[28] The Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow, by Prof. Wm. I. Knapp. London, 1899.[53] See list of masculine and feminine names, pp. 299–302.[61] Mulo-mas, the flesh of an animal which has died without the aid of a butcher. “Isn’t what the diri Duvel (God) kills as good as anything killed by a masengro?” (butcher).[73] “Gypsies,” by B. Gilliat-Smith (The Caian, vol. xvi. No. 3).[207] “Shelta is a secret language of great antiquity . . . in Irish MSS. we have mentions and records of it under various names . . . though now confined to tinkers, its knowledge was once possessed by Irish poets and scholars, who, probably, were its original framers” (Professor Kuno Meyer).

“The language of the tinkers is a dialect or jargon exclusively of Celtic origin, though, like one of their own stolen asses, it is so docked and disguised as to be scarcely recognizable. . . . A large number of Shelta words are formed by transposing the principal letters of the Gaelic word. This species of back-slang is, of course, purely phonetic, differing in this respect from the more artificial letter-reversing back-slang of costers and cabmen. . . . It is indeed strange that the existence of a tongue so ancient and widespread as Shelta should have remained entirely unsuspected until Mr. Leland, with whom the undivided honour of this discovery rests, first made it public in the pages of Macmillan’s Magazine” (Dr. John Sampson).[246] The Dark Ages and Other Poems. By L.[256] Gypsy Folk-Tales, by Francis Hindes Groome (London, 1899).[291] Taken from A System of Anglo-Romani Spelling for English Readers and British Printers, by R. A. Scott Macfie.