On one occasion, I met with a German cutler, in a place of business, in New York. I felt sure he was a Gipsy, although the world would not have taken him for one. Catching his eye, I commenced to look around the room, from those present to himself, as if there was to be something confidential between us, and then whispered to him, “Callo chabo,” (Gipsy, or black fellow;) and the effect was instantaneous. I afterwards visited his family, on a Sabbath evening, and took tea with them. They were from Wurtemberg, and appeared very decent people. The mother, a tall, swarthy, fine looking intelligent young woman, said grace, which was repeated by the children, whom I found learning their Sabbath-school lessons. The family regularly attend church. A fair-haired German called, and went to church with the Gipsy himself. What with the appearance of everything about the house, and the fine, clean, and neatly-dressed family of children, I felt very much pleased with my visit.
French and German Gipsies are very shy, owing to the severity of the laws against their race.
[284] Fletcher, of Saltoun, speaks of there being constantly a hundred thousand people in Scotland, leading the life (as Sir Walter Scott describes it,) of “Gipsies, Jockies, or Cairds.” Between the time alluded to and the date of John Faw’s league with James V., a period of 140 years had elapsed; and 174 years from the date of arrival of the race in the country: so that, from the natural encrease of the body, and the large amount of white blood introduced into it, the greater part, if not the whole, of the people mentioned, were doubtless Gipsies. But these Gipsies, according to Sir Walter’s opinion, “died out by a change of habits.” How strange it is that the very first class Scottish minds should have so little understood the philosophy of origin, blood, and descent, and especially as they applied to the Gipsies! For Sir Walter says: “The progress of time, and encrease both of the means of life and the power of the laws, gradually reduced this dreadful evil within more narrow bounds. . . . . Their numbers are so greatly diminished, that, instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by Fletcher, it would now, perhaps, be impossible to collect above five hundred throughout all Scotland(!)” It is perfectly evident that Sir Walter Scott, in common with many others, never realized the idea, in all its bearings, of what a Gipsy was; or he never could have imagined that those, only, were of the Gipsy race, who followed the tent.
It is very doubtful if Anthonius Gawino, and his tribe, departed with their letter of introduction from James IV. to his uncle, the king of Denmark, in 1506. Having secured the favour of the king of Scots, by this recommendatory notice, he was more apt, by delaying his departure, to secure his position in the country. The circumstances attending the league with his successor, John Faw, show that the tribe had been long in the country; doubtless from as far back as 1506. From 1506 till 1579, with the exception of about one year, during the reign of James V., the tribe, as I have already said, ([page 109],) must have encreased prodigiously. The persecutions against the body extended over the reign of James VI., and part of that of Charles I.; for, according to Baron Hume, such was the terror which the executions inspired in the tribe, that, “for the space of more than 50 years from that time, (1624,) there is no trial of an Egyptian;” although our author shows that an execution of a band of them took place in 1636. But “towards the end of that century,” continues Baron Hume, “the nuisance seems to have again become troublesome;” in other words, that from the reign of Charles I. to the accession of William and Mary, the time to which Fletcher’s remark applies, the attention of all being taken up with the troubles of the times, the Gipsies had things pretty much their own way; but when peace was restored, they would be called to strict account.
For all these reasons, it may be said that the 100,000 people spoken of were doubtless Gipsies of various mixtures of blood; so that, at the present day, there ought to be a very large number of the tribe in Scotland. I admit that many of the Scottish Gipsies have been hanged, and many banished to the Plantations; but these would be in a small ratio to their number, and a still smaller to the natural encrease of the body. Suppose that such and such Gipsies were either hanged or banished; so young did they all marry, that, when they were hanged or banished, they might leave behind them families ranging from five to ten children. We may say, of the Scottish Gipsies generally, in days that are past, what a writer in Blackwood’s Magazine, already alluded to, said of Billy Marshall: “Their descendants were prodigiously numerous; I dare say, numberless.” Many of the Scottish Gipsies have migrated to England, as well as elsewhere. In Liverpool, there are many of them, following various mechanical occupations.
[285] Peter Funks & Co.: Mock auctioneers of mock jewelry, &c., &c.
[286] If the real characters of those “lady fortune-tellers,” who flourish so much in the large cities, and publicly profess to reveal all matters in “love and law, health and wealth, losses and crosses,” were to be ascertained, many of them would, in all probability, be found to belong to a superior class of Gipsies. And this may much more be said of the more humble ones, who trust to the gossipping of a class—and that a respectable class of females, for the advertising of their calling. For a certainty, those are Gipsies who stroll about, telling fortunes for dimes, clothes, or old bottles. The advertising members form a very small part of the fraternity. The extent to which such business is patronized, by Americans, of both sexes, and of almost all positions in society is such, that it is doubtful if the English reader would credit it, if it were put on record.
[287] When travelling on the stage, towards Lake Huron, in Canada, I was surprised at finding a Gipsy tent on the road-side, with a man sitting in front of it, engaged in the mysteries of the tinker. I met a camp of Gipsies on a vacant space, beside a clump of trees, in Hamilton, at the head of Lake Ontario, but I deferred visiting them till the following morning. When I returned to the spot, I found that the birds had flown. Feeling disappointed, I began to question a man who kept a toll-bar, immediately opposite to where their tents had been, as to their peculiarities generally; when he said: “They seemed droll kind o’ folk—quite like ourselves—no way foreign; yet I could not understand a word they were saying among themselves.” Shortly after this, a company of them entered a shop, in the same town, to buy tin, when I happened to be in it. I accosted one of the mothers of the company, in an abrupt but bland tone. “You’re a’ Nawkens (Gipsies) I see.”—“Ou ay, we’re Nawkens,” was her immediate reply, accompanied by a smile on her weather-beaten countenance. “You’ll aye speak the language?” I continued. “We’ll ne’er forget that,” she again replied. This seemed to be a company of Gipsies from the Scottish Border; for the woman spoke about the broadest Scotch I ever heard. They dressed well, and bore a good reputation in the neighbourhood.
[288] Mixed Gipsies tell no lies, when they say that they are not Gipsies; for, physiologically speaking, they are not Gipsies, but only partly Gipsies, as regards blood. In every other way they are Gipsies, that is, chabos, calos, or chals.
[289] The people above-mentioned are doubtless Gipsies. According to Grellmann, the race is even to be found in the centre of Africa. Mollien, in his travels to the sources of the Senegal and Gambia, in 1818, says: “Scattered among the Joloffs, we find a people not unlike our Gipsies, and known by the name of Laaubés. Leading a roving life, and without fixed habitation, their only employment is the manufacture of wooden vessels, mortars, and bedsteads. They choose a well-wooded spot, fell some trees, form huts with the branches, and work up the trunks. For this privilege, they must pay a sort of tax to the prince in whose states they thus settle. In general, they are both ugly and slovenly.