Gypsy Variants.
That seven years ago was my theory, if it may be dignified with so high-sounding a title; and that is my theory still. And it seems to me even now, that, though now we possess 160 Gypsy folk-tales, [[lxiv]]our store is still far too scanty to warrant any definite conclusion. We want the unpublished materials of Paspati and Kopernicki; we want Dr. von Sowa and Mr. Sampson to complete their collections; and we want, too, the Gypsy folk-tales, if such there be, of Spain, Portugal, Brazil, the Basque Country, Italy, Alsace, Germany, Scandinavia, Russia, and Greece—above all, of Africa and Asia.[25] If a word like páni, water, is found in every Gypsy dialect from Persia to South America, from Finland to Egypt, one reasonably regards it as a true Rómani word, as one that the Gypsies have brought from their eastern home. Similarly, if a folk-tale could be shown to have an equally wide distribution among the Gypsies, we might reasonably believe that the Gypsies had brought it with them. But at present we know of no such wide distribution. We have five Gypsy versions of ‘The Master Thief’ (Nos. 11, 12), one from Roumania, two from Hungary, and two from Wales; and two of the cognate story, ‘Tropsyn’ (Nos. 27, 28), from the Bukowina and Wales. We have two of ‘The Vampire’ (No. 5), Roumanian and Hungarian; three of ‘The Bad Mother’ (Nos. 8, 9), Roumanian, Bukowinian, and Hungarian; two of ‘Mare’s Son’ (Nos. 20, 58), Bukowinian and Welsh; three of ‘It all comes to Light’ (Nos. 17, 18, 19), Bukowinian, Roumanian, and Slovak; two of ‘The Rich and the Poor Brother’ (Nos. 30, 31), Bukowinian and Hungarian; three of ‘The Robber Bridegroom’ (No. 47), Polish, Hungarian, and Welsh; three of ‘The Master Smith’ (Nos. 59, 60), Welsh, Catalonian, and Slovak; two of ‘The Golden Bush and the Good Hare’ (Nos. 49, 75), Polish and Scotch; and four of ‘The Deluded Dragon’ (Nos. 21, 22), Bukowinian, Slovak, Transylvanian, and Turkish. It is something to have established this much; and it will be seen how [[lxv]]enormously Mr. Sampson has extended the area of Gypsy folk-tales since 1896. But it still needs much greater extension.