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Updated: May 15, 2025
Mr Borrow is a man of great learning and research and master of many languages, and having translated the Gospel of St Luke into the Gitano, he presented a copy of it to Don Ramon Gamboa, the late Civil Governor, and announced his intention to advertise it for sale, to which no objection was made.
As evidence of the high opinion formed of the Romany version of St Luke, the following story told by Borrow is amusing: Borrow's enemies acknowledged that the Gitano St Luke was a philological curiosity; but that it was impossible to allow it to pass into circulation without notes.
They consisted of a chest of Testaments in Spanish, and a small box of Saint Luke's Gospel in the Gitano or language of the Spanish Gypsies. I obtained them from the custom-house at San Lucar, with a pass for that of Cadiz. At Cadiz I was occupied two days, and also a person whom I employed, in going through all the formalities, and in procuring the necessary papers.
Neither sun, nor wind, nor all those vicissitudes of weather, to which the gipsies are more constantly exposed than any other people, could impair the bloom of her complexion or embrown her hands; and what is more remarkable, the rude manner in which she was reared only served to reveal that she must have sprung from something better than the Gitano stock; for she was extremely pleasing and courteous in conversation, and lively though she was, yet in no wise did she display the least unseemly levity; on the contrary, amidst all her sprightliness, there was at the same time so much genuine decorum in her manner, that in the presence of Preciosa no gitana, old or young, ever dared to sing lascivious songs, or utter unbecoming words.
"Pablo," replied the lad. "Can you speak English?" "Yes, little," replied he. "How did you happen to fall into the pit?" "Not see hole." "Are you a gipsy?" "Yes, Gitano same thing." Humphrey put a great many more questions to the lad, and elicited from him, in his imperfect English, the following particulars.
A bystander asked me whether I could speak the Gitano language. I replied that I could not only speak it, but write it, and instantly made a speech of about five minutes in the Gypsy tongue, which I had no sooner concluded than all clapped their hands and simultaneously shouted, "Cosas de Ingalaterra," "Cosas de los Ingleses."
The Governor's engineer, who was one of the party, told me all he knew about the river and said I would soon reach the terrible rapids known as the Salto del Gitano the Gypsey's Leap. "After leaving the delightful company, I bowled away on a flying current and ere long heard a roar below warning me that I was approaching a dangerous point. I prepared to take it, no matter what it was.
"We do not believe it," replied several grave voices. "It is not possible." "It is not possible, say you? I tell you it is. Come forward, Balseiro, you who have been in prison all your life, and are always boasting that you can speak the crabbed Gitano, though I say you know nothing of it come forward and speak to his worship in the crabbed Gitano."
He speaks the crabbed Gitano, though he is an Inglesito. "'We do not believe it, replied several grave voices. 'It is not possible. "'It is not possible, say you? I tell you it is.
In spite of the fact that he had already translated into Gitano the New Testament, or the greater part of it, he would read out to the women from the Spanish version and let them translate it into Romany themselves, thus obtaining the correct gypsy idiom. The women looked forward to these gatherings and also to "the one small glass of Malaga" with which their host regaled them.
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