226 Notes upon the Evidence bearing
digression treating of an ancient tongue yet surviving as a
spoken language in Great Britain. The facts, as stated by
Mr. Leland, are so curious that they deserve to be quoted in
extenso:—
'Three or four years ago there was probably not an
educated man in all Great Britain who was aware of the
existence in that country of the very singular Celtic language
known as 'Shelta,' which is peculiar to tinkers, but which is
extensively understood and spoken by most of the confirmed
tramps and vagabonds. It is not mentioned in the Slang
Dictionary ; the English Dialect Society has ignored it; and
thus far I believe that I am the only man who has collected or
published a word or a vocabulary of it. . . . I doubt if I ever
took a walk in London, especially in the slums, without
meeting men and women who spoke 'Shelta'; and I know at
this instant of two—I really cannot say promising—little
boys who sell groundsel at the Marlborough Road Station
who chatter in it fluently.....
'As 'Shelta' is somewhat mixed with Gypsy, and as the
two languages are often spoken by the same persons, espe-
cially the half-blood Romanys, I will here give a brief account
of my discovery of it. Once at Bath, England, I met a
tramp who told me that Romany was being supplanted by a
kind of language like Old Irish, which was difficult to learn.
A year after, in company with Prof. Palmer, I met with
another vagabond, who told us the language was called
'Shelta.' He knew about a hundred words of it, which we
wrote off at his dictation. This vagabond was a well-
educated man. Two years after, in America, I found an Irish
half-blood gypsy tinker who spoke 'Shelta' quite perfectly,
and also Irish, Gaelic, and "Welsh. He was absolutely
certain that 'Shelta,' while it was pure Celtic, was quite
separate from the other tongues. Its pronunciation is
strongly Gaelic ; its words are, however, generally unlike it,
though it has roots in common. My informant, who very
much enlarged my vocabulary, himself pointed out differences
between the terms in 'Shelta' and Old Irish. According to
his account, the tinkers had from very ancient times always
been a closely allied clan, intermarrying and speaking this
peculiar language. Their unity began to break up 'about
the time that railroads came in.' Since then 'Shelta' has
declined. There are very few now living who can speak it
perfectly.
'It has been very ingeniously suggested that as the tinkers
of Great Britain may be the descendants of the old bronze
workers, so their tongue may have corne down to us from