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Updated: June 4, 2025
With their language I was fascinated, though at first I had taken it for mere gibberish. My rapid progress astonished and delighted Jasper. "We'll no longer call you Sapengro, brother," said he, "but Lavengro, which in the language of the gorgios meaneth word-master." And Jasper's wife actually proposed that I should marry her sister. The gipsies departed for England.
He himself attributes his success with the gipsies to his knowledge of the Romany tongue and customs, while they firmly believed that he had gipsy blood in his veins. “He has known them,” he says, writing of himself as the author of “The Zincali,” “for upwards of twenty years in various countries, and they never injured a hair of his head or deprived him of a shred of his raiment; but he is not deceived as to the motive of their forbearance: they thought him a Rom, and on this supposition they hurt him not, their love of ‘the blood’ being their most distinguishing characteristic.” This error on their part served his purpose well, as it enabled him to obtain from them a great deal of curious knowledge that would never have come into his possession had it been known he was one of the despised gorgios.
'Why, look at his neck, said Sinfi, turning down my neckerchief; 'is that sunburn, or is it Romany brown, I should like to know? 'I assure you, said the speaker, still addressing her in the same grave, measured voice, 'that the Romanies have no idea what a little soap can do with the Romany brown. I know what you fine Gorgios do say, you're allus a-tellin' lies about us Romanies.
‘My fathers did, brother.’ ‘And why did they come here?’ ‘They had their reasons, brother.’ ‘And you are not English?’ ‘We are not gorgios.’ ‘And you have a language of your own?’ ‘Avali.’ ‘This is wonderful.’
'Ha, ha! she screamed, fixing upon me two eyes, which shone like burning coals, and which were filled with an expression both of scorn and malignity, 'It is wonderful, is it, that we should have a language of our own? What, you grudge the poor people the speech they talk among themselves? That's just like you gorgios; you would have everybody stupid, single-tongued idiots, like yourselves.
"The hope of honour and renown! very good, brother; but I tell you one thing, that unless you have money in your pocket, and good broad-cloth on your back, you are not likely to obtain much honour and what do you call it? amongst the gorgios, to say nothing of the Romany chals."
But where did this speech come from, and who were they who spoke it? These were questions which I could not solve, and which Jasper himself, when pressed, confessed his inability to answer. "But, whoever we be, brother," said he, "we are an old people, and not what folks in general imagine, broken gorgios; and, if we are not Egyptians, we are at any rate Rommany chals!" "Rommany chals!
Well, brother, now that you talk so, wait until the moon is up, then hide in the woods round the cottage dell with your violin to your chin. I lure the rabbit from its hole, and then you play the dance that delights the Gorgios. But what I do, with kisses or arm-loving, my brother," she added shaking her finger, "is but the play of the wind to shake the leaves.
The lane is called the dark lane by the Gorgios, being much shaded by trees; so the plastramengro placed himself in the dark lane behind the holly tree; it was a cold February night, dreary, though; the wind blew in gusts, and the moon had not yet risen, and the plastramengro waited behind a tree till he was tired, and thought he might as well sit down; so he sat down and was not long in falling to sleep, and there he slept for some hours; and when he awoke, the moon had risen, and was shining bright, so that there was a kind of moonlight even in the dark lane; and the plastramengro pulled out his watch, and contrived to make out that it was just two hours beyond the time when the men should have passed by.
"What does Oh baro devil, and all the rest of it mean?" "The Great God be with you," translated Chaldea swiftly, "and duvel is not devil as you Gorgios call it." "Only the difference of a letter," replied the Gentile lady good-humoredly. "Show us round your camp, my good girl."
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