Part 21

The late Tom Taylor had, while a student at Cambridge, been aficionado, or smitten, with gypsies, and made a manuscript vocabulary of Romany words, which he allowed me to use, and from which I obtained several which were new to me. This fact should make all smart gypsy scholars "take tent" and heed as to believing that they know everything. I have many Anglo-Romany words--purely Hindi as to origin--which I have verified again and again, yet which have never appeared in print. Thus far the Romany vocabulary field has been merely scratched over.

Who that knows London knoweth not Sir Patrick Colquhoun? I made his acquaintance in 1848, when, coming over from student-life in Paris and the Revolution, I was most kindly treated by his family. A glorious, tough, widely experienced man he was even in early youth. For then he already bore the enviable reputation of being the first amateur sculler on the Thames, the first gentleman light-weight boxer in England, a graduate with honors of Cambridge, a Doctor Ph. of Heidelberg, a diplomat, and a linguist who knew Arabic, Persian, and Gaelic, Modern Greek and the Omnium Botherum tongues. They don't make such men nowadays, or, if they do, they leave out the genial element.

Years had passed, and I had returned to London in 1870, and found Sir Patrick living, as of yore, in the Temple, where I once and yet again and again dined with him. It was in the early days of this new spring of English life that we found ourselves by chance at a boat-race on the Thames. It was on the Thames, by his invitation, that I had twenty years before first seen an English regatta, and had a place in the gayly decked, superbly luncheoned barge of his club. It is a curious point in English character that the cleverest people do not realize or understand how festive and genial they really are, or how gayly and picturesquely they conduct their sports. It is a generally accepted doctrine with them that they do this kind of thing better in France; they believe sincerely that they take their own amusements sadly; it is the tone, the style, with the wearily-witty, dreary clowns of the weekly press, in their watery imitations of Thackeray's worst, to ridicule all English festivity and merry-making, as though sunshine had faded out of life, and God and Nature were dead, and in their place a great wind-bag Jesuit-Mallock were crying, in tones tainted with sulphuretted hydrogen, "Ah bah!" Reader mine, I have seen many a fete in my time, all the way from illuminations of Paris to the Khedive's fifteen-million-dollar spree in 1873 and the last grand flash of the Roman-candle carnival of 1846, but for true, hearty enjoyment and quiet beauty give me a merry party on the Thames. Give me, I say, its sparkling waters, its green banks, the joyous, beautiful girls, the hearty, handsome men. Give me the boats, darting like fishes, the gay cries. And oh--oh!--give me the Alsopp's ale in a quart mug, and not a remark save of approbation when I empty it.

I had met Sir Patrick in the crowd, and our conversation turned on gypsies. When living before-time in Roumania, he had Romany servants, and learned a little of their language. Yes, he was inclined to be "affected" into the race, and thereupon we went gypsying. Truly, we had not far to seek, for just outside the crowd a large and flourishing community of the black-blood had set itself up in the pivlioi (cocoa-nut) or kashta (stick) business, and as it was late in the afternoon, and the entire business-world was about as drunk as mere beer could make it, the scene was not unlively. At that time I was new to England, and unknown to every gypsy on the ground. In after-days I learned to know them well, very well, for they were chiefly Coopers and their congeners, who came to speak of me as their rye and own special property or proprietor,--an allegiance which involved on one side an amount of shillings and beer which concentrated might have set up a charity, but which was duly reciprocated on the other by jocular tenures of cocoa-nuts, baskets, and choice and deep words in the language of Egypt.

As we approached the cock-shy, where sticks were cast at cocoa-nuts, a young gypsy chai, whom I learned to know in after-days as Athalia Cooper, asked me to buy some sticks. A penny a throw, all the cocoa-nuts I could hit to be my own. I declined; she became urgent, jolly, riotous, insistive. I endured it well, for I held the winning cards. Qui minus propere, minus prospere. And then, as her voice rose crescendo into a bawl, so that all the Romanys around laughed aloud to see the green Gorgio so chaffed and bothered, I bent me low, and whispered softly in her ear a single monosyllable.

Why are all those sticks dropped so suddenly? Why does Athalia in a second become sober, and stand up staring at me, all her chaff and urgency forgotten. Quite polite and earnest now. But there is joy behind in her heart. This is a game, a jolly game, and no mistake. And uplifting her voice again, as the voice of one who findeth an exceeding great treasure even in the wilderness, she cried aloud,--"It's a Romany rye!"

The spiciest and saltest and rosiest of Sir Patrick's own stories, told after dinner over his own old port to a special conventicle of clergymen about town, was never received with such a roar of delight as that cry of Athalia's was by the Romany clan. Up went three sheers at the find; further afield went the shout proclaiming the discovery of an aristocratic stranger of their race, a rye, who was to them as wheat,--a gypsy gentleman. Neglecting business, they threw down their sticks, and left their cocoanuts to grin in solitude; the dyes turned aside from fortune-telling to see what strange fortune had sent such a visitor. In ten minutes Sir Patrick and I were surrounded by such a circle of sudden admirers and vehement applauders, as it seldom happens to any mortal to acquire--out of Ireland--at such exceedingly short notice and on such easy terms.

They were not particular as to what sort of a gypsy I was, or where I came from, or any nonsense of that sort, you know. It was about cerevisia vincit omnia, or the beery time of day with them, and they cared not for anything. I was extremely welcome; in short, there was poetry in me. I had come down on them by a way that was dark and a trick that was vain, in the path of mystery, and dropped on Athalia and picked her up. It was gypsily done and very creditable to me, and even Sir Patrick was regarded as one to be honored as an accomplice. It is a charming novelty in every life to have the better class of one's own kind come into it, and nobody feels so keenly as a jolly Romany that jucundum nihil est nisi quod ref icit varietas--naught pleases us without variety.

Then and there I drew to me the first threads of what became in after-days a strange and varied skein of humanity. There was the Thames upon a holiday. Now I look back to it, I ask, Ubi sunt? (Where are they all?) Joshua Cooper, as good and earnest a Rom as ever lived, in his grave, with more than one of those who made my acquaintance by hurrahing for me. Some in America, some wandering wide. Yet there by Weybridge still the Thames runs on.

By that sweet river I made many a song. One of these, to the tune of "Waves in Sunlight Dancing," rises and falls in memory like a fitful fairy coming and going in green shadows, and that it may not perish utterly I here give it a place:--

AVELLA PARL O PANI.

Av' kushto parl o pani, Av' kushto mir' akai! Mi kameli chovihani, Avel ke tiro rye!

Shan raklia rinkenidiri, Mukkellan rinkeni se; Kek rakli 'dre i temia Se rinkenidiri mi.

Shan dudnidiri yakka, Mukkelan dudeni; Kek yakk peshel' sa kushti Pa miro kameli zi.

Shan balia longi diri, Mukk 'lende bori 'pre, Kek waveri raklia balia, Te lian man opre.

Yoi lela angustrini, I miri tacheni, Kek wavei mush jinella, Sa dovo covva se.

Adre, adre o doeyav Patrinia pellelan, Kenna yek chumer kerdo O wavero well' an.

Te wenna butidiri, Ke jana sig akoi Sa sig sa yeck si gillo Shan waveri adoi.

Avella parl o pani, Avella sig akai! Mi kamli tani-rani Avell' ke tiro rye!

* * * * *

COME OVER THE RIVER

O love, come o'er the water, O love, where'er you be! My own sweetheart, my darling, Come over the river to me!

If any girls are fairer, Then fairer let them be; No maid in all the country Is half so fair to me.

If other eyes are brighter, Then brighter let them shine; I know that none are lighter Upon this heart of mine.

If other's locks are longer, Then longer let them grow; Hers are the only fish-lines Which ever caught me so.

She wears upon her finger A ring we know so well, And we and that ring only Know what the ring can tell.

From trees into the water Leaves fall and float away, So kisses come and leave us, A thousand in a day.

Yet though they come by thousands, Yet still they show their face; As soon as one has left us Another fills its place.