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Updated: May 15, 2025
I became tired of gazing, and was retracing my steps, when I was accosted by two Gypsies, who by some means had heard of my arrival. We exchanged some words in Gitano, but they appeared to be very ignorant of the dialect, and utterly unable to maintain a conversation in it. They were clamorous for a gabicote, or book in the Gypsy tongue.
"He spoke a few words in the broken Gypsy slang of the prison, inquiring of me whether I had ever been in the condemned cell, and whether I knew what a gitana was. "'Vamos Inglesito, shouted Sevilla, in a voice of thunder, 'answer the monro in the crabbed Gitano.
He also considerably improved himself in the language by conversing with his Basque servant Francisco. Borrow now decided to print the Gitano and Basque versions of St Luke, which he accordingly put in hand; but as the compositors were entirely ignorant of both languages, he had to exercise the greatest care in reading the proofs.
"'Did I not say to you, cried the bullfighter, 'that you knew nothing of the crabbed Gitano? But this Inglesito does. I understood all he said. Vaya, there is none like him for the crabbed Gitano. He is a good ginete, too; next to myself, there is none like him, only he rides with stirrup leathers too short. Inglesito, if you have need of money, I will lend you my purse.
Yesterday the brute had it all his own way, but to-day the toreros have prevailed, as you see, Don Jorge. Pray drink; for I must now run home to fetch my pajandi to play my brethren a tune, and sing a copla. What shall it be? Something in Gitano? "Una noche sinava en tucue." You shake your head, Don Jorge.
"I am here on a visit to El Gitano;" he writes, "two 'rum' coves, in a queer country . . . we defy the elements, and chat over las cosas de Espana, and he tells me portions of his life, more strange even than his book. By this last sentence Ford showed how thoroughly he understood Borrow's literary methods. A fortnight later Borrow writes to Ford:
From Seville he took the steamer to Bonanza, from whence he drove to San Lucar, where he picked up a chest of New Testaments and a small box of St Luke's Gospel in Gitano, with a pass for them to Cadiz. It proved expensive, this claiming of his own property, for at every step there was some fee to be paid or gratuity to be given.
Preciosa made her first appearance in the capital on the festival of Santa Anna, the patroness of the city, when she took part in a dance performed by eight gitanas, with one gitano, an excellent dancer, to lead them. The others were all very well, but such was the elegance of Preciosa, that she fascinated the eyes of all the spectators.
Your old friend the zingaro, the gitano who rode about Spain, to say nothing of Galicia, with the Greek Buchini behind him as his squire, had a hand in bringing them about; there are many brave Spaniards connected with the present movement who took Bibles from his hands, and read them and profited by them, learning from the inspired page the duties of one man towards another, and the real value of a priesthood and their head, who set at nought the word of God, and think only of their own temporal interests; ay, and who learned Gitano their own Gitano from the lips of the London Caloro, and also songs in the said Gitano, very fit to dumbfounder your semi-Buddhist priests when they attempt to bewilder people's minds with their school-logic and pseudo-ecclesiastical nonsense, songs such as
We send for wine, Don Jorge, and the nationals become wild, Don Jorge, dancing and drinking through the night, whilst Baltasarito strums the guitar and sings them songs of Germania: "Una romi sin pachi Le peno a su chindomar," &c., &c. That is Gitano, Don Jorge; I learnt it from the toreros of Andalusia, who all speak Gitano, and are mostly of Gypsy blood.
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