Drao = poison.—Both these latter devices were employed to produce epidemics among men or flocks, when the reputed medical or veterinary skill of the gitanos was called into requisition; and, being aware of the origin of the disease, they seldom failed to effect its cure.
The gitanos were, and are divided into two classes: one section have more or less settled colonies in the Spanish towns and cities, where they dwell in quarters apart from the natives, known as gitanerias, wherein they ply their trade of tinkers, horse-dealers and shearers, sorcerers, and general thieves; and from whence, in pursuance of their inveterate vagabondism, they sally forth from time to time to attend distant fairs and markets to dispose of their stolen goods; and, as occasion arises, to perpetrate fresh crimes. The other section is more exclusively nomadic, roaming at large over the wilds of Spain, having no home save the shelter of forest or sierra, and to some extent actually migratory.
The daily life of the Spanish gypsy has always been characterized by a squalor and degradation exceeding that of the residuum of any European nation. They appear to have been devoid of the faintest conception of religion beyond that undefined sense of superstition which is common to savage races all over the world, or to possess any sense of morality, decency, or self-respect. Their food was of the foulest—they shrank not from carrion, and have been accused, apparently not without reason, of cannibalism, for which in early days many a gitano swung from the gibbet. Male and female alike, they were adepts at devilry and crime of every degree, yet amidst such a category of evil, they still possessed the one singular virtue of esteeming purity in their women. We quote the following picture of life in a gitaneria from Borrow ("Zincali," i., p. 76 et seq.):—"The gitanerias at even-fall were frequently resorted to by individuals widely differing in station from the inmates of these places—we allude to the young and dissolute nobility and hidalgos of Spain. The gypsy women and girls were the principal attraction to these visitors. Wild and singular as these females are in their appearance, there can be no doubt, for the fact has been frequently proved, that they are capable of exciting passions of the most ardent kind, particularly in the bosoms of those who are not of their race, which passion of course becomes the more violent when the almost utter impossibility of gratifying it is known. No females in the world can be more licentious in word or gesture, in dance and song, than the gitanas, but there they stop; and so of old, if their titled visitors presumed to seek for more, an unsheathed dagger or gleaming knife speedily repulsed those who expected that the gift most dear among the sect of the Roma was within the reach of a Busné.
"Such visitors, however, were always encouraged to a certain point, and by this and various other means the gitanos acquired connections which frequently stood them in good stead in the hour of need. What availed it to the honest labourers of the neighbourhood, or the citizens of the town to make complaints to the Corregidor respecting thefts and frauds committed by the gitanos when perhaps the sons of that very Corregidor frequented the nightly dances at the gitanería, and were deeply enamoured of some of the dark-eyed singing girls? What availed complaints when perhaps a gypsy sybil, the mother of those very girls, had free admission to the house of the Corregidor at all times and seasons, and spa'ed the buena ventura of his daughters, promising them counts and dukes, or Andalucian knights in marriage, or prepared philtres for his lady by which she was always to reign supreme in the affections of her husband? And above all, what availed it to the plundered to complain that his mule or horse had been stolen when the gitano robber, perhaps the husband of the sybil and the father of the black-eyed Gitanillas, was at that moment actually in treaty with my lord the Corregidor himself, to supply him with some splendid, thick-maned, long-tailed steed at a small price, to be obtained, as the reader may well suppose, by an infraction of the laws? The favour and protection which the gitanos experienced from persons of high rank is alluded to in the Spanish laws, and can only be accounted for by the motives above detailed."
By the middle of the fifteenth century the bands of the Rommany had become a serious danger in rural Spain, and their ability to act daringly in concert was demonstrated by their attempt to massacre the whole populace and sack the town of Logroño. That town at the moment was stricken down by a pestilence, which it was more than suspected had been caused by the Zincales themselves having poisoned with their drao the springs whence Logroño was supplied with water. Already, before the gypsy assault, the greater part of the populace had perished of the disease, and the annihilation of the survivors was only averted by the singular foresight and energy of one man—Francisco Alvarez. This Alvarez in his early life was said to have been admitted to the community of a gitano tribe, to have married a daughter of its chief, and eventually to have become the chief himself. Around the details of the affair hangs some uncertainty; but the historic fact that the gitanos actually attempted the massacre and plunder of a considerable Spanish town has been well attested, among others by Francisco de Córdova on his "Didascalia" (Lugduni, 1615).
The beginning of the seventeenth century saw the evil still on the increase, despite repressive measures. Bands of these human fiends, many hundreds strong, roamed over the highlands of Castile and Arragon, and were only dispersed, after plundering and devastating the country, when sufficient military force had at length been collected. The gypsies speedily searched out the richest provinces of the land—New Castile, La Mancha, Estremadura, Murcia, Valencia and Andalucia, and troubled but little the poor, wild, mountain-regions of the Asturias, Galicia, and the hill-country of Biscay.
The impunity with which these people set at nought during hundreds of years the successive laws which were enacted for their repression, is a curious point in connection with their history. As early as 1499, Ferdinand and Isabella, at Medina del Campo, interdicted, under heavy penalties, their vagrant propensities; ordered them to find fixed occupations, and to settle in the different towns and villages within a short specified period. In default they were to be expelled from Spanish soil. This act was confirmed and supplemented with more vigorous penalties by Charles I. at Toledo in 1539, and again by Philip II. in 1586, at Madrid.
By an enactment of Philip IV. at Madrid, 1633, the former laws were confirmed, but in order still further to penalize the profession and race of gypsies, their dress, their language, and even the name of gitanos, were declared illegal, and suppressed under pain of servitude in the galleys, or banishment. The gypsies were forbidden to form colonies or tribes, to intermarry, or to trade at markets and fairs; while the local authorities were commissioned to "hunt them down, take and deliver them," even beyond the boundaries of their respective jurisdictions. Still further legal fulminations against the gypsies were promulgated by Charles II. in 1692 and 1695, but all alike proved futile.
Similarly Philip V., in 1726, again increased the penalties on gitanismo, banishing the sect from Madrid and other royal cities, and in 1745, by a yet fiercer edict, he directed that they were to be "hunted down with fire and sword; that even the sanctity of the temples was to be invaded in their pursuit, and the gitanos dragged from the horns of the altar, should they flee thither for refuge."
Such, during three centuries (1499-1788), was the set policy of Spain towards her gypsy population. They were a proscribed race, treated as aliens and outlaws, forbidden to intermarry, and their very name, dress, and language were interdicted under severe penalties. Yet in spite of it all the gypsies continued to flourish, to increase in numbers, and to ply their customary trades of thieving, sorcery, and the rest, without the slightest check.