BY ANDREAS (MUI SHUKO) Graph of serpent with letters R. A. S. M. around it LIVERPOOL HENRY YOUNG AND SONS 1913 Printed by Robert McGee & Co ., Ltd., 34 South Castle Street, Liverpool....

as amends for his annoyance when the railway-officials refused to allow the donkey to travel with a dog-ticket, and...

in gratitude for comforting portions of St. Luke and scrambled eggs administered in hours of depression, these sketches are dedicated. December , 1913 ....

Tomo . Gunia = Binka (f.) Grantsha (b. 1825) = Lolodzhi (f.). Descendants of Gunia: Gunia = Binka (f.) Kokoi (Fanaz). = Vorzha (f.) Worsho (Garaz) b. 1881. = Saliska (Anastasi). Luba, a widow. Descendants of Grantsha: Grantsha (b. 1825) = Lolodzhi (f.). Worsho (Nikola or Kola Tshoron) the chief. = Tinka (f.). Fardi (Andreas) b. 1860. = Lotka (f.). Yishwan. = Parashiva (f.). Yantshi. = Worsha (f.). Vorzha (f.). = Yono. 3 other daughters Worsho (Vasili).  4 other children. 5 children. 6 children.

When you want to find a Gypsy the police are more likely to be able to give you his address than directories, bankers, or ministers of religion; and it was a Liverpool policeman who sent me to the back of the municipal slaughter-house to seek a horde of “Hungarian” Roms whose arrival had been announced by the evening papers.  In a squalid street, at a corner where insanitary dwellings had been demolished, I found a vacant plot of brick-strewn ground surrounded by high walls.  There, evidently, w

Many kinds of foreigner tread the streets of Liverpool, and thus, when Uncle Kola and his tribe appeared on the banks of the Mersey from nowhere in particular the little boys put him down as a new species of “Dago,” and did not embarrass him with unwelcome attention.  Yet Kola is an extraordinary man, and even his costume is conspicuous.  His trousers, superfluously baggy and decorated with wide stripes of bright green and red, are thrust into great top-boots elaborately stitched.  The complicat

The commercial traveller is more truly born to his profession than the poet, unless an unreasonably exacting definition of poet be accepted; and to those who are not thus born, it seems inexplicable that any sane person should willingly adopt so toilsome and disagreeable, yet thankless and inglorious, an occupation, and even learn to like it.  Paradoxically the Gypsy coppersmiths, in travelling, combined the methods of a raw apprentice, foredoomed to failure, with diligence, enthusiasm—and succe

Milanko , son of Yono, was an impertinent lad, but good-humoured, rather ugly and always grinning.  I had assured him repeatedly that in the sugar-refinery to which I have the misfortune to be attached all the “pots” were as big as houses and in perfect repair, so that to my deep regret I was unable to take advantage of the offer of his professional services.  Milanko, however, with the incredulity of an habitual liar, made an independent reconnaissance through a window and caught sight of an an

The profession of the Gypsies, according to a reverend Spanish professor, whom Borrow quotes, is idleness; and by their proverb Butin hi dinilenge (Work is for fools) the German Gypsies plead guilty to the charge.  In this respect the coppersmiths were exceptional, for among them diligence raged almost as an epidemic fever.  The missionary of the eight-hours day would not have found a welcome in their camp, nor the agent of a Sabbath-observance society any encouragement.  On all days of the week

Conversation was difficult, not because there was nothing to talk about, but because Lotka, Fardi’s comely wife, returned at every opportunity to the subject of my study carpet.  I had invited them to afternoon tea and they were taking it in my room, behaving with the perfect propriety Gypsies always observe under circumstances in which the manners and self-possession of a British workman would fail.  But my carpet was thick and soft, catholic in its colour-taste though red in the main, and deco

Sedateness was characteristic of the coppersmiths’ camp.  Even when the air reverberated with the tapping of many hammers there was no bustle; work went on steadily, certainly, slowly, and with dignity.  The arrival of a stranger was the pretext for an animated and noisy chorus of begging by the women, but on ordinary occasions the foreign Gypsies applied themselves solemnly to labour, or still more solemnly to interminable divans.  Blood-curdling oaths in gentle Romani were hurled even at the s

I do not think the old Drill Hall in Birkenhead has ever been a cheerful place: deserted by the military and transformed into a boxing booth, it is now positively dismal.  But for two months during the summer of 1911 it was ablaze with Oriental colour.  Kola, the Gypsy chieftain, with his tribe of coppersmiths, had taken possession of it, having left the English Romany camp at Tranmere to make room for his brothers, Yantshi and Yishwan, who had arrived from Marseilles with their wives, children

Almost a year after the arrival of the coppersmiths, old Grantsha, his sons Fardi, Yantshi and Yishwan, and his son-in-law Yono, with their wives and children reappeared in Liverpool, meaning to take ship and follow Kola, who had already gone to Monte Video.  But no boat could be found to convey them, and after waiting a week in an emigrants’ lodging-house in Duke Street, they were obliged to go by rail to Dover and embark there.  It was a gloomy, undecorated dwelling in which they stayed, a war

Plumbers , and even politicians, think meanly of Gypsies.  The Oxford English Dictionary , apparently regarding them as a species of vermin rather than a nation, denies them the barren honour which it awards to Gallovidians, and spells their name with a little g .  As an old witch complained to Lavengro, some very respectable persons go so far as to “grudge the poor people the speech they talk among themselves,” and, like the magistrate, brand it “no language at all, merely a made-up gibberish.”

Sas trin phral; dúi sa godiáver, thai yek dílo.  Thai muló léngo dad.  Thai phendiá léngo dad: “Zha per talé.”  Káno vo meréla, te avél sáko phral kothé léste.  Hai phendiá o phral o báro: “Zha tu, phrála dilíya, k’ amáro dad.”  Liá o phral o dílo yek kash (bórta), hai thodéla po dúmo, hai geló ka pésko dad.  Hai ushtiló lésko dad, hai diá les yek bal kálo.  Káno vo tshinól les, ənklél ándo kódo bal yek gras kálo. Hai phendiá o əmperáto, kon khodéla ka léski rákli ándo kher, ənkəsto, kodoléske d

There were three brothers; two were wise, and one a fool.  And their father died.  Now their father said: “I am going to take to my bed.”  When he dies, each brother is to come there to him.  And the big brother said: “Do you go, foolish brother, to our father.”  The foolish brother took a stick and put it on his shoulder, and went to his father.  And his father got up, and gave him a black hair.  Whenever he cuts it, there will come out of that hair a black horse. Now the emperor said that whoe

Readers who may be sufficiently interested in these strange yet fascinating people to wish to make a closer study of them and their speech, are referred to the able articles published by Mr. E. O. Winstedt and the Rev. F. G. Ackerley in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society .  Information about the work of this Society and the conditions of membership can be obtained by application to the Honorary Secretary, 21 A , Alfred Street, Liverpool....