140 



MR. BORRO W ON THE GIPSIES. 



my parlour, and at once inquired if he 

 could speak the Tinkler language ? He 

 applied to my question the construction 

 that I doubted if he could, and the con- 

 sequences which that would imply, and 

 answered firmly, " Yes, sir ; I have been 

 bred in that line all my life." " Will 

 you allow me," said I, " to write down 

 your words ? " " O yes, sir ; you are 

 welcome to as many as you please." 

 " Have you names for everything, and 

 can you converse on any subject, in that 

 language ? " " Yes, sir ; we can con- 

 verse, and have a name for everything 1 , 

 in our own speech" (p. 304). Like the Gip- 

 sy woman with wh&m I had no less than 

 seven years' trouble ere getting any of 

 her speech, this Gipsy lad became, in 

 about an hour's time, very restless, and 

 impatient to be gone. The true state 

 of things, in this instance, dawned upon 

 his mind. He now became much 

 alarmed, and would neither allow me 

 to write down his songs, nor stop to 

 give me any more of his words and sen- 

 tences. His terror was only exceeded 

 by his mortification ; and on parting 

 with me, he said that, had he at first 

 been aware I was unacquainted with 

 his speech, he would not have given me 

 a word of it (p. 306). 



Like the Gipsy chief, in presence of 

 Dr. Bright, at Csurgo, in Hungary, she 

 in a short time became impatient ; and, 

 apparently when a certain hour arrived, 

 she insisted upon being allowed to de- 

 part. She would not submit to be ques- 

 tioned any longer (p. 298). 



This family, like all their race, now be- 

 came much alarmed at their communica- 

 tions ; and it required considerable trou- 

 ble on my part to allay their fears. The 

 old man was in the greatest anguish of 

 mind at having committed himself at all 

 relative to his speech. I was very sorry 

 for his distress, and renewed my pro- 

 mise not to publish his name, or place 

 of residence, assuring him he had noth- 

 ing to fear (p. 317). 



When I inquired of the eldest girl the 

 English of Jucal, she did not, at first, 

 catch the sound of the word ; but her 

 little sister looked up in her face and 

 said to her, " Don't you hear ? That is 

 dog. It is dog he means." The other 

 then added, with a downcast look, and 

 a melancholy tone of voice, " You gentle- 

 men understand all languages now-a- 

 days " (p. 293). 



A gentleman, an acquaintance of 



mine, was in my presence while the chil- 

 dren were answering my words ; and as 

 the subject of their language was new 

 to him, I made some remarks to him in 

 their hearing, relative to their tribe, 

 which greatly displeased them. One of 

 the boys called out to me, with much 

 bitterness of expression, "You are a 

 Gipsy yourself, sir, or you never could 

 have got these words " (p. 293). 



It is a thing well-nigh impossible, to 

 get a respectable Scottish Gipsy to ac- 

 knowledge even a word of the Gipsy 

 language. On meeting with a respect- 

 able Scotchman, I will call him in a 

 company, lately, I was asked by him, 

 "Are ye a* Tinklers ? " " We're travel- 

 lers," I replied. " But who is he ? " he 

 continued, pointing to my acquaintance. 



Going up to him, I whispered, " His 

 dade is a baurie grye-femler '' (his father 

 is a great horse-dealer) ; and he made 



for the door, as if a bee had got into 

 his ear. But he came back ; oh, yes, 

 he came back. There was a mysterious 

 whispering of " pistols and coffee," at 

 another time (Ed., p. 432). 



Publish their language ! Give to the 

 world that which they had kept to them- 

 selves, with so much solicitude, so much 

 tenacity, so much fidelity, for three hun- 

 dred and fifty years ! A parallel to 

 such a phenomenon cannot be found 

 within the whole range of history 

 (p. 318). 



Smith, in his Hebrew People, writes : 

 " The Jews had almost lost, in the 

 seventy years' captivity, their original 

 language ; that was now become dead ; 

 and they spoke a jargon made up of 

 their own language and that of the 

 Chaldeans, and other nations with 

 whom they had mingled. Formerly, 

 preachers had only explained subjects ; 

 now, they were obliged to explain 

 words ; words which, in the sacred 

 code, were become obsolete, equivocal, 

 dead" (Ed., p. 318). 



When we consider, on strictly philo- 

 sophical principles, the phenomenon of 

 the perpetuation of the Gipsy language, 

 we will find that there is nothing so 

 very wonderful about it after all. The 

 race have always associated closely 

 and exclusively together ; and their lan- 

 guage has become to them like the 

 worship of a household god hereditary, 

 and is spoken among themselves under 

 the severest of discipline (Ed., p. 24). 



