horse-dealer, or a tinker. He may be eloquent, as a Cheap Jack, noisy as
a Punch, or musical with a fiddle at fairs. He may "peddle" pottery,
make and sell skewers and clothes-pegs, or vend baskets in a caravan; he
may keep cock-shys and Aunt Sallys at races. But whatever he may be,
depend upon it, reader, that among those who follow these and similar
callings which he represents, are literally many thousands who,
unsuspected by the _Gorgios_, are known to one another, and who still
speak among themselves, more or less, that curious old tongue which the
researches of the greatest living philologists have indicated, is in all
probability not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps in point of age,
an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.

For THE ROMMANY is the characteristic leaven of all the real tramp life
and nomadic callings of Great Britain. And by this word I mean not the
language alone, which is regarded, however, as a test of superior
knowledge of "the roads," but a curious _inner life_ and freemasonry of
secret intelligence, ties of blood and information, useful to a class who
have much in common with one another, and very little in common with the
settled tradesman or worthy citizen. The hawker whom you meet, and whose
blue eyes and light hair indicate no trace of Oriental blood, may not be
a _churdo_, or _pash-ratt_, or half-blood, or _half-scrag_, as a full
Gipsy might contemptuously term him, but he may be, of his kind, a
quadroon or octoroon, or he may have "gipsified," by marrying a Gipsy
wife; and by the way be it said, such women make by far the best wives to
be found among English itinerants, and the best suited for "a traveller."
But in any case he has taken pains to pick up all the Gipsy he can. If
he is a tinker, he knows _Kennick_, or cant, or thieves' slang by nature,
but the Rommany, which has very few words in common with the former, is
the true language of the mysteries; in fact, it has with him become,
strangely enough, what it was originally, a sort of sacred Sanscrit,