A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language

by Walter Simson

We naturally ask, what effect has this difference in appearance upon two such members of one family—the one with European, the other with Gipsy, features and colour? and the answer is this: The first will hide the fact of his being a Gipsy from strangers; indeed, he is ashamed to let it be known that he is a Gipsy; and he is afraid that people, not knowing how it came about, would laugh at him. “What!” they would ask, “you a Gipsy? The idea is absurd.” Besides, it facilitates his getting on in the world, to prevent it being known that he is a Gipsy. The other member cannot deny that he is a Gipsy, because any one can see it. Such are the Gipsies who are more apt to cling to the tent, or the more original ways of the old stock. They are very proud of their appearance; but it is a pride accompanied with disadvantages, and even pain. For, after all, the beauty and pleasure in being a Gipsy is to have the other cast of features and colour; he has as much of the blood and language as the other, while he can go into any kind of company—a sort of Jack-the-Giant-Killer in his invisible coat. The nearer the Gipsy comes to the original colour of his race, the less chance is there of improving him. He knows what he is like; and well does he know the feeling that people entertain for him. In fact, he feels that there is no use in being anything but what people call a Gipsy. But it is different with those of European countenance and colour, or when these have been modified or diluted by a mixture of white blood. They can, then, enter upon any sphere of employment to which they have a mind, and their personal advantages and outward circumstances will admit of.[266]

Let us now consider the destiny of such European-like Gipsies. Suppose a female of this description marries a native in settled life, which both of them follow. She brings the children up as Gipsies, in the way described. The children are apt to become ultra Gipsies. If they, in their turn, marry natives, they do the same with their children; so that, if the same system were always followed, they would continue Gipsies forever. For all that is necessary to perpetuate the tribe, is simply for the Gipsies to know who they are, and the prejudice that exists toward the race of which they are a part; to say nothing of the innate associations connected with their origin and descent. Such a phenomenon may be fitly compared to the action of an auger; with this difference, that the auger may lose its edge, but the Gipsy will drill his way through generations of the ordinary natives, and, at the end, come out as sharp as ever; all the circumstances attending the two races being exactly the same at the end as at the beginning. In this way, let their blood be mixed as it may, let even their blood-relationship outside of their body be what it may, the Gipsies still remain, in their private associations, a distinct people, into whatever sphere of human action they may enter; although, in point of blood, appearance, occupation, character, and religion, they may have drifted the breadth of a hemisphere from the stakes and tent of the original Gipsy.

There can surely be no great difficulty in comprehending so simple an idea as this. Here we have a foreign race introduced amongst us, which has been proscribed, legally as well as socially. To escape the effects of this double proscription, the people have hidden the fact of their belonging to the race, although they have clung to it with an ardour worthy of universal admiration. The proscription is toward the name and race as such, that is, the blood; and is not general, but absolute; none having ever been received into society as Gipsies. For this reason, every Gipsy, every one who has Gipsy blood in his veins, applies the proscription to himself. On the other hand, he has his own descent—the Gipsy descent; and, as I have already said, he has naturally as little desire to wish a different descent, as he has to have a different sex. As Finns do not wish to have been born Englishmen, or Englishmen Finns, so Gipsies are perfectly satisfied with their descent, nay, extremely proud of it. They would not change it, if they could, for any consideration. When Gipsies, therefore, marry natives, they do not only willingly bring up their children as Gipsies, but by every moral influence they are forced to do it, and cling to each other. In this way has the race been absolutely cut off from that of the ordinary natives; all intercourse between the two, unless on the part of the bush Gipsy, in the way of dealings, having been of a clandestine nature, on the side of the Gipsy, or, in other words, incog. How melancholy it is to think that such a state of things exists in the British Islands!

The Gipsy, born of a Gipsy mother and a native father, does, therefore, most naturally, and, I may say, invariably, follow the Gipsy connexion; the simplest impulse of manhood compels him to do it. Being born, or becoming a member of settled society, he joins in the ordinary amusements or occupations of his fellow-creatures of both races; which he does the more readily when he feels conscious of the incognito which he bears. But he has been brought up from his mother’s knee a Gipsy; he knows nothing else; his associations with his relatives have been Gipsy; and he has in his veins that which the white damns, and, he doubts not, would damn in him, were he to know of it. He has, moreover, the words and signs of the Gipsy race; he is brought in contact with the Gipsy race; he perceives that his feelings are reciprocated by them, and that both have the same reserve and timidity for “outsiders.” He does not reason abstractly what he is not, but instinctively holds that he is “one of them;” that he has in his mind, his heart, and his blood, that which the common native has not, and which makes him a chabo, that is, a Gipsy.

The mother, in the case mentioned, is certainly not a full-blood Gipsy, nor anything like it; she does not know her real “points;” all that she knows is, that she is a “Gipsy:” so that, if the youth’s father is an ordinary native, the youth holds himself to be a half-and-half, nominally, though he does not know what he really is, as regards blood. Imagine, then, that he takes such a half-and-half Gipsy for a wife, and that both tell their children that they are “Gipsies:” the children, perhaps, knowing nothing of the real origin of their parents, take up the “wonderful story,” and hand it down to their children, initiating them, in their turn, in the “mysteries.” These children never doubt that they are “Gipsies,” although their Gipsyism may, as I have already said, have “drifted the breadth of a hemisphere from the stakes and tent of the original Gipsy.” In this manner is Gipsydom kept alive, by its turning round and round in a perpetual circle. And in this manner does it happen, that a native finds his own children Gipsies, from having, in seeking for a wife, stumbled upon an Egyptian woman. Gipsydom is, therefore, the aggregate of Gipsies, wherever, or under whatever circumstances, they are to be found. It is, in two respects, an absolute question; absolute as to blood, and absolute as to those teachings, feelings, and associations, that, by a moral necessity, accompany the possession of the blood.

This brings me to an issue with Mr. Borrow. Speaking of the destination of the Spanish Gipsies, he says: “If the Gitanos are abandoned to themselves, by which we mean, no arbitrary laws are again enacted for their extinction, the sect will eventually cease to be, and its members become confounded with the residue of the population.” I can well understand that such procedure, on the part of the Spanish Government, was calculated to soften the ferocious disposition of the Gipsies; but did it bring them a point nearer to an amalgamation with the people than before? Mr. Borrow continues: “The position which they occupy is the lowest. . . . . The outcast of the prison and the presidio, who calls himself Spaniard, would feel insulted by being termed Gitano, and would thank God that he is not.” He continues: “It is, of course, by intermarriage, alone, that the two races will ever commingle; and before that event is brought about, much modification must take place amongst the Gitanos, in their manners, in their habits, in their affections and their dislikes, and perhaps even in their physical peculiarities, (yet ‘no washing,’ as Mr. Borrow approvingly quotes, ‘will turn the Gipsy white;’) much must be forgotten on both sides, and everything is forgotten in course of time.” So great, indeed, was the prejudice against the Gipsies, that the law of Charles III, in 1783, forbade the people calling them Gitanos, under the penalty of being punished for slander! because, his majesty said: “I declare that those who go by the name of Gitanos are not so by origin or nature; nor do they proceed from any infected root(!)” What regard would the native Spaniards pay to the injunction, that they would be punished for “slander,” for calling the Gipsies Gitanos, in place of Spaniards? We may well believe that such a law would be a dead letter in Spain; where, according to Mr. Borrow, “justice has invariably been a mockery; a thing to be bought and sold, terrible only to the feeble and innocent, and an instrument of cruelty and avarice.”

Mr. Borrow leaves the question where he found it. Even remove the prejudice that exists against the Gipsies, as regards their colour, habits, and history; what then? Would they, as a people cease to be? Would they amalgamate with the natives, so as to be lost? Assuredly not. They may mix their blood, but they preserve their mental identity in the world; even although, in point of physical appearance, habits, manners, occupation, character, and creed, they might “become confounded with the residue of the population.” In that respect, they are the most exclusive people of almost any to be found in the world. We have only to consider what Freemasonry is, and we can form an idea of what Gipsyism is, in one of its aspects. It rests upon the broadest of all bases—flesh and blood, a common and mysterious origin, a common language, a common history, a common persecution, and a common odium, in every part of the world. Remove the prejudice against the Gipsies, make it as respectable to be Gipsies, as the world, with its ignorance of many of the race, deem it desreputable; what then? Some of them might come out with their “tents and encampments,” and banners and mottoes: the “cuddy and the creel, the hammer and tongs, the tent and the tin kettle” forever. People need not sneer at the “cuddy and the creel.” The idea conveys a world of poetry to the mind of a Gipsy. Mrs. Fall, of Dunbar, thought it so poetical, that she had it, as we have seen, worked in tapestry; and it is doubtless carefully preserved, as an heir-loom, among her collateral descendants.[267]

Mr. Borrow speaks of the Gipsies “declining” in Spain. Ask a Scotchman about the Scottish Gipsies, and he will answer: “The Scotch Gipsies have pretty much died out.” “Died out?” I ask; “that is impossible; for who are more prolific than Gipsies?” “Oh, then, they have become settled, and civilized.” “And ceased to be Gipsies?” I continue. “Exactly so,” he replies. What idea can be more ridiculous than that of saying, that if a Gipsy leaves the tent, settles in a town, and attends church, he ceases to be a Gipsy; and that, if he takes to the tent again, he becomes a Gipsy again? What has a man’s occupation, habits, or character, to do with his clan, tribe, or nationality? Does education, does religion, remove from his mind a knowledge of who he is, or change his blood? Are not our own Borderers and Highlanders as much Borderers and Highlanders as ever they were? Are not Spanish Gipsies still Spanish Gipsies, although a change may have come over the characters and circumstances of some of them? It would be absurd to deny it.[268]

Mr. Borrow has not sufficiently examined into Spanish Gipsyism to pass a reliable opinion upon it. He says: “One thing is certain, in the history of the Gitanos; that the sect flourished and encreased, so long as the law recommended and enjoined measures the most harsh and severe for its suppression. . . . The caste of the Gitanos still exists, but is neither so extensive, nor so formidable, as a century ago, when the law, in denouncing Gitanismo, proposed to the Gitanos the alternatives of death for persisting in their profession, or slavery for abandoning it.” These are very singular alternatives. The latter is certainly not to be found in any of the Spanish laws quoted by Mr. Borrow. I am at a loss to perceive the point of his reasoning. There can be no difficulty in believing that Gipsies would rather encrease in a state of peace, than if they were hunted from place to place, like wild beasts; and consequently, having renounced their former mode or life, they would, in Mr. Borrow’s own words, “cease to play a distinct part in the history of Spain, and the law would no longer speak of them as a distinct people.” And the same might, to a certain extent, be said of the Spanish people. Mr. Borrow again says: “That the Gitanos are not so numerous as in former times, witness those barrios, in various towns, still denominated Gitanerias, but from whence the Gitanos have disappeared, even like the Moors from the Morerias.” But Mr. Borrow himself, in the same work, gives a good reason for the disappearance of the Gipsies from these Gitanerias; for he says: “The Gitanerias were soon considered as public nuisances, on which account the Gitanos were forbidden to live together in particular parts of the town, to hold meetings, and even to intermarry with each other.” If the disappearance of the Gipsies from Spain was like that of the Moors, it would appear that they had left, or been expelled from, the country; a theory which Mr. Borrow does not advance. The Gipsies, to a certain extent, may have left these barriers, or been expelled from them, and settled, as tradesmen, mechanics, and what not, in other parts of the same or other towns; so as to be in a position the more able to get on in the world. Still, many of them are in the colonies. In Cuba there are many, as soldiers and musicians, dealers in mules and red pepper, which businesses they almost monopolize, and jobbers and dealers in various wares; and doubtless there are some of them innkeepers, and others following other occupations. In Mexico there are not a few. I know of a Gitano who has a fine wholesale and retail cigar store in Virginia.[269]

Mr. Borrow concludes, in regard to the Spanish Gipsies, thus: “We have already expressed our belief that the caste has diminished of latter years; whether this diminution was the result of one or many causes combined; of a partial change of habits, of pestilence or sickness, of war or famine, or of a freer intercourse with the Spanish population, we have no means of determining, and shall abstain from offering conjectures on the subject.” In this way does he leave the question just where he found it. Is there any reason to doubt that Gipsydom is essentially the same in Spain as in Great Britain; or that its future will be guided by any other principles than those which regulate that of the British Gipsies? Indeed, I am astonished that Mr. Borrow should advance the idea that Gipsies should decrease by “changing their habits;” they might not encrease so fast, in a settled life, as when more exposed to the air, and not molested by the Spanish Government. I am no less astonished that he should think they would decrease by “a freer intercourse with the Spanish population;” when, in fact, such mixtures are well known to go with the Gipsies; the mixture being, in the estimation of the British Gipsies, calculated to strengthen and invigorate the race itself. Had Mr. Borrow kept in mind the case of the half-blood Gipsy captain, he could have had no difficulty in learning what became of mixed Gipsies.[270]