Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/633

Rh GIPSIES sing. isémas, -istinas, -isris; plur. isdmas, isdnas, iszts. And in Welsh Romani occur the forms, shom, “I am;" sham, “thou art;’’ so, “he is” or “they are;" sham, “we are" (e.g., sham bctchcrda to last a kai ﬁlaslzin, “we are sent to get this man- sion”); shcn, “ ye are ;” shomas, “ I was ;” shcnncs, “ thou wert " or “ ye were ;” scs, “ he was” or “ they were." The terminations of the present indicative in Turkish I-lomani are: SISG. -ca, -sa, -la; PLUR. -Sfl, -na, -na, which are joined innnediately to the verbal stem (identical with the imperative) if it is monosyllabie and ends in a vowel, but otherwise are connected with it bya vowel. For example, Id-va, “I take ;" ld-sa (lésa), Id-la (léla), Id-srt, lé-mt, lé-nu; and kcr-ti-ra, “ I make ;" kc)‘-é-sa, &c. 'clsh llomaui retains all these forms, c.g., bz'tchcraz:a, “ I send ;" shoncsa, “ thou hearest;” 7_)cncla., “he says ;" bitchcrasa, “ we send ;" ccna, “ye come ;” bitchm-cna., “ they send." In -va (-mi in Asiatic 11.), -S’!-, and -la (cf. lo above) may be recognized the first, second, and third personal pronouns; the n of the second and third persons plural may be compared with the n in romén, “husbands.” The imperfect is formed from the present by the sullix of -s, or, in the llungarian dialect, -hi, c. _r/., T. /l'cr(ira-s, “ I was making;” Hung. /'.'a2nc.m-In’, “thou wast loving;” IV. sallcs, “he was laughing," jivmcs, “they were living.” This -s or -hi is the third person singular of the auxiliary verb, isi, “it is," so that literally kcrcivas means ‘‘I makc+it is " (ilsotne time ago). Perfccts are com- pounded of partieiples——ending in -do (rarely -to), -lo, and —no—- and the auxiliary verb. Thus from T. pirdva, “I walk,” part. pi)‘-Id, comes pirtl-6)n, “I walked," ]n'rd-(in, “thou walkedst," pint-(is, “he walked," &e. ; and from (idea, “ I give," part. (lino,
 * lz'na’m, “I gave." Here too the 'elsh agrees generally with the

Turkish dialect, c._(/. kcrdom, “I made,” kcdtlan, “ thou inadest,” Iccrrltzs, “he made; but kcdan, “ we made,” should properly be I: .r.lu'nL; and for the third person plural Velsh IL, like the German and other dialects, simply employs the plural participle, as dicktta, “they saw." In Continental dialects a pluperfcet is formed from the perfect by adding to it -Ll-S or -a-hi, just as the imperfect from the present; and for a future kama- (kamara, “ I love, wish, or will”) is prefixed to the present, c._(/., kanuz-Iccniva, “I will do,” l'(1m'L-kcrésa, “thou wilt do,” &c. The sign of the snb_junctive, which supplies the place of an inﬁnitive, is the conjunction to, “that,” preﬁxed to the imlieative, which usually drops its vowel- cuding, c._r/., T. tcréla dzii lar to péncl tzikc, “he has two words to tell (lit. that he tells-_) you;” W. trashaday scslay tc diclccn mrnz, “they were fright-.-ned to see (lit. that they see) me.” linnugh has been said to show that Romaui is not so utterly “ degraded in its grammar " as Max Miillcr has declared it to be; and the following short Velsh Gipsy story (printed literatim from ll nlwrts) will illustrate some of the foregoing remarks :— Yeker a doi ses bcareugaro ta vavcr store inorsh; yek ses Once there were (a) sailor and other four men; one was peltanengcro, ta ow vaver ses koramangaro, ta sivamaugaro, (a) blacksmith, and the other was (a) soldier, and (a) tailor, to pallano ses kirehimaekaro. Ow bcareugaro potchcdas e and the last was (an) innkecpcr. The sailor asked the peltanengaro te vel apra ow doreav. Ow pcltanengaro pendas, blacksmith to come on the sea. The blacksmith said, “ .'au, shom te ja te kerra boottce.” “ So se tcro bootee?" “ Te "No, (I) am to go to do work.“ “ What is thy work?” “To tasarra sastarn," chotehy ow pelttenengaro, “ ta te kerravles undra heat iron," quoth the blacksmith, “and to make it into ehiehaw grengey.’-’ Potchdas ow bearengaro e vaver trinengcy te shoes for horses." Asked the sailor the other three to ven adra ow bearo. Ow koramangaro pcndas ta jalla te kel come in the ship. The soldier said that he goes to make moyaben ta javaben; to sivamangaro pendas, “ Shom te ja te faeings antlmarehing;andthe tailor said, “(I)am to go to kerra t-sa te rigeren tomen tatay.” A ov kirehimaekaro pendas, makcclothcsto keep you warm.“ And the innkeeper said, “Java ma te kerra loviua te kcl tomen matay, te jan saw “Go I to make beer to make you drunk, that may go all to meuday kai ow Bong." Okke saw dolestay. you to the Devil." Here (is) all to that (i.e., of that). The Ilomani vocabulary reveals positively and negatively the route by which the Gipsies must have entered Europe, and the various ways by which they have since dispersed to their present quarters. The absence, for instance, of Arabic elements from every European dialect dis-proves a connnon belief that the earliest immigrants may have landed in the Balkan peninsula. from Egypt. On the other hand, the presence of Persian and Armenian words shows that they must have traversed and halted in the lands where those languages are spoken. Among the Persian are dcvrudl, “ set,” pas/z67n, “wool,” veslz, “forest,” amln-6/, “pear,” and avgin, “ honey ;” whilst the Armenian words number twenty-six, according to .Iiklosiel1—_r/rast, “horse,” char, (315 “ deep,” lrotér, “apiece,” mo-2-ti, “skin,” the. Again, every dialect presents a large number of Greek words, testify- ing to the long residence of the Gipsies in a Greek- speaking land. In the German Romani dialect Miklosich reckons forty-two, besides the article, in the English thirty, which latter number might be certainly aug- mented. Alike in Russia and Spain, England and Hungary, Gipsies call a road dram (3p6,uos), time clzairos (xatpés), a horseshoe petal (1'r€"ra}ov), a hat stadi (m<Lo't3¢), &c. ; in every land of Europe éqbrci, “seven,” (ixfoi), “eight,” and e’we’a, “nine,” have superseded the laaut, asclz, and mm of Asiatic Gipsies. This identity of their borrowed words disproves the view that the Gipsies of different European countries are the result of successive innr.igra- tions. Next to the Greek, and almost more numerous than they, come the Slavonic elements. I-lliklosich cites 70 fron1 the German dialect, 30 from the English, and from the Spanish 46, among them being /cral-is, “king,” I-Etc/u'7na, “inn,” mcitc/z/ca, “cat,” lovina, “ale,” and plttshfrl, “cloak.” Similarly English Romani contains Wallachian, Magyar, German, and French words, showing that the Gipsies reached England after wandering among Greeks, Slavs, Magyars, Germans, and French. It must not, how- ever, be inferred from the foregoing that Itomani is essentially other than an Indian speech. The Gipsies’ linguistic pilferings form but a small percentage in the 2332 articles gathered together by Pott. And though some of these articles, founded on error, must be struck out, their place might be more than ﬁlled up by omissions; and the sum total is largely multiplied when one considers how many derivatives are grouped under a single head. Altogether, the entire stock of Romani words probably exceeds 5000, though the number known to any individual Gipsy is of ten small. Elements of Lz'teratm'e.—’1‘l1e Gipsies have no literature worthy of the name-—nothing but some rude ballads, some love and dance songs, and a considerable mass of folk-tales. Valuable from a linguistic point of view, the songs have little merit of their own, and seem to be mainly echoes of Gentile strains. The folk-tales, however, would possibly repay a keener investigation than they have yet received. Alike in Wales and Turkey they may be identi- ﬁed with those of other Aryan races; scarce one has yet been published but its counterpart maybe found in Grimm’s, lalston’s, or other collections of European folk—lore. For instance I’aspati’s third story, taken down at Constanti- nople from a Gipsy professional 7'ac0ntem', is unquestion- ably the same as Grimm’s Treuer Jo/zamzts. Similarly in the Bukowina we meet with Romani versions of Das tapfere Se/uzeiderlein, Die zwei Br-ﬁder, &c., whilst .'a2clrz'vdn-u may be matched from Ralston’s Jtuss-ian Fol]:- tales, p. 73, and frequent mention is made of the waters of life and death, of hills that butt together like rams (cf. Ralston, p. 236), and of other features common in Slavonic folk—lore. This resemblance of Romani to Gen- tile stories may be explained (1) by the common origin of the Aryan races, by the Gipsies having borrowed from the nations among whom they wander, or (3) by these nations having received their stories from the Gipsies. Probably all three explanations are true by turns, but the ﬁI':<l': is sometimes excluded by an identity of details too close to have been preserved through untold ages, and as to the second it is hard to see how a story current at Peder- born should have travelled eastward to Constantinople, especially as Paspati’s tales, cnshrining words and plnases otherwise obsolete, are plainly of some antiquity. Accord- ingly the third explanation, that the Gipsies may have carried Trcuer Jolzmmes and other stories westward with them, deserves consideration. Seine of the Gaelic stories collected by Campbell were, it should be remarked. taken