Then set in the first period (1775-1800) of Sanskrit and Zend study, accompanied by publications of Bengali, Urdu, and others of the eighteen Prakrit tongues still spoken in the great Peninsula. This led to careful study of Romani. The celebrated Mezzofanti did not hesitate to assign it high rank amongst the thirty-two languages he had studied; and when he lost his mind (1832) he never confounded it with other idioms. Then followed in 1837 the Gospel of St. Luke translated into Spanish Caló by “Gypsy Borrow,” who, however, inserted Castilian words from Father Scio instead of forming them from Gypsy roots.
§ 2. The Gypsies of Spain.
We have ample material for studying the Spanish Gypsy, or Flamanco, as he is contemptuously called, probably because he entered Andalusia in the train of the Flemings during the first third of the fifteenth century. Yet it is somewhat remarkable that Europe believed up to the end of that century the purely Spanish origin of the Gypsies.
Pasquier, describing the arrival of these “penitents” in Paris a.d. 1427, adds that from that time all France was infested by these vagabonds, but that the first horde was replaced by the Biscayan and other peoples of the same origin. This suggests an early occupation of the Peninsula; although Francisca de Cordova in his Didasculia declared they were first known in Germany, and the general belief now is that the last horde entered Europe by the highroads of Andalusia and Bulgaria, or rather Greece, and they must have been settled for many years in these countries.
Northern Spaniards find in Andalusian blood a distinct Gypsy innervation.
In Spain, as elsewhere, the Gypsy made himself hated by his systematic contempt of the laws of meum and teum; whilst he was protected by two widely different conditions: the first was his poverty (“As poor as a Gypsy” is still a proverb); secondly, he was a spy equally useful to Christian and unbeliever. Yet action was not wanting. In 1499 was published the Gran Pragmatica (Royal Ordinance) of Medina del Campo, under the influence of a fanatic archbishop, banishing on and after the term of sixty days the Egyptian and foreign tinkers (caldereros), and forbidding return under pain of mutilation. This Pragmatica was renewed under Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo and of Madrid, with the additional punishment of perpetual slavery for those found wandering a third time. Yet in 1560, on his marriage at Toledo with Isabelle of France, Gypsy dances formed part of the festivities. He was comparatively mild, and after moderating the old rigorous laws he ordered the outcasts to live in towns. In 1586 the same king allowed them to sell their goods at ten fairs and markets under certain conditions.
These nomads picked up information from all classes, and the women, with their black magic, sorcery, and devilry, palmistry, love-potions, and poisons, penetrated into every secret. The Holy Office, established in January, 1481, disdained to persecute such paupers; and the strong arm of the law could not do more than hang a few witches. Ticknor remarks: “Encouraged by the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, also by that of the Moors in 1609-11, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, a professor in the University of Toledo, addressed Philip III. in a discourse published in 1619, urging that monarch to drive out the Gypsies, but he failed.”
Another authority says that he himself, 1618, had prepared a memorial to that effect, adding, “It is very vicious to tolerate such a pernicious and perverse race.” Cordova, writing in 1615, accused them of preparing, some years before, an organized attack upon Sogrovo town when the pest raged, and declares that it was saved from such by the arts of a certain wizard who had mysterious relations with the vagabonds.
The charges of cannibalism became universal, founded probably upon the fact that Gypsies do not disdain the flesh of animals poisoned by them.