The magic of the gypsies is not all deceit, though they deceive with it. They put faith themselves in their incantations, and practise them on their own account. “And they believe that there are women, and sometimes men, who possess supernatural power, partly inherited and partly acquired.” The last of seven daughters born in succession, without a boy’s coming into the series, is wonderfully gifted, for she can see hidden treasure or spirits, or enjoy second sight of many things invisible to men. And the same holds good for the ninth in a series of boys, who may become a seer of the same sort. Such a girl, i.e., a seventh daughter, being a fortune in herself, never lacks lovers. In 1883 the young Vojvode, or leader, of the Kukaya gypsy tribe, named Danku Niculai, offered the old gypsy woman, Pale Boshe, one hundred ducats if she would persuade her seventh daughter to marry him. In the United States of America there are many women who advertise in the newspapers that they also are seventh daughters of seventh daughters at that, and who make a good thing of it as fortune-tellers; but they have a far more speedy, economical, and effective way of becoming the last note in an octave, than by awaiting the slow processes of being begotten or born, inasmuch as they boldly declare themselves to be sevenths, which I am assured answers every purpose, as nobody ever asks to see their certificates of baptism any more than of marriage.[1]
Most of these witch-wives—also known in Hungary as cohalyi, or “wise women,” or gule romni, “sweet” or “charming women”—are trained up from infancy by their mothers in medicine and magic. A great part of this education consists in getting by heart the incantations or formulas of which specimens will be given anon, and which, in common with their fairy tales, show intrinsic evidence of having been drawn at no very distant period from India, and probably in common with the lower or Shamanic religion of India from Turanian sources. But there is among the Hungarian gypsies a class of female magicians who stand far above their sisters of the hidden spell in power. These are the lace romni, or “good women,” who draw their power directly from the Nivasi or Pchuvusi, the spirits of water and earth, or of flood and fell. For the Hungarian gypsies have a beautiful mythology of their own which at first sight would seem to be a composition of the Rosicrucian as set forth by Paracelsus and the Comte de Gabalis, with the exquisite Indo-Teutonic fairy tales of the Middle Ages. In fact, in some of the incantations used we find the Urme, or fairies, directly appealed to for help.
With the gypsies, as among the early Accadians, diseases are supposed to be caused by evil supernatural influences. This is more naturally the case among people who lead very simple lives, and with whom sickness is not almost a natural or normal condition, as it is with ladies and gentlemen, or the inhabitants of cities, who have “always something the matter with them.” Nomadic life is conducive to longevity. “Our grandfathers died on the gallows—we die from losing our teeth,” said an old gypsy to Doctor von Wlislocki, when asked what his age was. Therefore among all people who use charms and spells those which are devoted to cure occupy the principal position. However, the Hungarian Romany have many medicines, more or less mysterious, which they also apply in connection with the “healing rhymes.” And as in the struggle for life the weakest go first to the wall, the remedies for the diseases of children are predominant.
When a mother begins to suffer the pangs of childbirth, a fire is made before her tent, which is kept up till the infant is baptized, in order to drive away evil spirits. Certain women feed this fire, and while fanning it (fans being used for bellows) murmur the following rhyme:—
“Oh yakh, oh yakh pçabuva,
Pçabuva,
Te čavéstár tu trádá,
Tu trada,
Pçúvushen te Nivashen
Tire tçuva the traden!