George Borrow, the Man and His Work

by R. A. J. Walling

The attitude of the race towards questions of religion interested him greatly. If their progenitors brought any religion with them from beyond the frontier hills of India, they had lost all trace of it before Western inquirers began to investigate their history and explore their minds.

“Do you fear God, O Tuérta?” Borrow asked the one-eyed daughter of Pépa the sybil in Madrid.

“Brother, I fear nothing!” was Tuérta’s reply.

He translated the Gospel of St. Luke into the gypsy language of Spain, and remarks that the gitános purchased it freely; many of the men understood it, and prized it highly, but they were induced “more by the language than the doctrine.” The women, though generally unable to read, “each wished to have one in her pocket, especially when engaged in thieving expeditions; for they all looked upon it in the light of a charm which would preserve them from all danger and mischance.” Having forgotten whatever gods they ever worshipped before they left their country of origin, they were perfectly indifferent to the Christianity of the Western world. There is a curiously interesting passage on this subject in the introductory chapters of “The Zincali” dealing with the English gypsies:

“With respect to religion, they call themselves members of the Established Church, and are generally anxious to have their children baptised and to obtain a copy of the register. Some of their baptismal papers, which they carry about with them, are highly curious, going back for a period of upwards of two hundred years. With respect to the essential points of religion, they are quite careless and ignorant; if they believe in a future state, they dread it not, and if they manifest when dying any anxiety, it is not for the soul but for the body; a handsome coffin and a grave in a quiet country churchyard are invariably the objects of their last thoughts, and it is probable that, in their observance of the rite of baptism, they are principally influenced by a desire to enjoy the privilege of burial in consecrated ground.”

This might hold as an accurate account of the gypsies of to-day. In Eastern Europe, I believe, they are Christians or Mussulmans with the greatest impartiality, and change from one religion to the other as circumstances may require. In Great Britain they like the distinction and the respectability which they suppose to be attached to marriages and baptisms in the Established Church. The ceremony of baptism is a favourite one. They do not mind how many times or in how many places they submit their children to that rite: the sponsors usually give presents. The German gypsies who were in Great Britain in 1906 had their children baptised in Glasgow. The Catholic faith is professed by some Welsh members of the race. But, in general, religion of any type has no relation whatever to their lives; as a keen observer of the gypsies remarked to the writer, “they know as much about it as a navvy does of bimetallism.” They go to tea-meetings which may be organised for their benefit, and behave themselves as to the manner born; but efforts to evangelise them have been of little permanent effect. They have no “religious sense” in our acceptation of the term. Respect for the dead, however, is still an essential article of the gypsy code.

When that rare old scoundrel Ryley Bosvil lay a-dying, as Borrow relates in the “Lavo-Lil,” a Methodist visited him and asked him what was his hope. “My hope is,” said he, “that when I am dead I shall be put into the ground and my wife and children will weep over me.” They did. And on the return from the grave they carried out the gypsy custom, brought from India, of the funeral pyre. Instead of quarrelling over the division of the property, like Christians, as Borrow sourly says, they killed his pony and buried it, smashed his caravan and cart into matchwood, and built a fire, on which they cast his clothes, blankets, carpets, and curtains; they broke his mirrors and his crockery, and battered up his hardware, and threw it all on the flames. That practice is still occasionally carried out in England: the property of the dead shall not be defiled by the living. And of the dead themselves they speak only with bated breath. The relatives of a deceased gypsy will sometimes give up his favourite food. “An old friend of mine . . . gave up fish when her husband died, because it was the last thing they had eaten together,” writes to me one who has an intimate knowledge of the race. The old love for graves in quiet little churchyards survives in Wales, but in England—at any rate in Lancashire—the gypsies now own graves in the big cemeteries. This is also the case in France. In Norway, it is said, nobody knows how they dispose of their dead.

In “The Zincali” Borrow has a short disquisition on gypsy law, which he analyses under three heads: (1) Separate not from the husbands; (2) Be faithful to the husbands; (3) Pay your debts to the husbands—the husband being the “Rom,” as distinct from the “gorgio,” or gentile. He contends that, whatever may be the moral and legal relations between gypsydom and the world at large, there is perfect honour amongst the members of the race itself. He enlarges on the chastity of gypsy women, which is never overcome, in whatever licentious scenes they may be involved. Experts in the Romany language take exception to the use of the expression “husbands” in Borrow’s sense. “Rom” is an obscure word, and “husband” is only a secondary meaning. Its Indian origin is uncertain; there are in Western Asia thousands of people who call themselves “Rom” and are not gypsies. But Borrow’s rendering of the principles of gypsy law is accurate. Clan attachment is all-powerful still. Mr. Scott-Macfie informs me of the case of two brothers, friends of his, who quarrelled and have not spoken for thirty years. Yet they always live in the same camp, “and when there is a battle Kenza always comes and fights by Noah’s side, returning to his tent after the struggle without having said a word.” Their common cause is the concern of all: when a gypsy is in trouble, money is always forthcoming for his defence and to pay his fine. The chastity of the gypsy women is the fact to which is owing the preservation of their race purity against tremendous odds.