But as I firmly believe that there is much more Gipsy in English, especially in English slang and cant, than the world is aware of, I think it advisable to suggest what I can, leaving to abler philologists the task of testing its value.
Writers on such subjects err, almost without an exception, in insisting on one accurately defined and singly derived source for every word, when perhaps three or four have combined to form it.

The habits of thought and methods of study followed by philologists render them especially open to this charge.

They wish to establish every form as symmetrical and mathematical, where nature has been freakish and bizarre.

Some years ago when I published certain poems in the broken English spoken by Germans, an American philologist, named Haldemann, demonstrated to his own satisfaction that the language which I had put into Hans Breitmann's mouth was inaccurate, because I had not reduced it to an uniform dialect, making the same word the same in spelling and pronunciation on all occasions, when the most accurate observation had convinced me, as it must any one, that those who have only partially learned a language continually vary their methods of uttering its words.
That some words have come from one source and been aided by another, is continually apparent in English Gipsy, as for instance in the word for reins, "guiders," which, until the Rommany reached England, was voidas.
In this instance the resemblance in sound between the words undoubtedly conduced to an union.

Gibberish may have come from the Gipsy, and at the same time owe something to _gabble_, _jabber_, and the old Norse or Icelandic _gifra_.