has
thus far remained undiscovered. There is no hint of it in John Camden
Hotten's Slang Dictionary, nor has it been recognized by the Dialect
Society. Mr. Simson, had he known the "Tinklers" better, would have
found that not Romany, but Shelta, was the really secret language which
they employed, although Romany is also more or less familiar to them all.
To me there is in it something very weird and strange. I cannot well say
why; it seems as if it might be spoken by witches and talking toads, and
uttered by the Druid stones, which are fabled to come down by moonlight
to the water-side to drink, and who will, if surprised during their walk,
answer any questions. Anent which I would fain ask my Spiritualist
friends one which I have long yearned to put. Since you, my dear
ghost-raisers, can call spirits from the vasty deep of the outside-most
beyond, will you not--having many millions from which to call--raise up
one of the Pictish race, and, having brought it in from the _Ewigkeit_,
take down a vocabulary of the language? Let it be a lady _par
preference_,--the fair being by far the more fluent in words. Moreover,
it is probable that as the Picts were a painted race, woman among them
must have been very much to the fore, and that Madame Rachels occupied a
high position with rouge, enamels, and other appliances to make them
young and beautiful forever. According to Southey, the British
blue-stocking is descended from these woad-stained ancestresses, which
assertion dimly hints at their having been literary. In which case,
_voila notre affaire_! for then the business would be promptly done.
Wizards of the secret spells, I adjure ye, raise me a Pictess for the
sake of philology--and the picturesque!

Footnotes:

{19} From the observations of Frederic Drew (_The Northern Barrier of
India_, London, 1877) there can be little doubt that the Dom, or Dum,
belong to the pre-Aryan race or races of India. "They are described in
the Shastras as Sopukh, or Dog-Eaters" (_Types of India_). I have
somewhere met with the statement that the Dom was pre-Aryan, but allowed
to rank as Hindoo on account of services rendered to the early
conquerors.

{22} Up-stairs in this gentleman's dialect signified up or upon, like
_top_ Pidgin-English.

{23} _Puccasa_, Sanskrit. Low, inferior. Given by Pliny E. Chase in
his _Sanskrit Analogues_ as the root-word for several inferior animals.

{26} _A Trip up the Volga to the