M.

* * * * *

One thing in the foregoing letter is worth noting.  Every remark or incident occurring in it is literally true—­drawn from life—­pur et simple.  It is, indeed, almost the resume of the entire life of many poor Gipsies during the summer.  And I may add that the language in which it is written, though not the “deep” or grammatical Gipsy, in which no English words occur—­as for instance in the Lord’s Prayer, as given by Mr Borrow in his appendix to the Gipsies in Spain {70}—­is still really a fair specimen of the Rommany of the present day, which is spoken at races by cock-shysters and fortune-tellers.

The “Water Village,” from which it is dated, is the generic term among Gipsies for all towns by the sea-side.  The phrase kushto (or kushti), bak!—­“good luck!” is after “Sarishan!” or “how are you?” the common greeting among Gipsies.  The fight is from life and to the life; and the “two or three pounds to pay in the morning for the horses and asses that got impounded,” indicates its magnitude.  To have a beast in pound in consequence of a frolic, is a common disaster in Gipsy life.

During the dictation of the foregoing letter, my Gipsy paused at the word “broken-winded horse,” when I asked him how he could stop the heavy breathing?

“With ballovas (or lard and starch)—­long enough to sell it.”

“But how would you sell a glandered horse?”

Here he described, with great ingenuity, the manner in which he would tool or manage the horse—­an art in which Gipsies excel all the world over—­and which, as Mr Borrow tells us, they call in Spain “de pacuaro,” which is pure Persian.

“But that would not stop the running.  How would you prevent that?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then I am a better graiengro than you, for I know a powder, and with a penny’s worth of it I could stop the glanders in the worst case, long enough to sell the horse.  I once knew an old horse-dealer who paid sixty pounds for a nokengro (a glandered horse) which had been powdered in this way.”

The Gipsy listened to me in great admiration.  About a week afterwards I heard he had spoken of me as follows:—­

“Don’t talk about knowing.  My rye knows more than anybody.  He can cheat any man in England selling him a glandered horse.”

Had this letter been strictly confined to the limits originally intended, it would have spoken only of the sufferings of the family, the want of money, and possibly, the acquisition of a new horse by the brother.  In this case it bears a decided family-likeness to the following letter in the German-Gipsy dialect, which originally appeared in a book entitled, Beytrag zur Rottwellischen Grammatik, oder Worterbuch von der Zigeuner Spracke, Leipzig 1755, and which was republished by Dr A. F. Pott in his stupendous work, Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien.  Halle, 1844.