In 1874 he wrote, for Johnson’s Cyclopædia, an article on the Gipsies, in which he made use of the History proper to illustrate the race in Scotland, and my addition (which made about half of the book) exclusively to illustrate it in America, and giving my words. It did not appear from this article that he had any personal knowledge of the subject, [11c] excepting that he said that he knew of one Gipsy who had travelled from Canada to Texas, as confirmatory of what I had written; and asserted that “there is probably not one theatre or circus in England or America in which there are not one or more performers of more or less mixed Gipsy blood.” The only other remark he made of that nature was the following:—“The reader who will devote a very few weeks to either Dr. B. Smart’s Vocabulary, to G. Borrow’s Romano Lavo Lil, or G. C. Leland’s English Gipsies (London, 1872), can speak the language better than most English or American Gipsies.” In other words, that any person with tact and a turn to pick up, remember and use Gipsy words could do just what he had done; and by going over the same ground produce, in a varied form as regards circumstances, scenes described by others. It is exceedingly probable that the work edited and published by me specially stimulated Mr. Leland to take up the subject so fully treated in it.
In his book entitled The Gipsies (New York, 1882), Mr. Leland complains of “a reviewer” saying of his English Gipsies and their Language that it “had added nothing to our knowledge on the subject;” which was morally if not literally true, that on the language excepted, which was mainly an illustration and continuation of the collections of others, acquired with great labour. He has made several allusions to my work, without indicating it, such as frequently using the word “Gipsydom,” although that might have been done by any one; which could not have been said of “the old thing” (p. 274), which I used on several occasions to describe a settled Gipsy visiting a Gipsy tent, to view the style of life of his primitive ancestor. He has also made unfair allusion to the “mixed multitude” of the Exodus as being the origin of the Gipsies, (p. 89); and to the subject of the Scottish Tinklers or Gipsies, (p. 371). In The Gipsies he says, “No one will accuse me of wide discussion or padding,” (p. 84). That is obvious to any one, for almost every chapter contains an intolerable amount of extraneous matter or padding, that has no reference to the title page or headings of the chapters. In some parts of the book there are several pages at a stretch—once as much as seven pages—of such extraneous matter; and it would be interesting to make an analysis of it, line by line, to ascertain the proportion of the two kinds of matter.
But what I wish more particularly to allude to is Mr. Leland’s discovery that the Gipsies are a tribe from India that are known there under the name of “Syrians,” and therefore not originally natives of India; which latter conclusion, however, he does not admit, but accounts for the phenomenon in this way:—“I offer as an hypothesis that bands of Gipsies who roamed from India to Syria have, after returning, been called Trablûs or Syrians, just as I have known Germans after returning from the fatherland to America to be called Americans” (p. 338). That is, a family or company of Indian nomads returning from a visit to Syria would afterwards be called, and cause the whole of the race who never left India to be called, Syrians for ever! Again he says:—“It will probably be found that they are Hindoos who have roamed from India to Syria and back again, here and there, until they are regarded as foreigners in both countries” (!). The allusion to Germans in illustration is not merely inapplicable, but unintelligible. Of the “Syrians” in India Mr. Leland writes:—“Whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish” (p. 339). For this reason he should not have identified them with the Gipsies out of India. “Their language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that the word rom, like dom, is one of wide dissemination, dum being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race” (p. 339); and “among the Copts . . . the word for man is romi” (p. 20). [12] “Among the hundred and fifty wandering tribes of India and Persia . . . it is of course difficult to identify the exact origin of the European Gipsy” (p. 18). For that reason he should not have written so positively that he had “definitely determined the existence in India of a peculiar tribe of Gipsies who are par eminence the Romanys of the East, and whose language is there what it is in England, the same in vocabulary and the chief slang of the roads. This I claim as a discovery, having learned it from a Hindoo who had been himself a Gipsy in his native land” (Pref. iv.). He describes them as “thieves, fortune-tellers and vagrants” (p. 339), yet his informant, John Nano, said he was, or had been, one of them; which would imply that there were different kinds of “Syrians,” inasmuch as he was found to be a maker of curry powder in London, and the husband of an English woman, a Mahometan by religion, and sufficiently educated to have written an autobiography, which had unfortunately been burnt. According to John’s account, these “Syrians” were “full blood Hindoos, and not Syrians,” and he “was very sure that his Gipsies were Indians.” The term “full-blood Hindoos” who are “thieves, fortune-tellers and vagrants,” and strollers out of and back to India, requires explanation. John’s information as to these people being called by the other natives of India “Syrians” may be very reliable; but that they were “full-blood Hindoos” could have been, at its best, nothing but a supposition on his part. As I said in the Introduction to the History of the Gipsies, “I can conceive nothing more difficult than an attempt to elucidate the history of any of the infinity of sects, castes or tribes to be met with in India” (p. 41). The nature of the population of India is such that there would hardly be a possibility of its people at large becoming acquainted with the movements of a few families of outcasts leaving their race behind and going to and returning from Syria (if they ever did that), so as to give the whole race the name of Syrians. The name must have had its origin from the people having come originally from Syria, or from parts surrounding it.
In The Gipsies Mr. Leland says that he has “carefully read everything ever printed on the Romany” (Pref. v.); and that it is his “opinion that one ought, when setting forth any subject, to give quite as good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves” (p. 88). And yet, although he made exclusive use of the work I edited and published for parts of his article in Johnson’s Cyclopædia, and has alluded to Messrs. Borrow, Smart, Palmer and Groome, he has carefully abstained from mentioning my name, however much he may have been indebted to my work. By referring to it, he cannot but remember having “carefully read” the following:—
“I am inclined to believe that the people in India corresponding to the Gipsies in Europe will be found among those tented tribes who perform certain services to the British armies; at all events there is such a tribe in India who are called Gipsies by the Europeans who come in contact with them. A short time ago, one of these people, who followed the occupation of a camel driver, found his way to England, and ‘pulled up’ with some English Gipsies, whom he recognized as his own people; at least he found that they had the ways and ceremonies of them. But it would be unreasonable to suppose that such a tribe in India did not follow various occupations” (p. 40). “What evidently leads Mr. Borrow and others astray in the matter of the origin of the Gipsies, is that they conclude that because the language spoken by the Gipsies is apparently, or for the most part, Hindostanee, therefore the people speaking it originated in Hindostan; as just a conclusion as it would be to maintain that the Negroes in Liberia originated in England because they speak the English language!” (p. 41). [Mr. Leland alludes to this simile by saying that English spoken by American Negroes does not prove Saxon descent (p. 20).]
In discussing the question of the origin of the Gipsies with some English members of the race, I found that “a very intelligent Gipsy informed me that his race sprang from a body of men—a cross between the Arabs and Egyptians—that left Egypt in the train of the Jews” (p. 14). And I wrote when I published this, that “the intelligent reader will not differ with me as to the weight to be attached to the Gipsy’s remark on this point.” To that question I devoted ten (13–23) closely printed pages to demonstrate that the “mixed multitude,” or part of it, that left Egypt with Moses, after separating from the Jews, travelled East into Northern Hindostan, where they formed the Gipsy caste (p. 21); becoming in every way a people like the Gipsy so far as he is known to the public to-day. I further said that this people “travelled East, their own masters, and became the origin of the Gipsy nation throughout the world” (p. 40).
“What objection could any one advance against the Gipsies being the people that left Egypt in the train of the Jews? Not certainly an objection as to race, for there must have been many captive people or tribes introduced into Egypt from the many countries surrounding it . . . That the ‘mixed multitude’ travelled into India, acquired the language of that part of Asia, and perhaps modified its appearance there, and became the origin of the Gipsy race, we may safely assume . . . Everything harmonizes so beautifully with the idea that the Gipsies are the ‘mixed multitude’ of the Exodus that it may be admitted by the world. Even in the matter of religion, we could imagine Egyptian captives losing a knowledge of their religion, as has happened with the Africans in the New World, [14] and, not having had another taught them, leaving Egypt under Moses without any religion at all. After entering India they would in all probability become a wandering people, and for a certainty live aloof from all others” (pp. 494–496). “If we could but find traces of an Egyptian origin among the Gipsies of Asia, say Central and Western Asia, the question would be beyond dispute. But that might be a matter of some trouble” (p. 40).
In this way Mr. Leland’s informant, John Nano, if he was correct in what he said, confirmed my conjecture as to the Gipsies’ Egyptian or rather Syrian origin; for after escaping from Egypt they would remain for some time in Syria or its neighbourhood before they would become a body and proceed East. As illustrative of Mr. Leland’s desire to “give quite as good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves,” I find him writing thus:—
“Here I interrupt the lady,” a writer on Magyarland, “to remark that I cannot agree with her nor with her probable (!) authority, Walter (!) Simson, in believing that the Gipsies are the descendants of the mixed races who followed Moses out of Egypt. The Rom in Egypt is a Hindoo stranger, as he ever was (!)” (p. 89).
The “authority” was mine, not Walter Simson’s, which Mr. Leland perhaps did not care to state. One would naturally think that a people who left Egypt under Moses would be looked upon there as “strangers” to-day, rather than that a straggling family or company of Gipsies returning to India from Syria (if they ever did that) would cause all their race that never left India to be called Syrians for ever! According to Mr. Leland’s style of reasoning it would follow that he and Americans generally could not have originated in England, because they are “strangers” there, and are looked upon as foreigners by the law and by people whose sentiments are not of the most delicate nature!