A kind of cryptic Irish spoken by tinkers and confirmed tramps; a secret jargon composed chiefly of Gaelic words disguised by changes of initial, transposition of letters, back-slanging and similar devices. [Discovered by C. G. Leland and announced to the world in his book The Gypsies (1882); in 1886 there was a correspondence on the subject in The Academy; in 1889 The Gypsy Lore Society was started and several articles on Shelta appeared in its Journal; finally in Chambers’ Encyclopœdia (1902) there is a long account of this once mysterious but now fully explained speech.]
