“Sir Roger observing that I listened with great attention to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me that if I would, they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the knight’s proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra of the race, after having examined my lines very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a corner; that I was a good woman’s man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he had a widow in his line of life. Upon which the knight cried, ‘go, go, you are an idle baggage,’ and at the same time smiled upon me. The gipsy, finding that he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a further inquiry into his hand, that his true-love was constant, and that he should dream of her to-night. My old friend cried, ‘Pish,’ and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The knight still repeated that she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. ‘Ah, master,’ says the gipsy, ‘that roguish leer of yours makes a woman’s heart ache. You have not that simper about the mouth for nothing.’ The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the knight left the money with her that he had crossed the hand with, and got up again on his horse.
“As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me, that he knew several sensible people who believed these gipsies now and then foretold very strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary. In the height of his good humour, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no conjuror, as he went to relieve him, he found his pocket picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are very dexterous.”
This is a perfect piece of gipsyism. Wordsworth, Cowper, Crabbe, and others of our poets, have given very graphic sketches of them; but in all these descriptions you have the same characteristics, those of a strange, vagabond, out-of-door, artful, and fortune-telling people. This was for a long time the only point of view in which they were regarded. That they were a thievish and uncivilizable race everybody knew, but what was their real origin, or what their real country, few cared to inquire. It, in fact, quite satisfied the public to consider them as what they pretended to be, Egyptians. In all the descriptions I have alluded to, no reference whatever is made to their origin. Addison alone hints that he could give some historical remarks on this idle people, but he does not think it worth while. But a more inquisitive age came. It began to strike the minds of intelligent men, as the love of the picturesque, the love of whatever was quiet, ancient, singular, or poetic in the features of the country grew into a strong public feeling, that there was something far more curious and mysterious about this people than merely met the eye. That they were a peculiar variety of the human species, and had hereditary causes, whether prejudices or traditions, which stamped them, as distinctly and as stubbornly, a separate portion of humanity as the Jews, became obvious enough. That which had been supposed a mere gibberish in their mouths, was found to be true Eastern language, and it was discovered that they not merely “infested all Europe,” as Addison remarked, but all the world. In every quarter of it they were found, exhibiting the same strange and unchangeable lineaments, manners, and habits; in Egypt, as separate from the Egyptians in speech and custom, as they are separate from the English in England. Great curiosity was now excited concerning them, and we get a glimpse, in the following verses of the Ettrick Shepherd, of the speculations which arose out of the consequent inquiries.
Hast thou not noted on the by-way side,
Where England’s loanings stretch unsoiled and wide,
Or by the brook that through the valley pours,
Where mimic waves play lightly through the flowers,
A noisy crew far straggling through the glade,
Busied with trifles, or in slumber laid,
Their children lolling round them on the grass,
Or pestering with their sports the patient ass?
The wrinkled grandam there you may espy,
The ripe young maiden with her glossy eye;
Men in their prime—the striplings dark and dun,
Scathed by the storms, and freckled by the sun;
O mark them well when next the group you see,
In vacant barn, or resting on the lea;
They are the remnant of a race of old—
Spare not the trifle for your fortune told!
For there shalt thou behold with nature blent
A tint of mind in every lineament,
A mould of soul distinct, but hard to trace,
Unknown except to Israel’s wandering race;
For thence, as sages say, their line they drew—
O mark them well! the tales of old are true!
In these verses, which seem intended by Hogg as the commencement of a poem on the Gipsy history, he goes on to tell us that they were a tribe of Arabs that during the Crusades were induced to act as guides and allies of the Crusaders against Jerusalem, and were therefore compelled, on the retreat of the Christians, to flee too. It was not at all surprising that they should be regarded as the real descendants of Ishmael, for they have all the characteristics of his race,—an Eastern people, retaining all their features of mind or body in unchangeable fixedness—neither growing fairer in the temperate latitudes, nor darker in the sultry ones; perpetual wanderers and dwellers in tents; active, fond of horses, often herdsmen, artful, thievish, restrained by no principle but that of a cunning policy from laying hands on any man’s possessions; fond to enthusiasm of the chase after game, though obliged to follow it at midnight; as everlastingly isolated by their organic or moral conformation from the people amongst whom they dwell as the Jews themselves. The very prophecy seemed fulfilled in them, beyond what it could be in Araby itself, where they have been repeatedly subdued to the dominion of some conqueror, while this tribe seems in all countries to maintain its character as the genuine posterity of him who was to be a wild hunter in perpetual independence.
The Germans, however, who pursue every subject of curious inquiry with the same searching perseverance, took up this Gipsy mystery; and the result of their researches, founded principally on their language, at present leads to the adoption of the theory that they are a Hindu tribe. For a full view of the subject, I must refer my readers to the works of Grellman and Buttner, who have pursued this inquiry with great learning and zeal, or to a very able summary in Malte Brun’s Geography: my limits will compel me to take a more rapid notice of it. The sum and substance of their case is this. They find occupation in some countries as smiths and tinkers; they mend broken plates, and sell wooden ware. A class of them in Moldavia and Wallachia lead a settled life, and gain a subsistence by working and searching for gold in the beds of rivers. Those in the Bannat of Hungary are horse-dealers, and are gradually obeying the enactments of Joseph II., by which they are compelled to cultivate the land; but the great majority in Europe abhor a permanent residence and stated hours of labour. The women abuse the credulity of the German and Polish peasants, who imagine that they cure their cattle by witchcraft, and predict fortunate events by inspecting the lineaments of the hand. It is lawful for the wives of the Tchinganes in Turkey to commit adultery with impunity. Many individuals of both sexes, particularly throughout Hungary, are passionately fond of music, the only science in which they have, as yet, attained any degree of perfection. They are the favourite minstrels of the country people: some have arrived at eminence in cathedrals and the choirs of princes. Their guitar is heard in the romantic woods of Spain; and many gipsies, less indolent than the indolent Spaniards, exercise in that country the trade of publicans. They follow willingly whatever occupations most men hate and condemn. In Hungary and Transylvania, they are the flayers of dead horses, and executioners of criminals; the mass of the nation is composed of thieves and mendicants. The total number of these savages in Europe has never been considered less than 300,000; Grellman says 700,000; of these, 150,000 are in Turkey; 70,000 in Wallachia and Moldavia; 40,000 in Hungary and Transylvania; the rest are scattered through Russia, Prussia, Poland, Germany, Jutland, Spain, and other countries. Persia and Egypt are infested with them. They have appeared in Spanish America.
Who then are these people? Grellman and Buttner do not hesitate to pronounce them to be one of the low Indian castes, Soudras or Correvas, expelled from their country during one of its great revolutions, probably that of Tamerlane, about the year 1400. Their habits as tinkers, musicians, horse-dealers, etc. etc., already alluded to, are exactly in keeping with this supposition; but what is far stronger evidence is, that their language, formerly supposed to be the gibberish of thieves and pickpockets, is really Indostanée. In the tents of these wanderers is spoken the dialects of the Vedas, the Puranas, the Brachmans, and the Budahs. This, in different tribes, is in some degree dashed with words of Sclavonic, Persic, Permiac, Finnic, Wogoul, and Hungarian. The structure of the auxiliary verb is the same as others in the Indo-Pelasgic tongues, but the pronouns have a remarkable analogy with the Persic, and the declension of nouns with the Turkish. Pallas infers from their dialect that their ancient country was Moultan, and their origin the same as that of the Hindu merchants at present at Astrakhan. Bartolomeo believes they come from Guzerat, perhaps from the neighbourhood of Tatta, where a horde of pirates called Tchinganes still reside. Lastly, Richardson boasts of having found them among the Bazigurs, a wandering tribe of minstrels and dancers. No caste, however, bears so strong a resemblance to them as that of the Soudras, who have no fixed abodes, but live in tents, and sell baskets, mend kettles, and tell fortunes.
The names by which they have been, or are known in different countries are various. They call themselves Romi, Manusch, and Gadzi, each of these appellatives being connected with a different language—the Copt, the Sanscrit, and the Celtic. In Poland and Wallachia they are Zingani; in Italy and Hungary, Zingari; in Lithuania, Zigonas; Ziguene in Germany; Tchinganes in Turkey; the Atchinganes of the middle ages; in Spain they are Gitanos; in France, Bohemians, from their having passed out of Bohemia into that country. By the Persians they are called Sisech Hindou, or Black Indians. But the most ancient and general name is that of Sinte, or inhabitants of the banks of the Sinde, or Indus. The celebrated M. Hasse, has indeed proved that for the last 3000 years there have been in Europe wandering tribes bearing the name of Sigynes, or Sinte. He considers the modern gipsies as the descendants of these ancient hordes. Herodotus points out the Sigynes on the north side of the Ister. Strabo describes a people called Siginii, inhabiting the Hyrcanian mountains near the Caspian sea. Pliny speaks of the Caucasian Singi, and of the Indian Singæ. Hesychius reconciles the opinions of the ancients, and calls the Sinde an Indian people. They were noted for their cowardice; for submitting to the lash of Scythian masters, the prostitution of their women, whose name became a term of reproach. Different branches of the same people were scattered through Macedonia, in which was a Sinti district, and in Lemnos, where the Sinties were the workmen of Vulcan.
It will now be sufficiently obvious to the reader what a singular, ancient, and mysterious people are these gipsies, that haunt our lanes and commons, and form so striking and poetical a feature in our country scenery. After all the zealous and learned researches into their history and origin, nothing appears yet established beyond the fact, that they are older than Herodotus, the most ancient of profane historians; that for more than 3000 years they have been wandering through the world as they do at present; and that their language exhibits incontestable evidence of an oriental origin. The ravages of Tamerlane may perhaps help to account for the circumstance of their pressing upon Western Europe in 1400 in such unusual numbers; but they were wanderers long before Tamerlane’s days. Were they enemies of Krishna? for they boast of having formerly rejected Christ. They pretend that they were once a happy people, under kings of their own; but their traditionary knowledge seems nearly extinct. Perhaps an increasing acquaintance with the East and Eastern literature may cast some light on the origin of this peculiar variety of the human race. In the mean time we may proceed to take a close view of them as they now appear in this kingdom. From the first moment of their attracting the public attention in this part of Europe, they have always exhibited the same artful character,—a character above the trammels of either superstition or religion. They have therefore adopted the most plausible pretences to effect their purposes; and for a long time triumphed over the credulity of the christian princes, at all times over that of the common people. Their first appearance in France, as related by Pasquin, is curious enough. “On August 27th, 1427, came to Paris twelve penitents, Penanciers, as they called themselves, viz.: a duke, an earl, and ten men, all on horseback, and calling themselves good christians. They were of Lower Egypt, and gave out, that not long before, the christians had subdued their country, and obliged them to embrace christianity on pain of death. Those who were baptized were great lords in their own country, and had a king and queen there. Soon after their conversion, the Saracens overran the country, and obliged them to renounce christianity. When the emperor of Germany, the king of Poland, and the christian princes heard of this, they fell upon them, and obliged the whole of them, both great and small, to quit the country, and go to the Pope at Rome, who enjoined them seven years’ penance, to wander over the world without lying in a bed.
“They had been wandering five years when they came to Paris. First the principal people, and soon after the commonalty, about 100 or 120—reduced, according to their account, from 1000 or 1200, when they went from home; the rest, with their king and queen, being dead. They were lodged by the police at some distance from the city, at Chapel St. Denis.