The Scrivener: The Latcho Drom
…Gypsies like playing with words and inventing them. Sometimes the result is quite charming. Read ‘Sparadise’, a prayer taught by a Gypsy to her child over 100 years ago. If you don’t see the word-play, read it aloud.
Little bird of Sparadise,
Do the work of Jesu Chrise,
Go by sea, go by lan’,
Go by Goddes holy han’.
God make me a branch and flower,
May the lord send us all a happy hour…
Brian Barratt is justifiably proud of his gypsy ancestors and delights in their language.
After you have read this column do please visit Brian’s engaging Web site The Brain Rummager www.alphalink.com.au/~umbidas/
In the 1940s, my old Grannie had a special term of endearment for me: ‘My old wooden man made of smoke’. She came from farming stock in the Lincolnshire and Nottinghamshire area, but I haven’t been able to find anything like it in local idiom.
Grannie was only a couple of generations away from our Gypsy ancestors. I reckon that phrase is an old Gypsy saying, and I’m proud of it. (It’s a sobering thought that if Hitler had taken Britain, some of our family could have disappeared in Auschwitz.)
Gypsies like playing with words and inventing them. Sometimes the result is quite charming. Read ‘Sparadise’, a prayer taught by a Gypsy to her child over 100 years ago. If you don’t see the word-play, read it aloud.
Little bird of Sparadise,
Do the work of Jesu Chrise,
Go by sea, go by lan’,
Go by Goddes holy han’.
God make me a branch and flower,
May the lord send us all a happy hour.
The original language of the Gypsies comes from Indian languages and dialects. A few English words are from Romany or borrowed by the Roma from other languages during their trek from northern India, across southern Asia, and into Europe, 1,000 years ago. These words all have Gypsy connections:
* bosh, rubbish, from Turkish. Bosh is also Romany for violin.
* clobber, clothes, borrowed from Yiddish.
* cobber, friend, mate, borrowed from Yiddish. Its arrival in Australia could be because there were Gypsies among the convicts, fortune-hunters and swaggies.
* cosh, a stout stick or club. A Romany word.
hickory dickory dock, a counting rhyme from the border area of Scotland and England, it could have Gypsy word-play origins.
* lurcher, a dog bred by Gypsies in the 17th century for hunting. TV viewers will remember old Claude Greengrass’s dog Alfred. Although he looked like a mongrel, he was a lurcher, now recognised as a breed.
* mush, Cockney slang for face, from Romany moosh, mush, man.
* nark, a police informer or spy. From Romany nak, nock, nose.
* pal, a friend. In the Romany language it means brother, friend, from Turkish and Transylvanian words meaning brother.
* stir, slang for prison, used in a TV series starring Ronnie Barker, comes from Romany stiraben, prison.
* The latcho drom? A Gypsy jals the drom in a vardo, travels the road in a caravan. I wish you all kushti bok on the latcho drom — best fortune on the good road through life!
Copyright © Brian Barratt 2003, 2007
