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Updated: September 17, 2025
While talking to the children, their father approached leading a horse. I had never seen him before, but he welcomed me politely in Rommany, saying that I had been pointed out to him as the Rommany rye, and that his mother, who was proficient in their language, was very desirous of meeting me.
The English Gipsy calls a mermaid a pintni; in Hindu it is bint ool buhr, a maid of the sea. Bero in Gipsy is the sea or a ship, but the Rommany had reduced the term to the original bint, by which a girl is known all over the East. "Ya bint' Eeskendereyeh."
And I must confess that it was with great interest I learned that the Gipsies, from a very singular and Rommany point of view, respect, and even pay him, in common with the peasantry in some parts of England, a peculiar honour. For this reason I bade the Gipsy carefully repeat his words, and wrote them down accurately. I give them in the original, with a translation.
It was characteristic of the venerable wanderer who had installed himself as my permanent professor of Rommany, that although almost every phrase which he employed to illustrate words expressed some act at variance with law or the rights of property, he was never weary of descanting on the spotlessness, beauty, and integrity of his own life and character.
Nothing was more natural than that the Rommany on first coming to England should speak of far-away regions as being the same as the land they had left, and among such ignorant people the second generation could hardly fail to extend the term and make it generic.
Now the patteran which I have drawn, like the Koua of the Chinese or the mystical Swastika of the Buddhists, embraces the long line of life, or of the infinite and the short, or broken lines of the finite, and, therefore, as an ancient magical Eastern sign, would be most appropriately inscribed as a sikker-paskero dromescro or hand post to show the wandering Rommany how to proceed on their way of life.
Now, brother, had I but bent a finger in favour of the Rommany chal the plastramengro would never have come alive out of the lane; but I did not, for I thought to myself fair play is a precious stone; so you see, brother " "That you are quite right, Mr. Petulengro; I see that clearly; and now, pray proceed with your narration; it is both moral and entertaining." But Mr.
‘Perfectly,’ said I, ‘and their language too.’ ‘I wish I did,’ said the man; ‘I would give ten pounds and more to know the language of the Rommany Chals. There’s some of it in the language of the pea and thimble; how it came there I don’t know, but so it is. I wish I knew it, but it is difficult. You’ll make a capital bonnet; shall we close?’ ‘What would the wages be?’ I demanded.
The great wickedness of these outcasts may, perhaps, be attributed to their having abandoned their wandering life and become inmates of the towns, where, to the original bad traits of their character, they have superadded the evil and vicious habits of the rabble. . . . They listened with admiration, but alas, not of the truths, the eternal truths I was telling them, but at finding that their broken jargon could be written and read; the only words of assent to the heavenly doctrine which I ever obtained, and which were rather of the negative kind, were the following, from a woman 'Brother! you tell us strange things, though perhaps you do not lie; a month since I would sooner have believed these tales than that I should this day have seen one who could write Rommany. . . ."
'I don't know, said the girl, sitting down on the ground, 'I was almost thinking well, never mind, you don't know Rommany. I say, brother, I think I should like to have the kekaubi. 'I thought you said it was badly mended? 'Yes, yes, brother, but 'I thought you said it was only fit to be played at football with? 'Yes, yes, brother, but 'What will you give for it?
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