[88] Poetry and Music are in equal esteem among the Transalpine Wallachians, who have consigned over these two amiable sisters to the licentiousness of slaves—Gipseys. These alone sing, play, rhyme—for we cannot allow the appellation of poems to obscene hobbling verses, put together at the moment. By way of sample take the following couplet:
Mitidika, Mitidika, wién üng quátsch!
Ba nu, Ba nu, n’ am tsche fátsch.
This tsche fátsch, which should be tsche se fak, is a monstrous perversion of language. But the Gipsey wanted a rhyme for quatsch; so directly, with a bold poetical licence, he changes the first person of the conjunctive for the third of the indicative mood. Thus this little composition, in question and answer, which should be,
Little one, Little one, come from thence!
No, no, no, no, I have nothing to do (there).
he changes to, I have nothing, what do you?
[89] Sulzer, with respect to their timidity, says: “A Gipsey requires to have been a long time in the army before he can meet an enemy’s balls with decent soldier’s resolution; or to be an experienced robber, before he can take a traveller’s purse, without having first, from a bush, either killed or disabled him.” There is a proverb in Transylvania, that “You may drive fifty Gipseys before you with a wet rag.” Thicknesse found the Gipseys exactly the same in Spain.
[89a] There are a number of serious pagination errors in the book. Pages 1–98 are numbered correctly, but what should be page 99 is numbered 89, with the numbering continuing 89–121. Following this the page number changes to 132 and continues 132–179, when it changes to 182, 183, 182 (again), 183, 186, 187, 186 (again), 187 (again), 190, 191, 190 (again), 191 (again), 194 and then normally to the end of the book. In this transcription the page numbers are as per the book.—DP.
[113] Wilhelm Dilick, in his Heszischen Chronik. Seit 229. beyn Jahr 1414, certainly does say that they arrived during the same year in the Hessian territories; and Fabricius, in Annalibb. Misn. says they were driven from Meissen in 1416. But Calvisius contradicts Fabricius, and has corrected his date, putting 1418 for 1416. And with regard to Dilich, there must either have been a mistake in the manuscript from which he composed, or he must have read wrong; there being no mention made of Gipseys in any of the public prints till three years afterwards, viz. 1417. It is absurd to suppose they should remain invisible to every other person both in and out of Germany, at the same time they appeared to the editor of Dilich’s intelligence.
[132] But we have more than circumstantial proof of the existence of these safe-conducts, as besides a later, but here very pertinent, order of the former great Hungarian count Thurzo, given in the year 1616, remarkable for its serious and humane contents, an older one, granted in the earliest age of the Gipseys, is still extant. It is written on paper, and was brought by those who were at Regenspurgh in 1423. Andreas Presbyter copied it into his six-years Journal, which was in the possession of Oefelius.
[137] The eastern division of the present kingdom of Tunis.