[195] The Gipsies are always afraid to say what they would do in such cases. Perhaps they don’t know, but have only a general impression that the individual would “catch it;” or there may be some old law on the subject. What Ruthven said of her’s being a desperate race is true enough, and murderous too, among themselves as distinguished from the inhabitants generally. Her remark was evidently part of that frightening policy which keeps the natives from molesting the tribe. See [page 44].—Ed.
[196] Ponqueville, in his travels, says that the Gipsies in the Levant have no words in their language to express either God or the soul. Of ten words of the Greek Gipsy, given by him, five of them are in use in Scotland.—Paris, 1820.
[The Gipsy for God, according to Grellmann, is Dewe, Dewel, Dewol, Dewla.]—Ed.
[197] Had a German listened a whole day to a Gipsy conversation, he would not have understood a single expression.—Grellmann.
The dialect of the English Gipsies, though mixed with English, is tolerably pure, from the fact of its being intelligible to the race in the centre of Russia.—Borrow.—Ed.
[198] This letter is interesting to the extent that it illustrates the amount of knowledge possessed by the Scottish community, generally, regarding the subject of the Gipsies.—Ed.
[199] Sir Walter Scott was disposed to think that our Gipsy population was rather exaggerated at five thousand souls; but when families such as the above mentioned are taken into account—leaving alone those who may be classed as settled Gipsies—I am convinced that their number is not over-estimated.
[Not being in possession of sufficient information on the subject of the Gipsies, the opinion of Sir Walter Scott, on the point in question, amounted to nothing. See the Index, for [Sir Walter Scott’s ideas of the Scottish Gipsy population].—Ed.]
[200] In speaking of the more original kind of Gipsy, Grellmann says: “No Gipsy has ever signalized himself in literature, notwithstanding many of them have partaken of the instruction to be obtained at public schools. Their volatile disposition and unsteadiness will not allow them to complete anything which requires perseverance or application. In the midst of his career of learning, the recollection of his origin seizes him; he desires to return to what he thinks a more happy manner of life; this solicitude encreases; he gives up all at once, turns back again, and consigns over his knowledge to oblivion.”
There are too many circumstances surrounding such a Gipsy to remind him of his origin, and arrest him in his career of learning: for his race never having been tolerated—that is, no position ever having been assigned it, he feels as if he were a vagabond, if known or openly avowed to the public as a member of the tribe. And this, in itself, is sufficient to discourage such a Gipsy in every effort towards improvement.—Ed.