'Tawno Chikno,' said Jasper, 'which means the Small One; we
call him such because he is the biggest man of all our nation.
You say he is handsome; that is not the word, brother; he's the
beauty of the world. Women run wild at the sight of Tawno. An
earl's daughter, near London--a fine young lady with diamonds
round her neck--fell in love with Tawno. I have seen that lass
on a heath, as this may be, kneel down to Tawno, clasp his
feet, begging to be his wife--or anything else--if she might go
with him. But Tawno would have nothing to do with her.'"
A shrewd, sensible, and well-behaved fellow, this Tawno, in so far at
least as the ladies are concerned. When a horse was to be picked up on
the sly, he does not seem to have been so particular. The gipsies being
encamped near the town where the author was then residing, an intimacy
is struck up between them; Mr Borrow takes lessons in Rommany from the
respectable Jasper, very much to the disgust of his mother-in-law, a
certain Mrs Herne, who "comes of the hairy ones," and who ultimately
secedes from the kraal, rather than receive the stranger into the
tribe. The others entertain no such scruples.
"I went on studying the language, and, at the same time, the
manners of these strange people. My rapid progress in the
former astonished while it delighted Jasper. 'We'll no longer
call you Sap-engro, brother,' said he, 'but rather Lavengro,
which in the language of the gorgios meaneth Word-master.'
'Nay, brother,' said Tawno Chikno, with whom I had become very
intimate, 'you had better call him Cooro-mengro; I have put on
_the gloves_ with him, and find him a pure fist-master; I like
him for that, for I am a Cooro-mengro myself, and was born at
Brummagem.'"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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