Thou wilt feel pain no more!”
There is a strange, mysterious affinity between gypsies and the moon. A wonderful legend, which they certainly brought from India since in it Mekran is mentioned as the place where its incident occurred, details that there, owing to the misrepresentations of a sorcerer, the gypsy leader, Chen, was made to marry his sister Guin, or Kan, which brought the curse of wandering upon his people. Hence the Romany are called Chen-Guin. It is very evident that here we have Chon and Kan, or Kam, the Moon and Sun, which is confirmed by another gypsy legend which declares that the Sun, because he once violated or still seeks to seduce his sister, the Moon, continually follows her, being destined to wander for ever. And as the name Chen-Kan, or Zingan, or Zigeuner, is known all over the East, and, as this legend shows, is of Indian origin, it is hardly worth while to believe with Miklosich that it is derived from an obscure Greek heretical sect of Christians—the more so as it is most difficult to believe that the Romany were originally either Greeks or Christians or Christian heretics.
When a gypsy woman is with child she will not, if she can help it, leave her tent by full moonshine. A child born at this time it is believed will make a happy marriage. So it is said of birth in the Western World:—
“Full moon, high sea,
Great man thou shalt be;
Red dawning, cloudy sky,
Bloody death shalt thou die.
“Pray to the Moon when she is round,
Luck with you will then abound,