John Bunyan and the Gipsies

Transcribed from the 1882 James Miller edition by David Price, email ccx074@pglaf.org
JAMES SIMSON,
Editor of
“SIMSON’S HISTORY OF THE GIPSIES,”
and Author of
“CONTRIBUTIONS TO NATURAL HISTORY AND PAPERS ON OTHER SUBJECTS”; “CHARLES WATERTON”; “THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND JOHN BUNYAN”; “THE SCOTTISH CHURCHES AND THE GIPSIES”; AND “REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD AT INVERKEITHING, OR LIFE AT A LAZARETTO.”
“According to the fair play of the world, Let me have audience.”—Shakspeare.
NEW YORK: JAMES MILLER. EDINBURGH: MACLACHLAN & STEWART. LONDON: BAILLIÈRE, TYNDALL & CO. 1882. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
COPYRIGHT, 1882, BY JAMES SIMSON
Although what is contained in the following pages should explain itself, a few prefatory remarks may not be out of place. In the Scottish Churches and the Gipsies I said that, “in regard to the belief about the destiny of the Gipsies,” “almost all have joined in it, as something established”—that “the Gipsies ‘cease to be Gipsies’ by conforming, in a great measure, with the dress and habits of others, and keeping silence as to their being members of the race;” and that “in bringing forward this subject for discussion and action I thus find the way barred in every direction.” Although I have said that the belief about the disappearance, or rather the extinction , of the race has been tacitly if not formally maintained by almost everyone, “no one seems inclined to give a reason for this belief in regard to the destiny of the Gipsies, nor an intelligible definition of the word Gipsy.”
This is the position in which the Gipsy problem stands to-day. The latest work on the subject which I have seen is that of The Gipsies (New York, 1882), by Mr. Leland, so fully reviewed in the following pages. He leaves the question, in its most important meaning, just where he found it; and confesses that it has “puzzled and muddled” him. In 1874 I wrote in Contributions to Natural History , etc. , as follows:—