There is, I think, no rational connection between the BUNG of a barrel and an eye which has been closed by a blow.  One might as well get the simile from a knot in a tree or a cork in a flask.  But when we reflect on the constant mingling of Gipsies with prizefighters, it is almost evident that the word BONGO may have been the origin of it.  A bongo yakko or yak, means a distorted, crooked, or, in fact, a bunged eye.  It also means lame, crooked, or sinister, and by a very singular figure of speech, Bongo Tem or the Crooked Land is the name for hell. {83}

SHAVERS, as a quaint nick-name for children, is possibly inexplicable, unless we resort to Gipsy, where we find it used as directly as possible. Chavo is the Rommany word for child all the world over, and the English term chavies, in Scottish Gipsy shavies, or shavers, leaves us but little room for doubt.  I am not aware to what extent the term “little shavers” is applied to children in England, but in America it is as common as any cant word can be.

I do not know the origin of the French word CLICHY, as applied to the noted prison of that name, but it is perhaps not undeserving the comment that in Continental Gipsy it means a key and a bolt.

I have been struck with the fact that CALIBAN, the monster in “The Tempest,” by Shakespeare, has an appellation which literally signifies blackness in Gipsy.  In fact, this very word, or Cauliban, is given in one of the Gipsy vocabularies for “black.”  Kaulopen or Kauloben would, however, be more correct.

“A regular RUM ’un” was the form in which the application of the word “rum” to strange, difficult, or distinguished, was first introduced to the British public.  This, I honestly believe (as Mr Borrow indicates), came from Rum or Rom, a Gipsy.  It is a peculiar word, and all of its peculiarities might well be assumed by the sporting Gipsy, who is always, in his way, a character, gifted with an indescribable self-confidence, as are all “horsey” men characters, “sports” and boxers, which enables them to keep to perfection the German eleventh commandment, “Thou shall not let thyself be bluffed!”—­i.e., abashed.

PAL is a common cant word for brother or friend, and it is purely Gipsy, having come directly from that language, without the slightest change.  On the Continent it is prala, or pral.  In England it sometimes takes the form “pel.”

TRASH is derived by Mr Wedgwood (Dictionary of English Etymology, 1872) from the old word trousse, signifying the clipping of trees.  But in old Gipsy or in the German Gipsy of the present day, as in the Turkish Rommany, it means so directly “fear, mental weakness and worthlessness,” that it may possibly have had a Rommany origin.  Terror in Gipsy is trash, while thirst is trush, and both are to be found in the Hindustani. Tras, which means thirst and alarm or terror.