Romanies is fast dying out, and soon
we shall have wholly lost the traces of a people who for many centuries
have constituted a familiar feature of English country life. One of the
last surviving _chals_ of an old East Anglian gipsy family, in reply to a
remark of the writer said, not long ago, "Yes, it is quite true that the
old race of gipsies is dying out; there are very few of the real old
Romanies to be met with at the present day. 'Mumpers' there are in
plenty; folks who sell baskets and peddle clothes-pegs; but they are not
of the true gipsy breed. At one time a gipsy never married out of his or
her own tribe; but that day has gone, and there has been reared a mixed
race with little of the true blood in them. Marrying into the 'mumping'
and house-dwelling families has brought this about, and soon there will
be no true Romanies left. Here and there you may meet a few, such as the
Grays, Lees, and Coopers, and one or two of the Pinfolds; but they, too,
are going the way of the rest. Yes, as you say, it is a pity, for after
all the Romanies are a strange people, and, bad as they may have been,
they were not without their good points. They knew a good horse when
they saw one, and they let people see how a man, if he chooses, can shift
for himself, without being beholden to any one. Anyhow, they have given
clever men something to puzzle their brains about, and their language is
not, as some would have it, a mere thieves 'patter,' but is a good, if
not a better one, than that which the clever men speak themselves."

"Yes," went on my Romany friend, "this old language seems to interest a
good many of the clever men. I have known some of them come to our tents
and vans and write down the words and their meaning as we told them. I
did not mind their doing it; but some of my people did not like it, and
told them lies, and put them off with all sorts of queer stories. They
were afraid the men should put the words into their books, and then it
might be awkward for the gipsies when they wished to have a little talk
amongst themselves on matters that were nobody's business but their own.
Very few of the gipsies can read, so they did not learn the language in
that way; most of us who know anything of it picked it up from our
fathers and mothers when we were young. My father used to teach me
certain sayings about horses that were very useful when we were dealing
at the fairs. Now, however, some people who are not gip