תמונות בעמוד
PDF
ePub

Connie's not quite so young as she was, no doubt, but faithfulness never grows old;
And were beauty the only fuel of love, the warmest hearth soon would grow cold.
Once you thought that she had not traveled, and knew neither the world nor life:
Not to roam, but to deem her own hearth the whole world, that's what a man wants in a wife.

I'm sure you'd be happy with Connie, at least if your own heart's in the right place.
She will bring you nor power, nor station, nor wealth, but she never will bring you disgrace.
They say that the moon, though she moves round the sun, never turns to him morning or night
But one face of her sphere, and it must be because she's so true a satellite;
And Connie, if into your orbit once drawn by the sacrament sanctioned above,
Would revolve round you constantly, only to show the one-sided aspect of love.

You will never grow rich by the land, I own; but, if Connie and you should wed,
It will feed your children and household too, as it you and your fathers fed.
The seasons have been unkindly of late; there's a wonderful cut of hay,
But the showers have washed all the goodness out, till it's scarcely worth carting away.
There's a fairish promise of barley-straw, but the ears look rusty and slim:
I suppose God intends to remind us thus that something depends on him.

God neither progresses nor changes, dear, as I once heard you rashly say:
Men's schools and philosophies come and go, but his word doth not pass away.
We worship him here as we did of old, with simple and reverent rite:

In the morning we pray him to bless our work, to forgive our transgressions at night.
To keep his commandments, to fear his name, and what should be done, to do---
That's the beginning of wisdom still; I suspect 'tis the end of it too.

You must see the new-fangled machines at work, that harrow, and thresh, and reap;
They're wonderful quick, there's no mistake, and they say in the end they're cheap.
But they make such a clatter, and seem to bring the rule of the town to the fields:
There's something more precious in country life than the balance of wealth it yields.
But that seems going; I'm sure I hope that I shall be gone before:
Better poor sweet silence of rural toil than the factory's opulent roar.

They're a mighty saving of labor, though; so at least I hear them tell,
Making fewer hands and fewer mouths, but fewer hearts as well :

They sweep up so close that there's nothing left for widows and bairns to glean;
If machines are growing like men, man seems to be growing a half machine.
There's no friendliness left; the only tie is the wage upon Saturday nights:
Right used to mean duty; you'll find that now there's no duty, but only rights.

Still stick to your duty, my dear, and then things can not go much amiss.
What made folks happy in bygone times will make them happy in this.
There's little that's called amusement here; but why should the old joys pall?
Has the blackbird ceased to sing loud in spring? Has the cuckoo forgotten to call?
Are bleating voices no longer heard when the cherry-blossoms swarm?
And have home and children and fireside lost one gleam of their ancient charm?

Come, let us go round: to the farmyard first, with its litter of fresh-strewn straw,
Past the ash-tree dell, round whose branching tops the young rooks wheel and caw;
Through the ten-acre mead that was mown the first, and looks well for aftermath,
Then round by the beans-I shall tire by then-and home up the garden-path,
Where the peonies hang their blushing heads, where the larkspur laughs from its stalk-
With my stick and your arm I can manage. But see! There, Connie comes up the walk.

ALFRED AUSTIN (Cornhill Magazine).

IT

THE RUSSIAN GYPSIES.

T is, I believe, seldom observed that the world is so far from having quitted the romantic or sentimental for the purely scientific that, even in science itself, whatever is best set forth, owes half its charm to something delicately and distantly reflected from the forbidden land of fancy. The greatest reasoners and writers on the driest topics are still "genial," because no man ever yet had true genius who did not feel the inspiration of poetry, or mystery, or at least of the unusual. We are not rid of the marvelous or curious, and, if we have not yet a science of curiosities, it is apparently because it lies for the present distributed about among the other sciences, just as in small museums illuminated manuscripts are to be found in happy family union with stuffed birds or minerals, and with watches and snuff-boxes, once the property of their late majesties the Georges. Until such a science is formed, the new one of ethnology may appropriately serve for it, since it of all presents most attraction to him who is politely called the general reader, but who should in truth be called the man who reads the most for mere amusement. For Ethnology deals with such delightful material as primeval kumbo-cephalic skulls, and appears to her votaries arrayed, not in silk attire, but in strange fragments of leather from ancient Irish graves, or in cloth from Lacustrine villages. She glitters with the quaint jewelry of the first Italian race, whose ghosts, if they wail over the "find," "speak in a language man knows no more." She charms us with etchings or scratchings of mammoths on mammoth-bone, and invites us to explore mysterious caves, to picnic among megalithic monuments, and speculate on pictured Scottish stones. In short, she engages man to investigate his ancestry, a pursuit which presents charms even to the illiterate, and asks us to find out facts concerning works of art which have interested every body in every age.

Ad interim, before the science of curiosities is segregated from that of ethnology, I may observe that one of the marvels in the latter is that, among all the subdivisions of the human race, there are only two which have been, apparently from their beginning, set apart, marked and cosmopolite, ever living among others and yet reserved unto themselves. These are the Jew and the gypsy. From time whereof history hath naught to the contrary, the Jew was, as he himself holds in simple faith, the first man. Red Earth, Adam, was a Jew, and the old claim to be the chosen people has been apparently confirmed by the extraordinary genius and influence

of the race, and by their boundless wanderings. Go where we may, we find the Jew-has any other wandered so far?

Yes, one. For wherever Jew has gone, there, too, is the gypsy. The Jew may be more ancient, but even the authentic origin of the Rommany is lost in ancient Aryan record, and, strictly speaking, his is a prehistoric caste. Among the hundred and fifty wandering tribes of India and Persia, some of them Turanian, some Aryan, and others mixed, it is of course impossible to identify the exact origin of the European gypsy. One thing we know, that from the tenth to the twelfth century, and probably much later on, India threw out from her northern half a vast multitude of very troublesome indwellers. What with Buddhist, Brahman, and Mohammedan wars-invaders outlawing invaded—the number of out-castes became alarmingly great. To these the Jats, who, according to Captain Burton, constituted the main stock of our gypsies, contributed perhaps half their entire nation. Excommunication among the Indian professors of transcendental benevolence meant social death and inconceivable cruelty. Now there are many historical indications that these outcasts, before leaving Indía, became gypsies, which was the most natural thing in a country where such classes had already existed in very great numbers from early times. And from one of the lowest castes, which still exists in India, and is known as the Dom,* the emigrants to the West probably derived their name and several characteristics. The Dom burns the dead, handles corpses, skins beasts, and performs other functions, all of which were appropriated by, and became peculiar to, gypsies in several countries in Europe, notably in Denmark and Holland, for several centuries after their arrival there. The Dom of the present day also sells baskets, and wanders with a tent ; he is altogether gypsy. It is remarkable that he, living in a hot climate, drinks ardent spirits to excess, being by no means a “temperate Hindoo,” and that even in extreme old age his hair seldom turns white, which is a noted peculiarity among our own gypsies of pure blood. I know and have lately seen a gypsy woman, nearly a hun

*From the observations of Frederic Drew ("The Northern Barrier of India," London, 1877) there can be little doubt that the Dom, or Dûm, belong to the preAryan race or races of India. "They are described in the Vedas as Sopukh, or Dog-Eaters" ("Types of India"). I have somewhere met with the statement that the Dom was pre-Aryan, but allowed to rank as Hindoo on account of services rendered to the early conquerors.

dred years old, whose curling hair is black, or hardly perceptibly changed. It is extremely probable that the Dom, mentioned as a caste even in the Vedas, gave the name to the Rom. The Dom calls his wife a Domni, and being a Dom is "Domnipana." In English gypsy, the same words are expressed by Rom, romni, and romnipen. D, be it observed, very often changes to r in its transfer from Hindoo to Rommany. Thus doi, "a wooden spoon," becomes in gypsy roi —a term known to every tinker in London. But, while this was probably the origin of the word Rom, there were subsequent reasons for its continuance. Among the Cophts, who were more abundant in Egypt when the first gypsies went there, the word for man is romi, and after leaving Greece and the Levant, or Rum, it would be natural for the wanderers to be called Rumi. But the Dom was in all probability the parent stock of the gypsy race, though the latter received vast accessions from many other sources. I call attention to this, since it has always been held, and sensibly enough, that the mere fact of the gypsies speaking Hindi-Persian, or the oldest type of Urdu, including many Sanskrit terms, does not prove an Indian or Aryan origin, any more than the English spoken by American negroes proves a Saxon descent. But if the Rom can be identified with the Dom-and the circumstantial evidence, it must be admitted, is very strong-but little remains to seek, since, according to the Vedas, the Doms are Hindoo.*

Among the tribes whose union formed the European gypsy was, in all probability, that of the Nats, consisting of singing and dancing girls, and male musicians and acrobats. Of these, we are told that not less than ten thousand lute-players and minstrels, under the name of Luri, were once sent to Persia as a present to a king, whose land was then without music or song. This word Luri is still preserved. The saddle-makers and leather-workers of Persia are called Tsingani; they are, in their way, low caste, and a kind of gypsy, and it is supposed that from them are possibly derived the names Zingan, Zigeuner, Zingaro, etc., by which gypsies are known in so many lands. From Mr. Arnold's late work on "Persia," the reader may learn that the Eeli, who constitute the majority of the inhabitants of the southern portion of that country, are Aryan nomads, and apparently gypsies. There are also in India the Banjari, or wandering merchants, and many other tribes, all spoken of as gypsies by those who know them.

* Since writing this passage, I have met with a Mohammedan Hindoo who had lived with Indian gypsies. He confirmed in many ways his assertion that the real gypsies of India call themselves and their language "Rom."

As regards the great admixture of Persian with Hindi in good Rommany, it is quite unmistakable, though I can recall no writer who has attached sufficient importance to a fact which identifies gypsies with what is almost preeminently the land of gypsies. I once had the pleasure of taking a Nile journey in company with Prince S, a Persian, and in most cases, when I asked my friend what this or that gypsy word meant, he gave me its correct meaning, after a little thought, and then added, in his imperfect English: "What for you want to know such word ?-that old word—that no more used. Only common people-old peasant-woman-use that word-gentleman no want to know him.” But I did want to know "him" very much. I can remember that one night when our bon prince had thus held forth, we had dancing girls, or Almeh, on board, and one was very young and pretty. I was told that she was gypsy, but she spoke no Rommany. Yet her panther eyes, and serpent smile, and beauté du diable were not Egyptian, but of the Indian, kalo-ratt—the dark blood, which, once known, is known for ever. I forgot her, however, for a long timeuntil the other night in Moscow, when she was recalled by dancing and smiles, of which I will speak anon.

I was sitting one day by the Thames, in a gypsy hut, when its master, Joshua Cooper, now dead, pointing to a swan, asked me for its name in gypsy. I replied, “Boro pappin."

"No, rya. Boro pappin is 'a big goose.' Sákkú is the real gypsy word. It is very old, and very few Rommany know it."

A few days after, when my Persian friend was dining with me at the Langham Hotel, I asked him if he knew what Sákkú meant? By way of reply, he, not being able to recall the English word, waved his arms in wonderful pantomime, indicating some enormous winged creature, and then, looking into the distance, and pointing as if to some far-vanishing object, as boys do when they declaim Bryant's address to a waterfowl, replied:

“Sákkú―one ver' big bird, like one swen— but he not swen. He like the man who carry too much water up stairs * his head in Constantinople. That bird all same that man. He sakkia all same wheel that you see get water up stairs in Egypt."

This was explanatory but far from satisfactory. The prince, however, was mindful of me, and the next day I received from the Persian embassy the word elegantly written in Persian, with the translation, a pelican." Then it was all

"

* Up stairs in this gentleman's dialect signified up or upon, like top-side in Pidgin-English.

clear enough, for the pelican bears water in the bag under its bill. When the gypsies came to Europe they named animals after those which resembled them in Asia. A dog they called juckal from a jackal, and a swan sákkú, or pelican, because it so greatly resembles it. The Hindoo bandarus, or monkey, they have changed to bombaros, but why Tom Cooper should declare that it is pugasah, or pukkus-asa, I do not know. Perhaps some pundit may enlighten me. As little can I conjecture the meaning of the prefix mod, or mode, which I learned on the road near Weymouth from a very ancient tinker, a man so battered, tattered, seamed, riven, and wrinkled, that he looked like a petrifaction. He had so bad a barrow, or wheel, that I wondered what he could do with it, and regarded him as the very poorest man I had ever seen in England, until his mate came up, an alter ego, so excellent in antiquity, wrinkles, knobbiness, and rags, that he surpassed the vagabond pictures, not only of Callot, Doré, and Goya, but even the unknown Spanish maker of a picture, which I met with but yesterday for sale, and which for infinite poverty defied anything I ever saw encanvased. These poor men, who seemed at first amazed that I should speak to them at all, when I spoke Rommany at once called me "brother." When I asked the younger his name, he sank his voice to a whisper, and, with a furtive air, said:

"Kamlo-Lovel, you know."

"What do you call yourself in the way of business?" I asked. "Katsamengro, I suppose." Now Katsamengro means scissors-master. "That is a very good word. But chivd is deeper."

[ocr errors]

Chivó means a knife-man?"

"Yes. But the deepest of all, master, is Mod-angaréngro. For you see that the right word for coals isn't wongur, as Rommanies generally say, but Angdra."

Now angára, as Pott and Benfey indicate, is pure Sanskrit for coals, and angaréngro is a worker in coals, but what mod means I know not, and should be glad to be told.

I think it will be found difficult to identify the European gypsy with any one stock of the wandering races of India. Among those who left that country were men of different castes and different color, varying from the pure northern invader to the negro-like southern Indian. In the Danubian principalities there are at the present day three kinds of gypsies, one very dark and barbarous, another light brown and more intelligent, and the third, or élite, of yellow-pine complexion, as American boys characterize the hue of quadroons. Even in England there are straight-haired and curly-haired Rommanies, the two indicating not a difference resulting from

white admixture, but entirely different original stocks.

It will, I trust, be admitted, even from these remarks, that Rommanology, or that subdivision of ethnology which treats of gypsies, is both practical and curious. It deals with the only race save one which has long penetrated into every village which European civilization has ever touched. He who speaks Rommany need be a stranger in few lands, for on every road in Europe and America, in most of Asia, and even in Northern Africa, he will meet those with whom a very few words may at once establish a peculiar understanding. For, of all things understood by this widely spread brotherhood, the chief is this that he who knows the jib, or language, knows the ways, and that no one ever attained these without treading strange paths, and threading mysteries unknown to the Gorgios, or Philistines. And if he who speaks wears a good coat, and appears a gentleman, let him rest assured that he will receive the greeting which all poor relations in all lands extend to those of their kin who have risen in life. Some of them, it is true, manifest the winsome affection which is based on great expectations, a sentiment largely developed among British gypsies; but others are honestly proud that a gentleman is not ashamed of them. Of this latter class were the musical gypsies, whom I met in Russia during the winter of 1876-'77, and some of them again in Paris during the Exposition of 1878.

ST. PETErsburg.

THERE are gypsies and gypsies in the world, for there are the wanderers on the roads and the secret dwellers in towns; but even among the aficionados, or Rommany Ryes, by whom I mean those scholars who are fond of studying life and language from the people themselves, very few have dreamed that there exist communities of gentlemanly and ladylike gypsies of art, like the Bohemians of Murger and George Sand, but differing from them in being real "Bohemians" by race. I confess that it had never occurred to me that there was anywhere in Europe at the present day, least of all in the heart of great and wealthy cities, a class or caste devoted entirely to art, well-to-do or even rich, refined in manners, living in comfortable homes, the women dressing elegantly; and yet with all this obliged to live by law, as did the Jews once, in Ghettos or in a certain street, and regarded as outcasts and cagôts. I had heard there were gypsies in Russian cities, and expected to find them like the kerengri of England or Germany-house-dwellers somewhat reformed from the roads, but still reckless semi-outlaws, full of tricks and lies; in

a word, gypsies, as the world understands the term. And I certainly anticipated in Russia something queer-the gentleman who speaks Rommany seldom fails to achieve at least that, whenever he gets into an unbroken haunt, an unhunted forest, where the Rommany Rye is unknown-but nothing like what I really found. A recent writer on Russia* speaks with great contempt of these musical Rommanies, with their girls attired in dresses by Worth, as compared to the free wild outlaws of the steppes who, with dark, ineffable glances, meaning nothing more than a wild-cat's, steal poultry, and who, wrapped in dirty sheepskins, proudly call themselves Mi dvorane Polaivii, Lords of the Waste. The gypsies of Moscow, who appeared to me the most interesting I have ever met, because most remote from the Surrey ideal, seemed to Mr. Johnstone to be a kind of second-rate Rommanies or gypsies, gypsified for exhibition, like Mr. Barnum's negro minstrel, who, though black as a coal by nature, was requested to put on burnt cork and a wig, that the audience might realize that they were getting a thoroughly good imitation. Mr. Johnstone's own words are that a gypsy maiden in a long queue, "which perhaps came from Worth," is "horrible"; "corruptio optimi pessima est"; and he further compares such a damsel to a negro with a cocked hat and spurs. As the only negro thus arrayed who presents himself to my memory was one who lay dead on the battle-field in Tennessee, after one of the bravest resistances in history, and in which he and his men, not having moved, were extended "stark, serried lines" ("ten cart-loads of dead niggers," said to me a man who helped to bury them)—I may be excused for not seeing the wit of the comparison. As for the gypsies of Moscow, I can only say that, after meeting them in public, and penetrating to their homes, where I was received as one of themselves, even as a Rommany, I found that this opinion of them was erroneous, and that they were altogether original in spite of being clean, deeply interesting although honest, and a quite attractive class in most respects, notwithstanding their ability to read and write. Against Mr. Johnstone's impressions, I may set the straightforward and simple result of the experiences of Mr. W. R. Ralston. "The gypsies of Moscow," he says, "are justly celebrated for their picturesqueness and for their wonderful capacity for music. All who have heard their women sing are enthusiastic about the weird witchery of the performance."

When I arrived in St. Petersburg, one of my first inquiries was for gypsies. To my astonish

* "A Trip up the Volga to the Fair of Nijni-Novgorod." By H. A. Munro Butler Johnstone. 1875.

ment, they were hard to find. They are not allowed to live in the city; and I was told that the correct and proper way to see them would be to go at night to certain cafés, half an hour's sleighride from the town, and listen to their concerts. What I wanted, however, was not a concert, but a conversation; not gypsies on exhibition, but gypsies at home-and everybody seemed to be of the opinion that those of "Samarcand" and "Dorot" were entirely got up for effect. In fact, I heard the opinion hazarded that, even if they spoke Rommany, I might depend upon it they had acquired it simply to deceive. One gentleman, who had, however, been much with them in other days, assured me that they were of pure blood, and had an inherited language of their own. "But," he added, "I am sure you will not understand it. You may be able to talk with those in England, but not with ours, because there is not a single word in their language which resembles anything in English, German, French, Latin, Greek, or Italian. I can only recall," he added, one phrase. I don't know what it means, and I think it will puzzle you. It is me kamāva tut."

[ocr errors]

If I experienced internal laughter at hearing this, it was for a good reason, which I can illustrate by an anecdote: "I have often observed, when I lived in China," said Mr. Hoffman Atkinson, author of "A Vocabulary of the Yokohama Dialect," "that most young men, particularly the gay and handsome ones, generally asked me about the third day after their arrival in the country, the meaning of the Pidgin-English phrase, 'You makee too muchee lov-lov-pidgin.' Investigation always established the fact that the inquirer had heard it from a pretty China girl.' Now lov-pidgin means love, and me kamāva tut is perfectly good gypsy anywhere for 'I love you,' and a very soft expression it is, recalling kamadeva, the Indian Cupid, whose bow is strung with bees, and whose name has two strings to it, since it means, both in Gypsy and Sanskrit, LoveGod, or the god of love. It's kāma-duvel, you know, rya, if you put it as it ought to be,' said Old Windsor Froggie to me once; but I think that Kāma-devil would by rights come nearer to it, if Cupid is what you mean.''

I referred the gypsy difficulty to a Russian gentleman of high position, to whose kindness I had been greatly indebted while in St. Petersburg. He laughed.

"Come with me to-morrow night to the cafés, and see the gypsies; I know them well, and can promise that you shall talk with them as much as you like. Once, in Moscow, I got together all in the town-perhaps a hundred and fifty-to entertain the American Minister, Curtin. That was a very hard thing to do—there was so much

« הקודםהמשך »