Excerpt from The Tinkler-Gypsies Already in Simson's day we find that the Scottish dialect of Romani had lost all its air Of being a modern Indian dialect like Hindustani or Sindhi, and had taken its colour from the soil. Altogether about half Of Simson's words are debased Gypsy: the remainder is derived from some different source, and it is from the study ofthese words we must seek to identify the class Of people with whom the Scottish Tinklers interbred. The historical student Of secret or cant languages will have no difficulty in recognising at once the predominant factor in the non-gypsy element. It is none other than the ancient cant of the Elizabethan rogue or vagabond, not changed materially since it was first published to the world by Thomas Harman in his Caveat for Common Curse/07's, and familiar to us from the conversations and songs introduced into the plays Of Fletcher, Greene, Dekker, and Other early dramatists. This cant is largely a descriptive one, full of such simple coinages as glimmer for fire, lzg/ztmans for day, ' and darle'nans for night, with here and there a Latin importation like grannam, corn, showing that even before the days Of Glanvil's Scholar Gypsy the vagrants' bands must now and then have been recruited by a broken scholar. Among the words recorded by Harman three hundred years ago which still, though occasionally with some slight change of meaning or pronunciation, form part of the Tinkler tongue are bene and bens/zz'p, good bora', a shilling (simson, p. 305, a clzete, a thing dell, a young wench (simson, pp. 296, 394 dill, a servant maid fumbles, hands grannam, corn ru/zian, the devil (simson, p. 305, rufie) strommell, straw while Mr m'cormick supplies additions to those noted by Simson in his wun, wing, penny, and wapsi, meretrix - a word formed from l-larman's verb wap, perhaps preserved in the name of the Old sailors' quarter in London, Wapping. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.