Chapter XXIII: Appendix

P. 249.—The following nigger folk-tale, first printed by me in the Athenæum for 20th August 1887, p. 245, was taken down by an American acquaintance, Mr. J. P. Suverkrop, C.E., in 1871, at Sand Mountain, Alabama, from the recitation of his negro servant, Dick Brown, a ‘boy’ about thirty years old, who was a native of Petersburg, Virginia, and there had got it from his granny. It seems to be clearly a variant of ‘The Master Smith’ (Clouston, ii. 409) and of Grimm’s No. 147, ‘The Old Man made Young Again’ (ii. 215, 444). If so, it must be a comparatively recent transmission from one race (Aryan) to another (non-Aryan), yet it is as thoroughly localised as folk-tale well could be.

DE NEW HAN’.

Wunst dar wer a sawmill on de aige of a wood not a thousan mili from heah, wid a branch a-runnin by a-turnin de wheel. An ole colored man, he kep de mill an wer a very fine kine of man; but he son Sam, what help him, didn’ take arter de ole man, but wer a triflin, no account sort o’ young nigger; an de ole man had to wuk right sharp to git along. One day ’long come a poor-lookin sort o’ man, sayin he wanted to larn de saw-millin, an he wuk fur a yeah fur nuffin. De ole man wer glad to git his help, an de young ’un ’lowed he could shif some o’ his wuk on to de New Han’. So de New Han’ he went to totin boads and doin chores round de mill. De ole man he like de New Han’ fus class, an allus gin he jes as good as he git hisself; but de son he make hisself big to de New Han’ behind de ole man back, an order him roun to do dis an dat. De New Han’ he never say nuffin, but jes go ’long ’bout he own bisness. De ole man he cotch Sam ’busin an a-bossin de New Han’ aroun, and he club he good fur hit more’n a few times. One day an ole man come fur a load o’ plank, and he war a-groanin wid de misery in de back, an a-wishin he were young an spry like as he used to.

Den up speak de New Han’, an he say, ‘Ef you all go in de woods ’ceptin dis man an me, whar you can’t see nuffin goin on, an wait till I holler, I’ll fix dis man right up good; but you all mus promis not to peek, for suffin bad happen ef yo do.’

So dey promis. An de ole man an he son go in de woods wher dey can’t see nuffin. An de New Han’ he say to de man wid de misery in he back, ‘Go lay down on de saw-frame.’

Den he up wid de saw, an cut he in two. Den he up wid de two pieces of de man, an trow em into de branch, an de pieces jine togidder, an de ole man wid de misery in he back come outer de branch a live an well man an quite young like an frisky. Den he fell a-thankin de New Han’, but he jest tole he to shet up. An den he hollerd. Sam and he fader come a-runnin, an was mighty exprised when dey seen de young-lookin nigger in de place of de ole limpin man. But de New Han’ wouldn’t say nuffin ’bout it. So dey jest shet up, an things carried on same as usual till de ole man he got word his mudder very bad, an he must start right off fur to see her. Befo he go he dun tole Sam not fur to ac obstropolus wid de New Han’, case ef he did, so sho’ would he git a dubbin soon ez he got back. But Sam he forgit jes so soon de ole man gone, an behave wery overbearin an obstropolus.

Finally de New Han’ say to Sam, ‘Ef you don’ quit behavin, I’se gwine to leave when my yeah up, an dat’s to-morrer.’

Den Sam ac real owdashus, an tole him, ‘Go along now, yo fool.’

Sho’ enuff nex dey de New Han’ dun gone, an no one seed him go, an no one pass he in de road or in de wood. Well, de wery nex day ’long come de nigger what was made young an likely by de New Han’, an ’long wid him come he ole woman totin a baskit wid a elegant fat possum an sweet taters dat fairly made Sam mouf water. After passin de time o’ day an so on, de man ax arter de New Han’, sayin he want him fix up de ole woman same like he do him.

Sam say, ‘O, he be back to-morrer. Jes leave de possum, an come agin. I’ll gin it to him when he come.’

But de man too smart fur dat, an wouldn’ leave hit.

So Sam ’fraid he gwine to lose de possum, so he say, ‘De New Han’ dun gone off fur to see he sic fader, an dun tole me fo’ he go for to ax you an do same what he done to you.’

So den de man tole Sam, an Sam tell de man to go in de wood an shet he eyes. Den Sam he saw de ole woman in two, an frow de pieces in de branch; but dar dey stay. Den Sam git skeered, an go down to de branch, an try to jine de pieces, but dey wont jine. An de ole ’oman’s husban come a-runnin and a-hollerin outer de wood case he see suffin wrong; an de neighbers come, an dey take Sam an try he, an fin’ he guilty.

An de judge he put on he black hat an say, ‘Hang Sam by de neck ontil he mus be quite ded, an de Lor hab mussy on pore Sam.’

Den Sam’s ole fader come a-runnin, an he fall down, an beg for Sam; but do’ he roll in de dus, an cry, de judge won’ let Sam go. Den dey all go ’way solemn like to de gallus. An de judge ax Sam, do he got anything to say for hisself. An Sam see de New Han’ stan a-laffin in de crowd. An he think how bad he dun treated de pore man.

So he say, ‘Brudren an sistren, min’ what I gwine tell you. Don’ ac highminded an biggity wid no one, case ef I hadn’ ac dat way to a man in dis here very crowd, I’d a been heavin saw-logs instid o’ gwine to be hung dis day.’

’Den all he frinds fall a-cryin an a-rollin, but de New Han’ jump up longside Sam, an say quick like to he, ‘Do you shore enuff sorry for you acshuns?’

Den Sam say, ‘Deed an deed I’s sorry, an I ax pardon an hope yo’ll forgive me when I’s gone.’

Den de New Han’ speak out big an loud to de crowd, an say, ‘How come yo gwine to hang dis heah man when de ole ’oman he kill is a-standin right dar?’

Sho’ enuff dar was she standin long o’ her ole man. So dey let Sam down, an dey had great jollification; but dey never see de New Han’ from dat day to dis nowhar.

JOHN BUNYAN.

Folk-tales are scarcely literature, but a question affecting the world’s literature arises out of these Gypsy folk-tales. Was the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress an English peasant or a Gypsy half-breed? The Rev. J. Brown, in John Bunyan: his Life, Times, and Work (1885), shows that the family of Bunyan—a name spelt in thirty-four different ways—was established in Bedfordshire as early at least as 1199, and that in 1327 a William Bownon was living at Elstow on the very spot where John Bunyan was born in 1628. There is a gap in the Bunyan annals between 1327 and 1542, when one finds a William Bonyon of Elstow, as in 1548 a Thomas Bonyon, aged forty-six or more. Next come a Thomas Bunyon, ‘Pettie Chapman,’ who died in 1641, and his son, also Thomas Bunyon (1603–76), who, says Mr. Brown, is ‘usually spoken of as a tinker, but describes himself as a “braseyer.”’ This second Thomas took for his second wife in 1627 an Elstow woman, Margaret Bentley (1603–44), and John was the first child of that marriage. He, as every one knows, was an itinerant though house-dwelling tinker (Brown, pp. 64, 119, 158, etc); and his eldest son, John, ‘was brought up to the ancestral trade of a brazier, and carried on business in Bedford till his death in 1728’ (id. pp. 201–2). That is all of the essential to be gleaned about Bunyan’s pedigree; we know nothing as to his grandmother or great-grandmother.

With this evidence, then, before him, Canon Venables pronounced, in the Dictionary of National Biography (vii., 1886, p. 276), that ‘the antiquity of the family in Bunyan’s native county effectually disposes of the strange hallucination, which even Sir Walter Scott was disposed to favour, that the Bunyans, “though reclaimed and settled,” may have sprung from the Gipsy tribe.’ By no means necessarily, as may be seen from a single example. During 1870–75 I often came across members of the Bunce family in Oxfordshire, Wilts, Herts, and Somerset. Stephen Bunce, of Wiltshire yeoman ancestry, had thirty years earlier married Phœbe Buckland, a thorough-bred Gypsy woman, had himself turned tent-dweller, and ‘travelled’ the southern counties till his death. They had a largish family; and many, perhaps most, of their sons and daughters have married Gypsies of more or less purity. One son was (and maybe is still) a small farmer and horse-dealer, living in a house of his own at Pewsey. Now, if a son or a grandson of his rose to eminence, he could not by Canon Venables’ argument be a Gypsy, because, forsooth! the Bunces are an old Wiltshire family.

The chief upholder of Bunyan’s Gypsy ancestry was Mr. James Simson, a Scoto-American of New York, the editor of Walter Simson’s History of the Gipsies (1865), and author of John Bunyan and the Gipsies (1882) and a whole host of similar pamphlets. He pointed out that Bunyan writes in his Grace Abounding: ‘For my descent, it was, as is well known to many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my father’s house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land.’ And again: ‘After I had been thus for some considerable time, another thought came into my mind, and that was, whether we were of the Israelites or no. For, finding in the Scriptures that they were once the peculiar people of God, thought I, if I were one of this race, my soul must needs be happy. Now, again, I found within me a great longing to be resolved about this question, but could not tell how I should. At last, I asked my father, who told me, No, we were not.’ And yet again: ‘I often, when these temptations had been with force upon me, did compare myself to the case of such a child whom some Gipsy hath by force took up in her arms, and is carrying from friend and country.’

Kidnapping has never been a Gypsy practice (In Gypsy Tents, pp. 244–46), nor, though it were, would a Gypsy, even a converted Gypsy, be likely to use it as an illustration. But Mr. Simson’s two first passages are really pertinent. The Anglo-Israelite craze was not devised till 1793; and it is hard to conceive why about 1645 an English peasant-boy should have speculated on a Jewish origin for himself and his kindred. But with a Gypsy it would not the least surprise me. I hardly ever see Frampton Boswell, an English Gypsy of fifty, but he returns to the question, ‘And there’s one thing, Mr. Groome, I’ve been wanting to ask you about, and that is where you think our people originated.’ Hindoos, Jews, and Egyptians are regularly passed in review, but Frampton cannot make up his mind, as neither can he about Rómani, except that ‘for certain ’tisn’t one of the Seven Languages.’

Tinker in Bunyan’s day indubitably carried a suggestion at least of Gypsydom. I have not been able to see The Tinker of Turvey, [150] or Canterbury Tales (Lond. 1630, ed. by J. O. Halliwell), to which Mr. Brown refers, but from his few quotations on p. 34 it seems evident that that ‘strolling Tincker and brave mettle-man’ regarded himself as something widely different from an ordinary English artificer. Sir Thomas Overbury in his well-known Characters (1614) describes ‘The Tinker,’ the companion of whose travels ‘is some foul sun-burnt quean, that since the terrible statute recanted gypsism and is turned pedlaress. So marches he all over England with his bag and baggage,’ etc. In an article by A. H. A. Hamilton on ‘Quarter Sessions under Charles I. from original records of Devon’ (Fraser’s Mag., Jan. 1877) is a quotation concerning ‘sundry suspect persons, Roagues both sturdy and begging vagrant, some whereof pretend to be petty chapmen [like Bunyan’s grandfather], others peddlers, others glassmen, tynckers, others palmesters, fortune readers, Egiptians, and the like.’ Brazier is a frequent designation of Gypsies at the present day—e.g. the baptismal register of Hill, Sutton Coldfield, has ‘Jan. 27, 1866, Miriam Kate Agnes, daughter of Benjamin and Mira Boswell, cutler and brazier’; and that of Boothroyd, Dewsbury, has ‘Mary Jane dr of Thomas and Mary Green, Dewsbury Moor, Brazier of the Gipsey tribe.’ The occurrence in the Bunyan pedigree of such Gypsy ‘Christian’ names as Mantis and Perun, Delarīfa and Meralíni, would be a strong point, but is entirely lacking. On the other hand, ‘gaujified’ or gentilised Gypsies often drop such names; two brothers of my acquaintance, Oti and Lazzy, became thus plain William and George. A contemporary description of Bunyan (Brown, p. 399) as ‘tall of stature, strong-boned, though not corpulent, somewhat of a ruddy face, with sparkling eyes ... his hair reddish,’ runs rather against the theory of Bunyan’s Gypsy ancestry, but not conclusively, for I have known two Gypsy brothers, one very swarthy, the other red-haired.

The strongest corroboration of that theory was unknown to both Mr. Simson and Mr. Brown. In Notes and Queries for January 24, 1891, p. 67, ‘R.’ cited an entry from the parish register of St. Mary’s, Launceston: ‘1586, March the ivth daie was christened Nicholas, sonne of James Bownia, an Egiptia rogue.’ Here ‘Egiptia’ (? Egiptiā) must stand for ‘Egiptian’; ‘Bownia’ similarly should be ‘Bownian,’ and, if so, we have veritable Gypsy Bunyans. It may seem a far cry from Launceston in Cornwall to Elstow in Bedfordshire, were nomads not in case; in time, the interval between this baptism and the birth of ‘the inspired tinker’ is but forty-two years.

But, anyhow, whether Bunyan was Gypsy [151] or Gentile, folk-tales (plus the Bible) seem to me quite as likely a source of inspiration for his Pilgrim’s Progress and Holy War as (say) the fourteenth century Pélerinage de l’Homme or the siege of the Anabaptists at Münster. I do not believe this has ever before been suggested; I will merely suggest it, and leave the working out of it to folklorists.

NOTES

[1] According to the Spectator (24th December 1897) ten thousand Gypsies wintered in Surrey in 1896–97!

[2] I shall have frequent occasion to refer to the Gypsy Lore Journal (3 vols. 1888–92), which should in time be one of the libri rarissimi, as the issue was limited to 150 copies, many of which are sure to have perished. There are complete sets, however, at the British Museum, the Bodleian, the Edinburgh Advocates’ Library, Leyden, Berlin, Munich, Cracow, Rome, Madrid, Harvard, and twelve other public libraries.

[3] Aliqui in the Latin may stand for either some of the Gypsies or some of the townsfolk, more probably the latter. Æneas Sylvius Piccolomini (Pope Pius II.) speaks, a very few years after this, of the Northumbrian women staring at him ‘as in Italy the people stare at an Ethiopian or an Indian.’

[4] This passage was cited as far back as 1785 by Jacob Bryant in Archæologia, vii. 393; but another on p. 57 of the Itinerarium has hitherto escaped Gypsiologists. I give it in the original Latin:—‘Item sciendum est, quod in sæpedictis civitatibus [Alexandria and Cairo] de omni secta alia ab illorum viri mulieres lactantes juvenes et cani pravæ venditioni exponuntur ad instar bestiarum; et signanter indiani schismatici et danubiani, qui omnes utriusque sexus in colore cum corvis et carbonibus multum participant; quia hii cum arabis et danubianis semper guerram continuant, atque cum capiuntur redemptione vel venditione evadunt.... Prædicti autem Danubiani, quamvis ab Indianis non sunt figura et colore distincti, tamen ab eis distinguuntur per cicatrices longas quas habent in facie et cognoscuntur; comburunt enim sibi cum ferro ignito facies illas vilissimas terribiliter in longum, credentes se sic flamine [? flammis] baptizari ut dicitur, et a peccatorum sordibus igne purgari. Qui postquam ad legem Machometi fuerunt conversi christianis deteriores sunt Saracenis, sicut et sunt Radiani renegati, et plures molestias inferunt.... Item sciendum, quod in præfatis civitatibus tanta est eorum multitudo, quod nequaquam numerari possunt.’ There is much in this passage that remains obscure; but it seems clear from it that in 1322 there were in Egypt large numbers of captives, male and female, old and young, from the Danubian territories. They were black as crows and coal, and in complexion and features differed little from Indians, except that their faces bore long scars produced by burning (? a kind of tattooing, like that of the Gypsy women in 1427 at Paris on p. xii.). On conversion to Mohammedanism these Danubians were worse to the Christians than the Saracens. Were these Danubians, or some at least of them, Gypsies, prisoners of war, from the Danubian territories? and did some of them buy back their freedom and return to Europe? If so, perhaps one has here an explanation of the hitherto unexplained names ‘Egyptian,’ ‘Gypsy,’ ‘Gitano,’ etc., and of the story told by the western immigrants of 1417–34 of renegacy from the Christian faith.

[5] E. A. Sophocles in the Introduction to his Greek Lexicon of the Roman and Byzantine Periods (Boston, U.S., 1870, p. 32) regards Mazaris as probably an imaginary character of an anonymous writer of the fourteenth century, according to whom ‘Peloponnesus was at that time inhabited by a mongrel population, the principal elements being Lacedæmonians, Italians, Peloponnesians, Slavs, Illyrians, Egyptians (Αἰγύπτιοι), and Jews.’

[6] Of the Gypsies of Cyprus, as indeed those of Crete, Modern Greece, Lesbos, etc., we know practically nil. A writer in the Saturday Review for 12th January 1878, p. 52, quoted, without giving date or source, these words of a Cretan poet:—‘Franks and Saracens, Corsairs and Germans, Turks and Atzingani, they have tried them all, and cannot say who were better, who worse.’

[7] According to Captain Newbold, the Gypsies of Syria and Palestine ‘vend charms, philtres, poisons, and drugs of vaunted efficacy’; in 1590 Katherene Roiss, Lady Fowlis, was ‘accusit for sending to the Egyptianis, to haif knawledge of thame how to poysoun the young Laird of Fowlis and the young Lady Balnagoune.’

[8] It is just worth noting that St. Columbanus (543–615) was accustomed to celebrate the Eucharist in vessels of bronze (aeris), alleging as a reason for so doing that Our Lord was affixed to the cross by brazen nails.—Smith’s Dict. Christ. Antiqs., s.v. Chalice.

[9] Cf. supra, p. xi., line 13.

[10] Information supplied by M. Omont of the Bibliothèque Nationale at Paris, and by Prof. von Dobschütz of Jena, shows that the komodromos passage is to be found in neither of these two MSS. It has still to be sought for, then.

[11] In his Beiträge zur Kenntniss der deutschen Zigeuner (Halle, 1894, pp. 5–6), Herr Richard Pischel maintains, as it seems to me, successfully, that the ‘Bemische lute’ (Boehmische Leute) at Würzburg between 1372 and 1400 were real Bohemians and not Gypsies.

[12] No Greek loan-word has more interest for us than paramísi or paramísa, a story (Mod. Gk. παραμύθι). It occurs in the dialects of the Roumanian, Hungarian, Bohemian, Polish, German, and English Gypsies. I heard it myself first in 1872 near Oxford, from old Lolli Buckland, in the curious sense of stars:—‘As you kistas kérri ke-ráti, réia, túti’ll dik the paramíshis vellin’ avri adré the leeline’ (As you ride home this evening, sir, you’ll see the stars coming out in the darkness). How she came to apply the word thus, I cannot say, perhaps from the mere jingle of stars and stories, perhaps from the notion of the stars foretelling the future. Again, in 1879, from one of the Boswells, I heard the verb páramis, ‘to talk scandal, tell tales.’ And lastly, Mr. Sampson got paramissa in its proper sense of ‘story’ from the old tinker Philip Murray, who, though no Gypsy himself, had an unrivalled knowledge of Gypsydom and Rómani (Gyp. Lore Jour., iii. 77).

[13] In Chronicles of a Virgin Fortress (1896), Mr. W. V. Herbert gives an extraordinary story of one of the Stanleys, who, forced to fly Hampshire for some offence, found his way to Bulgaria, and as ‘Istanli’ became a Gypsy chieftain and public executioner of Widdin about 1874. Tom Taylor’s returned ‘lag’ of p. xvii recurs also to memory, and John Lee, the Gypsy recruit of ‘John Company,’ from whom on the outward voyage in 1805 Lieut. Francis Irvine of the Bengal Native Infantry took down a Rómani vocabulary of 138 words (Trans. Lit. Soc. Bombay, 1819).

[14] In 1894 there was a small band of Bosnian Gypsies at St. Jean de Luz on their way to Spain. They were evidently well-off.

[15] The tented Gypsies in Calabria in May 1777, described in Henry Swinburne’s Travels in the Two Sicilies (2nd ed. ii. 168–172), were almost certainly not Italian Gypsies, but Caldarari. Borrow speaks of the foreign excursions of the Hungarian Gypsies, which frequently endure for three or four years, and extend to France, even to Rome (The Zincali, 1841, i. 13); and Adriano Colocci tells in Gli Zingari (Turin, 1889), p. 181, how in the Apennines of Fossato he encountered Hungarian Gypsies who seemed quite at home there, as also how at Kadi Köi in Asia Minor he had discourse with a band of Neapolitan Gypsies.

[16] Against this statement I must set what was quite a typical remark of an English Gypsy, a Boswell:—‘That’s a thing, sir, I should be disdainful of, to be júvalo’ (verminous).

[17] Query, Solomon Jones? Jones I know for a real Gypsy surname.

[18] I take some little pride in having myself been a means of preserving two of our best—I had almost said, our only two really good—English folk-tales. These are ‘Cap o’ Rushes’ and ‘Tom Tit Tot,’ which were told by an old Suffolk servant to Miss Lois Fison when a child, and which she communicated to Nos. 23 and 43 of a series of ‘Suffolk Notes and Queries,’ edited by me for the Ipswich Journal in 1876–77. Thence my friend, Mr. Clodd, unearthed them a dozen years afterwards; and on the latter he has just issued a masterly monograph.

[19] The London tinker’s story, however, seems more closely to resemble ‘The Claricaune’ in Crofton Croker’s Fairy Legends and Traditions of the South of Ireland (ed. by Thos. Wright, N.D. pp. 98–112).

[20] Since writing this, I have learned, through the kindness of Mr. Rufus B. Richardson of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, that ‘nothing remains of Paspati’s collections except a few notes, which will be brought out in a new edition of his works.’

[21] Cf. the Indian story of ‘Prince Lionheart and his Three Friends’ (F. A. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories, p. 59):—‘In front of the horse lies a heap of bones, and in front of the dog a heap of grass,’ etc.

[22] The notes of that story are unfortunately lost, but it is a version of Grimm’s No. 36, ‘The Wishing-table, the Gold-ass, and the Cudgel in the Sack,’ Basile’s first tale in the Pentamerone (1637), etc. No European folk-tale is more widely spread than this in India, where we find ‘The Story of Foolish Sachuli’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy-tales, p. 27), ‘The Indigent Brahman’ (Rev. Lal Behari Day’s Folk-tales of Bengal, p. 53), and ‘The Jackal, the Barber, and the Brahman’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, p. 174). A fragment of the story comes into our Slovak-Gypsy one of ‘The Old Soldier’ (No. 60).

[23] See for this Celtic secret jargon the article ‘Shelta,’ by Mr. J. Sampson, in vol. ix. of Chambers’s Encyclopædia (1892), p. 389.

[24] So I had written when I learned, through the kindness of Lord Archibald Campbell, that John MacDonald the younger, known variously as ‘John Fyne,’ ‘Long John,’ and ‘Baboon,’ got a cottage on the Argyll estate, but was never either a keeper or an under-keeper in the Duke’s employ. He was, however, a keeper for a short while on the neighbouring estate of Ardkinlas. ‘Long John,’ writes Lord Archibald, ‘as far as I know, had no Rómani. His daughters still tramp the country.’ I may add here that Mr. Arthur Morgan, of the Crofters’ Commission, who knows the Highlands as few, is strongly of opinion that the tinkers are not Celts: ‘the Highlanders never regard them as such.’ This though they speak Gaelic, but much intermixed with odd words.

[25] Kounavine apart, we have but one hint of story-telling by Gypsies in Asia. In Blackwood’s for March 1891, pp. 388–9, the late Mr. Theodore Bent had an article on an archæological tour in ‘Cilicia Aspera,’ a district lying on the southern slopes of the Taurus Mountains, in which was this passage: ‘Periodically a travelling tinker comes among them [the mountain tribes], the great newsmonger of the mountain. He chooses a central spot to pitch his tent, and the most wonderful collection of decrepit copper utensils is soon brought from the neighbouring tents and piled around. He usually brings with him a young assistant to look after the mule and blow the bellows; and with nitre heated at his fire he mends the damaged articles, gossiping the while, and filling the minds of the simple Yourouks who stand around with wonderful tales, not always within the bounds of veracity. When his work is done, he removes to another central point, and after he has amassed as many fees as his mule can carry, for they usually pay in cheese and butter, he returns to his town, and realises a handsome profit.’ I have not seen a small work on the Yourouks by M. Tsakyroglou (Athens, 1891), giving their popular songs, etc.

[26] Not unique; occurs also in Wratislaw’s Bohemian story, No. 2, p. 21. But I let the lines stand for a warning against the vanity of dogmatising.

[27] According to the Archduke Josef’s great Czigány Nyelvatan (1888), p. 342, ‘chronological reasons force us to the conclusion that Solario was not a Gypsy. He came by the name of Zingaro as being the son of a travelling smith (farrier), and as having himself first engaged in that calling.... Since the Gypsies only made their appearance in Italy in 1422, it is clear that Solario could not be of Gypsy parentage.’ If it could be proved that Italy in 1382 had its travelling smiths, called Zingari, it would be clear that then there were Italian Gypsies. A similar instance of arguing from a foregone conclusion occurs in the remark of a German lexicographer of 1749, that, ‘the common people gave the name Zihegan to land-tramps before Gypsies ever were heard of.’ The said Zihegan could not of course be Gypsies, because Gypsies were then non-existent.

[28] Some one will be sure to point out, if I do not, that most or all of these incidents occur also in non-Gypsy European folk-tales, and that therefore they are not peculiar to the Gypsies. Precisely: that is a possible confirmation of my theory.

[29] To which add the slang pal, a comrade, from the Rómani, pral, brother.

[30] I have discussed the subject-matter of the last two pages more fully in my paper, ‘The Influence of the Gypsies on the Superstitions of the English Folk’ (Trans. Internat. Folklore Congress, 1891, pp. 292–308).

[31] That, however, is a vulgar error; the Gypsies are one of the purest races in Europe.

[32] I have sometimes wondered, what if a folklorist, making a little tour in Wales, in a Welsh inn-garden had come on a venerable Welsh harper, playing ancient Welsh airs, and speaking Welsh more fluently than English? He would have drawn him, of course, for folk-tales, and lo! a perfect mine of them—long, unpublished stories, all about magic snuff-boxes and magic balls of yarn, the kings of the mice and the frogs and the fowls of the air, griffins of the greenwood, golden apples and golden castles, sleeping princesses, and all the rest of it. ‘Eureka!’ that folklorist would have shouted, and straightway meditated a new Welsh Mabinogion. Welsh—Celtic—not at all necessarily; his old Welsh bard might have been just John Roberts the Gypsy.

[33] It is a great pity Mr. Curtin has not specified when, where, and from whom he got his stories; all we are told is that they were collected by him ‘personally in the West of Ireland, in Kerry, Galway, and Donegal, during the year 1887.’ It is almost incomprehensible that he never alludes once to Campbell’s collection.

[34] These two birds, which recur also in Norse, Swedish, and German versions of the story (Orient und Occ. ii. 108–9), at once recall the parrot and the mainá in ‘The Bél-Princess’ (Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 149–150) whose discourse revives the prince’s recollections. See also p. 412 of Mrs. Steel’s Wide-awake Stories.

[35] For an excursus, of true German erudition, on Gypsies and hedgehogs, see R. Pischel’s Beiträge zur Kenntniss der deutschen Zigeuner (Halle, 1894, pp. 26–30). He shows that hedgehogs are a Gypsy delicacy from Wales to Odessa, and that the Gypsies probably brought the taste from the foothills of the Himalayas, where hedgehogs are plentiful.

[36] ‘Γυφτικά,’ says Hahn in a footnote. ‘The sedentary Gypsies as a rule are smiths, therefore Gypsy and Locksmith are synonymous in the towns.’

[37] Only four years ago Mr. Joseph Jacobs wrote: ‘It is at any rate clear, that the only considerable addition to our folklore knowledge in these isles must come from the Gaelic area.’ And since then a folklorist has expressed himself in the Athenæum as ‘pretty certain that as to complete stories of any length there are none such to be found in Wales at the present day.’

[38] Told by an old sedentary Gypsy woman of Adrianople.

[39] Lit. ‘the lad there became dry’; but that is how an English Gypsy would put it.

[40] Kláka. ‘Claca,’ says Grenville Murray, ‘signifies a species of assembly very popular in Wallachia. If any family has some particular work to do on any particular account, they invite the neighbourhood to come and work for them. When the work is completed there is high glee, singing and dancing, and story-telling.’—Doine; or, Songs and Legends of Roumania (Lond. 1854), p. 109 n.

[41] In Wlislocki, p. 104 note, the devil has a duck’s foot. In F. A. Steel’s Indian Wide-awake Stories, p. 54, the hero detects a ghost by her feet being set on hind part before.

[42] On p. 110 Dr. Barbu Constantinescu gives a long and terrific formula for bewitching with the evil eye.

[43] The notion of a dead girl turning into a flower is very common in Indian folk-tales. Cf. Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, pp. 145, 149, 244, 247, 248, 252, etc.; and Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 6, ‘Little Surya Bai,’ pp. 79–93.

[44] Dá pes pe sherésti, lit. gave, or threw, herself on her head. In Gypsy stories this undignified proceeding almost invariably precedes every transformation. Cf. ‘The Red King and the Witch,’ ‘The Snake who became the King’s Son-in-law,’ ‘Tropsyn,’ etc.

[45] For golden boy cf. Dr. Barbu Constantinescu’s own ‘The Golden Children,’ No. 18, also Hahn, ii. 293. The two apples seem to be birth-marks.

[46] For the bursting of monsters, cf. Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, pp. 27, 240; and Ralston, p. 130.

[47] Our queen’s great-great-great-grandfather, George I., was a firm believer in the vampire superstition (Horace Walpole’s Letters, vol. i. p. cix.).

[48] Cf. Grimm, No. 56, ‘Sweetheart Roland,’ i. 226.

[49] i.e. Pretend to be ill. English Gypsies employ the same phrase alike in Rómani and in English.

[50] Lit. ‘put himself.’

[51] See note on No. 6, ‘God’s Godson.’

[52] Baldpate makes the same remark in No. 2, p. 8, but the conventional answer is wanting there.

[53] So I had written; but I have since read Maive Stokes’ story of ‘The Demon conquered by the King’s Son’ (Indian Fairy Tales, No. 24, pp. 173 and 288). Here it is the demon step-mother, who, pretending her eyes are bad, sends the hero to fetch tigress’s milk, an eagle’s feather, night-growing rice and water from the Glittering Well. He speaks, however, of her as his ‘mother.’ e.g. on p. 180. Compare ‘The Son of Seven Mothers’ in F. A. Steel’s Indian Wide-awake Stories, pp. 98–110, and Knowles’ Folk-tales of Kashmir, pp. 1 and 42.

[54] There is obviously an omission, at this point, of a wager or something of that sort.

[55] See note on No. 46.

[56] See footnote 2 on p. 16.

[57] Clearly Mr. Mayhew was no folklorist. The boy’s claim to have invented the story is worth noting.

[58] The Roumanian-Gypsy word is Baht, which in one form or another (bakht, bahi, bok, bachí, etc.) occurs in every Gypsy dialect—Turkish, Russian, Scandinavian, German, English, Spanish, etc., and which Pott derives from the Sanskrit (ii. 398–9). But the curious point is that in Dozon’s Contes Albanais (1881), p. 60, we get ‘Va trouver ma Fortune,’ and a footnote explains, ‘Fortune, en turc bakht, espèce de génie protecteur.’ Paspati, again, in his Turkish-Gypsy vocabulary (1870), p. 155, gives—‘Bakht, n.f. fortune, sort, hasard.... Les Grecs et les Turcs se servent très souvent du même mot’; and Miklosich, too, cites the Modern Greek μπάκτι (Ueber die Mundarten, vii. 14). The occurrence of this Gypsy word as a loan-word in Modern Greek and Turkish is suggestive of a profound influence of the Gypsies on the folklore of the Balkan Peninsula. Bakht, fortune, is also good Persian.

[59] This is a little puzzling, but it must mean that all the speeches seemingly by the princess were really made by the watchmaker—that he maintained the dialogue.

[60] Lit. Greek.

[61] This is the first real remark on the part of the princess, who, woman-like, cannot stand a stupid male remark about the price of a dress.

[62] This change from the third to the second person is in the original.

[63] What ‘pearly hay’ is I know not, but it stands so in the original.

[64] The last four words fairly beat me, but such seems their literal meaning. In the Roumanian rendering, ‘le-a facut doue mere.’

[65] See footnote 2 on p. 16.

[66] The meaning of these three words is obscure. According to Miklosich, they are a magic formula with which the boy summons the empress from her grave behind the door. Or, perhaps, at this point the boy shows his pearly teeth.

[67] Slov. Vah, Ger. Waag, a river of Northern Hungary.

[68] By rights this question should be put to the grand-parents.

[69] Zenele, a Roumanian loan-word, is rendered ‘zenæ’ in the Latin translation; ‘böse weibliche Genien,’ ‘evil feminine spirits,’ in the vocabulary.

[70] She says much worse in the original.

[71] This phrase occurs also in our No. 24, in a Wallachian story cited by Hahn (ii. 312), and, if I mistake not, in Ralston, but I have mislaid the exact reference. The Romani trúshul, cross, is from the Sanskrit trisula, the trident of Siva.

[72] Bowdlerised.

[73] Cf. the very curious ‘Story of Lelha’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 80:—Boots, the youngest brother, presses his three brothers ‘to attempt the removal of the stone, so they and others to the number of fifty tried their strength, but the stone remained immovable. Then Lelha said, “Stand by, and allow me to try.” So putting to his hand, he easily removed it, and revealed the entrance to the mansion of the Indarpuri Kuri.’

[74] Cf. Hahn, i. 140, lines 4–7.

[75] Anastasia.

[76] Ruthenian mountaineers of the Carpathians.

[77] With this episode of the horse compare that of the pony in ‘Brave Seventee Bai’ (Mary Frere’s Old Deccan Days, No. 3, p. 30).

[78] That is, of course, the prince’s poor little blow had seemed to her like a caress.

[79] Cf. footnote on p. 80.

[80] This, it seems, is the comrade’s name.

[81] A very Gypsy touch this, for the fiddlers of course would be Gypsies, so the meanness of dispensing with their services would appeal to the Gypsy mind.

[82] Observe, he had become a seer already.

[83] Lit. they raised him on the hands.

[84] See footnotes on p. 16.

[85] No use is made of these. Was the ship to be made of them?

[86] Hahn has the selfsame story up to this point, only not so well told, ‘Von dem Schönen und vom Drakos’ (No. 3, i. 75–79, and ii. 178–86).

[87] As a kind of block evidently. I do not remember this elsewhere.

[88] It should be remembered that Austro-Hungarian Gypsies have all to serve in the army.

[89] The text runs, ‘So he, the king’s son,’ etc., but this makes nonsense.

[90] This inquiry as to the secret of the hero’s strength should by rights be made, not by the emperor, but by a former lover.

[91] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33, 35.

[92] Cf. supra, pp. 28, 33.

[93] This suggests that the cat and the princess really were one. Cf. footnote on No. 46.

[94] Cf. footnote 2, p. 16.

[95] Cf. note on the Polish-Gypsy story of ‘The Brigands and the Miller’s Daughter,’ No 47, p. 171.

[96] Urme.

[97] He threw the hat in the direction of the light, so that when he had descended, and could no longer discern the light, he might know by the hat in which direction to find it. So in Grimm, No. 111 (ii. 103).

[98] The idea may be far-fetched (literally), but this passage has a very Oriental flavour. Cf. ‘A Simple Thief’ in Campbell’s Santal Folk-tales, p. 126.—The thieves ‘went to a rich man’s house, and dug a hole through the wall. They then said, “You creep in.”’

[99] The text for the next ten lines is very corrupt, like the narrative. I have Bowdlerised much, and omitted a good deal more.

[100] This is wrong; and from this point onward there is some confusion—the son, not the mother, seeming to become the narrator.

[101] Cf. Hahn, i. 186 and ii. 52.

[102] Now first mentioned. The whole story is confused.

[103] This answer presupposes the presence of at least three robbers.

[104] This method of killing the robbers is exactly the same as that followed by the youth in the Moravian-Gypsy story of ‘The Princess and the Forester’s Son’ (No. 43, p. 147). Cf. too, No. 8, ‘The Bad Mother,’ pp. 25, 30, where the lad kills eleven of twelve dragons, and Hahn, vol. ii. p. 279.

[105] For cutting three red stripes out of back, cf. ‘Osborn’s Pipe’ (Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 3), which = the Welsh-Gypsy tale of ‘The Ten Rabbits’ (No. 64); also Dasent’s Tales from the Norse, ‘The Seven Foals,’ p. 380. Cutting three strips out of the back occurs also in a Russian story epitomised by Ralston, p. 145; and cutting a strip of skin from head to foot in Campbell’s West Highland tale, No. 18 (cf. supra, p. 124), which Reinhold Köhler connects with the pound of flesh in the Merchant of Venice (Orient und Occident, 1864, pp. 313–316).

[106] Our story here has a curious resemblance with pp. 122–3 of ‘Le Trimmatos ou l’Ogre aux Trois Yeux,’ a vampire story from Cyprus, in Legrand’s Contes Grecs (1881). Query: Was ‘Mr. Fox’ originally a vampire story?

[107] It is the general custom among pious people in Poland, on entering a house, or when meeting one another, to give the greeting, ‘Jesus Christ be praised.’ To which the response is, ‘From age to age.’

[108] Albanian folk-tales open with a similar formula (Dozon’s Contes Albanais, 1881, p. 1).

[109] The Gypsy word, rashani, originally means ‘priestess.’

[110] Cf. Campbell’s Tales of the West Highlands, i. 61, and iv. 283; and Dozon’s Contes Albanais, 27, note.

[111] It should by rights be a drake; still, the swan is suggestive of ‘swan-maidens.’ Nor does she strictly adhere to her self-prescribed rules of metamorphosis.

[112] Apparel.

[113] So in the Bukowina-Gypsy story of ‘The Mother’s Chastisement,’ No. 9, p. 29. Cf. Maive Stokes’s Indian Fairy Tales, p. 245.

[114] God.

[115] Liege.

[116] Poverty = poor, possibly confused with paltry, is very common among English Gypsies.

[117] Cf. footnote, p. 212.

[118] Cf. Noah Young’s name for elder, mi-duvel’s kandlo ruk (‘God’s stinking tree’); some other Gypsies, including Isaac Herren, call it wuzén. Oliver Lee’s name for ivy is chirikléskro ruk (‘bird’s tree’), because it was the tree brought back by the dove into the ark, and this is the reason that birds are fond of clustering round it. Holly is mi-duveléskro ruk (‘God’s tree’; cf. Cornish Aunt Mary’s Tree); and Gypsies pitching their tent against a holly-bush are under divine protection.—J. S.

[119] ‘As cunning as a bushel o’ monkeys’ is a favourite figure of a Gypsy friend of mine.

[120] Cf. also Hahn, Nos. 22, 70, 98, and i. 308.

[121] Cf. footnote on p. 118. John Roberts also was an old soldier.

[122] Much the same phrase recurs in ‘An Old King and his three Sons in England’ (No. 55), and in ‘Ashypelt’ (No. 57). Cf. also Goldsmith’s Vicar of Wakefield chapter xiii.:—‘They now travelled far, and farther than I can tell, till they met with a company of robbers.’

[123] Cf. notes on ‘The Green Man of Noman’s Land,’ No. 62.

[124] Gypsies have different kinds of whistles, one peculiar to each family, by which they can recognise one another at a distance or in the dark.

[125] Dordi = ‘look-ye,’ a common Gypsy exclamation.

[126] Valentine and Oliver are both Welsh-Gypsy Christian names.

[127] See footnote on p. 212.

[128] This point is lost, of course, in my English rendering of the Rómani portions of this story. In the original MS. the youngest brother uses the broken dialect put by John Roberts in the mouths of all English Gypsies, while the two others speak in the very deepest Rómani.

[129] The Jacobite engraver, Sir Robert Strange, thus tethered his horse on the eve of Culloden (Life, i. 59).

[130] Presumably the royal arms of England would be engraved on his watch, and his princely initials embroidered on his pocket-handkerchief.

[131] In another Welsh-Gypsy story, ‘Jack the Robber,’ summarised on pp. 48–9, the master says, ‘If you can’t do that, Jack, I’ll be behead you.’

[132] That story is of very wide and seemingly recent dispersion. It occurs in Norway (‘The Three Lemons,’ Dasent’s Tales from the Fjeld, p. 158); Sicily (‘Die Schöne mit den sieben Schleiern,’ Laura Gonzenbach, No. 13, i. 73, which offers striking analogies to ‘An Old King’ and ‘The Accursed Garden’); Zacynthus (‘Die drei Citronen,’ Bernhard Schmidt, No. 5, p. 71), etc.; also in India (‘The Bel Princess,’ Maive Stokes, No. 21, p. 138).

[133] See note on p. 212.

[134] The next eight Welsh-Gypsy stories were told, like the last, in Rómani, by Matthew Wood to Mr. Sampson; and the English summaries of them given here are by Mr. Sampson.

[135] I am reminded of Poly Mace, the champion’s cousin. He was camping at Golden Acre near Granton, and told me one Sunday that he knew a sea-captain who had a familiar: would I care to see it? Of course I would; had he seen it? what was it like, then? ‘Well, it’s a very curious kind of a little, wee, teeny dragon, that is, Mr. Groome; changes colour, it does, according to where you puts it.’ I found Poly meant a chameleon.

[136] I Shuvali Râni is the Rómani title of this story.

[137] The first half of this story, which, like the next, was told to Mr. Sampson in English by Cornelius Price, is here omitted, having been already summarised on pp. 48–9.

[138] Montford Bridge, over the Severn, near Shrewsbury.

[139] Valiant.

[140] A corruption probably of ‘Welcome.’

[141] A passage in ‘The King of Erin and the Queen of the Lonesome Island’ (Curtin’s Myths and Folk-lore of Ireland, p. 98) offers a curious parallel:—‘They fought an awful battle that day from sunrise to sunset. They made soft places hard, and hard places soft; they made high places low, and low places high; they brought water out of the centre of hard grey rocks, and made dry rushes soft in the most distant parts of Erin till sunset.’

[142] Of course, £1 notes in Scotland.

[143] In the Welsh-Gypsy story Ashypelt gets no whisky, also no Bible.

[144] Haversack.

[145] Went home.

[146] ‘This word,’ says Campbell, ‘I have never met before.’

[147] A sock, a brogue of untanned leather or skin, commonly worn with the hairy side outward; Lat. cothurnus, Welsh cwaran, French cothurne.—J. F. C.

[148] ‘Bolg seididh, bag of blowing. The bellows used for melting copper in the mint at Tangier in 1841 consisted of two sheepskins worked by two men. The neck of the hide was fastened to the end of an iron tube, and the legs sewed up. The end of each bag opened with two flat sticks; and the workmen, by a skilful action of the hand, filled the bag with air as they raised it, and then squeezed it out by pressing downwards. By working the two bags turn-about, a constant steady blast was kept on a crucible in the furnace, and the copper was soon melted. The Gaelic word clearly points to the use of some such apparatus. I believe something of the kind is used in India; but I saw the Tangier mint at work.’—J. F. C.

Were Mr. Campbell still living I would call his attention to ‘something of the kind’ much nearer home than India or Tangiers, viz. the Scottish-Gypsy method of smelting iron in a furnace of stone, turf, and clay, three feet in height and eighteen inches in diameter: ‘the materials in the furnace are powerfully heated by the blasts of a large hand-bellows, generally wrought by females, admitted at a small hole a little from the ground’ (Walter Simson’s History of the Gipsies, 1865, p. 234). In the Gypsy Lore Journal for January 1892, pp. 134–142, is an article by Henri van Elven on ‘The Gypsies of Belgium,’ with excellent illustrations of a Hungarian-Gypsy furnace and bellows, corresponding to Simson’s description. And there are also illustrations and minute descriptions of the Gypsy furnace and bellows in Kopernicki’s masterly monograph on ‘Les Zlotars ou Dzvonkars, Tsiganes fondeurs en bronze dans la Galicie Orientale et la Bukovine,’ communicated by Bataillard to the Société d’Anthropologie (Paris, 1878). From a footnote here on p. 519 we learn that ‘the Calderari often use two of these bellows at once, making them work turn-about to right and to left, so as to produce a constant blast.’ One is tempted to conclude that the mint at Tangiers in 1841 was worked by Gypsies, that here we get an explanation of those mysterious visits of the Hungarian Calderari to Northern Africa, referred to in the Introduction. It sounds surprising, but Mr. Campbell, I doubt not, would have been quite as surprised to learn that the church bell of Edzell in Forfarshire was cast in the woods by Gypsies in 1726; that about 1740 the Border Gypsies practised engraving on pewter, lead, and copper, as well as rude drawing and painting; that about the beginning of this century the Gypsies had a small foundry near St. Andrews, which the country-folk called ‘Little Carron’; that Killin in 1748 had its tinker silversmith, whose secret of enamel inlaying died with him; or that the silver Celtic Lochbuy Brooch, a pound in weight, was made by a Mull tinker ‘in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, about the year 1600’ (Strand Magazine, January 1897, p. 115). I myself have sat and watched a Gypsy lad, a Boswell, fashion a pretty silver finger-ring out of a shilling I had given him, and have thought of the hoard of a travelling silversmith which in 1858 was unearthed on Skaill Links in Orkney. It comprised brooches, neck-rings, arm-rings, silver ingots, and Cufic coins, struck at Bagdad between 887 and 945. ‘It seems most unlikely,’ says Mr. Lang, ‘that tales which originated in India could have reached the Hebrides within the historic period.’ Perhaps; but where coins could come, so surely also could folk-tales.—A desperate footnote this, but nothing to what has some day to be written on the subject of Gypsy metallurgy.

[149] I have furnished a name to this nameless story, a long one, which Campbell got from ‘Old MacDonald, travelling tinker.’ Else I give it just as he gives it.

[150] Turvey, a parish near Elstow, was a Gypsy abode long after Bunyan’s day; at it, in 1822–25, Legh Richmond buried two Gypsies—James Smith, and his mother-in-law, Elizabeth Robinson, both of the reputed age of 105. Robinson was a surname of descendants of Bunyan.

[151] There are those to whom the notion will seem monstrous that the author of The Pilgrim’s Progress should have been ‘a gipsy!’ I would remind such that at the present day there is Mr. George Smith, the Converted Gypsy, of the Potteries, who conducts missions in Edinburgh and other large cities. I have never heard him myself, but I am assured by a competent judge that he is a really eloquent preacher. Then there was William Mitchel (1672–1740), the Edinburgh ‘Tinklarian Doctor,’ author of a score of prophetical pamphlets. There was Thomas Wright, the tinker Berean of Barnsley, who baptized Ebenezer Elliott in 1781. And there was the founder of the American Shakers, ‘Mother’ Ann Lee (1736–86), a Manchester blacksmith’s illiterate daughter, who married in 1762 the blacksmith Abraham Stanley. The conjunction of the surnames Lee and Stanley, of the smith’s craft, and of the illiteracy, renders it almost certain in my mind that these were Gypsies.