A gillie shoon has its counterpart in the English word “singsong,” as it is beginning to be used now, with this exception:  Romanys have few “fixed” songs.  They have strains which are set, which every one knows, but a gillie shoon means that the performers improvise coninually; and in this sense it is a mystic ceremony, never held at an appointed time, except a “time of Mul-cerus,” which really means a sort of religious wave of feeling, which strikes tribe after tribe, usually in the spring.

“Marda has come back,” Aunty Lee called out to Dora Parse.  No one ever called her by her full name of Marda Lee, because she was a Lee only by courtesy, having been adopted from a distant wagon when both her parents were killed in a thunderstorm.  Marda, wearing the trim tailored skirt and waist that were her usual costume, was putting the big red tablecloth of the “big meals” on the boards.  Dora went quickly toward the young girl and embraced her.

“How is our little scholar?” she asked affectionately.

“I am very well, Dora Parse, but a little tired,” Marda answered.

“And did you receive another paper?”

“Yes.  I passed my exams.  It will save me half a year in Dover.”

“That is good,” Dora Parse replied, although she had only the dimmest idea of what Marda meant.  The young girl knew that.  She had just come from taking a special course in Columbia, and she was feeling the breach between herself and her people to be especially wide.  Because of that, perhaps, she also felt more loving toward all of them than she ever had, and especially toward Dora about whom she knew something that was most alarming.  Dora Parse noted the pale, grave face of her favourite friend with concern.

“Smile, bird of my heart,” she entreated, “for we are to have a gillie shoon.  Sit near me, that I may follow your heaven voice.”

There was no flattery meant.  The Romanys call the soprano “the heaven voice,” the tenor “the sky voice,” the contralto “the earth voice,” and the basso “the sea voice.”  Dora had a really wonderful earth voice, almost as wonderful as Marda’s heaven voice, which would have been remarkable even among opera singers, and the two were known everywhere for their improvisations.  In answer to the remark of the princess, Marda gave her a strange look and said: 

“I shall be near you, Dora Parse.  Do not forget.”

Her manner was certainly peculiar, the princess thought, as she walked away.  But then one never knew what Marda was thinking about.  Her great education set her apart from others.  Any chi who habitually read herself to sleep over those most puro libros, “The Works of William Shakespeare, in Eight Volumes, Complete, with Glossary and Appendix,” must not be judged by ordinary standards.  The princess knew the full title of those puro libros, having painfully spelled it out, all one rainy afternoon, in Marda’s mother’s wagon, with repeated assitance and explanations from Marda, which had left the princess with a headache.