It is curious to find in the Gipsy tan not only the root-word of a tent, but also the "Alabama," or "here we rest," applied by the world's early travellers to so many places in the Morning Land.
_Slang_ does _not_ mean, as Mr Hotten asserts, the secret language of the Gipsies, but is applied by them to acting; to speaking theatrical language, as in a play; to being an acrobat, or taking part in a show.

It is a very old Gipsy word, and indicates plainly enough the origin of the cant word "slang." Using other men's words, and adopting a conventional language, strikes a Gipsy as _artificial_; and many men not Gipsies express this feeling by speaking of conventional stage language as "theatrical slang." Its antiquity and origin appear in the Hindu swangi, an actor; swang, mockery, disguise, sham; and swang lena, to imitate.

As regards the sound of the words, most English Gipsies would call swang "slang" as faithfully as a Cockney would exchange _hat_ with '_at_.
Deepest among deep words in India is _tat_, an element, a principle, the essence of being; but it is almost amusing to hear an English Gipsy say "that's the tatto (or tat) of it," meaning thereby "the thing itself," the whole of it.

And thus the ultimate point of Brahma, and the infinite depth of all transcendental philosophy, may reappear in a cheap, portable, and convenient form, as a declaration that the real meaning of some mysterious transaction was that it amounted to a sixpenny swindle at thimble-rig; for to such base uses have the Shaster and the Vedas come in England.
It is, however, pleasant to find the Persian _bahar_, a garden, recalling Bahar Danush, the garden of knowledge (Hindustani, bagh), reappearing in the English Gipsy _bar_.

"She pirryed adree the bar lellin ruzhers." "She walked in the garden plucking flowers." And it is also like old times and the Arabian Nights at home, to know that bazaar is a Gipsy word, though it be now quite obsolete, and signifies no longer a public street for shops, but an open field.
But of all words which identify the Gipsies with the East, and which prove their Hindu origin, those by which they call themselves Rom and Romni are most conclusive.