As to their religious sentiments, I am inclined to think that the greater part of the Scottish Gipsies are quite indifferent on the subject. Numbers of them certainly attend church, occasionally, when at home, in their winter quarters; but not one of them will enter its door when travelling through the country.[251] On Sundays, while resting themselves by the side of the public roads, the females employ themselves in washing and sewing their apparel, without any regard for that sacred day. It appears to me that a large proportion of them comply with our customs and forms of worship, more for the purpose of concealing their tribe and practices, than from any serious belief in the doctrines of Christianity. I recollect, however, of once conversing with an aged man who professed much apparent zeal in religious matters; and I mind well that he stoutly maintained, in opposition to Calvin’s ideas on the subject of free grace, that everything depended upon our own works. “By my works in this life,” said he, “I must stand, or fall, in the world to come.” This very man acknowledged to me that the Gipsies were a tribe of thieves. But almost all the Gipsies, when the subject of religion is mentioned to them, affect to be very pious; speak of the goodness of God to them, with much apparent sincerity; lament the want of education; and reprobate, in strong terms, every act of immorality. This, I am sorry to say, is, in general, all hypocrisy and deception. There is not a better test, in a general way, for discovering who are Gipsies, than the expression of “God bless you,” which is constantly in the mouth of every female.[252]
With regard to the general politics of the Scottish Gipsies, if they entertain any political sentiments at all, I am convinced they are monarchical; and that, were any revolutionary convulsion to loosen the bonds of society, and separate the lower from the higher classes, they would take to the side of the superior portion of the community. They have, at all times, heartily despised the peasantry, and been disposed to treat menials with great contempt, though, at the very moment, they were begging at the doors of their masters. In the few instances which have come to my knowledge, of Scottish Gipsies forming matrimonial connexions with individuals of the community, those individuals were not of the working or lower classes of society.[253]
I believe there are Gipsies, in more or less numbers, in almost every town in Scotland, permanent as well as periodical residenters. In many of the villages there are also Gipsy inhabitants. In Mid-Lothian there are great numbers of them, who have houses, in which they reside permanently, but a portion of them travel in other districts, during the summer season. I have been at no ordinary pains and trouble in making enquiries regarding the number of the Gipsies, and the result of my numerous investigations induces me to believe that there are about five thousand of them in Scotland, at the present day. Indeed, some of the Gipsies themselves entertain the same opinion, and they must certainly be allowed to have some idea of the number of their own fraternity.[254]
It appears to me that the civilization and improvement of the body, generally, would be a work of great difficulty. I would be apt to give nearly the same answer which a Hungarian nobleman gave to Dr. Bright, when that traveller asked him if he could not devise a plan for bettering the condition of the race in Hungary. The nobleman said he knew of no manner of improving the Gipsies.[255] The best plan yet proposed for improving the race appears to be the one suggested by the Rev. James Crabb, of Southampton, and the Rev. John Baird, of Yetholm.[256] One of the first steps, however, should be a complete publicity to their language, if that was possible; and encouragement held out to them to speak it openly, without fear or reproach. Their secret speech is a strong bond of union among them, and forms, as it were, a wall of separation between them and the other inhabitants of the country.
Many of the Gipsies, following the various occupations enumerated, are not now to be distinguished from others of the community, except by the most minute observation; yet they appear a distinct and separate people; seldom contracting marriage out of their own tribe.[257] A tradesman of Gipsy blood will sooner give his hand to a lady’s maid of his own race, than marry the highest female in the land; while the Gipsy lady’s maid will take a Gipsy shoemaker, in preference to any one out of her tribe. A Gipsy woman will far rather prefer, in marriage, a man of her own blood who has escaped the gallows, to the most industrious and best-behaved tradesman in the kingdom. Like the Jews, almost all those in good circumstances marry among themselves, and, I believe, employ their poorer brethren as servants. I have known Gipsies most solemnly declare, that no consideration would induce them to marry out of their own tribe; and I am informed, and convinced, that almost every one of them marries in that way. One of them stated to me that, let them be in whatever situation of life they may, they all “stick to each other.”
[225] An objection is perhaps started, that these incorporated individuals are not Gipsies. They have been brought into the body at such an age as to leave no trace of past recollections, leaving alone past associations. There was no occasion for such children being either “squalling infants,” or of such an age as was likely to lead them to “betray the Gipsies,” as Mr. Borrow supposes would be the case, when he says that Gipsies have never stolen children, to bring them up as Gipsies. How are they to discover their origin, when so many of the body around them have the same colour of hair and complexion? If the idea has ever entered into their imaginations, it has led to a greater antipathy towards their own race, and attachment to the tribe, from the special education which they have received to those ends. So far as the matter of blood is concerned, they are not what may be physiologically called Gipsies; and, by being married to Gipsies, they become doubly attached to the body. What has been said of children introduced among the Gipsies, in the way described, applies with infinitely greater force to those born of one of such parents.
Suppose, for instance, that the Spanish race was originally of an exclusively dark hair and complexion: should we therefore say that a fair Spaniard, at the present day, was no Spaniard? Or that the Turks of Constantinople, on account of the mixture of their blood, were not Turks? In the same manner are Gipsies with white blood in their veins Gipsies. They may be half-breed, but it would be improper to call them half-caste, Gipsies. But what are full-blood Gipsies, to commence with? The idea itself is intangible; for, by adopting, more or less, wherever they have been, others into their body, during their singular history, a pure Gipsy, like the pure Gipsy language, is doubtless nowhere to be found.
An English Gipsy acquaintance, of perfect European appearance, who, for love of race and language, may be termed “a Gipsy of the Gipsies,” admitted that he was only one-eighth Gipsy; his father, a full-blood white, having married a quadroon Gipsy. He spoke Gipsy with great fluency. He married a seven-eighths Gipsy. Were his descendants to marry what are supposed to be pure Gipsies, the result would be as follows: the first generation, (his children,) would be one-half Gipsy; the second, three-fourths; the third, seven-eighths; the fourth, fifteen-sixteenths; the fifth, thirty-one thirty-seconds; and the sixth, sixty-three sixty-fourths. If this were to go on ad infinitum, the issue would always lack the one part to make the full blood. But the Gipsies do not calculate their vulgar fractions so closely as that; the division of the blood doubtless bothers them, so that they “lump” the question. What has been said, is breeding up. Sometimes they breed down, and sometimes across. Mixing the blood, in this way, is quite a peculiarity among the English Gipsies. I asked my friend, if he was sure his wife was a pure Gipsy. He said she was considered such, (I have put her down at seven-eighths,) but that one of her forefathers was a fair-haired French Gipsy. According to a well-admitted principle in physiology, a fair-haired Gipsy, of almost full blood, is by no means so rara avis in terris as a white crow. Some of the children of my acquaintance took after himself, and had blue eyes; and others after the mother, and had black ones. But the English Gipsies, (the tented ones at least,) are much purer, in point of blood, than their brethren in Scotland. Many of the Irish Gipsies have very red hair—fiery and shaggy in the extreme. Indeed, they seem to be pretty much all of a fairish kind.—Ed.
[226] The following extract from the Fife Herald, for the 18th June, 1829, will give the reader an idea of a Scotch “country-keeper,” at the time alluded to: “A Gipsy chief, of the name of Pat Gillespie, was keeper for the county of Fife. He rode on horse-back, armed with a sword and pistols attended by four men, on foot, carrying staves and batons. He appears to have been a sort of travelling justice of the peace. The practice seems to have been general. About the commencement of the late French war, a man, of the name of Robert Scott, (Rob the Laird,) was keeper for the counties of Peebles, Selkirk, and Roxburgh.”