'
'Whence could they have got it?'
'Why, perhaps where they got their names, brother. A gentleman, who had
travelled much, once told me that he had seen the sister of it about the
neck of an Indian queen.'
'Some of your names, Jasper, appear to be church names; your own, for
example, and Ambrose, and Sylvester; perhaps you got them from the
Papists, in the times of Popery; but where did you get such a name as
Piramus, a name of Grecian romance? Then some of them appear to be
Slavonian; for example, Mikailia and Pakomovna. I don't know much of
Slavonian; but--'
'What is Slavonian, brother?'
'The family name of certain nations, the principal of which is the
Russian, and from which the word slave is originally derived. You have
heard of the Russians, Jasper?'
'Yes, brother, and seen some. I saw their crallis at the time of the
peace; he was not a bad-looking man for a Russian.'
'By-the-bye, Jasper, I'm half-inclined to think that crallis is a Slavish
word. I saw something like it in a lil called Voltaire's Life of
Charles. How you should have come by such names and words is to me
incomprehensible.'
* * * * *
'What is your opinion of death, Mr. Petulengro?' said I, as I sat down
beside him.
'My opinion of death, brother, is much the same as that in the old song
of Pharaoh, which I have heard my grandam sing:--
'"Cana marel o manus chivios ande puv,
Ta rovel pa leste o chavo ta romi."
When a man dies, he is cast into the earth, and his wife and child sorrow
over him.
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