Part 26

"'Red and yellow for Romany, And blue and pink for the Gorgiee.'"

We rose to depart, the old dame offered back to L. her handkerchief, and, on being told to keep it, was greatly pleased. I saw that the way in which it was given had won her heart.

"Did you hear what the old woman said while she was telling your fortune?" asked L., after we had left the tent.

"Now, I think of it, I remember that she or you had hold of my hand, while I was talking with the old man, and he was making merry with my whisky. I was turned away, and around so that I never noticed what you two were saying."

"She penned your dukkerin, and it was wonderful. She said that she must tell it."

And here L. told me what the old dye had insisted on reading in my hand. It was simply very remarkable, and embraced an apparent knowledge of the past, which would make any credulous person believe in her happy predictions of the future.

"Ah, well," I said, "I suppose the dukk told it to her. She may be an eye-reader. A hint dropped here and there, unconsciously, the expression of the face, and a life's practice will make anybody a witch. And if there ever was a witch's eye, she has it."

"I would like to have her picture," said L., "in that lullo diklo [red handkerchief]. She looked like all the sorceresses of Thessaly and Egypt in one, and, as Bulwer says of the Witch of Vesuvius, was all the more terrible for having been beautiful."

Some time after this we went, with Britannia Lee a-gypsying, not figuratively, but literally, over the river into New Jersey. And our first greeting, as we touched the ground, was of good omen, and from a great man, for it was Walt Whitman. It is not often that even a poet meets with three sincerer admirers than the venerable bard encountered on this occasion; so, of course, we stopped and talked, and L. had the pleasure of being the first to communicate to Bon Gualtier certain pleasant things which had recently been printed of him by a distinguished English author, which is always an agreeable task. Blessed upon the mountains, or at the Camden ferryboat, or anywhere, are the feet of anybody who bringeth glad tidings.

"Well, are you going to see gypsies?"

"We are. We three gypsies be. By the abattoir. Au revoir."

And on we went to the place where I had first found gypsies in America. All was at first so still that it seemed if no one could be camped in the spot.

"Se kekno adoi." (There's nobody there.)

"Dordi!" cried Britannia, "Dikkava me o tuv te tan te wardo. [I see a smoke, a tent, a wagon.] I declare, it is my puro pal, my old friend, W."

And we drew near the tent and greeted its owner, who was equally astonished and delighted at seeing such distinguished Romany tani ranis, or gypsy young ladies, and brought forth his wife and three really beautiful children to do the honors. W. was a good specimen of an American-born gypsy, strong, healthy, clean, and temperate, none the worse for wear in out-of-dooring, through tropical summers and terrible winters. Like all American Romanys, he was more straightforward than most of his race in Europe. All Romanys are polite, but many of the European kind are most uncomfortably and unconsciously naive. Strange that the most innocent people should be those who most offend morality. I knew a lady once--Heaven grant that I may never meet with such another!--who had been perfectly educated in entire purity of soul. And I never knew any devergondee who could so shock, shame, and pain decent people as this Agnes did in her sweet ignorance.

"I shall never forget the first day you came to my camp," said W. to Britannia. "Ah, you astonished me then. You might have knocked me down with a feather. And I didn't know what to say. You came in a carriage with two other ladies. And you jumped out first, and walked up to me, and cried, 'Sa'shan!' That stunned me, but I answered, 'Sa'shan.' Then I didn't speak Romanes to you, for I didn't know but what you kept it a secret from the other two ladies, and I didn't wish to betray you. And when you began to talk it as deep as any old Romany I ever heard, and pronounced it so rich and beautiful, I thought I'd never heard the like. I thought you must be a witch."

"Awer me shom chovihani" (but I am a witch), cried the lady. "Mukka men ja adre o tan." (Let us go into the tent.) So we entered, and sat round the fire, and asked news of all the wanderers of the roads, and the young ladies, having filled their pockets with sweets, produced them for the children, and we were as much at home as we had ever been in any salon; for it was a familiar scene to us all, though it would, perhaps, have been a strange one to the reader, had he by chance, walking that lonely way in the twilight, looked into the tent and asked his way, and there found two young ladies--bien mises--with their escort, all very much at their ease, and talking Romany as if they had never known any other tongue from the cradle.

"What is the charm of all this?" It is that if one has a soul, and does not live entirely reflected from the little thoughts and little ways of a thousand other little people, it is well to have at all times in his heart some strong hold of nature. No matter how much we may be lost in society, dinners, balls, business, we should never forget that there is an eternal sky with stars over it all, a vast, mysterious earth with terrible secrets beneath us, seas, mountains, rivers, and forests away and around; and that it is from these and what is theirs, and not from gas-lit, stifling follies, that all strength and true beauty must come. To this life, odd as he is, the gypsy belongs, and to be sometimes at home with him by wood and wold takes us for a time from "the world." If I express myself vaguely and imperfectly, it is only to those who know not the charm of nature, its ineffable soothing sympathy,--its life, its love. Gypsies, like children, feel this enchantment as the older grown do not. To them it is a song without words; would they be happier if the world brought them to know it as words without song, without music or melody? I never read a right old English ballad of sumere when the leaves are grene or the not-broune maid, with its rustling as of sprays quivering to the song of the wode-wale, without thinking or feeling deeply how those who wrote them would have been bound to the Romany. It is ridiculous to say that gypsies are not "educated" to nature and art, when, in fact, they live it. I sometimes suspect that aesthetic culture takes more true love of nature out of the soul than it inspires. One would not say anything of a wild bird or deer being deficient in a sense of that beauty of which it is a part. There are infinite grades, kinds, or varieties of feeling of nature, and every man is perfectly satisfied that his is the true one. For my own part, I am not sure that a rabbit, in the dewy grass, does not feel the beauty of nature quite as much as Mr. Ruskin, and much more than I do.

No poet has so far set forth the charm of gypsy life better than Lenau has done, in his highly-colored, quickly-expressive ballad of "Die drei Zigeuner," of which I here give a translation into English and another into Anglo-American Romany.

THE THREE GYPSIES.

I saw three gypsy men, one day, Camped in a field together, As my wagon went its weary way, All over the sand and heather.

And one of the three whom I saw there Had his fiddle just before him, And played for himself a stormy air, While the evening-red shone o'er him.

And the second puffed his pipe again Serenely and undaunted, As if he at least of earthly men Had all the luck that he wanted.

In sleep and comfort the last was laid, In a tree his cymbal {238} lying, Over its strings the breezes played, O'er his heart a dream went flying.

Ragged enough were all the three, Their garments in holes and tatters; But they seemed to defy right sturdily The world and all worldly matters.

Thrice to the soul they seemed to say, When earthly trouble tries it, How to fiddle, sleep it, and smoke it away, And so in three ways despise it.

And ever anon I look around, As my wagon onward presses, At the gypsy faces darkly browned, And the long black flying tresses.

TRIN ROMANI CHALIA.