Part 23

Now, as the old Wesleyan washerwoman turned around in the sunshine, I saw the witch-pointed eye and the glint of the Romany. And then I glanced at her hands, and saw that they had not been long familiar with wash-tubs; for, though clean, they were brown, and had never been blanched with an age of soap-suds. And I spoke suddenly, and said,--

"Can tute rakker Romanes, miri dye?" (Can you speak Romany, my mother?) And she answered, as if bewildered,--

"The Lord forbid, sir, that I should talk any of them wicked languages."

The younger professor's eyes expressed dawning delight. I followed my shot with,--

"Tute needn't be attrash to rakker. Mandy's been apre the drom mi-kokero." (You needn't be afraid to speak. I have been upon the road myself.)

And, still more confused, she answered in English,--

"Why, sir, you be upon the road now!"

"It seems to me, old lady," remarked the younger professor, "that you understand Romany very well for one who has been for forty years in the Methodist communion."

It may be observed that he here confounded washing with worshiping.

The face of the true believer was at this point a fine study. All her confidence had deserted her. Whether she thought we were of her kind in disguise, or that, in the unknown higher world of respectability, there might be gypsies of corresponding rank, even as there might be gypsy angels among the celestial hierarchies, I cannot with confidence assert. About a week ago a philologist and purist told me that there is no exact synonym in English for the word flabbergasted, as it expresses a peculiar state of bewilderment as yet unnamed by scholars, and it exactly sets forth the condition in which our virtuous poverty appeared. She was, indeed, flabbergasted. Cornix scorpum rapuit,--the owl had come down on the rabbits, and lo! they had fangs. I resumed,--

"Now, old lady, here is a penny. You are a very poor person, and I pity you so much that I give you this penny for your poverty. But there is a pocketful where this came from, and you shall have the lot if you'll rakker,"--that is, talk gypsy.

And at that touch of the Ithuriel spear the old toad flashed up into the Romany devil, as with gleaming eyes and a witch-like grin she cried in a mixture of gypsy and tinker languages,--

"Gents, I'll have tute jin when you tharis mandy you rakker a reg'lar fly old bewer." Which means, "Gentlemen, I'll have you know, when you talk to me, you talk to a reg'lar shrewd old female thief."

The face of the elder professor was a study of astonishment for Lavater. His fingers relaxed their grasp of the shilling, his hand was drawn from his pocket, and his glance, like Bill Nye's, remarked: "Can this be?" He tells the story to this day, and always adds, "I never was so astonished in my life." But the venerable washerwoman was also changed, and, the mask once thrown aside, she became as festive as a witch on the Brocken. Truly, it is a great comfort to cease playing a part, particularly a pious one, and be at home and at ease among your like; and better still if they be swells. This was the delight of Anderson's ugly duck when it got among the swans, "and, blest sensation, felt genteel." And to show her gratitude, the sorceress, who really seemed to have grown several shades darker, insisted on telling our fortunes. I think it was to give vent to her feelings in defiance of the law that she did this; certain it was that just then, under the circumstances, it was the only way available in which the law could be broken. And as it was, indeed, by heath and hill that the priestess of the hidden spell bade the Palmer from over the sea hold out his palm. And she began in the usual sing-song tone, mocking the style of gypsy fortune-tellers, and satirizing herself. And thus she spoke,--

"You're born under a lucky star, my good gentleman, and you're a married man; but there's a black-eyed young lady that's in love with you."

"Oh, mother of all the thieves!" I cried, "you've put the dukkerin on the wrong man. I'm the one that the dark girls go after."

"Yes, my good gentleman. She's in love with you both."

"And now tell my fortune!" I exclaimed, and with a grim expression, casting up my palm, I said,--

"Pen mengy if mandy'll be bitchade padel for chorin a gry, or nasherdo for merin a gav-mush." (Tell me if I am to be transported for stealing a horse, or hung for killing a policeman.)

The old woman's face changed. "You'll never need to steal a horse. The man that knows what you know never need be poor like me. I know who you are now; you're not one of these tourists. You're the boro Romany rye [the tall gypsy gentleman]. And go your way, and brag about it in your house,--and well you may,--that Old Moll of the Roads couldn't take you in, and that you found her out. Never another rye but you will ever say that again. Never."

And she went dancing away in the sunshine, capering backwards along the road, merrily shaking the pennies in her hand for music, while she sang something in gypsy,--witch to the last, vanishing as witches only can. And there came over me a feeling as of the very olden time, and some memory of another witch, who had said to another man, "Thou art no traveler, Great master, I know thee now;" and who, when he called her the mother of the giants, replied, "Go thy way, and boast at home that no man will ever waken me again with spells. Never." That was the parting of Odin and the Vala sorceress, and it was the story of oldest time; and so the myth of ancient days becomes a tattered parody, and thus runs the world away to Romanys and rags--when the gods are gone.

When I laughed at the younger professor for confounding forty years in the church with as many at the wash-tub, he replied,--

"Cleanliness is with me so near to godliness that it is not remarkable that in my hurry I mistook one for the other."

So we went on and climbed Cader Idris, and found the ancient grave of rocks in a mystic circle, whose meaning lies buried with the last Druid, who would perhaps have told you they were--

"Seats of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand But wrocht by Nature as it ane house had bene For Nymphes, goddis of floudes and woodis grene."

And we saw afar the beautiful scene, "where fluddes rynnys in the foaming sea," as Gawain Douglas sings, and where, between the fresh water and salt, stands a village, even where it stood in earliest Cymric prehistoric dawn, and the spot where ran the weir in which the prince who was in grief because his weir yielded no fish, at last fished up a poet, even as Pharaoh's daughter fished out a prophet. I shall not soon forget that summer day, nor the dream-like panorama, nor the ancient grave; nor how the younger professor lay down on the seat of stone nevir hewin with mennes hand, and declared he had a nap,--just enough to make him a poet. To prove which he wrote a long poem on the finding of Taliesin in the nets, and sent it to the Aberystwith newspaper; while I, not to be behindhand, wrote another, in imitation of the triplets of Llydwarch Hen, which were so greatly admired as tributes to Welsh poetry that they were forthwith translated faithfully into lines of consonants, touched up with so many w's that they looked like saws; and they circulated even unto Llandudno, and, for aught I know, may be sung at Eistedfodds, now and ever, to the twanging of small harps,--in soecula saeculorum. Truly, the day which had begun with a witch ended fitly enough at the tomb of a prophet poet.

III. THE GYPSIES AT ABERYSTWITH.

Aberystwith is a little fishing-village, which has of late years first bloomed as a railway-station, and then fruited into prosperity as a bathing-place. Like many parvenus, it makes a great display of its Norman ancestor, the old castle, saying little about the long centuries of plebeian obscurity in which it was once buried. This castle, after being woefully neglected during the days when nobody cared for its early respectability, has been suddenly remembered, now that better times have come, and, though not restored, has been made comely with grass banks, benches, and gravel walks, reminding one of an Irish grandfather in America, taken out on a Sunday with "the childher," and looking "gintale" in the clean shirt and whole coat unknown to him for many a decade in Tipperary. Of course the castle and the wealth, or the hotels and parade, are well to the fore, or boldly displayed, as Englishly as possible, while the little Welsh town shrinks quietly into the hollow behind. And being new to prosperity, Aberystwith is also a little muddled as to propriety. It would regard with horror the idea of allowing ladies and gentlemen to bathe together, even though completely clad; but it sees nothing out of the way when gentlemen in pre-fig-leaf costume disport themselves, bathing just before the young ladies' boarding-school and the chief hotel, or running joyous races on the beach. I shall never forget the amazement and horror with which an Aberystwithienne learned that in distant lands ladies and gentlemen went into the water arm in arm, although dressed. But when it was urged that the Aberystwith system was somewhat peculiar, she replied, "Oh, that is a very different thing!"