[9] Abbé Dubois says: “In every country of the Peninsula, great numbers of foreign families are to be found, whose ancestors had been obliged to emigrate thither, in times of trouble or famine, from their native land, and to establish themselves amongst strangers. This species of emigration is very common in all the countries of India; but what is most remarkable is, that in a foreign land, these emigrants preserve, from generation to generation, their own language and national peculiarities. Many instances might be pointed out of such foreign families, settled four or five hundred years in the district they now inhabit, without approximating in the least to the manners, fashions, or even to the language, of the nation where they have been for so many generations naturalized. They still preserve the remembrance of their origin, and keep up the ceremonies and usages of the land where their ancestors were born, without ever receiving any tincture of the particular habits of the countries where they live.”—Preface xvii.
At page 470, he gives an instance of a wandering tribe in the Mysore and Telinga country, originally employed in agriculture, who, a hundred and fifty years previously, took up their vagrant and wandering life, in consequence of the severe treatment which the governor of the province was going to inflict upon some of their favourite chiefs. To this kind of life they have grown so much accustomed, that it would be impossible to reclaim them to any fixed or sedentary habits; and they have never entertained a thought of resuming their ancient manners. They sojourn in the open fields, under small tents of bamboo, and wander from place to place as humour dictates. They amount to seven or eight thousand individuals, are divided into tribes, and are under the government of chiefs, and maintain a great respect for the property of others.
[10] The Gipsies frighten their children in the same manner, by saying that they will give them to the Gorgio.
[11] As children, have we not, at some time, run affrighted from a Gipsy?—Grellmann on the Hungarian Gipsies.
[12] There is an exception, however, to this rule in the Danubian Principalities, to which I will again refer.
INTRODUCTION.
The new era which the series of splendid works, called the Waverly Novels, created in literature, produced, among other effects, that of directing attention to that singular anomaly in civilization—the existence of a race of men scattered over the world, and known, wherever the English language is spoken, as Gipsies; a class as distinct, in some respects, from the people among whom they live, as the Jews at the present day. The first of the series in which their singular characters, habits, and modes of life were illustrated, was that of Guy Mannering; proving one of the few happy instances in which a work of fiction has been found to serve the end of specially stirring up the feelings of the human mind, in its various phases, toward a subject with which it has a common sympathy. The peasant and the farmer at once felt attracted by it, from the dread of personal danger which they had always entertained for the race, and the uncertainty under which they had lived, for the safety of their property from fire and robbery, and the desire which they had invariably shown to propitiate them by the payment of a species of blackmail, under the form of kind treatment, and a manner of hospitality when occasion called for it. The work at the same time struck a chord in the religious and humane sentiments of others, and the result, but a very tardily manifested one, was the springing up of associations for their reformation; with comparatively little success, however, for it was found, as a general thing, that while some of the race allowed their children, very indifferently, even precariously, to attend school, yet to cure them of their naturally wandering and other peculiar dispositions, was nearly as hopeless as the converting of the American Indians to some of the ways of civilized life. That general class was also interested, which consist of the more or less educated, moral, or refined, to whom anything exciting comes with relish. To the historical student, the subject was fraught with matter for curious investigation, owing to the race having been ignored, for a length of time, as being in no respect different from a class to be found in all countries; and, whatever their origin, as having had their nationality extinguished in that general process which has been found to level every distinction of race in our country. The antiquary and philologist, in their respective pursuits, found also a sphere which they were unlikely to leave unexplored, considering that they are often so untiring in their researches in such matters as sometimes to draw upon themselves a smile from the rest of mankind: and while the latter was thinking that he had exhausted the languages of his native land, and was contemplating others elsewhere, he struck accidentally upon a mine under his feet, and at once turned up a specimen of virgin ore; coming all the more acceptably to him, from those in possession of it keeping it as secret as if their existence depended on its being concealed from others around them. All, indeed, but especially those brought up in rural places, knew from childhood more or less of the Gipsies, and dreaded them by day or night, in frequented or in lonely places, knowing well that, if insulted, they would threaten vengeance, if they could not execute it then; which they in no way doubted, with the terror of doomed men.