Post by wren on Jan 14, 2007 17:24:40 GMT -5
A GYPSY MAGIC SPELL--HOKKANI BÂSO--LELLIN DUDIKABIN, OR THE GREAT SECRET--CHILDREN'S RHYMES AND INCANTATIONS--TEN LITTLE INDIAN BOYS AND TEN LITTLE ACORN GIRLS OF MARCELLUS BURDIGALENSIS
THERE is a meaningless rhyme very common among children. It is repeated while "counting off "--or "out"--those who are taking part in a game, and allotting to each a place. There are many versions of it, but the following is exactly word for word what I learned when a boy in Philadelphia:--
Ekkeri (or ickery), akkery, u-kéry an,
Fillisi', follasy, Nicholas John,
Queebee--quabee--Irishman (or, Irish Mary),
Stingle 'em--stangle 'em--buck!
With a very little alteration in sounds, and not more than children make of these verses in different places, this may be read as follows:--
Ek-keri (yekori) akairi, you kair an,
Fillissin, follasy, Nákelas jân
Kivi, kávi--Irishman,
Stini, stani--buck!
This is, of course, nonsense, but it is Romany or gypsy nonsense, and it may be thus translated very accurately
First--here--you begin!
Castle, gloves. You don't play!
Go on !
Kivi--a kettle. How are you?
Stáni, buck.
The common version of the rhyme begins with:--
"One--ery--two--ery, ickery an."
But one-ery is an exact translation of ek-keri; ek, or yek, meaning one in gypsy. (Ek-orus, or yek-korus, means once). And it is remarkable that in-
"Hickory dickory dock,
The rat ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
And down he run,
Hickory dickory dock."
We have hickory, or ek-keri, again followed by a significant one. It may be observed that while my first quotation abounds in what are unmistakably Romany words, I can find no trace of any in any other child-rhymes of the kind. I lay stress on this, for if I were a great Celtic scholar I should not have the least difficulty in proving that every word in every rhyme, down to "Tommy, make room for your uncle," was all old Irish or Gaelic.
Word for word every person who understands Romany will admit the following:--
Ek, or yek, means one. Yekorus, ekorus, or yeckori, or ekkeri, once.
U-kair-an. You kair an, or begin. Kair is to make or do, ânkair to begin. "Do you begin?"
Fillissin is a castle, or gentleman's country scat (H. SMITH).
Follasi, or follasy, is a lady's glove.
Nâkelas. I learned this word from an old gypsy. It is used as equivalent to don't, but also means ná (kélas), you don't play. From kel-ava, I play,
Ján, Já-an, Go on. From jâva, I go. Hindu, jána, and jáo.
Kivi, or keevy. No meaning.
Kavi, a kettle, from kekâvi, commonly given as kâvi. Greek, κεκκάβοσ {Greek kekkábos}. Hindu, kal, a box.
Stini. No meaning that I know.
Stáni. A buck.
Of the last line it may be remarked that if we take from ingle 'em (angle 'em), which is probably added for mere jingle, there remains stán, or stáni, "a buck," followed by the very same word in English.
With the mournful examples of Mr. BELLENDEN KERR'S efforts to show that all our old proverbs, saws, sayings, and tavern signs are Dutch, and Sir WILLIAM BETHAM's Etruscan-Irish, and the works of an army of "philologists," who consider mere chance resemblance to be a proof of identical origin, I should be justly regarded as one of the seekers for mystery in moonshine if I declared that I positively believed this to be Romany. But it certainly contains words which, without any stretching or fitting, are simply gypsy, and I think it not improbable that it was some sham charm used by some Romany fortune-teller to bewilder Gorgios. Let the reader imagine the burnt-sienna, wild-cat-eyed old sorceress performing before a credulous farm-wife and her children, the great ceremony of hâkkni pánki--which Mr. BORROW calls hokkani bâro, but for which there is a far deeper name--that of the great secret"--which even my best Romany friends tried to conceal from me. This is to lel dûdikabin--to "take lightment." In the oldest English canting, lightment occurs as an equivalent for theft--whether it came from Romany, or Romany from it, I cannot tell.
This feat-which is described by almost every writer on Gypsies--is performed by inducing some woman of largely magnified faith to believe that there is hidden in her house a magic treasure, which can only be made "to come to hand" by depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by natural affinity and attraction. "For gold, as you sees, draws gold, my deari, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher, an' leaves it, you'll find it doubled. An' wasn't there the Squire's lady--you know Mrs. Trefarlo, of course--and didn't she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where they'd laid in an old grave-and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; an' I hope you'll do better than that for the poor old gypsy, my deari--."
The gold and the spoons are all tied up-for, as the enchantress sagely observes, "there may be silver too"--and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles lighted--to add to the effect. The bundle is left or buried in a certain place. The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her cloak, he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again solemnly and departs, after carefully charging the house-wife that the bundle must not be touched, looked at, or spoken of for three weeks. "Every word you tell about it, my deari, will be a guinea gone away." Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible, when she chivs o manzin apré lâtti--that nothing shall be said.
Back to the farmer's house never again. After three weeks another Extraordinary Instance of Gross Credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the schoolmaster. There is wailing and shame in the house--perhaps great suffering--for it may be that the savings of years, and bequeathed tankards, and marriage rings, and inherited jewellery, and mother's souvenirs have been swept away. The charm has worked.
"How can people be such fools!" Yea--how can they? How can fully ninety-nine out of one hundred, and I fear me nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, be capable of what amounts to precisely the same thing--paying out their cash in the hopes that the Invisible Influences in the Inscrutable Cellar or Celestial Garret will pay it back to them, cent. per cent.? Oh, reader, if you be of middle age (for there are perhaps some young agnostics beginning to appear to whom the cap does not fit), and can swear on your hat that you never in your life have been taken in by a dûdikabin in any form--send me your name and I will award you for an epitaph that glorious one given in the Nugæ Venales:
"Hic jacet ille qui unus fuit inter mille!"
The charm has worked. But the little sharp-eared children remember it, and sing it over, and the more meaningless it sounds in their ears, the more mysterious does it become. And they never talk about the bundle--which when opened was found to contain only stones, sticks, and rags--without repeating it. So it goes from mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it passes current for even worse nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however--and the remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the gypsy language--that there is a Romany turn to even the roughest corners of these rhymes. Kivi, stingli, stangli, are all gypsyish. But, as I have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses of the kind. There is nothing of it in--
"Intery, mintery, cutery corn,"
or in anything else in "Mother Goose." It is alone in its sounds and sense--or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer on the roads in England who on hearing it would not exclaim, "There's a great deal of Romanes in that ere!" And if any one doubts it let him try it on any gypsy who has an average knowledge of Romany.
I should say that the word Na-Kelas, which means literally "Do not play," or, "You do not play," was explained to me by a gypsy as signifying not speaking, or keeping quiet. Nicholas John has really no meaning, but "You don't play--go on," fits exactly into a counting-out game.
The mystery of mysteries in the Romany tongue--of which I have spoken--is this: The hokkani bâro, or huckeny boro, or great trick, consists of three parts. Firstly, the getting into a house or into the confidence of its owner, which is effected in England by offering small wares for sale, or by begging for food, but chiefly by fortune-telling, the latter being the usual pretence in America. If the gypsy woman be at all prepared, she will have learned enough to amaze "the lady of the house," who is thereby made ready to believe anything. The second part of the trick is the conveying away the property, which is, as I have said, to lel dûdikabin, or "take lightning," possibly connected with the old canting term for conveyance of bien lightment. There is evidently a confusion of words here. And third is to "chiv o manzin apré lâti" to put the oath upon her--the victim--by which she binds herself not to speak of the affair for some weeks. When the deceived are all under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has a safe thing of it.
The hâkkani boro, or great trick, or dûdikabin, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practised by them all over the world, and is still played every day somewhere. And I have read in the Press of Philadelphia that a Mrs. BROWN--whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine who walks before the world in other names--was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling, and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the "grand deception." And Mrs. BROWN--"good old Mrs. Brown"--went to prison, where she doubtless lingered until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is easily evaded in Pennsylvania, delivered her.
Yet it is not a good country on the whole for hâkkani boro, since the people, especially in the rural districts, have a rough and ready way of inflicting justice, which sadly interferes with the profits of aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy woman robbed a farmer of all he was worth. Now it is no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee resemble Indians in several respects, and when 1 saw thousands of them during the Civil War, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied these dark brown faces, high cheek-bones, and long, straight, wiry hair, that the American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee farmer and his friends reverted to it at any rate with a vengeance, for they turned out altogether, hunted the gypsies down, and having secured the sorceress, burned her alive at the stake. Which has been, as I believe, "an almighty warning" to the Romany in that sad section of the world. And thus in a single crime, and its consequence, we have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offence, an European Middle Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the Red Indian.
In the United States there is often to be found in a gypsy camp a negro or two ... a few years ago a coloured sorcerer appeared in Philadelphia, who, as I was assured, "persuaded half the negroes in Lombard Street to dig up their cellars to find treasure--and carried off all the treasures they had." He had been, like MATTHEW ARNOLD'S scholar, among the tents of the Romany, and had learned their peculiar wisdom, and turned it to profit.
In Germany the Great Sorcery is practised with variations, and indeed in England or America or anywhere it is modified in many ways to suit the victims. The following methods are described by Dr. RICHARD LIEBICH, in "Die Zigeuner in ihrem Wesen und in ihrer Sprache" (Leipzig, 1863):--
"When a gypsy has found some old peasant who has the reputation of being rich or very well-to-do he sets himself to work with utmost care to learn the disposition of the man with every possible detail as to his house and habits." (It is easy and congenial work to people who pass their lives in learning all they can of other folks' affairs to aid in fortune-telling, to find out the soft spots, as Sam Slick calls the peculiarities by which a man may be influenced.) "And so some day, when all the rest of the family are in the fields, the gypsy--man or woman--comes, and entering into a conversation, leads it to the subject of the house, remarking that it is a belief among his people that in it a treasure lies buried. He offers, if he may have permission to take it away, to give one-fourth, a third, or a half its value. This all seems fair enough, but the peasant is greedy and wants more. The gypsy, on his side, also assumes suspicion and distrust. He proves that he is a conjuror by performing some strange tricks--thus he takes an egg from under a hen, breaks it, and apparently brings out a small human skull or some strange object, and finally persuades the peasant to collect all his coin and other valuables in notes, gold, or silver, into a bundle, cautioning him to hold them fast. He must go to bed and put the packet under his pillow, while he, the conjuror, finds the treasure. This done--probably in a darkened room--he takes a bundle of similar appearance which he has quickly prepared, and under pretence of facilitating the operation and putting the man into a proper position, takes the original package and substitutes another. Then the victim is cautioned that it is of the utmost importance for him to lie perfectly still;"
Nor move his hand nor blink his 'ee
If ever he hoped the goud to see
For aye aboot on ilka limb,
The fairies had their 'een on him."
The gypsy is over the hills and far far away ere the shades of evening fall, and the family returning from their fields find the father in bed refusing to speak a word; for he has been urgently impressed with the assertion that the longer he holds his tongue and keeps the affair a secret the more money he will make. And the extreme superstition of the German peasant is such that when obliged to tell the truth he often believes that all his loss is due to a premature forced revelation of what he has done--for the gypsy in many cases has the cheek to caution the victim that if he speaks too soon the contents of the package will be turned to sand or rags--accordingly as he has prepared it.
Another and more impudent manner of playing this pretended sorcery, is to persuade the peasant that he must have a thick cloth tied around his head, and if any one addresses him to reply only by what in German is called brummen--uttering a kind of growl. This he does, when the. entire party proceed to carry off everything portable--
"Chairs and tables knives and forks,
Tankards and bottles and cups and corks,
Beds and dishes and boots and kegs,
Bacon and puddings and milk and eggs,
The carpet lying on the floor,
And the hams hung up for the winter store,
Every pillow and sheet and bed,
The dough in the trough and the baken bread,
Every bit of provant or pelf;
All that they left was the house itself."
One may imagine what the scene is like when the rest return and find the house plundered, the paterfamilias sitting in the ruins with his head tied up, answering all frantic queries with brum--brum--brum! It may recall the well-known poem--I think it is by PETER PINDAR WOLCOTT--Of the man who was persuaded by a bet to make the motion of a pendulum, saying, "Here she goes--there she goes!" while the instigator "cleared out the house and then cleared out himself." I have little doubt that this poem was drawn from a Romany original.
Or yet, again, the gypsy having obtained the plunder and substituted the dummy packet, persuades the true believer to bury it in the barn, garden, field, or a forest, performs magic ceremonies and repeats incantations over it, and cautions him to dig it up again, perhaps six months later on a certain day, it may be his saint's or birth day, and to keep silence till then. The gypsy makes it an absolute condition--nay, he insists very earnestly on it--that the treasure shall not be dug up unless he himself is on the spot to share the spoil. But as he may possibly be prevented from coming, he tells the peasant how to proceed: he leaves with him several pieces of paper inscribed with cabalistic characters which are to be burnt when the money is removed, and teaches him what he is to repeat while doing it. With sequence as before.
It might be urged by the gypsy that the taking a man's money from him under the conditions that he shall get it all back with immense interest six months after, does not differ materially from persuading him to give his property to Brahmins, or even priests, with the understanding that he is to be amply rewarded for it in a future state. I n both cases the temptation to take the money down is indeed great--as befel a certain very excellently honest but extremely cautious Scotch clergyman, to whom there once came a very wicked and wealthy old reprobate who asked him "If I gie a thousand puns till the kirk d'ye think it wad save my soul?" "I'm na preparit to preceesely answer that question," said the shrewd dominie, "but I would vara urgently advise ye to try it."
Oh thou who persuadest man that for money down great good shall result to him from any kind of spiritual incantation--twist and turn it as ye will--mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur:
"With but a single change of name,
The story fits thee quite the same."
And few and far between are the Romanys--or even the Romans--who would not "vara earnestly advise ye to try it."
Since I wrote that last line I have met, in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, with a very interesting article on the Counting-out Rhymes of Children, in which the writer, H. CARRINGTON BOLTON, avows his belief that these doggerel verses or rhymes are the survivals of sortileges or divination by lot, and that it was practised among the ancient heathen nations as well as the Israelites:--
"The use of the lot at first received divine sanction, as in the story of Achan related by Joshua, but after this was withheld the practice fell into the hands of sorcerers--which very name signifies lot-taker. The doggerels themselves I regard as a survival of the spoken charms used by sorcerers in ancient times in conjunction with their mystic incantations. There are numerous examples of these charms, such as-
"'Huat Hanat Huat ista pista sista domiabo damnaustra.'
(CATO, 235 B.C.)
THERE is a meaningless rhyme very common among children. It is repeated while "counting off "--or "out"--those who are taking part in a game, and allotting to each a place. There are many versions of it, but the following is exactly word for word what I learned when a boy in Philadelphia:--
Ekkeri (or ickery), akkery, u-kéry an,
Fillisi', follasy, Nicholas John,
Queebee--quabee--Irishman (or, Irish Mary),
Stingle 'em--stangle 'em--buck!
With a very little alteration in sounds, and not more than children make of these verses in different places, this may be read as follows:--
Ek-keri (yekori) akairi, you kair an,
Fillissin, follasy, Nákelas jân
Kivi, kávi--Irishman,
Stini, stani--buck!
This is, of course, nonsense, but it is Romany or gypsy nonsense, and it may be thus translated very accurately
First--here--you begin!
Castle, gloves. You don't play!
Go on !
Kivi--a kettle. How are you?
Stáni, buck.
The common version of the rhyme begins with:--
"One--ery--two--ery, ickery an."
But one-ery is an exact translation of ek-keri; ek, or yek, meaning one in gypsy. (Ek-orus, or yek-korus, means once). And it is remarkable that in-
"Hickory dickory dock,
The rat ran up the clock,
The clock struck one,
And down he run,
Hickory dickory dock."
We have hickory, or ek-keri, again followed by a significant one. It may be observed that while my first quotation abounds in what are unmistakably Romany words, I can find no trace of any in any other child-rhymes of the kind. I lay stress on this, for if I were a great Celtic scholar I should not have the least difficulty in proving that every word in every rhyme, down to "Tommy, make room for your uncle," was all old Irish or Gaelic.
Word for word every person who understands Romany will admit the following:--
Ek, or yek, means one. Yekorus, ekorus, or yeckori, or ekkeri, once.
U-kair-an. You kair an, or begin. Kair is to make or do, ânkair to begin. "Do you begin?"
Fillissin is a castle, or gentleman's country scat (H. SMITH).
Follasi, or follasy, is a lady's glove.
Nâkelas. I learned this word from an old gypsy. It is used as equivalent to don't, but also means ná (kélas), you don't play. From kel-ava, I play,
Ján, Já-an, Go on. From jâva, I go. Hindu, jána, and jáo.
Kivi, or keevy. No meaning.
Kavi, a kettle, from kekâvi, commonly given as kâvi. Greek, κεκκάβοσ {Greek kekkábos}. Hindu, kal, a box.
Stini. No meaning that I know.
Stáni. A buck.
Of the last line it may be remarked that if we take from ingle 'em (angle 'em), which is probably added for mere jingle, there remains stán, or stáni, "a buck," followed by the very same word in English.
With the mournful examples of Mr. BELLENDEN KERR'S efforts to show that all our old proverbs, saws, sayings, and tavern signs are Dutch, and Sir WILLIAM BETHAM's Etruscan-Irish, and the works of an army of "philologists," who consider mere chance resemblance to be a proof of identical origin, I should be justly regarded as one of the seekers for mystery in moonshine if I declared that I positively believed this to be Romany. But it certainly contains words which, without any stretching or fitting, are simply gypsy, and I think it not improbable that it was some sham charm used by some Romany fortune-teller to bewilder Gorgios. Let the reader imagine the burnt-sienna, wild-cat-eyed old sorceress performing before a credulous farm-wife and her children, the great ceremony of hâkkni pánki--which Mr. BORROW calls hokkani bâro, but for which there is a far deeper name--that of the great secret"--which even my best Romany friends tried to conceal from me. This is to lel dûdikabin--to "take lightment." In the oldest English canting, lightment occurs as an equivalent for theft--whether it came from Romany, or Romany from it, I cannot tell.
This feat-which is described by almost every writer on Gypsies--is performed by inducing some woman of largely magnified faith to believe that there is hidden in her house a magic treasure, which can only be made "to come to hand" by depositing in the cellar another treasure, to which it will come by natural affinity and attraction. "For gold, as you sees, draws gold, my deari, and so if you ties up all your money in a pocket-handkercher, an' leaves it, you'll find it doubled. An' wasn't there the Squire's lady--you know Mrs. Trefarlo, of course--and didn't she draw two hundred old gold guineas out of the ground where they'd laid in an old grave-and only one guinea she gave me for all my trouble; an' I hope you'll do better than that for the poor old gypsy, my deari--."
The gold and the spoons are all tied up-for, as the enchantress sagely observes, "there may be silver too"--and she solemnly repeats over it magical rhymes, while the children, standing around in awe, listen to every word. It is a good subject for a picture. Sometimes the windows are closed, and candles lighted--to add to the effect. The bundle is left or buried in a certain place. The next day the gypsy comes and sees how the charm is working. Could any one look under her cloak, he might find another bundle precisely resembling the one containing the treasure. She looks at the precious deposit, repeats her rhyme again solemnly and departs, after carefully charging the house-wife that the bundle must not be touched, looked at, or spoken of for three weeks. "Every word you tell about it, my deari, will be a guinea gone away." Sometimes she exacts an oath on the Bible, when she chivs o manzin apré lâtti--that nothing shall be said.
Back to the farmer's house never again. After three weeks another Extraordinary Instance of Gross Credulity appears in the country paper, and is perhaps repeated in a colossal London daily, with a reference to the absence of the schoolmaster. There is wailing and shame in the house--perhaps great suffering--for it may be that the savings of years, and bequeathed tankards, and marriage rings, and inherited jewellery, and mother's souvenirs have been swept away. The charm has worked.
"How can people be such fools!" Yea--how can they? How can fully ninety-nine out of one hundred, and I fear me nine hundred and ninety-nine out of a thousand, be capable of what amounts to precisely the same thing--paying out their cash in the hopes that the Invisible Influences in the Inscrutable Cellar or Celestial Garret will pay it back to them, cent. per cent.? Oh, reader, if you be of middle age (for there are perhaps some young agnostics beginning to appear to whom the cap does not fit), and can swear on your hat that you never in your life have been taken in by a dûdikabin in any form--send me your name and I will award you for an epitaph that glorious one given in the Nugæ Venales:
"Hic jacet ille qui unus fuit inter mille!"
The charm has worked. But the little sharp-eared children remember it, and sing it over, and the more meaningless it sounds in their ears, the more mysterious does it become. And they never talk about the bundle--which when opened was found to contain only stones, sticks, and rags--without repeating it. So it goes from mouth to mouth, until, all mutilated, it passes current for even worse nonsense than it was at first. It may be observed, however--and the remark will be fully substantiated by any one who knows the gypsy language--that there is a Romany turn to even the roughest corners of these rhymes. Kivi, stingli, stangli, are all gypsyish. But, as I have already intimated, this does not appear in any other nonsense verses of the kind. There is nothing of it in--
"Intery, mintery, cutery corn,"
or in anything else in "Mother Goose." It is alone in its sounds and sense--or nonsense. But there is not a wanderer on the roads in England who on hearing it would not exclaim, "There's a great deal of Romanes in that ere!" And if any one doubts it let him try it on any gypsy who has an average knowledge of Romany.
I should say that the word Na-Kelas, which means literally "Do not play," or, "You do not play," was explained to me by a gypsy as signifying not speaking, or keeping quiet. Nicholas John has really no meaning, but "You don't play--go on," fits exactly into a counting-out game.
The mystery of mysteries in the Romany tongue--of which I have spoken--is this: The hokkani bâro, or huckeny boro, or great trick, consists of three parts. Firstly, the getting into a house or into the confidence of its owner, which is effected in England by offering small wares for sale, or by begging for food, but chiefly by fortune-telling, the latter being the usual pretence in America. If the gypsy woman be at all prepared, she will have learned enough to amaze "the lady of the house," who is thereby made ready to believe anything. The second part of the trick is the conveying away the property, which is, as I have said, to lel dûdikabin, or "take lightning," possibly connected with the old canting term for conveyance of bien lightment. There is evidently a confusion of words here. And third is to "chiv o manzin apré lâti" to put the oath upon her--the victim--by which she binds herself not to speak of the affair for some weeks. When the deceived are all under oath not to utter a word about the trick, the gypsy mother has a safe thing of it.
The hâkkani boro, or great trick, or dûdikabin, was brought by the gypsies from the East. It has been practised by them all over the world, and is still played every day somewhere. And I have read in the Press of Philadelphia that a Mrs. BROWN--whom I sadly and reluctantly believe is the wife of an acquaintance of mine who walks before the world in other names--was arrested for the same old game of fortune-telling, and persuading a simple dame that there was treasure in the house, and all the rest of the "grand deception." And Mrs. BROWN--"good old Mrs. Brown"--went to prison, where she doubtless lingered until a bribed alderman, or a purchased pardon, or some one of the numerous devices by which justice is easily evaded in Pennsylvania, delivered her.
Yet it is not a good country on the whole for hâkkani boro, since the people, especially in the rural districts, have a rough and ready way of inflicting justice, which sadly interferes with the profits of aldermen and other politicians. Some years ago, in Tennessee, a gypsy woman robbed a farmer of all he was worth. Now it is no slander to say that the rural folk of Tennessee resemble Indians in several respects, and when 1 saw thousands of them during the Civil War, mustered out in Nashville, I often thought, as I studied these dark brown faces, high cheek-bones, and long, straight, wiry hair, that the American is indeed reverting to the aboriginal type. The Tennessee farmer and his friends reverted to it at any rate with a vengeance, for they turned out altogether, hunted the gypsies down, and having secured the sorceress, burned her alive at the stake. Which has been, as I believe, "an almighty warning" to the Romany in that sad section of the world. And thus in a single crime, and its consequence, we have curiously combined a world-old Oriental offence, an European Middle Age penalty for witchcraft, and the fierce torture of the Red Indian.
In the United States there is often to be found in a gypsy camp a negro or two ... a few years ago a coloured sorcerer appeared in Philadelphia, who, as I was assured, "persuaded half the negroes in Lombard Street to dig up their cellars to find treasure--and carried off all the treasures they had." He had been, like MATTHEW ARNOLD'S scholar, among the tents of the Romany, and had learned their peculiar wisdom, and turned it to profit.
In Germany the Great Sorcery is practised with variations, and indeed in England or America or anywhere it is modified in many ways to suit the victims. The following methods are described by Dr. RICHARD LIEBICH, in "Die Zigeuner in ihrem Wesen und in ihrer Sprache" (Leipzig, 1863):--
"When a gypsy has found some old peasant who has the reputation of being rich or very well-to-do he sets himself to work with utmost care to learn the disposition of the man with every possible detail as to his house and habits." (It is easy and congenial work to people who pass their lives in learning all they can of other folks' affairs to aid in fortune-telling, to find out the soft spots, as Sam Slick calls the peculiarities by which a man may be influenced.) "And so some day, when all the rest of the family are in the fields, the gypsy--man or woman--comes, and entering into a conversation, leads it to the subject of the house, remarking that it is a belief among his people that in it a treasure lies buried. He offers, if he may have permission to take it away, to give one-fourth, a third, or a half its value. This all seems fair enough, but the peasant is greedy and wants more. The gypsy, on his side, also assumes suspicion and distrust. He proves that he is a conjuror by performing some strange tricks--thus he takes an egg from under a hen, breaks it, and apparently brings out a small human skull or some strange object, and finally persuades the peasant to collect all his coin and other valuables in notes, gold, or silver, into a bundle, cautioning him to hold them fast. He must go to bed and put the packet under his pillow, while he, the conjuror, finds the treasure. This done--probably in a darkened room--he takes a bundle of similar appearance which he has quickly prepared, and under pretence of facilitating the operation and putting the man into a proper position, takes the original package and substitutes another. Then the victim is cautioned that it is of the utmost importance for him to lie perfectly still;"
Nor move his hand nor blink his 'ee
If ever he hoped the goud to see
For aye aboot on ilka limb,
The fairies had their 'een on him."
The gypsy is over the hills and far far away ere the shades of evening fall, and the family returning from their fields find the father in bed refusing to speak a word; for he has been urgently impressed with the assertion that the longer he holds his tongue and keeps the affair a secret the more money he will make. And the extreme superstition of the German peasant is such that when obliged to tell the truth he often believes that all his loss is due to a premature forced revelation of what he has done--for the gypsy in many cases has the cheek to caution the victim that if he speaks too soon the contents of the package will be turned to sand or rags--accordingly as he has prepared it.
Another and more impudent manner of playing this pretended sorcery, is to persuade the peasant that he must have a thick cloth tied around his head, and if any one addresses him to reply only by what in German is called brummen--uttering a kind of growl. This he does, when the. entire party proceed to carry off everything portable--
"Chairs and tables knives and forks,
Tankards and bottles and cups and corks,
Beds and dishes and boots and kegs,
Bacon and puddings and milk and eggs,
The carpet lying on the floor,
And the hams hung up for the winter store,
Every pillow and sheet and bed,
The dough in the trough and the baken bread,
Every bit of provant or pelf;
All that they left was the house itself."
One may imagine what the scene is like when the rest return and find the house plundered, the paterfamilias sitting in the ruins with his head tied up, answering all frantic queries with brum--brum--brum! It may recall the well-known poem--I think it is by PETER PINDAR WOLCOTT--Of the man who was persuaded by a bet to make the motion of a pendulum, saying, "Here she goes--there she goes!" while the instigator "cleared out the house and then cleared out himself." I have little doubt that this poem was drawn from a Romany original.
Or yet, again, the gypsy having obtained the plunder and substituted the dummy packet, persuades the true believer to bury it in the barn, garden, field, or a forest, performs magic ceremonies and repeats incantations over it, and cautions him to dig it up again, perhaps six months later on a certain day, it may be his saint's or birth day, and to keep silence till then. The gypsy makes it an absolute condition--nay, he insists very earnestly on it--that the treasure shall not be dug up unless he himself is on the spot to share the spoil. But as he may possibly be prevented from coming, he tells the peasant how to proceed: he leaves with him several pieces of paper inscribed with cabalistic characters which are to be burnt when the money is removed, and teaches him what he is to repeat while doing it. With sequence as before.
It might be urged by the gypsy that the taking a man's money from him under the conditions that he shall get it all back with immense interest six months after, does not differ materially from persuading him to give his property to Brahmins, or even priests, with the understanding that he is to be amply rewarded for it in a future state. I n both cases the temptation to take the money down is indeed great--as befel a certain very excellently honest but extremely cautious Scotch clergyman, to whom there once came a very wicked and wealthy old reprobate who asked him "If I gie a thousand puns till the kirk d'ye think it wad save my soul?" "I'm na preparit to preceesely answer that question," said the shrewd dominie, "but I would vara urgently advise ye to try it."
Oh thou who persuadest man that for money down great good shall result to him from any kind of spiritual incantation--twist and turn it as ye will--mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur:
"With but a single change of name,
The story fits thee quite the same."
And few and far between are the Romanys--or even the Romans--who would not "vara earnestly advise ye to try it."
Since I wrote that last line I have met, in the Journal of American Folk-Lore, with a very interesting article on the Counting-out Rhymes of Children, in which the writer, H. CARRINGTON BOLTON, avows his belief that these doggerel verses or rhymes are the survivals of sortileges or divination by lot, and that it was practised among the ancient heathen nations as well as the Israelites:--
"The use of the lot at first received divine sanction, as in the story of Achan related by Joshua, but after this was withheld the practice fell into the hands of sorcerers--which very name signifies lot-taker. The doggerels themselves I regard as a survival of the spoken charms used by sorcerers in ancient times in conjunction with their mystic incantations. There are numerous examples of these charms, such as-
"'Huat Hanat Huat ista pista sista domiabo damnaustra.'
(CATO, 235 B.C.)