[251] The ostensible reason which the Gipsy gives for not attending church, when travelling, is to prevent himself being ridiculed by the people. If he enters a place of worship, he makes the old people stare, and frightens the children. On returning from church, a child will exclaim, “Mother, mother, there was a Tinkler at the kirk, to-day.”—“A what? a Tinkler at the kirk? What could have possessed him to go there?”
Gipsies are extremely sensitive to the feeling in question. A short time ago, one of them entered ——, in the State of ——, with a “shears to grind,” having a small bell attached. Some bar-room gentry assembled around him, and saluted him with, “Oh, oh, a Gipsy in a new rig!” So keenly did he feel the insult, that he at once left the village.—Ed.
[252] According to Grellmann, the Gipsies did not bring any particular religion with them from their own country, but have regulated it according to those of the countries in which they have lived. They suffer themselves to be baptized among Christians, and circumcised among Mahommedans. They are Greeks with Greeks, Catholics with Catholics, Protestants with Protestants, and as inconstant in their creed as their place of residence. They suffer their children to be several times baptised. To-day, they receive the sacrament as a Lutheran; next Sunday, as a Catholic; and, perhaps before the end of the week, in the Reformed Church. The greater part of them do not go so far as this, but live without any religion at all, and worse than heathens. So thoroughly indifferent are they in this respect, as to have given rise to the adage, “The Gipsy’s church was built of bacon, and the dogs ate it.” So perfectly convinced are the Turks of the insincerity of the Gipsy in matters of religion, that, although a Jew, by becoming a Mahommedan, is freed from the payment of the poll-tax, a Gipsy—at least in the neighbourhood of Constantinople—is not, even although his ancestors, for centuries, had been Mahommedans, or he himself should actually have made a pilgrimage to Mecca. His only privilege is to wear a white turban, which is denied to unbelieving Jews and Gipsies.
Mr. Borrow says, that when the female Gipsies, who sing in the choirs of Moscow, were questioned, in their own language, about their externally professing the Greek religion, they laughed, and said it was only to please the Russians.
The same author mentions an instance in which he preached to them; taking, for his text, the situation of the Hebrews in Egypt, and drawing a comparison between it and theirs in Spain. Warming with his subject, he spoke of the power of God in preserving both, as a distinct people, in the world to this day. On concluding, he looked around to see what impression he had made upon them, but the only response he got from them all was—a squint of the eye!—Ed.
[253] What our author says of the politics of the Gipsies is rather more applicable to their ideas of their social position. Being a small body in comparison with the general population of the country, they entertain a very exclusive and, consequently, a very aristocratic idea of themselves, whatever others may think of them; and therefore scorn the prejudice of the very lowest order of the common natives.—Ed.
[254] Before the reformation of our criminal law, many of the male Gipsies perished on the gallows, but now, the greatest punishment they meet with is banishment, or a short imprisonment, for “sorning, pickery, and little thieving.” Few of them are now “married to the gallows tree,” in the manner of Graham, as described under the head of Fifeshire Gipsies. Owing to their, (the more original kind especially,) all marrying very young, and having very large families, their number cannot fail to encrease, under the present laws, in a ratio far beyond that of our own population. Instead of there being only 5,000 Gipsies in Scotland, there are, as I have already said, nearer 100,000, for reasons to be given in my [Disquisition] on the Gipsies.—Ed.
[255] Speaking of the attempted civilization of the Gipsies, by the Empress Maria Theresa, Grellmann says, “A boy, (for you must leave the old stock alone,) would frequently seem in the most promising train to civilization; on a sudden, his wild nature would appear, a relapse follow, and he become a perfect Gipsy again.”
“Curate.—Could you not, by degrees, bring yourself to a more settled mode of life?
“Gipsy.—I would not tell you a lie, sir; I really think I could not, having been brought up to it from a child.”—Hoyland on the English Gipsies.