Mr. Borrow, speaking of the Hungarian Gipsies in his “Zyncali,” page 7, says:—“Hungary, though a country not a tenth part so extensive as the huge colossus of the Russian empire, whose Czar reigns over a hundred lands, contains perhaps as many Gipsies, it not being uncommon to find whole villages inhabited by this race. They likewise abound in the suburbs of the towns.
“In Hungary the feudal system still exists in all its pristine barbarity. In no country does the hard hand of oppression bear so heavy upon the lower classes—not even in Russia. The peasants of Russia are serfs, it is true, but their condition
is enviable compared with that of the same class in the other country; they have certain rights and privileges, and are, upon the whole, happy and contented, at least, there, whilst the Hungarians are ground to powder. Two classes are free in Hungary to do almost what they please—the nobility and the Gipsies (the former are above the law, the latter below it). A toll is wrung from the hands of the hard working labourers, that most meritorious class, in passing over a bridge, for example, at Perth, which is not demanded from a well-dressed person, nor from Zingany, who have frequently no dress at all, and whose insouciance stands in striking contrast with the trembling submission of the peasants. The Gipsy, wherever you find him, is an incomprehensible being, but nowhere more than in Hungary, where in the midst of slavery he is free, though apparently one step lower than the lowest slave. The habits of the Hungarian Gipsies are abominable; their hovels appear sinks of the vilest poverty and filth; their dress is at best rags; their food frequently of the vilest carrion, and occasionally, if report be true, still worse: thus they live in filth, in rags, in nakedness. The women are fortune-tellers. Of course both sexes are thieves of the first water. They roam where they list.”
The “Chronicle of Bologna,” printed about the year 1422, says:—“And of those who went to have their fortunes told few there were who had not their purses stolen, or some portion of their garments cut away. Their women also traversed the city six or eight together, entering the houses of the citizens, and diverting them with idle talk while one of the party secured whatever she could lay her hands upon. In the shops they pretended to buy, but in fact stole. They were amongst the cleverest thieves that the world contained. Be it noted that they were the most hideous crew ever seen in these parts. They were lean and black, and ate like pigs. The women wore mantles flung upon one shoulder, with only a vest underneath.” Forli, who wrote about them about the
same time as the “Chronicle of Bologna,” does not seem to have liked them, and says they were not “even civilised, and resembling rather savage and untamed beasts.”
A writer describes a visit to a Gipsy’s tent as follows:—“We were in a wigwam which afforded us but miserable shelter from the inclemency of the season. The storm raged without; the tempest roared in the open country; the wind blew with violence, and whistled through the fissures of the cabin; the rain fell in torrents, and prevented us from continuing our route. Our host was an Indian with sparkling and intelligent eyes, clad with a certain elegance, and wrapped majestically in a large fur cloak. Seated close to the fire, which cast a reddish gleam through the interior of the wigwam, he felt himself all at once seized with an irresistible desire to imitate the convulsion of nature, and to sing his impressions. So taking hold of a drum which hung near his bed, he beat a slight rolling, resembling the distant sounds of an approaching storm, then raising his voice to a shrill treble, which he knew how to soften when he pleased, he imitated the whistling of the air, the creaking of the branches dashing against one another, and the particular noise produced by dead leaves when accumulated in compact masses on the ground. By degrees the rollings of the drum became more frequent and louder, the chants more sonorous and shrill; and at last our Indian shrieked, howled, and roared in the most frightful manner; he struggled and struck his instrument with extraordinary rapidity; it was a real tempest, to which nothing was wanting, not even the distant howling of the dogs, nor the bellowing of the affrighted buffaloes.”
Mr. Leland, speaking of the Russian Gipsies near Moscow, says that after meeting them in public, and penetrating to their homes, they were altogether original, deeply interesting, and able to read and write, and have a wonderful capacity for music, and goes on to say that he speedily found the Russian Gipsies were as unaffected and childlike as they
were gentle in manner, and that compared with our own prize-fighting, sturdy, begging, and always suspecting Gipsy roughs, as a delicate greyhound might compare with a very shrewd old bulldog trained by a fly tramp. Leland, in his article, speaking of one of the Russian Gipsy maidens, says:—“Miss Sarsha, who had a slight cast in one of her wild black eyes, which added something to the Gipsiness and roguery of her smiles, and who wore in a ring a large diamond, which seemed as if it might be the right eye in the wrong place, was what is called an earnest young lady, and with plenty to say and great energy wherewith to say it. What with her eyes, her diamond, her smiles, and her tongue, she constituted altogether a fine specimen of irrepressible fireworks.”
Leland, referring to the musical abilities of the Russian Gipsies, in his article in “Macmillan’s Magazine,” November, 1879, says:—“These artists, with wonderful tact and untaught skill have succeeded in all their songs in combining the mysterious and maddening chorus of the true wild eastern music with that of regular and simple melody intelligible to every western ear.” “I listened,” says Leland, “to the strangest, wildest, and sweetest singing I ever had heard—the singing of Lurleis, of syrens, of witches. First, one damsel, with an exquisitely clear, firm voice began to sing a verse of a love ballad, and as it approached the end the chorus stole in, softly and unperceived, but with exquisite skill, until, in a few seconds, the summer breeze, murmuring melody over a rippling lake, seemed changed to a midnight tempest roaring over a stormy sea, in which the basso of the black captain pealed like thunder, and as it died away a second girl took up the melody, very sweetly, but with a little more excitement—it was like a gleam of moonlight on the still agitated waters—a strange contralto witch gleam, and then again the chorus and the storm, and then another solo yet sweeter, sadder, and stranger—the movement continually increasing, until all was fast, and wild,
and mad—a locomotive quick step and then a sudden silence—sunlight—the storm had blown away;” and adds, “I could only think of those strange fits of excitement which thrill the Red Indian, and make him burst into song.”