Those who are unable to read see nothing extraordinary in the possibility of recording, by means of written or printed characters, all the sounds of the English language; but that one should be able to write anything that may be spoken in the Romany tongue, and afterwards to read it so as to reproduce the original speech, nearly always occasions surprise. I have often jotted down jingles, verses or quaint sayings by the simple method of phonetic spelling, and when, somewhat later, I have read aloud what I had written, considerable surprise has been evinced. “Ain’t it wonderful he can set it down in Romany,” says one who is unable to spell even her own name. A tolerably sharp ear and a good memory are needed to catch and record many of the verses one hears, for gypsies generally speak rapidly, and their rhymes and sayings are sometimes in poggado jib, a strangely mixed or broken language that requires much practice to ensure fluency. The following may be considered a good example of this jargon, which is neither good Romany nor English:— “Mande went to poov the gry, All around the stiggur sty, Mush off to Mande, I takes off my chuvvel, I dels him in the per, So ope me duvvel dancin’, Mande cours well.” It is unnecessary to render this jingle into English, but it serves to convey the sound of this curious language, for I have recorded it phonetically, exactly as spoken, and in common with much of the verse beloved of the bedouin Arab this specimen is more forcible than elegant. During the same evening I heard a girl recite a rhyme which must be very old; it has been printed many times, and is fairly well known to the student of Romany; nevertheless, one seldom hears it at the present day and I was pleased to know it had not been lost, as many old gypsy verses have been. The words were as follows and they differ in one respect only from those which have been printed, the last word being pronounced cosh, not cost:— “Can you rokkra Romany? Can you play the bosh? Can you jal adrey the staripen? Can you chin the cosh?” In this, the real significance of the questions lies, not so much in their literal meaning as in their idiomatic interpretation; instead of the questions being simply— Can you speak the Romany? Can you play the fiddle? Can you go into the prison? Can you cut the stick? a gypsy would understand them to signify— ... Are you a master of the Romany tongue? Can you hold your own in a lav-chingaripen, or argument, in that language? ... Are you a master of the fiddle? ... Are you man enough to “face the music,” hear your sentence and do your bit without flinching? ... Are you qualified to earn your living as a gypsy? For if you cannot in one way or another “chin the cosh” to some purpose, on occasion, then you will never be successful on the road. The Romany tongue being no exception to the rule that idioms are one of the principal stumbling blocks to students of languages other than their own.