“If he could dick sim’s he can shoon,
   He wouldn’t mukk mush or grai jal an the drum.”

“If he could see as well as he can hear, he would not allow man or horse to go on the road.”

The Hindi alphabet Deva Nagari, “the writing of the gods,” is commonly called Nagari.  A common English Gipsy word for writing is “niggering.”  “He niggered sar he could pooker adree a chinamangree.”  The resemblance between nagari and nigger may, it is true, be merely accidental, but the reader, who will ascertain by examination of the vocabulary the proportion of Rommany words unquestionably Indian, will admit that the terms have probably a common origin.

From Sanskrit to English Gipsy may be regarded as a descent “from the Nile to a street-gutter,” but it is amusing at least to find a passable parallel for this simile. Nill in Gipsy is a rivulet, a river, or a gutter.  Nala is in Hindustani a brook; nali, a kennel:  and it has been conjectured that the Indian word indicates that of the great river of Egypt.

All of my readers have heard of the Nautch girls, the so-called bayaderes or dancing-girls of India; but very few, I suppose, are aware that their generic name is remotely preserved in several English Gipsy words.  Nachna in Hindustani means to dance, while the Nats, who are a kind of Gipsies, are generally jugglers, dancers, and musicians.  A natua is one of these Nats, and in English Gipsy nautering means going about with music.  Other attractions may be added, but, as I have heard a Gipsy say, “it always takes music to go a-nauterin’ or nobbin’.”

Naubat in the language of the Hindu Nats signifies “time, turn, and instruments of music sounding at the gate of a great man, at certain intervals.”  “Nobbet,” which is a Gipsy word well known to all itinerant negro minstrels, means to go about with music to get money.  “To nobbet round the tem, bosherin’.”  It also implies time or turn, as I inferred from what I was told on inquiry.  “You can shoon dovo at the wellgooras when yeck rakkers the waver, You jal and nobbet.”  “You can hear that at the fairs when one says to the other, You go and nobbet,” meaning, “It is your turn to play now.”

Nachna, to dance (Hindustani), appears to be reflected in the English Gipsy “nitchering,” moving restlessly, fidgeting and dancing about.  Nobbeting, I was told, “is nauterin’—­it’s all one, rya!”

Paejama in India means very loose trousers; and it is worth noting that Gipsies call loose leggings, trousers, or “overalls,” peajamangris.  This may be Anglo-Indian derived from the Gorgios.  Whether “pea-jacket” belongs in part to this family, I will not attempt to decide.