(lit. strong tree), told of him (lit. across, against him), where he was hiding, so they have to remain dead through the winter.  And so we Gipsies always burn an ash-fire every Great Day.  For the Saviour was born in the open field like a Gipsy, and rode on an ass like one, and went round the land a begging his bread like a Rom.  And he was always a poor wretched man like us, till he was destroyed by the Gentiles.

“And He rode on an ass?  Yes.  Once he asked the mule if he might ride her, but she told him no.  So because the mule would not carry him, she was cursed never to be a mother or have children.  So she never had any, nor any cross either.

“Then he asked the ass to carry him, and she said ‘Yes;’ so he put a cross upon her back.  And to this day the ass has a cross and bears young, but the mule has none.  So the asses belong to (are peculiar to) the Gipsies.”

There was a pause, when I remarked—

“That is a fino gudlo—a fine story; and all of it about an ash tree.  Can you tell me anything about the súrrelo rukk—the strong tree—the oak?”

“Only what I’ve often heard our people say about its life.”

“And what is that?”

“Dui hundred besh a hatchin, dui hundred besh nasherin his chuckko, dui hundred besh ’pré he mullers, and then he nashers sār his ratt and he’s kekoomi kushto.” {30}

“That is good, too.  There are a great many men who would like to live as long.”

“Tacho, true.  But an old coat can hold out better than a man.  If a man gets a hole in him he dies, but his chukko (coat) can be toofered and sivved apré (mended and sewed up) for ever.  So, unless a man could get a new life every year, as they say the hepputs, the little lizards do, he needn’t hope to live like an oak.”

“Do the lizards get a new life every year?”

“Āvali.  A hepput only lives one year, and then he begins life over again.”

“Do snails live as long as lizards?”

“Not when I find ’em rya—if I am hungry.  Snails are good eating. {32} You can find plenty on the hedges.  When they’re going about in the fields or (are found) under wood, they are not good eating.  The best are those which are kept, or live through (literally sleep) the winter.  Take ’em and wash ’em and throw ’em into the kettle, with water and a little salt.  The broth’s good for the yellow jaundice.”

“So you call a snail”—

“A bawris,” said the old fortune-teller.

“Bawris!  The Hungarian Gipsies call it a bouro.  But in Germany the Rommanis say stārgōli.  I wonder why a snail should be a stārgōli.”

“I know,” cried the brother, eagerly.  “When you put a snail on the fire it cries out and squeaks just like a little child.  Stārgōli means ‘four cries.’”

I had my doubts as to the accuracy of this startling derivation, but said nothing.  The same Gipsy on a subsequent occasion, being asked what he would call a roan horse in Rommany, replied promptly—

“A matchno grai”—a fish-horse.

“Why a matchno grai?”

“Because a fish has a roan (i.e., roe), hasn’t it?  Leastways I can’t come no nearer to it, if it ain’t that.”

But he did better when I was puzzling my brain, as the learned Pott and Zippel had done before me, over the possible origin of churro or tchurro, “a ball, or anything round,” when he suggested—

“Ryá—I should say that as a churro is round, and a curro or cup is round, and they both sound alike and look alike, it must be all werry much the same thing.” {33}

“Can you tell me anything more about snails?” I asked, reverting to a topic which, by the way, I have observed is like that of the hedgehog, a favourite one with Gipsies.

“Yes; you can cure warts with the big black kind that have no shells.”

“You mean slugs.  I never knew they were fit to cure anything.”

“Why, that’s one of the things that everybody knows.  When you get a wart on your hands, you go on to the road or into the field till you find a slug, one of the large kind with no shell (literally, with no house upon him), and stick it on the thorn of a blackthorn in a hedge, and as the snail dies, one day after the other, for four or five days, the wart will die away.  Many a time I’ve told that to Gorgios, and Gorgios have done it, and the warts have gone away (literally, cleaned away) from their hands.” {34}

Here the Gipsy began to inquire very politely if smoking were offensive to me; and as I assured him that it was not, he took out his pipe.  And knowing by experience that nothing is more conducive to sociability, be it among Chippeways or Gipsies, than that smoking which is among our Indians, literally a burnt-offering, {35} I produced a small clay pipe of the time of Charles the Second, given to me by a gentleman who has the amiable taste to collect such curiosities, and give them to his friends under the express condition that they shall be smoked, and not laid away as relics of the past.  If you move in etching circles, dear readers, you will at once know to whom I refer.

The quick eye of the Gipsy at once observed my pipe.

“That is a crow-swägler—a crow-pipe,” he remarked.

“Why a crow-pipe?”

“I don’t know.  Some Gipsies call ’em mullos’ swäglers, or dead men’s pipes, because those who made ’em were dead long ago.  There are places in England where you can find ’em by dozens in the fields.  I never dicked (saw) one with so long a stem to it as yours.  And they’re old, very old.  What is it you call it before everything” (here he seemed puzzled for a word) “when the world was a-making?”

“The Creation.”

“Āvali—that’s it, the Creation.  Well, them crow-swäglers was kaired at the same time; they’re hundreds—ávali—thousands of beshes (years) old.  And sometimes we call the beng (devil) a swägler, or we calls a swägler the beng.”

“Why?”

“Because the devil lives in smoke.”