The English Gipsies and Their Language eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 247 pages of information about The English Gipsies and Their Language.

The English Gipsies and Their Language eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 247 pages of information about The English Gipsies and Their Language.
in the Daily News of October 19, 1872, speaks of having seen parrots which spoke Rommany among the Gipsies of Epping Forest.  A Gipsy dog is, if we study him, a true character.  Approach a camp:  a black hound, with sleepy eyes, lies by a tent; he does not bark at you or act uncivilly, for that forms no part of his master’s life or plans, but wherever you go those eyes are fixed on you.  By-and-by he disappears—­he is sure to do so if there are no people about the tan—­and then reappears with some dark descendant of the Dom and Domni.  I have always been under the impression that these dogs step out and mutter a few words in Rommany—­their deportment is, at any rate, Rommanesque to the highest degree, indicating a transition from the barbarous silence of doghood to Christianly intelligence.  You may persuade yourself that the Gipsies do not mind your presence, but rest assured that though he may lie on his side with his back turned, the cunning jucko is carefully noting all you do.  The abject and humble behaviour of a poor negro’s dog in America was once proverbial:  the quaint shrewdness, the droll roguery, the demure devilry of a real Gipsy dog are beyond all praise.

The most valuable dogs to the Gipsies are by no means remarkable for size or beauty, or any of the properties which strike the eye; on the contrary, an ugly, shirking, humble-looking, two-and-sixpenny-countenanced cur, if he have but intellect, is much more their affaire.  Yesterday morning, while sitting among the tents of “ye Egypcians,” I overheard a knot of men discussing the merits of a degraded-looking doglet, who seemed as if he must have committed suicide, were he only gifted with sense enough to know how idiotic he looked.  “Would you take seven pounds for him?” asked one.  “Avo, I would take seven bar; but I wouldn’t take six, nor six an’ a half neither.”

The stranger who casts an inquisitive eye, though from afar off, into a Gipsy camp, is at once noted; and if he can do this before the wolf—­I mean the Rom—­sees him, he must possess the gift of fern-seed and walk invisible, as was illustrated by the above-mentioned yesterday visit.  Passing over the bridge, I paused to admire the scene.  It was a fresh sunny morning in October, the autumnal tints were beautiful in golden brown or oak red, while here and there the horse-chestnuts spread their saffron robes, waving in the embraces of the breeze like hetairae of the forest.  Below me ran the silver Thames, and above a few silver clouds—­the belles of the air—­were following its course, as if to watch themselves in the watery winding mirror.  And near the reedy island, at the shadowy point always haunted by three swans, whom I suspect of having been there ever since the days of Odin-faith, was the usual punt, with its elderly gentlemanly gudgeon-fishers.  But far below me, along the dark line of the hedge, was a sight which completed the English character of the scene—­a real Gipsy camp.  Caravans, tents, waggons, asses, smouldering fires; while among them the small forms of dark children could be seen frolicking about.  One Gipsy youth was fishing in the stream from the bank, and beyond him a knot of busy basketmakers were visible.

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The English Gipsies and Their Language from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.