Page:Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant (1889) by Barrere & Leland.djvu/22

 in England, yet went there all the same. Andrew Borde, the eccentric physician, who lived during the reign of Henry VIII., was the first person who made (in 1542) a vocabulary of their language, which he did under the impression that it was "Egyptian" or the current tongue of Egypt. Bonaventura Vulcanius, in 1597, in his curious book "De Literis et Lingua Getarum," also gave specimens of Romany as "Nubian." The first European writer who discovered that Romany was really of Hindu origin, was J. C. Rudiger, and this he announced in a book entitled "Neuester Zuwachs der Sprachkunde," Halle 1782. He was followed by Grellmann, whose work was much more copious. It was translated into English at the beginning of this century, and passed through three editions. George Borrow, in his novels of "Lavengro" and "The Romany Rye," published about 1845, and in "The Gypsies in Spain," first told the public much about this subject, and his influence was very great both in England and on the Continent in awakening an interest in it. Among more recent writers, Dr. Bath C. Smart, Francis Groome, and the writer, have been the principal collectors of Anglo-Romany lore. Borrow, who knew the gypsies so well, was far from being perfect in their language, as he declared positively that there are only 1200 words in the English dialect; more recent researches have more than doubled the number.

The next element of importance which enters into English slang of the middle type, subsequent to old cant, is Dutch. Of this there are two separate sources. In England, from the time of William of Orange until that of George II., there was a constant influx of Nederduytsch, while in America, the State of New York, while subject to Holland, contributed an equally large proportion of quaint expressions, and of these in time there was great interchange between the old country and the new. To detect many of these, one must go much deeper into Dutch than the standard dictionaries, and descend to Teirlinck's and other collections of thieves' slang, or dig into such old works as those of Sewel, in which the vulgar and antiquated words "to be avoided" are indicated by signs. As English and Dutch belong to the same stock, it naturally results that numbers of our provincial or obsolete terms are the same or nearly the same in both; in such cases we have generally placed them together. An examination of the work cannot fail to convince any one that our indebtedness to this source is much greater than has ever been supposed. But as these derivations are often as doubtful as they are numerous and plausible, the editor, with the example of Bellenden