[264] I have picked up quite a number of Scottish Gipsies of respectable character, from their having gone in their youth, to look at the “old thing.” It is the most natural thing in the world for them to do. What is it to look back to the time of James V., in 1540, when John Faw was lord-paramount over the Gipsies in Scotland? Imagine, then, the natural curiosity of a young Gipsy, brought up in a town, to look at something like the original condition of his ancestors. Such a Gipsy will leave Edinburgh, for example, and travel over the south of Scotland, “casting his sign,” as he passes through the villages, in every one of which he will find Gipsies. Some of these villages are almost entirely occupied by Gipsies. James Hogg is reported, in Blackwood’s Magazine, to say, that Lochmaben is “stocked” with them.
[265] Among the English Gipsies, fair-haired ones are looked upon by the purer sort, or even by those taking after the Gipsy, as “small potatoes.” The consequence is they have to make up for their want of blood, by smartness, knowledge of the language, or something that will go to balance the deficiency of blood. They generally lay claim to the intellect, while they yield the blood to the others. A full or nearly full-blood young English Gipsy looks upon herself with all the pride of a little duchess, while in the company of young male mixed Gipsies. A mixed Gipsy may reasonably be assumed to be more intelligent than one of the old stock, were it only for this reason, that the mixture softens down the natural conceit and bigotry of the Gipsy; while, as regards his personal appearance, it puts him in a more improvable position. Still, a full-blood Gipsy looks up to a mixed Gipsy, if he is anything of a superior man, and freely acknowledges the blood. Indeed, the two kinds will readily marry, if circumstances bring them together. To a couple of such Gipsies I said: “What difference does it make, if the person has the blood, and has his heart in the right place?” “That’s the idea; that’s exactly the idea,” they both replied.
[266] To thoroughly understand how a Gipsy, with fair hair and blue eyes, can be as much a Gipsy as one with black, may be termed “passing the pons assinorum of the Gipsy question.” Once over the bridge, and there are no difficulties to be encountered on the journey, unless it be to understand that a Gipsy can be a Gipsy without living in a tent or being a rogue.
[267] There is a considerable resemblance between Gipsyism, in its harmless aspect, and Freemasonry; with this difference, that the former is a general, while the latter is a special, society; that is to say, the Gipsies have the language, or some of the words, and the signs, peculiar to the whole race, which each individual or class will use for different purposes. The race does not necessarily, and does not in fact, have intercourse with every other member of it; in that respect, they resemble any ordinary community of men. Masonry, as my reader may be aware, is a society of what may be termed “a mixed multitude of good fellows, who are all pledged to befriend and help each other.” The radical elements of Masonry may be termed a “rope of sand,” which the vows of the Order work into the most closely and strongly formed coil of any to be found in the world. But it is altogether of an artificial nature; while Gipsyism is natural—something that, when separated from objectionable habits, one might almost call divine; for it is founded upon a question of race—a question of blood. The cement of a creed is weak, in comparison with that which binds the Gipsies together; for a people, like an individual, may have one creed to-day, and another to-morrow; it may be continually travelling round the circle of every form of faith; but blood, under certain circumstances, is absolute and immutable.
There are many Gipsies Freemasons; indeed, they are the very people to push their way into a Mason’s lodge; for they have secrets of their own, and are naturally anxious to pry into those of others, by which they may be benefited. I was told of a Gipsy who died lately, the Master of a Masons’ Lodge. A friend, a Mason, told me, the other day, of his having entered a house in Yetholm, where were five Gipsies, all of whom responded to his Masonic signs. Masons should therefore interest themselves in, and befriend, the Gipsies.
[268] The principle, or rather fact, here involved, simple as it is in itself, is evidently very difficult of comprehension by the native Scottish mind. Any person understands perfectly well how a Highlander, at the present day, is still a Highlander, notwithstanding the great change that has come over the character of his race. But our Scottish literati seem to have been altogether at sea, in comprehending the same principle as applicable to the Gipsies. They might naturally have asked themselves, whether Gipsies could have procreated Jews; and, if not Jews, how they could have procreated gorgios, (as English Gipsies term natives.) A writer in Blackwood’s Magazine says, in reference to Billy Marshall, a Gipsy chief, to whom allusion has already been made: “Who were his descendants I cannot tell; I am sure he could not do it himself, if he were living. It is known that they were prodigiously numerous; I dare say numberless.” And yet this writer gravely says that “the race is in some risk of becoming extinct(!)” Another writer in Blackwood says: “Their numbers may perhaps have since been diminished, in particular States, by the progress of civilization(!)” We would naturally pronounce any person crazy who would maintain that there were no Highlanders in Scotland, owing to their having “changed their habits.” We could, with as much reason, say the same of those who will maintain this opinion in regard to the Gipsies. There has been a great deal of what is called genius expended upon the Gipsies, but wonderfully little common sense.
As the Jews, during their pilgrimage in the Wilderness, were protected from their enemies by a cloud, so have the Gipsies, in their encrease and development, been shielded from theirs, by a mist of ignorance, which, it would seem, requires no little trouble to dispel.
[269] In Olmstead’s “Journey in the Seaboard Slave States” it is stated, that in Alexandria, Louisiana, when under the Spanish rule, there were “French and Spanish, Egyptians and Indians, Mulattoes and Negroes.” This author reports a conversation which he had with a planter, by which it appears that these Egyptians came from “some of the Northern Islands;” that they spoke a language among themselves, but could talk French and Spanish too; that they were black, but not very black, and as good citizens as any, and passed for white folk. The planter believed they married mostly with mulattoes, and that a good many of the mulattoes had Egyptian blood in them too. He believed these Egyptians had disappeared since the State became part of the Union. Mr. Olmstead remarks: “The Egyptians were probably Spanish Gipsies, though I have never heard of any of them being in America in any other way.”
[270] Mr. Borrow surely cannot mean that a Gipsy ceases to be a Gipsy, when he settles down, and “turns over a new leaf;” and that this “change of habits” changes his descent, blood, appearance, language and nationality! What, then, does he mean, when he says that the Spanish Gipsies have decreased by “a partial change of habits?”
And does an infusion of Spanish blood, implied in a “freer intercourse with the Spanish population,” lead to the Gipsy element being wiped out; or does it lead to the Spanish feeling being lost in Gipsydom? Which is the element to be operated upon—the Spanish or the Gipsy? Which is the leaven? The Spanish element is the passive, the Gipsy the active. As a question of philosophy, the most simple of comprehension, and, above all, as a matter of fact, the foreign element introduced, in detail, into the body of Gipsydom, goes with that body, and, in feeling, becomes incorporated with it, although, in physical appearance, it changes the Gipsy race, so that it becomes “confounded with the residue of the population,” but remains Gipsy, as before. A Spanish Gipsy is a Spaniard as he stands, and it would be hard to say what we should ask him to do, to become more a Spaniard than he is already.