22G Notes upon the Evidence bearing 
digression treating of an ancient tongue yet surviving as a 
spoken language in Great Britain. The facts, as stated by 
Mr. Leland, are so curious that they deserve to be quoted in 
cxtenso :—• 
£ Three or four years ago there was probably not an 
educated man in all Great Britain w T ho was aware of the 
existence in that country of the very singular Celtic language 
known as ‘ Slielta,’ which is peculiar to tinkers, but which is 
extensively understood and spoken by most of the confirmed 
tramps and vagabonds. It is not mentioned in the Slang 
Dictionary ; the English Dialect Society lias ignored it; and 
thus far I believe that I am the only man who has collected or 
published a word or a vocabulary of it. ... I doubt if I ever 
took a walk in London, especially in the slums, without 
meeting men and women who spoke ‘ Slielta ’; and I know at 
this instant of two—I really cannot say promising—little 
boys who sell groundsel at the Marlborough Road Station 
who chatter in it fluently. 
‘ As ‘ Slielta ’ is somewhat mixed with Gypsy, and as the 
two languages are often spoken by the same persons, espe¬ 
cially the half-blood Bomanys, I will here give a brief account 
of my discovery of it. Once at Bath, England, I met a 
tramp who told me that Romany was being supplanted by a 
kind of language like Old Irish, which was difficult to learn. 
A year after, in company with Prof. Palmer, I met with 
another vagabond, who told us the language was called 
‘ Slielta.’ He knew about a hundred words of it, which we 
wrote off at his dictation. This vagabond was a well- 
educated man. Two-years after, in America, I found an Irish 
half-blood gypsy tinker who spoke ‘ Slielta ’ quite perfectly, 
and also Irish, Gaelic, and Welsh. He was absolutely 
certain that ‘ Slielta,’ while it was pure Celtic, was quite 
separate from the other tongues. Its pronunciation is 
strongly Gaelic ; its words are, however, generally unlike it, 
though it has roots in common. My informant, wdio very 
much enlarged my vocabulary, himself pointed out differences 
between the terms in * Slielta ’ and Old Irish. According to 
his account, the tinkers had from very ancient times always 
been a closely allied clan, intermarrying and speaking this 
peculiar language. Their unity began to break up ‘ about 
the time that railroads came in.’ Since then * Slielta’ has 
declined. There are very few r now living who can speak it 
perfectly. 
‘ It has been very ingeniously suggested that as the tinkers 
of Great Britain may be the descendants of the old bronze 
workers, so their tongue may have come down to us from 
