It is recorded in Socrates, that after the defeat of the Athenian army under the prætor Laches, as he was flying in company with the Athenian general, and came to a place where several roads met, he refused to go the same road that the others took, and the reason being asked him, he answered that his genus, or familiar spirit, who frequently attended him, dissuaded him from it; and the event justified the precaution, for all those who went a different way, were killed, or made prisoners by the enemy’s cavalry.
GIPSIES—EGYPTIANS.
In most parts of the continent the gipsies are called Cingari, or Zingari; the Spaniards call them Gitanos, the French Bohemiens or Bohemiennes.
It is not certain when the Gipsies, as they are now termed, first appeared in Europe; but mention is made of them in Hungary and Germany, so early as the year 1417. Within 10 years afterwards we hear of them in France, Switzerland and Italy. The date of their arrival in England is more uncertain; it is most probable that it was not until near a century afterward. In the year 1530, they are spoken of in the following manner, in the penal statutes.
“Forasmuch as before this time, divers and many outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft nor feat of merchandize, have come into this realm, and gone from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company, and used great subtil and crafty means to deceive the people; bearing them in mind that they, by palmistry, could tell men’s and women’s fortunes; and so many times, by craft and subtilty, have deceived the people of their money; and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies, to the great hurt and deceit of the people they have come among,” &c.
This is the preamble to an act, by which the Gipsies were ordered to quit the realm under heavy penalties. Two subsequent acts, passed in 1555 and 1565, made it death for them to remain in the kingdom; and it is still on record, that thirteen were executed under these acts, in the county of Suffolk, a few years before the restoration. It was not till about the year 1783, that they were repealed.
The Gipsies were expelled France in 1560, and Spain in 1591: but it does not appear they have been extirpated in any country. Their collective numbers, in every quarter of the globe, have been calculated at 7 or 800,000[[66]]. They are most numerous in Asia, and in the northern parts of Europe. Various have been the opinion relative to their origin. That they came from Egypt, has been the most prevalent. This opinion (which has procured them here the name of Gipsies, and in Spain that of Gittanos) arose from some of the first who arrived in Europe, pretending that they came from that country; which they did, perhaps, to heighten their reputation for skill in palmistry and the occult sciences. It is now we believe pretty generally agreed, that they came originally from Hindostan; since their language so far coincides with the Hindostanic, that even now, after a lapse of nearly four centuries, during which they have been dispersed in various foreign countries, nearly one half of their words are precisely those of Hindostan[[67]]; and scarcely any variation is to be found in vocabularies procured from the Gipsies in Turkey, Hungary, Germany, and those in England[[68]]. Their manners, for the most part, coincide, as well as the language, in every quarter of the globe where they are found; being the same idle wandering set of beings, and seldom professing any mode of acquiring a livelihood, except that of fortune-telling[[69]]. Their religion is always that of the country in which they reside; and though they are no great frequenters either of mosques or churches, they generally conform to rites and ceremonies as they find them established.
Grellman says that, in Germany, they seldom think of any marriage ceremony; but their children are baptized and the mothers churched. In England their children are baptized, and their dead buried, according to the rites of the church; perhaps the marriage ceremony is not more regarded than in Germany; but it is certain they are sometimes married in churches. Upon the whole, as Grellman observes, we may certainly regard the Gipsies as a singular phenomenon in Europe. For the space of between three and four hundred years they have gone wandering about like pilgrims and strangers, yet neither time nor example has made in them any alteration: they remain ever and every where what their fathers were: Africa makes them no blacker, nor does Europe make them whiter.
Few of the descendants of the aboriginal Gipsies are to be found any where in Europe, and in England less than any where else. The severity of the police against this description of the degenerate vagabonds existing at the present day, have considerably thinned their phalanxes, and brought them to something like a due sense of the laws and expectations of civilized society. What remains of them, nevertheless, contrive one way or other to elude the vigilance of the laws by different masked callings, under which they ostensibly appear to carry on their usual traffic.
The modern Gipsies pretend that they derive their origin from the ancient Egyptians, who were famous for their knowledge in astronomy and other sciences; and, under the pretence of fortune-telling, find means to rob or defraud the ignorant and superstitious. To colour their impostures, they artificially discolour their faces, and speak a kind of gibberish or cant peculiar to themselves. They rove up and down the country in large companies, to the great terror of the farmers, from whose geese, turkeys, and fowls, they take considerable contributions.