The English Gipsies and Their Language | Page 5

with greater or less fluency. Mr Simeon, in
his "History of the Gipsies," asserts that there is not a tinker or scissors-
grinder in Great Britain who cannot talk this language, and my own
experience agrees with his declaration, to this extent--that they all have

some knowledge of it, or claim to have it, however slight it may be.
So rare is a knowledge of Rommany among those who are not
connected in some way with Gipsies, that the slightest indication of it is
invariably taken as an irrefutable proof of relationship with them. It is
but a few weeks since, as I was walking along the Marine Parade in
Brighton, I overtook a tinker. Wishing him to sharpen some tools for
me, I directed him to proceed to my home, and en route spoke to him in
Gipsy. As he was quite fair in complexion, I casually remarked, "I
should have never supposed you could speak Rommany--you don't
look like it." To which he replied, very gravely, in a tone as of gentle
reproach, "You don't look a Gipsy yourself, sir; but you know you are
one--you talk like one."
Truly, the secret of the Rommany has been well kept in England. It
seems so to me when I reflect that, with the exception of Lavengro and
the Rommany Rye, {5} I cannot recall a single novel, in our language,
in which the writer has shown familiarity with the real life, habits, or
language of the vast majority of that very large class, the itinerants of
the roads. Mr Dickens has set before us Cheap Jacks, and a number of
men who were, in their very face, of the class of which I speak; but I
cannot recall in his writings any indication that he knew that these men
had a singular secret life with their confreres, or that they could speak a
strange language; for we may well call that language strange which is,
in the main, Sanscrit, with many Persian words intermingled. Mr
Dickens, however, did not pretend, as some have done, to specially
treat of Gipsies, and he made no affectation of a knowledge of any
mysteries. He simply reflected popular life as he saw it. But there are
many novels and tales, old and new, devoted to setting forth Rommany
life and conversation, which are as much like the originals as a Pastor
Fido is like a common shepherd. One novel which I once read, is so full
of "the dark blood," that it might almost be called a gipsy novel. The
hero is a gipsy; he lives among his kind--the book is full of them; and
yet, with all due respect to its author, who is one of the most gifted and
best- informed romance writers of the century, I must declare that, from
beginning to end, there is not in the novel the slightest indication of any
real and familiar knowledge of gipsies. Again, to put thieves' slang into

the mouths of gipsies, as their natural and habitual language, has been
so much the custom, from Sir Walter Scott to the present day, that
readers are sometimes gravely assured in good faith that this jargon is
pure Rommany. But this is an old error in England, since the
vocabulary of cant appended to the "English Rogue," published in 1680,
was long believed to be Gipsy; and Captain Grose, the antiquary, who
should have known better, speaks with the same ignorance.
It is, indeed, strange to see learned and shrewd writers, who pride
themselves on truthfully depicting every element of European life, and
every type of every society, so ignorant of the habits, manners, and
language of thousands of really strange people who swarm on the
highways and bye-ways! We have had the squire and the governess, my
lord and all Bohemia--Bohemia, artistic and literary--but where are our
Vrais Bohemiens?--Out of Lavengro and Rommany Rye--nowhere. Yet
there is to be found among the children of Rom, or the descendants of
the worshippers of Rama, or the Doms or Coptic Romi, whatever their
ancestors may have been, more that is quaint and adapted to the
purposes of the novelist, than is to be found in any other class of the
inhabitants of England. You may not detect a trace of it on the roads;
but once become truly acquainted with a fair average specimen of a
Gipsy, pass many days in conversation with him, and above all acquire
his confidence and respect, and you will wonder that such a being, so
entirely different from yourself, could exist in Europe in the nineteenth
century. It is said that those who can converse with Irish peasants in
their own native tongue, form far higher opinions of their appreciation
of the beautiful, and of the elements of humour and pathos