It is uncertain how far the waywode’s sway over his subjects extends. A distinction must here be made, whether the state gives him any power, and what he assumes or derives by custom from his caste. It were ridiculous to suppose that the state should, on any occasion, appoint this sort of illustrious personage a judge. In Transylvania, indeed, the magistrates do interfere with regard to the fellow whom this or that horde has elected chief, and impose an obligation on him; but it is only that he should be careful to prevent his nimble subjects from absconding, when the time arrives for them to discharge their annual tribute at the land-regent’s chamber. He has no right to interfere in disputes or quarrels which the Gipseys have among themselves, or with other people, further than to give notice of them to the regular courts of the district where they happen to be. In this point of view, what Toppeltin and others after him assert, that the waywodes have little or no power over their own people, is perfectly correct: but if we attend to their actions, the affair carries a very different appearance. Whenever a complaint is made, that any of their people have been guilty of theft, the waywode not only orders a general search to be made, in every tent or hut, and returns the stolen goods to the owner, if they can be found, but punishes the thief, in presence of the complainant, with his whip. Certainly it is not by any written contract that he acquires his right over the people, for no such thing exists among them, but custom gives him this judicial power. Moreover he does not punish the aggressor from any regard to justice, but rather to quiet the plaintiff, and at the same time to make his people more wary in their thefts, as well as more dextrous in concealing their plunder. These discoveries materially concern him, since by every detection his income suffers; as the whole profit of his office arises from his share of the articles that are stolen. Every time a Gipsey brings in a booty, he is obliged to give information to the arch-Gipsey of his successful enterprise; and then render a just account of what and how much he has stolen, in order that the proper division may be made. In this proceeding the Gipsey considers himself bound to give a fair and true detail; though in every other instance he does not hesitate to commit the grossest perjury. We may therefore judge how precarious success is likely to be, when a waywode is applied to for the recovery of stolen goods. The Gipseys are cunning enough to hide what they have pilfered, in such a manner, that out of a hundred searches the complainer hardly once accomplishes his desire. It does not at all forward the cause, that the waywode knows who the thief is: his interest requires him to dissemble. Thus, though he does not steal himself, the Spanish proverb is a very true one: “The Count and the Gipsey are rogues alike.” For which reason people seldom apply to so suspicious a judge. If a thief is caught in the fact, the owner takes his property, and gives the offender his proper reward, or else delivers him over to the civil power for correction. Here ensues a truly laughable scene: As soon as the officer seizes on, and forces away the culprit, he is surrounded by a swarm of Gipseys, who take unspeakable pains to procure the release of the prisoner. They endeavour to cajole him with kind words, desiring him to consider this, that, and the other, or admonish him not to be so uncivil. When it comes to the infliction of punishment, and the malefactor receives a good number of lashes, well laid on, in the public market-place, an universal lamentation commences among the vile crew; each stretches his throat, to cry over the agony his dear associate is constrained to suffer. This is oftener the fate of the women than of the men; for, as the maintenance of the family depends most upon them, they more frequently go out for plunder.
CHAPTER XI.
On the Religion of the Gipseys.
These people did not bring any particular religion with them from their native country, by which, as the Jews, they could be distinguished among other persons; but regulate themselves, in religious matters, according to the country where they live. Being very inconstant in their choice of residence, they are likewise so in respect to religion. No Gipsey has an idea of submission to any fixed profession of faith: it is as easy for him to change his religion at every new village, as for another person to shift his coat. They suffer themselves to be baptised in Christian countries; among Mahometans to be circumcised. They are Greeks with Greeks, Catholics with Catholics, and again profess themselves to be Protestants, whenever they happen to reside where protestantism prevails.
From this mutability, we may conceive what ideas they have, and thence deduce their general opinions of religion. As parents suffer their children to grow up without education or instruction, and were reared in the same manner themselves, so neither have any knowledge of God or morality. Few of them will attend to any discourse on religion: they hear what is said with indifference, nay rather with impatience and repugnance; despising all remonstrance, believing nothing, they live without the least solicitude concerning what shall become of them after this life. An instance, quoted by Toppeltin, will fully illustrate this matter: One of the more civilised Gipseys in Transylvania took the resolution of sending his son to school: leave being obtained from the government, the lad was admitted, and was going on very well, under his teachers’ hands. The child died; whereupon the relations applied to the magistrates and clergy for permission to give the young man Christian burial, he being a student at the time of his death. On this occasion the priest asked, whether they believed the deceased would rise again at the last day?—“Strange idea!” they answered; “to believe that a carcase, a lifeless corpse, should be reanimated, and rise again!—In our opinion, it would be no more likely to happen to him, than to the horse we flayed a few days ago.” Such are the opinions of the greatest part of these people with regard to religion; it naturally follows, that their conduct should be conformable to such ideas and conceptions. Every duty is neglected, no prayer ever passes their lips: as little are they to be found in any assembly of public worship; whence the Wallachian adage—“The Gipsey’s church was built with bacon, and the dogs ate it.” The religious party from which a Gipsey apostatises, as little loses a brother believer, as the one into which he goes acquires one. He is neither Mahometan nor Christian; for the doctrines of Mahomet and of Christ are alike unknown or indifferent to him, producing no other effect than that in Turkey his child is circumcised, and baptised in Christendom. The Turks are so fully convinced of the little sincerity the Gipseys entertain in regard to religion, that although a Jew, by becoming a Mahometan, is freed from the payment of the charadsch, the Gipseys are not, at least in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. They are compelled to pay this polltax even though their ancestors, for centuries back, had been Mahometans; or though they should actually have been a pilgrimage to Mecca: the privilege of wearing a white turban is the only advantage their conversion gives them over unbelieving Jews and Gipseys.
Such is the respect paid by the Gipseys to moral institutions, in every country where they are found. It is true that in this, as well as in other things, there may be exceptions, but they are very rare; by much the greatest part of them are as above described. Wherefore the more ancient, as well as the more modern, writers agree, in positively denying that the Gipseys have any religion; placing them even below the heathens. This sentence cannot be contradicted; since, so far from having a respect for religion, they are adverse to every thing which in the least relates to it.
CHAPTER XII.
Their Language, Sciences, and Arts.
Besides that the Gipseys understand and speak the language of the country where they live, they have a general language of their own, in which they always converse with each other. Writers differ in opinion concerning this language, being undecided whether it be really that of any country, and who are the people from whom it originates. Some pronounce it a mere jargon, others say it is gibberish. We can by no means agree with the supporters of the first opinion, as the only ground for the assertion is barely, that they do not know any other language correspondent to that of the Gipseys. But they do not seem to have considered how extravagant a surmise it is, to believe a whole language an invention; that too of people rude, uncivilised, and hundreds of miles distant from each other. This opinion is too absurd to employ more time to controvert it. Neither can the Gipsey language be admitted for gibberish; unless by those who know nothing of the former, or are totally ignorant of the latter, which is corrupt German; whereas the former has neither German words, inflexions, nor the least affinity in sound. No German, were he to listen a whole day to a Gipsey conversation, would comprehend a single expression. A third party allow that the language of the original Gipseys was really vernacular, and that of some country; but assert it to be so disguised and falsified, partly by design of the Gipseys themselves, partly by adventitious events, through length of time, and the continual wandering of these people, that it is entirely new formed, and now used by the Gipseys only. This opinion contains much truth; but carries the matter too far, in not allowing that any traces remain to prove any particular dialect to be the Gipseys’ mother tongue. Perhaps the great Büsching means the same thing, when he says, “the Gipsey language is a mixture of corrupt words from the Wallachian, Sclavonian, Hungarian, and other nations.” Among these, the best-founded notion may be, that it is the dialect of some particular country, though no longer so pure as in the country whence it originated. This opinion meets the greatest concurrence of the learned: and will, we hope, be fully proved in another part of this book, where the subject will be again discussed, more fully, in order to corroborate the other proofs of the origin of this people. It will then be certified, in what country this is the native mother tongue. This is a point concerning which most writers think differently. Sometimes the Gipseys are Hebrews, then Nubians, Egyptians, Phrygians, Vandals, Sclavonians, or, as opinions vary, perhaps some other nation.
It appears extraordinary, that the language of a people who have lived for centuries among us, and has been matter of enquiry almost ever since, should still remain an affair of so much uncertainty. Gipseys are to be found every-where, and might be very easily examined, as closely and often as any body pleased, about their language. It would have been attended with no great trouble, to have made so near an acquaintance as to bring them to converse with variety of people, and thereby, by means of comparison, to have attained some degree of certainty. This observation sounds plausibly; but on a closer examination the case is found to be very different. First, it is not so easy as people may imagine, to gain much information from the Gipseys concerning their language. They are suspicious, apprehending an explanation might be attended with danger to themselves; and are therefore not very communicative. To this must be added, their natural levity, and consequent seeming inattention to the questions put to them. A writer, who had frequent experience of this behaviour, expresses himself to the following effect: “Suppose any person had an inclination to learn the Gipsey language, he would find it very difficult to accomplish his purpose. Intercourse with these people is almost insufferable; and very few of them have sense enough to teach any thing, or even to give a proper answer to a question. If you ask about a single word, they chatter a great many, which nobody can understand. Others have equally failed of success, not being able, by any means whatever, to obtain from them the paternoster in their own language.” Secondly, suppose the language of the Gipseys had been perfectly understood soon after their arrival in Europe, variety of opinions would nevertheless have been maintained among the learned. It would still have been necessary, in order to ascertain truth, to have revised the original languages of all the inhabitants both in and out of Europe, or at least a general sketch of them. By such a review, the Gipseys’ mother tongue might easily have been discovered. But many there are, as Büttner, Schlözer, Gibelin, and Bachmeister, who have taken great pains in the minute investigation of the languages, as well as manners, of different people, and reckon those they have learned by dozens. How was it, indeed, possible for the learned of former centuries to be competent to the enquiry, as they had not the aids which now so copiously occur to the historical etymologist? Many dialects have been discovered, and our knowledge of others greatly increased, within the last fifty or sixty years. During that term, the treasures of the farthest north have been opened; and the most eastern idioms become more familiar to us: we even know how the Otaheitian expresses himself. All this information did not exist before; knowledge in this science was much more confined than at this period: nor was it possible for the most learned man, so circumstanced, to point out the country in which the Gipsey language was spoken.