“Upon the road to Romany
It’s stay, friend, stay!
There’s lots o’ love and lots o’ time
To linger on the way;
Poppies for the twilight,
Roses for the noon,
It’s happy goes as lucky goes
To Romany in June.”
But as the Frenchman puts it, “look to the other side of the coin.”
Brigandage is the original profession of the gypsy, though to-day the only stealing which they do is done stealthily, and not in the plain hold-up fashion. They profess a profound regard for the Catholic religion, but they practise other rites in secret, and form what one versed in French Catholicism would call a “culte particulière.” It is known that they baptize their newly-born children as often as possible—of course each time in a different place—in order that they may solicit alms in each case. Down-right begging is forbidden in France, but for such a purpose the law is lenient.
Gitanos from Spain
They are gross feeders, the Gitanos, and a fowl “a little high” has no terrors for them; they have even been known to eat sea-gulls, which no white man has ever had the temerity to taste. It has been said that they will eat cats and dogs and even rats, but this is doubtless another version of the Chinese fable. At any rate a mere heating of their viands in a saucepan—not by any stretch of the imagination can it be called cooking—is enough for them, and what their dishes lack in cooking is made up by liberal additions of salt, pepper, piment (which is tobacco or something like it), and saffron.
As to type, the French Gitanos are of that olive-brown complexion, with the glossy black hair, usually associated with the stage gypsy, rather small in stature, but well set up, strong and robust, fine eyes and features and, with respect to the young women and girls (who marry young), often of an astonishing beauty. In the course of a very few years the beauty of the women pales considerably, owing, no doubt, to their hard life, but among the men their fine physique and lively emotional features endure until well past the half-century.