Round About the Carpathians

by Andrew F. Crosse

Some way up the valley we came upon a little colony of gipsies, who were settled there. Their dwellings were more primitive than the Wallacks even. The huts are formed of plaited sticks, with mud plastered into the interstices; this earth in time becomes overgrown with grass, and as the erection is only some seven feet high, it has very much the appearance of an exaggerated mound or anthill, and would never suggest a human habitation.

A fire was burning in the open, with a tripod to support the iron pot—just as we see in England in a gipsy's camp; and the people had a remarkable resemblance in complexion and feature, only that here they were far less civilised than with us.

I entered one of the huts, in which by the way I could scarcely stand upright, and found there a man employed in making a variety of simple wooden articles for household use. The gipsies are remarkably clever with their hands; many of these wooden utensils are fashioned very dexterously, and even display some taste. The gipsy, moreover, is always the best blacksmith in all the country round; and as for their music, I have before spoken of the strange power these people possess of stirring the hearts of their hearers with their pathetic strains. It has often seemed to me that this marvellous gift of music is, as it were, a language brought with them in their exile from another and a higher state of existence.

That these poor outcasts are capable of noble self-sacrifice, the story I am about to relate will testify. Not far from this very gipsy settlement, in a wild romantic glen, is a steep overhanging rock, which is known throughout the country as the "Gipsy's Rock," and came to be so called from the following tragical occurrence. It seems that many years ago—about the middle of the last century, I believe—there was a famine in the land, and the poor gipsies, poorer than all the rest, were reduced to great straits. Some of them came to the neighbouring village and begged hard for food. The selfish people turned them away, or at least tried to do so; but one poor fellow would not cease his importunities, and said that his children were literally starving. "Then," said one of the villagers in a mocking tone, "I will give your family a side of bacon if you will jump that rock."

"You hear his promise?" cried the gipsy, appealing to the idle crowd. He said not another word, but rushing from their midst, clambered up the rock, and in another instant took the fatal leap!

I see no reason to discredit the story, generally believed as it is in the district; and, happily for the honour of human nature, it has many a parallel, in another way perhaps, but equal in self-sacrifice and devotion.

The gipsies in Hungary are supposed to number at least 150,000. The Czigany, as they are called, made their appearance early in the fifteenth century, having fled, it is believed, from the cruelty of the Mongol rulers. They were allowed by King Sigismund to settle in Hungary, and were called in law the "new peasants." Before the reforms of 1848 they were in a state of absolute serfdom, and could not legally take service away from the place where they were born. The case of the gipsy was the only instance in Hungary, even in the Hungary of the old régime, of absolute serfdom; for oppressive as were the obligations of the land-holding peasant to his lord, yet the relation between them was never that of master and slave. As a matter of fact, if the Hungarian peasant gave up his session—that is to say, the land he occupied in hereditary use—he was free to go wheresoever he pleased, and was not forced to serve any master. In practice the serf would not readily relinquish the means of subsistence for himself and family, and generally preferred the burden, odious though it was, of the robot, or forced labour. This personal liberty, which the Hungarian peasant in the worst of times has preserved, is deep-rooted in the growth of the nation, and accounts for their characteristic love of freedom in the present day. It was this that made the freedom-loving peasant detest the military conscription imposed by the Austrians in 1849, an innovation the more obnoxious because enforced with every species of official brutality.

The poor Czigany had not been so fortunate as to preserve even the Hungarian serf's modicum of liberty. Mr Paget mentions that forty years ago he saw gipsies exposed for sale in the neighbouring province of Wallachia.

There are a great many "settled gipsies" in Transylvania. Of course they are legally free, but they attach themselves peculiarly to the Magyars, from a profound respect they have for everything that is aristocratic; and in Transylvania the name Magyar holds almost as a distinctive term for class as well as race. The gipsies do not assimilate with the thrifty Saxon, but prefer to be hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian noble: they call themselves by his name, and profess to hold the same faith, be it Catholic or Protestant. Notwithstanding that, the gipsy has an incurable habit of pilfering here as elsewhere; yet they can be trusted as messengers and carriers—indeed I do not know what people would do without them, for they are as good as a general "parcels-delivery company" any day; and certainly they are ubiquitous, for never is a door left unlocked but a gipsy will steal in, to your cost.

The gipsy is sometimes accused of having a hand in incendiary fires; but I believe the general testimony is in his favour, and against the Wallack, whose love of revenge is the ugliest feature in his character. These people seem to forget the saying that "curses, like chickens, come home to roost," for they will set fire to places under circumstances that not unfrequently involve themselves in ruin.