BUSINESS-LIKE TO THE LAST.

Cromwell Argus, Volume XXX, Issue 1513, 10 May 1898, Page 7

BUSINESS-LIKE TO THE LAST.

Highwayman (to Mr. Levy, second-hand dealer in miscellaneous property) : “ Your money or your life.” Mr. Levy : “ Mine friondt, you cannot expect me to gif you my money for nodings, and mine life von’dt do you no goot. But I tell you vot I vill do—l vili buy dot bijtol off you at a £ak brioe 1"

GIPSY CUSTOMS. In England a gipsy will—it is needless adding with wondrous self-denial—often abstain from spirits for years, because a brother now dead was fond of liquor, or will abandon some favourite pursuit by reason of the fact that the deoased, when last in his company, was engaged in this business or pastime. Again, a wife or child will often renounce the delicacy most liked by the dead husband or father. They will never mention the dead one’s name, and if any of the survivors happen to bear one of the names they will change it for another less apt to recall the loved one. A gipsy declined a cigar offered to him by Mr. Leland because in the pockets of his nephew some cigars were found after his death. The same man ceased using snuff after his wife’s death. '* Some men ” —the language is the gipsy’s— ■“ won’t eat meat because tho brother or sister that died was fond of it; some won’t drink ale for five or six years ; some won’t eat the favourite dish that the child ate ; some won’t eat potatoes, or drink milk, or eat apples, and all for tho dead. Some won’t play cards or the fiddle—* that’s rny poor boy’s tune’—and g.ime won’t dance. ‘No, I can’t dance ; the last time I danced was with poor wife that’s been dead this four years.’ * Come, brother, let’s go and have a drop of ale’ (the fiddler is there). No, brother, I nev<k drank a drop of ale since ray aunt went.’ 4 Well, take some tobacco, brother V ‘ No, no ; I have not smoked since my wife fell in the water, and never come out again alive.’ ‘ Well, let’s go and play at cock-shy ; we two’l Iplay you two for a pint o’ ale.’ ‘No I never played at cock-shy since my father died; the last time I played was with him.’ And Lena, the wife of my nephew Job, never ate plums after her husband died.” This is Oriental Entirely; but in Germany, where the gipsies are even nearer akin to the primitive conditions of the race than in England, the respect for the dead is even more sacred. “By my father’s head !” is a very binding oath, but to swear by “ the dead ” is even more so. Even in England a gipsy who declares that he will do anything—“ mullo juvo”— by his dead wife, is pretty sure to keep his word, though he never heard of the Bible, and regards the founder of our faith only in the light of something to lend strength to an affirmation. In Germany it is said that when a maiden called Forella died, her entire nation ceased designating the trout by its old name of forelle, bub used one signifying the red fish. In England this rule is generally observed, though it is not universal. At one time —here again is a custom which we have often come across—they put new shoes, and even money, in the coffin with the corpse, or deck the body with gay clothes and ornaments of value. In the course of their wanderings the gipsies have, as might have been expected, picked up a good many snatches of tho Christian religion. For instance, some of them burn ash fire on Christmas Bay in honour of Christ, “ because he was born and lived like a gipsy,” and there have nob been wanting many cases of undoubted conversion to Christianity among a race who,as a rule,are entirely ignorant of, and totally indifferent to religion. Among others of their superstitious scruples is a dislike to wash a table cloth with other clothes. A German gipsy woman must not cook for four months after the birth of a child, and any vessel touched by a woman’s skirt is defiled while one of their most widespread and most Indian practices is to leave at a corner road a handful of leaves or grass, or a heap of stones or sticks, to guide aqy of the band who may follow up.