewhat aloof from the rest of the tribe; and in the matter of respectability the chief himself could hardly hold a candle to his brother, though they had this in common, that neither ever begged.

I spent the afternoon of the day of their departure with the coppersmiths.  It was a naturally dispiriting afternoon of steady, drizzling rain, and the conduct of the Gypsies made it almost insufferably unpleasant.  Throughout a long wet promenade Milanko begged dismally for a silk scarf.  A smaller boy, inspired by a well-founded conviction that I would give him a cap, accompanied me and a friend when we went home for afternoon tea.  He begged in the streets and at table as continuously and mechanically as a Chinese praying wheel, refused food and drink in order that his mouth might be free to exercise its main function, and afterwards, drenched but undaunted, droned petitions during half our walk to the station.  Yono enticed me into an apartment on the first floor where he and his family lived, in order that we might debate at tiresome length a proposed supplementary payment for tinning the cauldron.  Even Fardi’s wife and daughter forgot their manners.  He himself was out, but his women locked the door and removed the key in order that I might not escape from their room at the top of the house until Lotka had made a last desperate effort to become possessor of my carpet.  They were interrupted by a loud knock, and hope rose within me that Fardi had returned and would exercise parental authority to stop the persecution.  But it was only patient Yono wishing to resume the discussion about the cauldron.  As he came in I went out—against resistance, precipitately.  Downstairs Grantsha and burly Yishwan sat in a larger room surrounded by children, while a group of women stitched industriously at the opposite end.  Every one of them begged.  The lads demanded watches, cigarette-holders and silver match-boxes; even the dotard Grantsha asked for money; Yishwan’s smallest request was for the coat from off my back; and the girls pleaded singly and in chorus: “Brother, why have you given me nothing?”  The attack was irresistible: I was outnumbered, and the only alternative to surrender was flight.  So I rose to take my leave, assisted to my feet by two impish boys who, with apparent politeness, seized my hands and unnoticed by me cleverly stole my silver Zodiac ring.

The Gypsies had told me that they would go to Lime Street Station at seven o’clock, and that their train would leave at half-past eight.  Twice before under similar circumstances they had tried to hoodwink me, and it seemed that they had tricked me again, for when at half-past seven I reached Lime Street there was never a gay red skirt to be seen, nor even a braided coat.  Moreover, on inquiry, I learned that no train for Dover left that or any other Liverpool Station at eight-thirty.  Almost glad to escape a renewal of the afternoon’s hostilities I began to retrace my steps.  I had not walked a couple of hundred yards when, from afar, I spied a flash of colour so brilliant that it could have been nothing except a Gypsy girl’s dress.  She was standing outside the Central Station, where the tribe had assembled to wait two hours, for their train was scheduled to start at half-past nine.  A microcosm within, yet untouched by, the greater world, these outlandish people sat perfectly self-possessed and completely isolated amid a throng of inquisitive strangers whose presence imported to them as little as the presence of the vulgar sparrows.  They were adventuring on a journey longer than that which their ancestors undertook centuries ago when they emigrated from India, yet they exhibited no greater emotion than if they were changing parishes.  On the platform they had grouped themselves by families, and behind each group was a hillock of trunks, utensils, bedding, carpets and tents; but before I reached them Vasili and another lad met me and, postponing my farewell interview with the elders, I turned back with the boys to buy them cigarettes.  In the street we found Fardi, and he accompanied us to a tobacconist.

To my surprise Fardi encouraged the boys not only to choose the most expensive Russian cigarettes, but also to demand meerschaum holders.  That very afternoon, to distinguish him above his brethren and mark my approval of the admirable Fardi who never begged, I had given him as parting present a splendid guinea pipe; and now he must needs demonstrate that he had gulled me, that though he had played a long and cunning game of respectability he was no whit less a Gypsy than the others, and could, when he chose, beg with the best.  My paragon produced three leather purses which, he said most falsely, contained all the money he possessed.  Two were empty, and in the third a half-sovereign lurked among some coppers.  He begged for a loan, and, when I refused to entertain the idea, entreated me to buy a dress for his wife.  In the window of a shop which was preparing to close he saw a gloriously green silk underskirt marked “six and eleven” which was exactly what she would like; and I was the more ready to surrender to his unexpected attack because I had given Lotka nothing.  But when we entered the shop he saw and preferred a long silk scarf which was attractively festooned upon a rail.  I bought it, congratulating myself secretly that Fardi, being illiterate, would not notice that its cost was two shillings less than that of the petticoat.  But Fardi’s sharp eyes discerned the price I paid, and immediately he claimed the dress as well, becoming almost abusive, and telling me plainly that I ought to be ashamed to refuse so small a favour.  It was the revelation of a new and unsuspected Fardi—a much less comfortable character than the Fardi who never begged.

He begged desperately and without a moment’s pause until the train left Liverpool, ably abetted by every member of his family.  Had I yielded Fardi would have won a barren victory, because the shop was closed and the dress beyond our reach: but higher principles were at stake—it was a trial of strength, and the respect in which the Gypsies held me was threatened.  There were flank attacks by Yishwan, who wanted my watch, and rear attacks from battalions of boys, whose demands a universal provider would have been hard pushed to satisfy: but Lotka’s skirt was the main objective, and, meeting all arguments, talking with marvellous if ungrammatical fluency, and shouting as loudly as anybody, I held my position without budging a hair’s-breadth.

Even when, with their samovars and eiderdown beds, the whole party had been packed in the carriages, Fardi stood at a door and mischievously continued his persecution.  But he and the others bade me a warm farewell, wishing me brilliantly overwhelming blessings, all except Yono, who angrily rejected my proffered hand; and as the train steamed out of the station an impudent little boy waved from a window a grubby fist, on one finger of which shone my stolen silver ring.

10.  AN UNWRITTEN TONGUE.

Plumbers, and even politicians, think meanly of Gypsies.  The Oxford English Dictionary, apparently regarding them as a species of vermin rather than a nation, denies them the barren honour which it awards to Gallovidians, and spells their name with a little g.  As an old witch complained to Lavengro, some very respectable persons go so far as to “grudge the poor people the speech they talk among themselves,” and, like the magistrate, brand it “no language at all, merely a made-up gibberish.”  Mrs. Herne very properly retorted, with an ironical curtsey: “Oh, bless your wisdom, you can tell us what our language is without understanding it”; for to learn to understand Romani is a far easier task than to trace it to its sources.

The central mystery of a mysterious race, it is their greatest treasure, whether, with Borrow, we regard it as a means “to enable habitual breakers of the law to carry on their consultations with more secrecy,” or share the enthusiasm of scholars who have found in it the most fascinating, yet most baffling, problem of linguistics.  On the language of the Gypsies one of the greatest philologists wrote two volumes, containing more than a thousand closely-printed pages, although he confessed he had never heard it spoken; another devoted eight years to the gradual publication of a huge quarto which, when completed, weighed nearly a hundred ounces; and countless humbler contributors have added their stones to the cairn of learning under which Romani lies buried.  All believed that in this unwritten tongue, the conversational currency of “the most unfortunate and degraded of beings,” lay hid answers to riddles which have perplexed the learned for five hundred years: Where was the original home of the Gypsies?  When did they leave it?  By what route did they reach Europe?  But the hopes of scholars have been grievously disappointed, and at the end of a century of diligent gleaning and scientific analysis the mystery of Gypsy origin is as deep as it was at the beginning!

Far from being gibberish, Romani is an inflected language possessing more cases for its noun than did Latin; and it is Indian, although the Gypsies, true to their reputation, have begged words with which to supplement their vocabulary from Persians, Greeks, Slavs and other peoples among whom they have dwelt.  It has been said that “the Arabic of the Bedouin in this century is incomparably more nearly identical with that of the tribes through whose borders the children of Israel were led by Moses than is any one of our contemporary European tongues with its ancestor of the same remote period.”  A similar cause has enabled the Gypsies, ever wandering, separating and reuniting, to resist more successfully than a sedentary race could have resisted the gradual changes which ultimately part a language into mutually incomprehensible dialects.  Their speech is an echo which has reverberated through the centuries, for in it may be heard ancient Indian forms that have been lost in India itself, and dearest of all to the philologist, though most perplexing, a number of words which are almost pure Sanskrit.  But if you ask the linguistic student of the Roma whence they come, you will receive no reply more definite than a reference to north-west Hindustan and the inhospitable mountains thereabouts; while for the date of the Gypsy exodus you may choose at will any period between 300 B.C. and 1300 A.D. and find high philological authority for your choice.

To satisfy, or, better still, to stimulate curiosity about the language of the “Brahmins of the roads,” a short nursery story in the dialect of the coppersmiths is here reprinted from the pages of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, by the kind permission of Mr. E. O. Winstedt, to whom it was dictated by one of Kola’s sons-in-law.  Most of the consonants may, without serious error, be pronounced as in English, r being rolled as in “rural,” g hard as in “gas,” and s unvoiced as in “sago.”  The symbol zh represents the French j or the z in English “azure,” while sh is the corresponding unvoiced sound in “ash”: with t prefixed the latter becomes tsh, the double sound heard twice in “church,” which would be written tshə(r)tsh.  In Romani the letter h is often found after p, t and k, where, except in the mouths of Irish speakers, it is not used in English.  Thus ph and th have not the values they have in “philosophy” and “theology,” nor kh (as in Oriental languages) that of the ch in Scottish “loch,” but the h must be sounded after the other consonant: p+h, t+h, and k+h.  The vowels may be pronounced as in Italian, the additional vowel ə representing the vowels in English “but” and “cur,” and the diphthongs ai and au being similar to the sounds in “aisle” and “ounce.”  The vowel in English “law” is written aw.  For examples the following words may be taken:—

but (much) as “boot.”

hai (and) as “high.”

háide! (come!) as “high-day.”

kothé (there) as “coat-hay.”

le (take) as “lay.”

meklé (they allowed) as “make-lay.”

per (belly) as “pair.”

ye (even) as “yea.”

The acute accents indicate the stressed syllables and do not alter the quality of the vowels.  They were not marked in the original, and are added here merely to assist readers and not as an accurate record of the coppersmiths’ method of accentuation.

O DÍLO HAI LÉSKE DÚI PHRALÁ.

Sas trin phral; dúi sa godiáver, thai yek dílo.  Thai muló léngo dad.  Thai phendiá léngo dad: “Zha per talé.”  Káno vo meréla, te avél sáko phral kothé léste.  Hai phendiá o phral o báro: “Zha tu, phrála dilíya, k’ amáro dad.”  Liá o phral o dílo yek kash (bórta), hai thodéla po dúmo, hai geló ka pésko dad.  Hai ushtiló lésko dad, hai diá les yek bal kálo.  Káno vo tshinól les, ənklél ándo kódo bal yek gras kálo.

Hai phendiá o əmperáto, kon khodéla ka léski rákli ándo kher, ənkəsto, kodoléske déla.  Thai phendiá o phral o báro: “Háide! phrála, te dikás kon khutéla ka i rákli.”  Thai phendiás o dílo: “Meg me, phrále, te dikáu ye me kothé.”  Hai mardé lə lésko phral; tshi meklé les.  Thai liné le dúi phral le grastén, hai gelé-tar.  Hai liás o phral o dílo o bal, hai kerdiló léske yek gras ándo bal, hai geló-tar.  Aresliá péske do phralén, aresló palál; hai pushlé les: “Kon tu san, manushá?”  Vo si mánush depel-méshti (vityáz).  Hai mardé le zoralés péske phralén; hai geló-tar ka i rákli.  Hai hukló ándo kher ka i rákli.  Hai liás la rakliá péske; hai tshumidá les lésko sókro, le dilés.

Hai tradéla léskro sókro péske dúi zhamutrén (godiáver zhamutré) te mudarén tshirikliá.  Hai aviló-tar o dílo ka pésko sókro əmperáto, thai phendiá o dílo te del les púshka te mudarél ye vo tshirikliá.  Hai la o dílo phagliás e púshka, hai geló-tar péske dúye shogorénsa.  Vo sas o tríto.  Hai pirdé léske shogoré so (? kai) rodiás, hai tshi mudardé kántshi tshirikliá.  Hai o dílo mudardiás le kashtésa but tshirikliá bi-pushkáko.  Hai avilé léske shogoré, hai diklé le tshiriklián; hai den pe dúma: “O dílo mudardiás but tshirikliá, hai amé tshi mudardiám kantsh.”  Hai mangén le tshiriklián kátar o dílo, te del le lénge.  Hai phendiá o dílo: “Kána la te shináv tumáro práshhau (per) le shuriása, atúntshi dav túme le tshirikliá, hai phenáu k’ o əmperáto ke túme mudardián le tshirikliá.”  Hai kána shindiá o práshau léngo, hai del lénge i tshirikliá, hai gelé-tar kheré.

Hai dikliás əmperáto le but tshiriklé, hai lovodíl pésko do zhamutrén.  Hai pushél le dilés: “Tu tshi mu(da)rdán kantsh?”  Hai phenél o dílo le əmperatóske: “Me kudalá tshirikliá me mudardém le.  Tu man tshi patshiás?  Me shindém le shuriása léngo práshau, tha dem lénge le tshirikliá.”  Hai vasdás əmperáto léngo gad, hai dikliá léngo práshau.  E tshiriklí si but láshi.  Hai phendiás əmperáto ke léske zhamutré: “Díle mánush! sóste von meklé te shindiás léngro práshau?

Thai ma nai kantsh.

THE FOOL AND HIS TWO BROTHERS.

There were three brothers; two were wise, and one a fool.  And their father died.  Now their father said: “I am going to take to my bed.”  When he dies, each brother is to come there to him.  And the big brother said: “Do you go, foolish brother, to our father.”  The foolish brother took a stick and put it on his shoulder, and went to his father.  And his father got up, and gave him a black hair.  Whenever he cuts it, there will come out of that hair a black horse.

Now the emperor said that whoever climbs up to his daughter in the house, on horseback, he will give her to that one.  And the big-brother said: “Come along, brother, let us see who will climb up to the girl.”  And the fool said: “Let me, brothers, see whether I, too, can get there.”  And his brothers beat him; they did not let him.  And the two brothers took the horses, and off they went.  But the foolish brother took the hair, and there was made for him a horse from the hair, and off he went.  He overtook his two brothers, he caught them up from behind; and they asked him: “Who are you, man?”  He is a hero.  And he beats them severely, his brothers; and off he went to the girl.  And he climbed up into the house to the girl.  And he took the girl for himself; and his father-in-law kissed him, the fool.

And his father-in-law sends his two sons-in-law (the wise sons-in-law) to kill birds.  And the fool came to his father-in-law, the emperor, and the fool told him to give him a gun that he too may kill birds.  And the fool broke the gun, and went off with his two brothers-in-law.  He was the third.  And his brothers-in-law walked about, whom he sought, and they did not kill any birds at all.  But the fool killed many birds with the stick, without a gun.  And his brothers-in-law came and saw the birds; and they say to themselves: “The fool has killed many birds, and we have killed none.”  And they beg the birds from the fool, that he should give them to them.  And the fool said: “When I cut your bellies with the knife, then will I give you the birds, and I will tell the emperor that you have killed the birds.”  And when he has cut their bellies, he gives them the birds, and they went home.

And the emperor saw the many birds, and praises his two sons-in-law.  And he asks the fool: “Have you killed none?”  And the fool tells the emperor: “It was I who killed those birds.  You do not believe me?  I cut their bellies with the knife, and gave them the birds.”  And the emperor pulled up their shirts, and looked at their bellies.  The birds are very good.  And the emperor said to his sons-in-law: “Silly fellows! why did they let him cut their bellies?”

I have no more.

THE END

Printed by Robert McGee & Co., Ltd., 34, South Castle Street, Liverpool.

NOTE.

Readers who may be sufficiently interested in these strange yet fascinating people to wish to make a closer study of them and their speech, are referred to the able articles published by Mr. E. O. Winstedt and the Rev. F. G. Ackerley in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society.  Information about the work of this Society and the conditions of membership can be obtained by application to the Honorary Secretary, 21A, Alfred Street, Liverpool.

FOOTNOTES.

[v]  It’s not been possible to reproduce the typography of the original.  Instead the various groups have been split into separate tables, with the parents coming first, and the row underneath being their children, and the row underneath that the children of the children.—DP.

[vi]  The author’s thanks are offered to the editors of The Bazaar, The Manchester Guardian, and The Birkenhead News, who have most kindly permitted him to reprint articles from their respective publications, as well as to Mr. Fred. Shaw, Mr. F. A. Cooper, the Central News and Newspaper Illustrations, Ltd., for leave to reproduce their admirable photographs.

[1]  Manchester Guardian, Friday, August 30, 1912.

[7]  Manchester Guardian, Thursday, June 20, 1912.

[13]  Birkenhead News, Wednesday, March 26, 1913.

[32]  From The Bazaar, Pictures, Poetry, Prose, a publication edited by Dr. William E. A. Axon and sold for the benefit of a bazaar held at Manchester in October, 1912, in aid of the United Kingdom Alliance, a temperance organization.

[38]  Birkenhead News, Saturday, March 29, 1913.

[44]  Birkenhead News, Saturday, March 1, 1913.

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