After due allowance for the faults of these people—the existence of which I should be more than foolish to deny—and writing off, as it were, so much for depreciated human nature, there remains a great deal about them that is straightforward and lovable.
There is, too, a peculiar attractiveness in this singing by the camp fire before the family retires to rest on this Sunday night.
This absolutely faithful description of the close of a Sunday evening in a gypsy encampment, of which my own tent formed a part, and the few observations thereon which I made at the time, afford material for a good deal of thought. Why—it may be asked—did not these people attend some place of worship this Sunday evening? As a matter of fact, they had been asked to attend a church; that they did not, is scarcely to be wondered at as it was situated at a considerable distance, and was only to be reached by much groping along dark lanes; moreover, by staying away they were not subjected to the exasperating sight of primly dressed worshippers drawing back their skirts to avoid contact with gypsies who were presumptuous enough to imagine that the Christ of the well-dressed could be their Christ too.
One may well hesitate to blame them for holding a service of their own in a church whose walls were the darkness of night, and whose vaulted roof was Nature’s own. Gypsies may be illiterate,—many are, some are not,—but all of them who are worthy of the name Romany are keen, albeit in one direction at least they may be likened to children,—they are able to put questions which make one pause. More than once have I been asked by them in slightly differing words, whether “parsons are paid a lot of money to minister to those only who possess fine clothes and a good place in society,” also, “whether the people called Pharisees in the Bible are all dead.” There is no need for chronicling my replies to these questions, and in passing I will state merely that I replied truthfully. However, it is with pleasure I turn to the work of the Church Army Mission, which I have viewed with much interest, for such work among the gypsies is in many respects of a difficult character and calls for conscientious workers having a more or less specialized knowledge and tact of the finest.
It has often been stated that it is almost impossible to get a gypsy to view religion in its true aspect, and one has but to read, to realize the amount of trouble experienced by many who have sooner or later relinquished their endeavours, declaring it impossible to do very much among them. Having myself had opportunities of becoming familiar with the ideas of gypsies while living among them, my impressions of the beliefs and intuitive religion of the Romanies, and some account of their reception of such efforts for their moral advancement as have come under my notice may, perhaps, throw a little light on bygone failures, as well as on the good work now in progress.
To put the matter bluntly, religious symbolism and ceremonial do not attract the gypsy,—perhaps my meaning will be more definite if I say—do not appeal to the gypsy as components of, nor as essentials to religion, and they strike no finer chord in his nature than does the display in a circus procession. That there exists with them nevertheless a profound belief in the existence of God as the Maker of the beautiful earth is evidenced by the fact that while the gypsy will treat with ridicule the notion that he could be in any way helped (morally) in this world, or advanced in the next, by bowing according to man-made rules, so many times to the right or left, a suitably worded appeal to his better self, pointing him through Nature to Nature’s God will always hold his attention.
Shall we then adjudge him the less a worshipper, or the less devout, in that he has a clearer vision of God as the loving Creator of birds and beasts and every other form of life, and as the painter of the sunset and the flowers? Again, certain narrow-minded people imagine, or profess to believe, that those who do not join in public worship, or in some way proclaim themselves Christians, are of necessity atheists. It is to be feared that these self-appointed judges would find many “atheists” among the gypsies; but, such atheists as “love their fellow-men,” and whose religion is that of the good Samaritan.
“MANDE’S GRY.”