It is as a contribution to philology, Borrow tells us in the Appendix, that he wishes ‘Lavengro’ and this book to be judged. Fortunately for himself, his fame rests upon surer foundations. A great but careless linguist, Borrow was assuredly no philologist. ‘Hair-erecting’ (haarsträubend) is the fitting epithet which an Oriental scholar, Professor Richard Pischel, of Berlin, finds to describe Borrow’s etymologies; while Pott, in quoting from the ‘Zincali,’ indicates his horror by notes of exclamation; or, when Borrow once in a way hits on the right etymon, confirms the statement with an ironical ‘Ganz recht!’ Though Borrow had read Borde, it was reserved for a Viennese scholar, Dr. Zupitza, to discover that the specimens of ‘Egipt speche,’ in our original Merry-Andrew’s ‘Boke of Knowledge,’ were in reality good Anglo-Romany. And whatever may have been Lavengro’s vaunted acquaintance with Armenian, it was apparently insufficient to enable him to identify any of the Armenian elements in the gypsy language.
Touching Borrow’s knowledge of Romani, it must be confessed that while he has been the means of attracting others to the study of that interesting tongue, his own command of it was of the slightest. He never mastered ‘deep’ (or inflected) Romani, and even his broken gypsy is a curious Borrovian variety, distinct from the idiom of the tents. No gypsy ever uses chal or engro as a separate word, or talks of the dukkering dook or of penning a dukkerin. His genders are perversely incorrect, as in the title of the present book; and his ‘Romano Lavo-Lil: Word Book of the Romany or English Gypsy Language’ probably contains more ‘howlers’ than any other vocabulary in the world. He is responsible for the creation of such ghost-words as asarlas, ‘at all, in no manner’ (mistaking helpasar les for help asarlas, pp 18, 110); cappi, ‘booty, gain’ (to lel cappi, pp 28, 176 = ‘to get blankets’); ebyok, ‘sea’ (? the gypsy questioned, mishearing ‘ebb-eye’ for ‘ebb-tide’); is, ‘if,’ p. 51; kokkodus, ‘uncle’ (perhaps mistaking some such phrase as ‘like my koko does’ for ‘like my kokkodus’); lutherum, ‘sleep’; medisin, ‘measure’ (perhaps because medicine is measured out); moskey, ‘a spy’ (? mistaking dikamaski for dik! a moskey); o, ‘he’ (mistaking kai jivela for kai jivvel o, p. 53); pahamengro, ‘turnip’ (probably mistaking pusamengro, ‘pitchfork,’ for the turnip it was used to uproot); pazorrhus, ‘indebted’ = ‘trust us’); pios, ‘drunken as a health’ (aukko tu [to] pios, p. 78 = ‘here’s fun’); sar, ‘with’; sherrafo, ‘religious, converted,’ pp. 89, 194 (really ‘chief, principal,’ from shero, ‘head’); sicovar, ‘eternally’ (si covar ajaw, p. 90 = ‘so the thing is’); sos, ‘who’ (= ‘what’s’); talleno, ‘woollen, flannel’ (mistaking talleno chofa, p. 93, ‘under-skirt’ for ‘flannel petticoat’), etc. Perhaps the most amusing instance of all is the word hinjiri in ‘Lavengro.’ When Mrs. Herne hanged herself, Petulengro says that she ‘had been her own hinjiri,’ [0z3] and the word is explained by Professor Knapp as the feminine of hinjiró, ‘executioner,’ from djandjir, ‘a chain.’ [0z4] But there is no such word as hinjero, and hinjiri is merely the English ‘injury’ with a superfluous aspirate.
On the Sunday evening after his conversation with Ursula, Borrow, moved by his discovery of the original meaning of the gypsy word patteran, falls into a strange train of thought. ‘No one at present,’ he says, ‘knew that but myself and Ursula, who had learnt it from Mrs. Herne, the last, it was said, of the old stock; and then I thought what strange people the gypsies must have been in the old time. They were sufficiently strange at present, but they must have been far stranger of old; they must have been a more peculiar people—their language must have been more perfect—and they must have had a greater stock of strange secrets. I almost wished that I had lived some two or three hundred years ago, that I might have observed these people when they were yet stranger than at present. I wondered whether I could have introduced myself to their company at that period, whether I should have been so fortunate as to meet such a strange, half-malicious, half good-humoured being as Jasper, who would have instructed me in the language, then more deserving of note than at present. What might I not have done with that language had I known it in its purity? Why, I might have written books in it! Yet those who spoke it would hardly have admitted me to their society at that period, when they kept more to themselves. Yet I thought that I might possibly have gained their confidence, and have wandered about with them, and learnt their language and all their strange ways, and then—and then—and a sigh rose from the depth of my breast; for I began to think, “Supposing I had accomplished all this, what would have been the profit of it? and in what would all this wild gypsy dream have terminated?” ’
It is one of the ironies of fate that Borrow, neither then nor thirty years later, when he made his pedestrian tour through Wales, should have known that there was still in that country a gypsy tribe who had preserved the language of two or three hundred years ago. He might have met gypsies who had spoken to that Romani patriarch Abram Wood; he might have told us the origin of the mysterious Ingrams, for one of whom he was himself mistaken; [0z5] he might have learned from Black Ellen some of the three hundred folk-tales with which she is credited; he might have sat at the feet of that fairy witch Alabina the Melení, or have described ‘Taw’ as a girl in her teens. We may sigh for the pictures which the word-master would have given us of this people, but the sigh is almost one of relief when we think of the escape of the exquisite tongue which Borrow would have tortured and defaced, and I, for one, cannot pretend to regret that the discovery of Welsh Romani should have fallen instead to the lot of that perfect scholar-gypsy and gypsy-scholar, Francis Hindes Groome.
* * * * *
Note.—The page references to ‘Lavengro’ in the foot-notes are to F. H. Groome’s edition published in this series; references to ‘Romano Lavo-Lil’ and ‘Wild Wales’ are to the original editions. Borrow’s own foot-notes are marked (G. B.), and facts quoted on Professor Knapp’s authority (Kn.).
ADVERTISEMENT
It having been frequently stated in print that the book called ‘Lavengro’ was got up expressly against the Popish agitation in the years 1850–51, the author takes this opportunity of saying that the principal part of that book was written in the year ’43, that the whole of it was completed before the termination of the year ’46, and that it was in the hands of the publisher in the year ’48. [0z6] And here he cannot forbear observing, that it was the duty of that publisher to have rebutted a statement which he knew to be a calumny; and also to have set the public right on another point dealt with in the Appendix to the present work, more especially as he was the proprietor of a review enjoying, however undeservedly, a certain sale and reputation.
‘But take your own part, boy!
For if you don’t, no one will take it for you.’
With respect to ‘Lavengro,’ the author feels that he has no reason to be ashamed of it. In writing that book he did his duty, by pointing out to his country-people the nonsense which, to the greater part of them, is as the breath of their nostrils, and which, if indulged in, as it probably will be, to the same extent as hitherto, will, within a very few years, bring the land which he most loves beneath a foreign yoke; he does not here allude to the yoke of Rome.
Instead of being ashamed, has he not rather cause to be proud of a book which has had the honour of being rancorously abused and execrated by the very people of whom the country has least reason to be proud?