This extract is given for the benefit of the latter part of it, which applies admirably to the present subject; yet falls as much short of it as the interest in the history of an Egyptian mummy falls short of that of a living and universally scattered race, that appears a riddle to our comprehension.
[14] I sent him a specimen of forty-six words. [Many words used in Scotland, in every day life, are evidently derived from the Gipsy, owing, doubtless, to the singularity of the people who have used them, or the happy peculiarity of circumstances under which they have been uttered; the original cause of such passing current in a language, no less than that degree of personal authority which sometimes occasions them to be adopted. Randy, a disreputable word for a bold, scolding, and not over nicely worded woman, is evidently derived from the Gipsy raunie, the chief of a tribe of viragos; so that the exceptions spoken of are as likely to have been derived from the Gipsy as vice versa.—Ed.]
[15] The name by which Mr. Blackwood was known in the celebrated Chaldee manuscript, published in his magazine.
[16] Previous to this, Mr. Blackwood wrote me as follows: “I received your packet some days ago, and immediately gave it to the editor. He desires me to say that your No. 5, though very curious, would not answer, from the nature of the details, to be printed in the magazine. In a regular history of the Gipsies, they would, of course, find a place.” This was what suggested the idea of the present work.
[17] Grellmann. I am not aware that he ever compared the words I sent him with those in this publication, as he wrote he would do, in the previous letter quoted.
[18] Throughout the whole of his works there does not appear, I believe, a single word of the proper Scottish Gipsy; although slang and cant expressions are to be found in considerable numbers. [Some of these are of Gipsy extraction.—Ed.]
[19] There cannot be less then 100,000 Gipsies in Scotland. See [Disquisition] on the Gipsies.—Ed.
[20] The following is a description of the Jews, throughout the world, as given by them, in their letters to Voltaire: “A Jew in London bears as little resemblance to a Jew at Constantinople, as this last resembles a Chinese Mandarin! A Portuguese Jew, of Bordeaux, and a German Jew, of Metz, appear two beings of a different nature! It is, therefore, impossible to speak of the manners of the Jews in general, without entering into a very long detail, and into particular distinctions. The Jew is a chamelion, that assumes all the colours of the different climates he inhabits, of the different people he frequents, and of the different governments under which he lives.”
These words are much more applicable to the Gipsy tribe, in consequence of their drawing into their body the blood of other people.—Ed.
[21] This, I need hardly say, is a description of what may be called a wild Gipsy.—Ed.