Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvementSmith, George
History
Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement
Smith, George
Romanies -- Great Britain
I will now, as we pass along, endeavour to show what the actual condition
of the Gipsies has been in the past, and what it is at the present time,
which, in some cases, has been touched upon previously, with reference to
the moral, social, and religious traits in their character that go to the
making up of a MAN—the noblest work of God. The peculiar fascinating
charms about them, conjured up by ethnologists and philologists, I will
leave for those learned gentlemen to deal with as they may think well. I
will, however, say that, as regards their so-called language, it is
neither more nor less than gibberish, not “full of sound and fury
signifying nothing,” but full of “sound and fury” signifying something.
They never converse with it openly among themselves for a good purpose,
as the Frenchmen, Germans, Turks, Spaniards, or other foreigners do.
Some of the old Gipsies have a thousand or more leading words made up
from various sources, English, French, German, Spanish, Indian, &c.,
which they teach their children, and use in the presence of strangers
with a certain amount of pride, and, at the same time, to throw dust into
their eyes while the Gipsies are talking among themselves. They will in
the same breath bless you in English and curse you in Romany; this I
experienced myself lately while sitting in a tent among a dozen
uninteresting-looking Gipsies, while they one and all were thanking me
for taking steps to get the children educated. There was one among them
who with a smile upon his face, was cursing me in Romany from his heart.
Many writers differ in the spelling and pronunciation of Gipsy words, and
what strikes me as remarkable is, the Gipsies themselves are equally
confused upon these points. No doubt the confusion in the minds of
writers arises principally from the fact that they have had their
information from ignorant, lying, deceiving Gipsies. Almost all Gipsies
have an inveterate hatred and jealousy towards each other, especially if
one sets himself up as knowing more than John Jones in the next yard.
One Gipsy would say paanengro-gújo means sailor, or water gentile,
another Gipsy would say it means an Irishman, or potato gentile; another
would say poovengri-gújo meant a sailor; another would say it means an
Irishman. They glory in contradictions and mystification. I was at an
encampment a few days ago, and out of the twenty-five men and women and
forty children there were not three that could talk Romany, and there was
not one who could spell a single word of it. Their language, like
themselves, was Indian enough, no doubt, when they started on their
pilgrimage many centuries ago; but, as a consequence of their mixing with
the scum of other nations in their journey westward, the charm in their
language and themselves has pretty nearly by this time vanished. If I
were to attempt to write a book about their language it would not do the
Gipsies one iota of good. “God bless you” are words the Gipsies very
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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