In no country in the world is there so much caste feeling, devilish jealousy, and diabolical revenge manifested as inIndia. These are true types and traits of Indian character, especially of the lower orders and those who have lost caste; the Turks, Arabs, Egyptians, Roumanians, Hungarians, and Spaniards sink into insignificance when compared with the Afghans, Hindus, and other inhabitants of some of the worst parts of India. Any one observing the Gipsies closely, as I have been trying to do for some time, outside their mystery boxes, with their thin, flimsy veil of romance and superstitious turn of their faces, will soon discover their Indian character. Of course their intermixture with Circassians and other nations, in the course of their travels from India, during five or six centuries, till the time they arrived at our doors, has brought, and is still bringing, to the surface the blighted flowers of humanity, whose ancestral tree derived its nourishment from the soil of Arabia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, Hungary, Norway, Italy, Germany, France, Switzerland, England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales, as the muddy stream of Gipsyism has been winding its way for ages through various parts of the world; and, I am sorry to say, this little dark stream has been casting forth an unpleasant odour and a horrible stench in our midst, which has so long been fed and augmented by the dregs of English society from Sunday-schools and the hearthstones of pious parents. The different nationalities to be seen among the Gipsies, in their camps and tents, may be looked upon as so many bastard off-shoots from the main trunk of the trees that have been met with in their wanderings.
In no part of the globe, owing principally to our isolation, is the old Gipsy character losing itself among the street-gutter rabble as in our own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and races, the diabolical Indian elements are easily recognisable in their wigwams. Then, again, their Indian origin can be traced in many of their social habits; among others, they squat upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and other nationalities, who are pointed to by some writersas being the ancestors of the Gipsies. Their tramping over the hills and plains of India, and exposure to all the changes of the climate, has no doubt fitted them, physically, for the kind of life they are leading in various parts of the world. To-day Gipsies are to be found in almost every part of the civilised countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the burning sands of Africa, squatting about in their tents. The treatment of the women and children by the men corresponds exactly with the treatment the women and children are receiving at the hands of the low-caste Indians. The Arabian women, the Turkish women, and Egyptian women, may be said to be queens when set up in comparison with the poor Gipsy woman in this country. In Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, and some other Eastern nations, the women are kept in the background; but among the low-caste Indians and Gipsies the women are brought to the front divested of the modesty of those nations who claim to be the primogenitors of the Gipsy tribes and races. Among the lower orders of Indians, from whom the Gipsies are the outcome, most extraordinary types of characters and countenances are to be seen. Any one visiting the Gipsy wigwams of the present day will soon discover the relationship.
In early life, as among the Indians, some of the girls are pretty and interesting, but with exposure, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, idle and loose habits, the pretty, dark-eyed girl soon becomes the coarse, vulgar woman, with the last trace of virtue blown to the winds. If any one with but little keen sense of observation will peep into a Gipsy’s tent when the man is making pegs and skewers, and contrast him with the low-caste Indian potter at his wheel and the carpenter at his bench—all squatting upon the ground—he will not be long in coming to the conclusion that they are all pretty much of the same family.
Ethnologists and philologists may find certain words used by the Gipsies to correspond with the Indian language, and this adds another proof to those I have already adduced;but, to my mind, this, after the lapse of so many centuries, considering all the changes that have taken place since the Gipsies emigrated, is not the most convincing argument, any more than our forms of letters, the outcome of hieroglyphics, prove that we were once Egyptians. No doubt, there are a certain few words used by all nations which, if their roots and derivations were thoroughly looked into, a similarity would be found in them. As America, Australia, New Zealand, and Africa have been fields for emigrants from China and Europe during the last century, so, in like manner, Europe was the field for certain low-caste poor emigrants from India during the two preceding centuries, with this difference—the emigrants from India to Europe were idlers, loafers who sought to make their fortunes among the Europeans by practising, without work, the most subtle arts of double-dealing, lying, deception, thieving, and dishonesty, and the fate that attends individuals following out such a course as this has attended the Gipsies in all their wanderings; the consequence has been, the Gipsy emigrants, after their first introduction to the various countries, have, by their actions, disgusted those whom they wished to cheat and rob, hence the treatment they have received. This cannot be said of the emigrant from England to America and our own or other colonies. An English emigrant, on account of his open conduct, straightforward character, and industry, has been always respected. In any country an English emigrant enters, owing to his industrious habits, an improvement takes place. In the country where an Indian emigrant of the Gipsy tribe enters the tendency is the reverse of this, so far as their influence is concerned—downward to the ground and to the dogs they go. In these two cases the difference between civilisation and Christianity and heathenism comes out to a marked degree.
In a leading article in theEdinburgh Review, July, 1878, upon the origin and wanderings of the Gipsies, the followingappears:—“We next encounter them in Corfu, probably before 1346, since there is good reason to believe them to be indicated under the name ofhomines vagenitiin a document emanating from the Empress Catharine of Valois, who died in that year; certainly, about 1370, when they were settled upon a fief recognised as thefeudum Acinganorumby the Venetians, who, in 1386, succeeded to the right of the House of Valois in the island. This fief continued to subsist under the lordship of the Barons de Abitabulo and of the House of Prosalendi down to the abolition of feudalism in Corfu in the beginning of the present century. There remain to be noted two important pieces of evidence relating to this period. The first is contained in a charter of Miracco I., Waiwode of Wallachia, dated 1387, renewing a grant of forty ‘tents’ of Gipsies, made by his uncle, Ladislaus, to the monastery of St. Anthony of Vodici. Ladislaus began to reign in 1398. The second consists in the confirmation accorded in 1398 by the Venetian governor of Nanplion of the privileges extended by his predecessors to the Acingani dwelling in that district. Thus we find Gipsies wandering through Crete in 1322, settled in Corfu from 1346, enslaved in Wallachia about 1370, protected in the Peloponnesus before 1398. Nor is there is any reason to believe that their arrival in those countries was a recent one.”
Niebuhr, in his travels through Arabia, met with hordes of these strolling Gipsies in the warm district of Yemen, and M. Sauer in like manner found them established in the frozen regions of Siberia. His account of them, published in 1802, shows the Gipsy to be the same in Northern Russia as with us in England. He describes them as follows:—“I was surprised at the appearance of detached families throughout the Government of Tobolsk, and upon inquiry I learned that several roving companies of these people had strolled into the city of Tobolsk.” The governor thought of establishing a colony of them, but they were too cunning forthe simple Siberian peasant. He placed them on a footing with the peasants, and allotted a portion of land for cultivation with a view of making them useful members of society. They rejected houses even in this severe climate, and preferred open tents or sheds. In Hungary and Transylvania they dwell in tents during the summer, and for their winter quarters make holes ten or twelve feet deep in the earth. The women, one writer says, “deal in old clothes, prostitution, wanton dances, and fortune-telling, and are indolent beggars and thieves. They have few disorders except the measles and small-pox, and weaknesses in their eyes caused by the smoke. Their physic is saffron put into their soup, with bleeding.” In Hungary, as with other nations, they have no sense of religion, though with their usual cunning and hypocrisy they profess the established faith of every country in which they live.
The following is an article taken from theSaturday Review, December 13th, 1879:—“It has been repeated until the remark has become accepted as a sort of truism that the Gipsies are a mysterious race, and that nothing is known of their origin. And a few years ago this was true; but within those years so much has been discovered that at present there is really no more mystery attached to the beginning of those nomads than is peculiar to many other peoples. What these discoveries or grounds of belief are we shall proceed to give briefly, our limits not permitting the detailed citation of authorities. First, then, there appears to be every reason for believing with Captain Richard Burton that the Jats of North-Western India furnished so large a proportion of the emigrants or exiles who, from the tenth century, went out of India westward, that there is very little risk in assuming it as an hypothesis, at least, that they formed theHauptstammof the Gipsies of Europe. What other elements entered into these, with whom we are all familiar, will be considered presently. These Gipsies came from India, where caste is established and callings arehereditary even among out-castes. It is not assuming too much to suppose that, as they evinced a marked aptitude for certain pursuits and an inveterate attachment to certain habits, their ancestors had in these respects resembled them for ages. These pursuits and habits were, that:—They were tinkers, smiths, and farriers. They dealt in horses, and were naturally familiar with them. They were without religion. They were unscrupulous thieves. Their women were fortune-tellers, especially by chiromancy. They ate without scruple animals which had died a natural death, being especially fond of the pig, which, when it has thus been ‘butchered by God,’ is still regarded even by the most prosperous Gipsies in England as a delicacy. They flayed animals, carried corpses, and showed such aptness for these and similar detested callings that in several European countries they long monopolised them. They made and sold mats, baskets, and small articles of wood. They have shown great skill as dancers, musicians, singers, acrobats; and it is a rule almost without exception that there is hardly a travelling company of such performers, or a theatre in Europe or America, in which there is not at least one person with some Romany blood. Their hair remains black to advanced age, and they retain it longer than do Europeans or ordinary Orientals. They speak an Aryan tongue, which agrees in the main with that of the Jats, but which contains words gathered from other Indian sources. Admitting these as the peculiar pursuits of the race, the next step should be to consider what are the principal nomadic tribes of Gipsies in India and Persia, and how far their occupations agree with those of the Romany of Europe. That the Jats probably supplied the main stock has been admitted. This was a bold race of North-Western India which at one time had such power as to obtain important victories over the caliphs. They were broken and dispersed in the eleventh century by Mahmoud, many thousands of them wandering to the West. They were without religion,‘of the horse, horsey,’ and notorious thieves. In this they agree with the European Gipsy. But they are not habitual eaters ofmullo balor, or ‘dead pork;’ they do not devour everything like dogs. We cannot ascertain that the Jat is specially a musician, a dancer, a mat and basket-maker, a rope-dancer, a bear-leader, or a pedlar. We do not know whether they are peculiar in India among the Indians for keeping their hair unchanged to old age, as do pure-blood English Gipsies. All of these things are, however, markedly characteristic of certain different kinds of wanderers, or Gipsies, in India. From this we conclude—hypothetically—that the Jat warriors were supplemented by other tribes.
“Next to the word Rom itself, the most interesting in Romany is Zingan, or Tchenkan, which is used in twenty or thirty different forms by the people of every country, except England, to indicate the Gipsy. An incredible amount of far-fetched erudition has been wasted in pursuing this philologicalignis-fatuus. That there are leather-working and saddle-working Gipsies in Persia who call themselves Zingan is a fair basis for an origin of the word; but then there are Tchangar Gipsies of Jat affinity in the Punjab. Wonderful it is that in this war of words no philologist has paid any attention to what the Gipsies themselves say about it. What they do say is sufficiently interesting, as it is told in the form of a legend which is intrinsically curious and probably ancient. It is given as follows in ‘The People of Turkey,’ by a Consul’s Daughter and Wife, edited by Mr. Stanley Lane Poole, London, 1878:—
“‘Although the Gipsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to be founded upon a strange legend current in the country. This legend says that when the Gipsy nation were driven out of their country and arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a wheel was attached.’ From the context of this imperfectlytold story, it would appear as if the Gipsies could not travel further until this wheel should revolve:—‘Nobody appeared to be able to turn it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only when he had married his sister Guin. The chief accepted the advice, the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident became that of the combined names of the brother and sister, Chenguin, the appellation of all the Gipsies of Turkey at the present day.’ The legend goes on to state that, in consequence of this unnatural marriage, the Gipsies were cursed and condemned by a Mohammedan saint to wander for ever on the face of the earth. The real meaning of the myth—for myth it is—is very apparent. Chen is a Romany word, generally pronounced Chone, meaning the moon, while Guin is almost universally renderedGanorKan.Kanis given by George Borrow as meaning sun, and we have ourselves heard English Gipsies call itkan, althoughkamis usually assumed to be right. Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun. And it may be remarked in this connection that the Roumanian Gipsies have a wild legend stating that the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister, was condemned as the sun to wander for ever in pursuit of her turned into the moon. A similar legend exists in Greenland and the island of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish. It was very natural that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with that of these luminaries. It may be objected by those to whom the term ‘solar myth’ is as a red rag that this story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek. If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan. It is quiteas plausible as Dr. Mikliosch’s derivation from the Acingani— ̓Ατσίyανοι—‘an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century.’ The mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon-sun story came from India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name. And if the Romany call themselves Jengan, or Chenkan, or Zin-gan, in the East, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name from the Gorgios in Europe.”
“‘Although the Gipsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to be founded upon a strange legend current in the country. This legend says that when the Gipsy nation were driven out of their country and arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a wheel was attached.’ From the context of this imperfectlytold story, it would appear as if the Gipsies could not travel further until this wheel should revolve:—‘Nobody appeared to be able to turn it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only when he had married his sister Guin. The chief accepted the advice, the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident became that of the combined names of the brother and sister, Chenguin, the appellation of all the Gipsies of Turkey at the present day.’ The legend goes on to state that, in consequence of this unnatural marriage, the Gipsies were cursed and condemned by a Mohammedan saint to wander for ever on the face of the earth. The real meaning of the myth—for myth it is—is very apparent. Chen is a Romany word, generally pronounced Chone, meaning the moon, while Guin is almost universally renderedGanorKan.Kanis given by George Borrow as meaning sun, and we have ourselves heard English Gipsies call itkan, althoughkamis usually assumed to be right. Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun. And it may be remarked in this connection that the Roumanian Gipsies have a wild legend stating that the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister, was condemned as the sun to wander for ever in pursuit of her turned into the moon. A similar legend exists in Greenland and the island of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish. It was very natural that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life with that of these luminaries. It may be objected by those to whom the term ‘solar myth’ is as a red rag that this story, to prove anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek. If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan. It is quiteas plausible as Dr. Mikliosch’s derivation from the Acingani— ̓Ατσίyανοι—‘an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century.’ The mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon-sun story came from India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name. And if the Romany call themselves Jengan, or Chenkan, or Zin-gan, in the East, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name from the Gorgios in Europe.”
Professor Bott, in his “Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien,” speaks of the Gipsies orLüryas follows:—“In the great Persian epic, the ‘Shah-Nameh’—in ‘Book of Kings,’ Firdusi—relates an historical tradition to the following effect. About the year 420a.d., Behrâm Gûr, a wise and beneficent ruler of the Sassanian dynasty, finding that his poorer subjects languished for lack of recreation, bethought himself of some means by which to divert their spirits amid the oppressive cares of a laborious life. For this purpose he sent an embassy to Shankal, King of Canaj and Maharajah of India, with whom he had entered into a strict bond of amity, requesting him to select from among his subjects and transmit to the dominions of his Persian ally such persons as could by their arts help to lighten the burden of existence, and lend a charm to the monotony of toil. The result was the importation of twelve thousand minstrels, male and female, to whom the king assigned certain lands, as well as an ample supply of corn and cattle, to the end that, living independently, they might provide his people with gratuitous amusement. But at the end of one year they were found to have neglected agricultural operations, to have wasted their seed corn, and to be thus destitute of all means of subsistence. Then Behrâm Gûr, being angry, commanded them to take their asses and instruments, and roam through the country, earning a livelihood by their songs. The poet concludes as follows:—‘The Lüry, agreeably to this mandate, now wander about the world in search of employment,associating with dogs and wolves, and thieving on the road, by day and by night.’” These words were penned nearly nine centuries ago, and correctly describe the condition of one of the wandering tribes of Persia at the present day, and they have been identified by some travellers as members of the Gipsy family.
Dr. Von Bott goes on to say this:—“The tradition of the importation of the Lüry from India is related by no less than five Persian or Arab writers: first, about the year 940 by Hamza, an Arab historian, born at Ispahan; next, as we have seen, by Firdusi; in the year 1126 by the author of the ‘Modjmel-al-Yevaryk;’ in the fifteenth century by Mirkhoud, the historian of the Sassanides. The transplanted musicians are called by HamzaZuth, and in some manuscripts of Mirkhoud’s history the same name occurs, written, according to the Indian orthography,Djatt. These words are undistinguishable when pronounced, and, in fact, may be looked upon as phonetically equivalent, the Arabiczbeing the legitimate representative of the Indiandj. Now Zuth or Zatt, as it is indifferently written, is one of the designations of the Syrian Gipsies, and Djatt is the tribal appellative of the ancient Indian race still widely diffused throughout the Punjab and Beloochistan. Thus we find that the modern Lüry, who may, without fear of error, be classed as Persian Gipsies, derive a traditional origin from certain Indian minstrels called by an Arab author of the tenth centuryZuth, and by a Persian historian of the fifteenth,Djatt, a name claimed, on the one hand by the Gipsies frequenting the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on the other by a people dwelling in the valley of the Indus.” The Djatts were averse to religious speculation, and rejected all sectarian observances; the Hindu was mystical and meditative, and a slave to the superstitions of caste. From a remote period there were Djatt settlements along the shores of the Persian Gulf, plainly indicating the route by which the Gipsies travelled westward from India, as I have beforeintimated, rather than endure the life of an Indian slave under the Mohammedan task-masters. Liberty! liberty! free and wild as partridges, with no disposition to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow, ran through their nature like an electric wire, which the chirp of a hedge-sparrow in spring-time would bring into action, and cause them to bound like wild asses to the lanes, commons, and moors. They have always refused to submit to the Mohammedan faith: in fact, the Djatts have accepted neither Brahma nor Budda, and have never adopted any national religion whatever. The church of the Gipsies, according to a popular saying in Hungary, “was built of bacon, and long ago eaten by the dogs.” Captain Richard F. Burton wrote in 1849, in his work called the “Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus:”—“It seems probable, from the appearance and other peculiarities of the race, that the Djatts are connected by consanguinity with that singular race, the Gipsies.” Some writers have endeavoured to prove that the Gipsies were formerly Egyptians; but, from several causes, they have never been able to show conclusively that such was the case. The wandering Gipsies in Egypt, at the present day, are not looked upon by the Egyptians as in any way related to them. Then, again, others have tried to prove that the Gipsies are the descendants of Hagar; but this argument falls to the ground simply because the connecting links have not been found. The two main reasons alleged by Mr. Groom and those who try to establish this theory are, first, that the Ishmaelites are wanderers; second, that they are smiths, or workers in iron and brass. The Mohammedans claim Ishmael as their father, and certainly they would be in a better position to judge upon this point eleven centuries ago then we possibly can be at this late date. And so, in like manner, where it is alleged that the Gipsies sprang from, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, and Hungary.
The following are specimens of Indian characters, takenfrom “The People of India,” prepared under the authority of the Indian Government, and edited by Dr. Forbes Watson, M.A., and Sir John William Kaye, F.R.S. In speaking of the Changars, they say that these Indians have an unenviable character for thieving and general dishonesty, and form one of the large class of unsettled wanderers which, inadmissible to Hinduism and unconverted to the Mohammedan faith, lives on in a miserable condition of life as outcasts from the more civilised communities. Changars are, in general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation. They object to continuous labour. The women make baskets, beg, pilfer, or sift and grind corn. They have no settled places of residence, and live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages. They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but they make offerings at Mohammedan shrines. They have private ceremonies, separate from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the most ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant demons and malicious sprites. They marry exclusively among themselves, and polygamy is common. In appearance, both men and women are repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular being very ugly, and of a strong aboriginal type. The Changars are one of the most miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper provinces. They feed, as it were, on the garbage left by others, never changing, never improving, never advancing in the social rank, scale, or utility—outcast and foul parasites from the earliest ages, and they so remain. The Changars, like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits, indulging freely in intoxicating liquors, and smoking ganjia, or cured hemp leaves, to a great extent. Their food can hardly be particularised, and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however, there are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and eaten; and at marriagesand other domestic occurrences feasts are provided, which usually end in foul orgies. In the clothes and person the Changars are decidedly unclean, and indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the tribes can hardly be exceeded.
The Doms are a race of Gipsies found from Central India to the far Northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appear as the Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan. In “The People of India,” we are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a marked difference from those who surround them (in Behar). The Hindus admit their claim to antiquity. Their designation in the Shastras is Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater. They are wanderers, they make baskets and mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings on it. They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling all dead bodies. They eat all animals which have died a natural death, and are particularly fond of pork of this description. “Notwithstanding profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white.” The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers. Travellers speak of them as “Gipsies.” A specimen which we have of their language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English Gipsy, and be called pure Romany. Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana.Din Hindustani is found asrin English Gipsy speech—e.g.,doi, a wooden spoon, is known in Europe asroi. Now in common Romany we have, even in London:—
Rom
A Gipsy.
Romni
A Gipsy wife.
Romnipen
Gipsydom.
Of this wordromwe shall more to say. It may be observed that there are in the IndianDomcertain distinctly-marked and degrading features, characteristic of the European Gipsy, which are out of keeping with the habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the caliphs. Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making baskets, eating carrion, living for drunkenness, does not agree with anything we can learn of the Jats. Yet the European Gipsies are all this, and at the same time ‘horsey’ like the Jats. Is it not extremely probable that during the “out-wandering” the Dom communicated his name and habits to his fellow-emigrants?
The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other European Gipsies appears to link them with the Lüri of Persia. These are distinctly Gipsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves, fortune-tellers, and minstrels. The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that about the year 420a.d., Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels, male and female, calledLüri. Though lands were allotted to them, with corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds. Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:—
“They bear a marked affinity to the Gipsies of Europe.” [“Travels in Beloochistan and Scinde,” p. 153.] “They speak a dialect peculiar to themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping and pilfering. Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and monkeys that are broken in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks. In each company there are always two or three members who profess . . . modes of divining which procure them a ready admission into every society.” This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and monkeys, identifies them with the Ricinari, or bear-leadingGipsies of Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania. A party of these lately came to England. We have seen these Syrian Ricinari in Egypt. They are unquestionably Gipsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied the early migration of Jats and Doms.
The following is the description of another low-caste, wandering tribe of Indians, taken from “The People of India,” called “Sanseeas,” vagrants of no particular creed, and make their head-quarters near Delhi. The editor, speaking of this tribe, says that they have been vagrants from the earliest periods of Indian history. They may have accompanied Aryan immigrants or invaders, or they may have risen out of aboriginal tribes; but whatever their origin, they have not altered in any respect, and continue to prey upon its population as they have ever done, and will continue to do as long as they are in existence, unless they are forcibly restrained by our Government and converted, as the Thugs have been, into useful members of society.
They are essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When they are not engaged in acts of crime, they are beggars, assuming various religious forms, or affecting the most abject poverty. The women and children have the true whine of the professional mendicant, as they frequent thronged bazaars, receiving charity and stealing what they can. They sell mock baubles in some instances, but only as a cloak to other enterprises, and as a pretence of an honest calling. The men are clever at assuming disguises; and being often intelligent and even polite in their demeanour, can become religious devotees, travelling merchants, or whatever they need to further their ends. They are perfectly unscrupulous and very daring in their proceedings.The Sanseeas are not only Thugs and Dacoits, but kidnappers of children, and in particular of female children, who are readily sold even at very tender ages to be brought up as household slaves, or to be educated by professional classes for the purpose of prostitution. These crimes are the peculiar offence of the women members of the tribe. Generally a few families in company wander over the whole of Northern India, but are also found in the Deccan, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in association with Khimjurs, or a class of Dacoits, called Mooltanes. It is, perhaps, a difficult question for Government to deal with, but it is not impossible, as the Thugs have been employed in useful and profitable arts, and thus reclaimed from pursuits in which they have never known in regard to others the same instincts of humanity which exist among ourselves. Sanseeas have as many wives and concubines as they can support. Some of the women are good-looking, but with all classes, women and men, exists an appearance of suspicion in their features which is repulsive. They are, as a class, in a condition of miserable poverty, living from hand to mouth, idle, disreputable, restless, without any settled homes, and for the most part without even habitations. They have no distinct language of their own, but speak a dialect of Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang orargotterms of their own that is unintelligible to other classes. In “The People of India” mention is made of another class of wandering Indians, called Nuts, or Nâths, who correspond to the European Gipsy tribes, and like these, have no settled home. They are constant thieves. The men are clever as acrobats. The women attend their performances, and sing or play on native drums or tambourines. The Nuts do not mix with or intermarry with other tribes. They live for the most part in tents made of black blanket stuff, and move from village to village through all parts of the country. They are as a marked race, and generally distrusted wherever they go.
They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents. They eat everything, except garlic. There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by travellers as “Gipsies.” They are travelling merchants or pedlars. Among all of these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in England. This slang extends even into Persia. Each tribe has its own, but the general name for it isRom.
It has never been pointed out, however, that there is in Northern and Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded even by the Nats and Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly Gipsy. “We have met,” says one writer, “in London with a poor Mohammedan Hindu of Calcutta. This man had in his youth lived with these wanderers, and been, in fact, one of them. He had also, as is common with intelligent Mohammedans, written his autobiography, embodying in it a vocabulary of the Indian Gipsy language. This MS. had unfortunately been burned by his English wife, who informed the writer that she had done so ‘because she was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not understand.’ With the assistance of an eminent Oriental scholar who is perfectly familiar with both Hindustani and Romany, this man was carefully examined. He declared that these were the real Gipsies of India, ‘like English Gipsies here.’ ‘People in India called them Trablus or Syrians, a misapplied word, derived from a town in Syria, which in turn bears the Arabic name for Tripoli. But they were, as he was certain, pure Hindus, and not Syrian Gipsies. They had a peculiar language, and called both this tongue and themselvesRom. In it bread was called Manro.’ Manro is all over Europe the Gipsy word forbread. In English Romany it is softened intomaroormorro. Captain Burton has since informed us thatmanrois the Afghan word for bread; but this our ex-Gipsy did not know. He merely said that he did not know it in any Indian dialect except that of theRom, and that Rom was the general slang of the road, derived, as he supposed, from the Trablus.”
These are, then, the very Gipsies of Gipsies in India. They are thieves, fortune-tellers, and vagrants. But whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish. Their language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that the word Rom, like Dom, is one of wide dissemination, Dom being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race. And the very great majority of even English Gipsy words are Hindu, with an admixture of Persian, and not belonging to a slang of any kind. As in India,churiis a knife,nak, the nose,balia, hairs, and so on, with others which would be among the first to be furnished with slang equivalents. And yet these very Gipsies areRom, and the wife is aRomni, and they use words which are not Hindu in common with European Gipsies. It is therefore not improbable that in these Trablus, so called through popular ignorance, as they are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at least of the real stock. It is to be desired that some resident in India would investigate the Trablus.
Grellmann in his German treatise on Gipsies, says:—“They are lively, uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding benefits with the most insidious malice. Fear makes them slavishly compliant when under subjection, but having nothing to apprehend, like other timorous people, they are cruel. Desire of revenge often causes them to take the most desperate resolutions. To such a degree of violence is their fury sometimes excited, that a mother has been known in the excess of passion to take her small infant by the feet, and therewith strike the object of her anger. They are so addicted to drinking as to sacrifice what is most necessaryto them that they may feast their palates with ardent spirits. Nothing can exceed the unrestrained depravity of manners existing among them. Unchecked by any idea of shame they give way to every libidinous desire. The mother endeavours by the most scandalous arts to train up her daughter for an offering to sensuality, and she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the seducer of others. Laziness is so prevalent among them that were they to subsist by their own labour only, they would hardly have bread for two of the seven days in the week. This indolence increases their propensity to stealing and cheating. They seek to avail themselves of every opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires. Their universal bad character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge, malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning, though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of no use in society. The boys will run like wild things after carrion, let it stink ever so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle, there these wretched creatures are to be found in the greatest numbers.”
So devilish are their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and violent their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the man who comes within their clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact sufficient to cope with them. A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies must have his hands out of his pockets, “all his buttons on,” “his head screwed upon the right place,” and no fool, or he will be swamped before he leaves the place. This I experienced myself a week or two since. During the months of November and December of last year, my friend, theIllustrated London News, had a number of faithful sketches showing Gipsy life round London; these, it seems, with the truthful description I have given of the Gipsies, in my letters, papers, &c., encouraged by the untruthful, silly, and unwise remarks of a clergyman, not overdone with too much wisdom andcommon sense, residing in the neighbourhood of N--- Hill, seemed to have raised the ire of the Gipsies in the neighbour hood of L--- Road (I will not go so far as to say that the minister of Christ Church did it designedly, if he did, and with the idea of stopping the work of education among the Gipsy children—it is certain that this farthing rushlight has mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a friend wrote to me, stating that the next time I went to the neighbourhood of N--- Hill I “must look out for a warm reception,” to which I replied, that “the sooner I had it the better, and I would go for it in a day or two;” accordingly I went, believing in the old Book, “Resist the devil and he will flee from thee.” Upon my first approach towards them, I was met with sour looks, scowls, and not over polite language, but with a little pleasantry, chatting, and a few little things, such as Christmas cards, oranges to give to the children, the sun began to beam upon their countenances, and all passed off with smiles, good humour, and shakes of the hands, till I came to a man who had the colour and expression upon his face of his satanic majesty from the regions below. It took me all my time to smile and say kind things while he was pacing up and down opposite his tent, with his hands clenched, his eye like fire, step quick, reminding me of Indian revenge. He was speaking out in no unmistakable language, “I should like to see you hung like a toad by the neck till you are dead, that I should, and I mean it from my heart.” When I asked him to point out anything I had said or done that was not correct, he was in a fix, and all he could say was, that “I would be likely to stop his game.” Every now and then he would thrust his hands into his pockets, as if feeling for his clasp-knife, and then again, occasionally, he would give a shrug of the shoulders, as if he felt not at all satisfied. I felt in my pocket, and opened my small penknife. I thought it might do a little service in case he should “close in upon me.” Just to feel his pulse, and set his heart a beating, I told him, good-humouredly, that“I was not afraid of half-a-dozen better men than he was if they would come one at a time, but did not think I could tackle them all at once.” This caused him to open his eyes wider than I had seen them before, as if in wonder and amazement at the kind of fellow he had come in contact with. I told him I was afraid that he would find me a queer kind of customer. Gipsies as a rule are cowards, and this feature I could see in his actions and countenance. However, after talking matters over for some time we parted friends, feeling thankful that the storm had abated.
The Gipsies plan of attacking a house, town, city, or country for the sake of pillage, plunder, and gain remains the same to-day as it did eight centuries ago. They do not generally resort to open violence as the brigands of Spain, Turkey and other parts of the East. They follow out an organised system, at least, they go to work upon different lines. In the first place, they send a kind of advance-guard to find out where the loot and soft hearts lay and the weaknesses of those who hold them, and when this has been done they bring all the arts their evil disposition can devise to bear upon the weak points till they are successful. When Mahmood was returning with his victorious army from the war in the eleventh century with the spoils and plunder of war upon their backs, and while the soldiers were either lain down to rest or allured away with the Gipsy girls’ “witching eyes,” the old Gipsies, numbering some hundreds, who where camping in the neighbourhood, bolted off with their war prizes; this so enraged Mahmood, after finding out that he had been sold by a lot of low-caste Indians or Gipsies, that he sent his army after them and slew the whole band of these wandering Indians.
A gentleman gipsy’s tent, and his dog, “Grab,” Hackney Marshes
Sometimes they will put on a hypocritical air of religious sanctity; at other times they will dress their prettiest girls in Oriental finery and gaudy colours on purpose to catch the unwary; at other times they will try to lay hold of thesympathic by sending out their old women and tottering men dressed in rags; and at other times they will endeavour to lay hold of the benevolent by sending out women heavily laden with babies, and in this way they have Gipsyised and are still Gipsyising our own country from the time they landed in Scotland in the year 1514, until they besieged London now more than two centuries ago, planting their encampments in the most degraded parts on the outskirts of our great city; and this holds good of them even to this day. They are never to be seen living in the throng of a town or in the thick of a fight. In sketching the plan of campaigning for the day, the girls with pretty “everlasting flowers” go in one direction, the women with babies tackle the tradesmen and householders by selling skewers, clothes-pegs, and other useful things, but in reality to beg, and the old women with the assistance of the servant girls face the brass knockers through the back kitchen. The men are all this time either loitering about the tents or skulking down the lanes spotting out their game for the night, with their lurcher dogs at their heels. Thus the Gipsy lives and thus the Gipsy dies, and is buried like a dog; his tent destroyed, and his soul flown to another world to await the reckoning day. He can truthfully say as he leaves his tenement of clay behind, “No man careth for my soul.” Charles Wesley, no doubt, in his day, had seen vast numbers of these wandering English heathens in various parts of the country as he travelled about on his missionary tour, and it is not at all improbable but that they were in his mind when those soul-inspiring, elevating, and tear-fetching lines were penned by him in 1748, and first published by subscription in his “Hymns and Sacred Poems,” 2 vols., 1749, the profits of which enabled him to get a wife and set up housekeeping on his own account at Bristol. They are words that have healed thousands of broken hearts, fixed the hopes of the downcast on heaven, and sent the sorrowful on his way rejoicing; and they are words that will live aslong as there is a Methodist family upon earth to lisp its song of triumph.
“Come on, my partners in distress,My comrades through the wilderness,Who still your bodies feel;A while forget your griefs and fears,And look beyond this vale of tears,To that celestial hill.
“Beyond the bounds of time and space,Look forward to that heavenly place,The saints’ secure abode;On faith’s strong eagle-pinions rise,And force your passage to the skies,And scale the mount of God.
“Who suffer with our Master here,We shall before His face appear,And by His side sit down;To patient faith the prize is sure;And all that to the end endureThe cross, shall wear the crown.”
It is impossible to give anything like a correct number of Gipsies that are outside Europe. Many travellers have attempted to form some idea of the number, and have come to the conclusion that there were not less than 3,000 families in Persia in 1856, and in 1871 there were not less than 67,000 Gipsies in Armenia and Asiatic Turkey. In Egypt of one tribe only there are 16,000. With regard to the number of Gipsies there are in America no one has been able to compute; but by this time the number must be considerable, for stragglers have been wending their way there from England, Europe, and other parts of the world for some time.
Mikliosch, in 1878, stated that there are not less than 700,000 in Europe. Turkey, previous to the war with Russia, 104,750, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1874 contained 9,537. Servia in 1874 had 24,691; in 1873 Montenegrohad 500, and in Roumania there are at the present time from 200,000 to 300,000. According to various official estimates in Austria there are about 10,000, and in 1846 Bohemia contained 13,500, and Hungary 159,000. In Transylvania in 1850 there were 78,923, and in Hungary proper there were in 1864, 36,842. In Spain there are 40,000; in France from 3,000 to 6,000; in Germany and Italy, 34,000; Scandinavia, 1,500; in Russia they numbered in 1834, 48,247, exclusive of Polish Gipsies. Ten years later they numbered 1,427,539, and in 1877 the number is given as 11,654. It seems somewhat strange that the number of Gipsies should be in 1844, 1,427,539, and thirty-five years later the number should have been reduced to 11,654. Presuming these figures to be correct, the question arises, What has become of the 1,415,885 during the last thirty-five years?
As regards the number of Gipsies in England, Hoyland in his day, 1816, calculated that there were between 15,000 and 18,000, and goes on to say this:—“It has come to the knowledge of the writer what foundation there has been for the report commonly circulated that a member of Parliament had stated in the House of Commons, when speaking on some question relating to Ireland, that there were not less than 36,000 Gipsies in Great Britain.
“To make up such an aggregate the numerous hordes must have been included who traverse most of the nation with carts and asses for the sale of earthenware, and live out of doors great part of the year, after the manner of the Gipsies. These potters, as they are commonly called, acknowledge that Gipsies have intermingled with them, and their habits are very similar. They take their children along with them on travel, and, like the Gipsies, regret that they are without education.” Mr. Hoyland says that he endeavoured to obtain the number of pot-hawking families of this description who visited the earthenware manufactories at Tunstall, Burslem, Longport, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent,Fenton, Longton, and other places in Staffordshire, but without success.
Borrow, in his time, 1843, put the number as upwards of 10,000. The last census shows that there were under 4,000; but then it should be borne in mind that the Gipsies decidedly objected to their numbers being taken. Their reason for taking this step and putting obstacles in the way of the census-takers has never been stated, except that they looked upon it with a superstitious regard and dislike, the same as they look upon photographers, painters, and artists, as kind ofBengaw, for whom Gipsy models will sit forsoonakei,Roopeno, or even aposh-hovi. They told me that during the day the census was taken they made it a point to always be upon the move, and skulking about in the dark. The census returns for the number of canal-boatmen gives under 12,000. The Duke of Richmond stated in the House of Lords, August 8, 1877, that there were between 29,000 and 80,000 canal boatmen. The number I published in the daily papers in 1873, viz., 100,000 men, women, and children is being verified as the Canal Boats Act is being put into operation.
At a pretty good rough estimate I reckon there are at least from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsies in the United Kingdom. Apart from London, if I may take ten of the Midland counties as a fair average, there are close upon 3,000 Gipsy families living in tents and vans in the by-lanes, and attending fairs, shows, &c.; and providing there are only man, wife, and four children connected with each charmless, cheerless, wretched abodes called domiciles, this would show us 18,000; and judging from my own inquiries and observation, and also from the reliable statements of others who have mixed among them, there are not less than 2,000 on the outskirts of London in various nooks, corners, and patches of open spaces. Thus it will be seen, according to this statement, we shall have 1,000 Gipsies for every 1,750,000 of the inhabitants in our great London; and this proportion will be fully borne out throughout the rest of the country;so taking either the Midland counties or London as an average, we arrive at pretty much the same number—i.e., 15,000 to 20,000 in our midst, and moving about from place to place. Upon Leicester Race Course, at the last races, I counted upwards of ninety tents, vans, and shows; connected with each there would be an average of man, woman, and three children. A considerable number of Gipsies would also be at Nottingham, for the Goose Fair was on about the same time. One gentleman tells me that he has seen as many as 5,000 Gipsies collected together at one time in the North of England.
Of this 20,000, 19,500 cannot read a sentence and write a letter. The highest state of their education is to make crosses, signs, and symbols, and to ask people to tell them the names of the streets, and read the mile-posts for them. The full value of money they know perfectly well. Out of this 20,000 there will be 8,000 children of school age loitering about the tents and camps, and not learning a single letter in the alphabet. The others mostly will tell you that they have “finished their education,” and when questioned on the point and asked to put three letters together, you put them into a corner, and they are as dumb as mutes. Of the whole number of Gipsy children probably a few hundreds might be attending Sunday-schools, and picking up a few crumbs of education in this way. Then, again, we have some 1,500 to 2,000 families of our own countrymen travelling about the country with their families selling hardware and other goods, from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, the Staffordshire potteries, and other manufacturing towns, from London, Liverpool, Nottingham, and other places, the children running wild and forgetting in the summer, as a show-woman told me, the little education they receive in the winter.
Caravans will be moving about in our midst with “fat babies,” “wax-work models,” “wonders of the age,” “the greatest giant in the world,” “a living skeleton,” “thesmallest man alive,” “menageries,” “wild beast shows,” “rifle galleries,” and like things connected with these caravans; there will be families of children, none of whom, or at any rate but very few of them, are receiving an education and attending any school, and living together regardless of either sex or age, in one small van. In addition to these, we have some 3,000 or 4,000 children of school age “on the road” tramping with their parents, who sleep in common lodging-houses, and who might be brought under educational supervision on the plan I shall suggest later on in this book. Altogether, with the Gipsies, we have a population of over 30,000 outside our educational and sanitary laws, fast drifting into a state of savagery and barbarism, with our hands tied behind us, and unable to render them help.
“I was a bruised reedPluck’d from the common corn,Play’d on, rude-handled, worn,And flung aside, aside.”
Dr. Grosart, “Sunday at Home.”
A Gipsy’s home for man, wife, and six children, Hackney Wick
When as a lad I trudged along in the brick-yards, now more than forty years ago, I remember most vividly that the popular song of theemployésof that day was
“When lads and lasses in their bestWere dress’d from top to toe,In the days we went a-gipsyingA long time ago;In the days we went a-gipsying,A long time ago.”
Every “brick-yard lad” and “brick-yard wench” who would not join in singing these lines was always looked upon as a “stupid donkey,” and the consequence was that upon all occasions, when excitement was needed as a whip, they were “struck up;” especially would it be the case when the limbs of the little brick and clay carrier began to totter and were “fagging up.” When the task-master perceived the “gang” had begun to “slinker” he would shout out at the top of his voice, “Now, lads and wenches, strike up with the:
“‘In the days we went a-gipsying, a long time ago.’”
“‘In the days we went a-gipsying, a long time ago.’”
And as a result more work was ground out of the little English slave. Those words made such an impression upon me at the time that I used to wonder what “gipsying” meant. Somehow or other I imagined that it was connected with fortune-telling, thieving and stealing in one form or other, especially as the lads used to sing it with “gusto”when they had been robbing the potato field to have “a potato fuddle,” while they were “oven tenting” in the night time. Roasted potatoes and cold turnips were always looked upon as a treat for the “brickies.” I have often vowed and said many times that I would, if spared, try to find out what “gipsying” really was. It was a puzzle I was always anxious to solve. Many times I have been like the horse that shies at them as they camp in the ditch bank, half frightened out of my wits, and felt anxious to know either more or less of them. From the days when carrying clay and loading canal-boats was my toil and “gipsying” my song, scarcely a week has passed without the words
“When lads and lasses in their bestWere dress’d from top to toe,In the days we went a-gipsyingA long time ago,”
ringing in my ears, and at times when busily engaged upon other things, “In the days we went a-gipsying” would be running through my mind. In meditation and solitude; by night and by day; at the top of the hill, and down deep in the dale; in the throng and battle of life; at the deathbed scene; through evil report and good report these words, “In the days we went a-gipsying,” were ever and anon at my tongue’s end. The other part of the song I quickly forgot, but these words have stuck to me ever since. On purpose to try to find out what fortune-telling was, when in my teens I used to walk after working hours from Tunstall to Fenton, a distance of six miles, to see “old Elijah Cotton,” a well-known character in the Potteries, who got his living by it, to ask him all sorts of questions. Sometimes he would look at my hands, at other times he would put my hand into his, and hold it while he was reading out of the Bible, and burning something like brimstone-looking powder—the forefinger of the other hand had to rest upon a particular passage or verse; at other times he would give me some of thisyellow-looking stuff in a small paper to wear against my left breast, and some I had to burn exactly as the clock struck twelve at night, under the strictest secrecy. The stories this fortune-teller used to relate to me as to his wonderful power over the spirits of the other world were very amusing, aye, and over “the men and women of this generation.” He was frequently telling me that he had “fetched men from Manchester in the dead of the night flying through the air in the course of an hour;” and this kind of rubbish he used to relate to those who paid him their shillings and half-crowns to have their fortunes told. My visits lasted for a little time till he told me that he could do nothing more, as I was “not one of his sort.” Like Thomas called Didymus, “hard of belief.” Except an occasional glance at the Gipsies as I have passed them on the road-side, the subject has been allowed to rest until the commencement of last year, when I mentioned the matter to my friends, who, in reply, said I should find it a difficult task; this had the effect of causing a little hesitation to come over my sensibilities, and in this way, between hesitation and doubt, matters went on till one day in July last year, when the voice of Providence and the wretched condition of the Gipsy children seemed to speak to me in language that I thought it would be perilous to disregard. On my return home one evening I found a lot of Gipsies in the streets; it struck me very forcibly that the time for action had now arrived, and with this view in mind I asked Moses Holland—for that was his name, and he was the leader of the gang—to call into my house for some knives which required grinding, and while his mate was grinding the knives, for which I had to pay two shillings, I was getting all the information I could out of him about the Gipsy children—this with some additional information given to me by Mr. Clayton and several other Gipsies at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, together with a Gipsy woman’s tale to my wife, mentioned in my “Cry of the Children from the Brick-yardsof England,” brought forth my first letter upon the condition of the poor Gipsy children as it appeared in theStandard,Daily Chronicle, and nearly every other daily paper on August 14th of last year:—“Some years since my attention was drawn to the condition of these poor neglected children, of whom there are many families eking out an existence in the Leicestershire, Derbyshire, and Staffordshire lanes. Two years since a pitiful appeal was made in one of our local papers asking me to take up the cause of the poor Gipsy children; but I have deferred doing so till now, hoping that some one with time and money at his disposal would come to the rescue. Sir, a few weeks since our legislators took proper steps to prevent the maiming of the little show children, who are put through excruciating practices to please a British public, and they would have done well at the same time if they had taken steps to prevent the warping influence of a vagrant’s life having its full force upon the tribes of little Gipsy children, dwelling in calico tents, within the sound of church bells—if living under the body of an old cart, protected by patched coverlets, can be called living in tents—on the roadside in the midst of grass, sticks, stones, and mud; and they would have done well also if they had put out their hand to rescue from idleness, ignorance, and heathenism our roadside arabs,i.e., the children living in vans, and who attend fairs, wakes, &c. Recently I came across some of these wandering tribes, and the following facts gleaned from them will show that missionaries and schoolmasters have not done much for them. Moses Holland, who has been a Gipsy nearly all his life, says he knows about two hundred and fifty families of Gipsies in ten of the Midland counties and thinks that a similar proportion will be found in the rest of the United Kingdom. He has seen as many as ten tents of Gipsies within a distance of five miles. He thinks there will be an average of five children in each tent. He has seen as many as ten or twelve children in some tents, and not many ofthem able to read or write. His child of six months old—with his wife ill at the same time in the tent—sickened, died, and was ‘laid out’ by him, and it was also buried out of one of those wretched abodes on the roadside at Barrow-upon-Soar, last January. When the poor thing died he had not sixpence in his pocket. In shaking hands with him as we parted his face beamed with gladness, and he said that I was the first who had held out the hand to him during the last twenty years. At another time later on I came across Bazena Clayton, who said that she had had sixteen children, fifteen of whom are alive, several of them being born in a roadside tent. She says that she was married out of one of these tents; and her brother died and was buried out of a tent at Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch. This poor woman knows about three hundred families of Gipsies in eleven of the Midland and Eastern counties, and has herself, so she says, four lots of Gipsies travelling in Lincolnshire at the present time. She said she could not read herself, and thinks that not one Gipsy in twenty can. She has travelled all her life. Her mother, named Smith, of whom there are not a few, is the mother of fifteen children, all of whom were born in a tent. A Gipsy lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally locate for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields, and game-preserves. They sell a few clothes-lines and clothes-pegs, but they seldom use such things themselves. Washing would destroy their beauty. Telling fortunes to servant girls and old maids is a source of income to some of them. They sleep, but in many instances lie crouched together, like so many dogs, regardless of either sex or age. They have blood, bone, muscle, and brains, which are applied in many instances to wrong purposes. To have between three and four thousand men and women, and fifteen thousand children classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over the country, in ignorance and evil training, that carries peril with it, is not a pleasant look-out for the future; and Iclaim on the grounds of justice and equity, that if these poor children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places, they shall be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act of 1877, so that the children may be brought under the Compulsory Clauses of the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised as other children.”
The foregoing letter, as it appeared in theStandard, brought forth the following leading article upon the subject the following day, August 15th, in which the writer says:—“We yesterday published a letter from Mr. George Smith, whose efforts to ameliorate and humanise the floating and transitory population of our canals and navigable rivers have already borne good fruit, in which he calls attention to the deserted and almost hopeless lot of English Gipsy children. Moses Holland—the Hollands are a Gipsy family almost as old as the Lees or the Stanleys, and a Holland always holds high rank among the ‘Romany’ folk—assures Mr. Smith that in ten of the Midland counties he knows some two hundred and fifty families of Gipsies, and that none of their children can read or write. Bazena Clayton, an old lady of caste, almost equal to that of a Lee or a Holland, confirms the story. She has lived in tents all her life. She was born in a tent, married from a tent, has brought up a family of sixteen children, more or less, under the same friendly shelter, and expects to breathe her last in a tent. That she can neither read nor write goes without saying; although doubtless she knows well enough how to ‘kair her patteran,’ or to make that strange cross in the dust which a true Gipsy alway leaves behind him at his last place of sojourn, as a mark for those of his tribe who may come upon his track. ‘Patteran,’ it may be remarked, is an almost pure Sanscrit word cognate with our own ‘path;’ and the least philological raking among the chaff of the Gipsy dialect will show their secretargotto be, as Mr. Leland calls it, ‘a curious old tongue, not merely allied to Sanscrit, but perhaps inpoint of age an elder though vagabond sister or cousin of that ancient language.’ No Sanscrit or even Greek scholar can fail to be struck by the fact that, in the Gipsy tongue, a road is a ‘drum,’ to see is to ‘dicker,’ to get or take to ‘lell,’ and to go to ‘jall;’ or, after instances so pregnant, to agree with Professor von Kogalnitschan that ‘it is interesting to be able to study a Hindu dialect in the heart of Europe.’ Mr. Smith, however, being a philanthropist rather than a philologist, takes another view of the question. His anxiety is to see the Gipsies—and especially the Gipsy children—reclaimed. ‘A Gipsy,’ he reminds us, ‘lives, but one can scarcely tell how; they generally locate for a time near hen-roosts, potato-camps, turnip-fields, and game-preserves. They sell a few clothes-lines and clothes-pegs; but they seldom use such things themselves. Washing would destroy their beauty . . . To have between three and four thousand men and women, and eight or ten thousand children, classed in the census as vagrants and vagabonds, roaming all over the country in ignorance and evil training, is not a pleasant look-out for the future; and I claim that if these poor children, living in vans and tents and under old carts, are to be allowed to live in these places, they shall be registered in a manner analogous to the Canal Boats Act, so that the children may be brought under the Education Acts, and become Christianised and civilised.’
“Mr. Smith, it is to be feared, hardly appreciates the insuperable difficulty of the task he proposes. The true Gipsy is absolutely irreclaimable. He was a wanderer and a vagabond upon the face of the earth before the foundations of Mycenæ were laid or the plough drawn to mark out the walls of Rome; and such as he was four thousand years ago or more, such he still remains, speaking the same tongue, leading the same life, cherishing the same habits, entertaining the same wholesome or unwholesome hatred of all civilisation, and now, as then, utterly devoid of even the simplest rudiments of religious belief. His whole attitude of mind isnegative. To him all who are not Gipsies, like himself, are ‘Gorgios,’ and to the true Gipsy a ‘Gorgio’ is as hateful as is a ‘cowan’ to a Freemason. It would be interesting to speculate whether, when the Romany folk first began their wanderings, the ‘Gorgios’ were not—as the name would seem to indicate—the farmers or permanent population of the earth; and whether the nomad Gipsy may not still hate the ‘Gorgio’ as much as Cain hated Abel, Ishmael Isaac, and Esau Jacob. Certain in any case it is that the Gipsy, however civilised he may appear, remains, as Mr. Leland describes him, ‘a character so entirely strange, so utterly at variance with our ordinary conceptions of humanity, that it is no exaggeration whatever to declare that it would be a very difficult task for the best writer to convey to the most intelligent reader any idea of such a nature.’ The true Gipsy is, to begin with, as devoid of superstition as of religion. He has no belief in another world, no fear of a future state, nor hope for it, no supernatural object of either worship or dread—nothing beyond a few old stories, some Pagan, some Christian, which he has picked up from time to time, and to which he holds—much as a child holds to its fairy tales—uncritically and indifferently. Ethical distinctions are as unknown to him as to a kitten or a magpie. He is kindly by nature, and always anxious to please those who treat him well, and to win their affection. But the distinction between affection and esteem is one which he cannot fathom; and the precise shade ofmeumandtuumis as absolutely unintelligible to him as was the Hegelian antithesis betweennichtsandseynto the late Mr. John Stuart Mill. To make the true Gipsy we have only to add to this an absolute contempt for all that constitutes civilisation. The Gipsy feels a house, or indeed anything at all approaching to the idea of a permanent dwelling, to amount to a positive restraint upon his liberty. He can live on hedgehog and acorns—though he may prefer a fowl and potatoes not strictly his own. Wherever a hedge gives shelter he will roll himselfup and sleep. And it is possibly because he has no property of his own that he is so slow to recognise the rights of property in others. But above all, his tongue—the weird, corrupt, barbarous Sanscrit ‘patter’ or ‘jib,’ known only to himself and to those of his blood—is the keynote of his strange life. In spite of every effort that has been made to fathom it, the Gipsy dialect is still unintelligible to ‘Gorgios’—a few experts such as Mr. Borrow alone excepted. But wherever the true Gipsy goes he carries his tongue with him, and a Romany from Hungary, ignorant of English as a Chippeway or an Esquimaux, will ‘patter’ fluently with a Lee, a Stanley, a Locke, or a Holland, from the English Midlands, and make his ‘rukkerben’ at once easily understood. Nor is this all, for there are certain strange old Gipsy customs which still constitute a freemasonry. The marriage rites of Gipsies are a definite and very significant ritual. Their funeral ceremonies are equally remarkable. Not being allowed to burn their dead, they still burn the dead man’s clothes and all his small property, while they mourn for him by abstaining—often for years—from something of which he was fond, and by taking the strictest care never to even mention his name.
“What are we to do with children in whom these strange habits and beliefs, or rather wants of belief, are as much part of their nature as is their physical organisation? Darwin has told us how, after generations had passed, the puppy with a taint of the wolf’s blood in it would never come straight to its master’s feet, but always approach him in a semicircle. Not Kuhleborhn nor Undine herself is less susceptible of alien culture than the pure-blooded Gipsy. We can domesticate the goose, we can tame the goldfinch and the linnet; but we shall never reclaim the guinea-fowl, or accustom the swallow to a cage. Teach the Gipsy to read, or even to write; he remains a Gipsy still. His love of wandering is as keen as is the instinct of a migratory bird for its annual passage; and exactly as the prisoned cuckooof the first year will beat itself to death against its bars when September draws near, so the Gipsy, even when most prosperous, will never so far forsake the traditions of his tribe as to stay long in any one place. His mind is not as ours. A little of our civilisation we can teach him, and he will learn it, as he may learn to repeat by rote the signs of the zodiac or the multiplication table, or to use a table napkin, or to decorously dispose of the stones in a cherry tart. But the lesson sits lightly on him, and he remains in heart as irreclaimable as ever. Already, indeed, our Gipsies are leaving us. They are not dying out, it is true. They are making their way to the Far West, where land is not yet enclosed, where game is not property, where life is free, and where there is always and everywhere room to ‘hatch the tan’ or put up the tent. Romany will, in all human probability, be spoken on the other side of the Atlantic years after the last traces of it have vanished from amongst ourselves. We begin even now to miss the picturesque aspects of Gipsy life—the tent, the strange dress, the nomadic habits. English Gipsies are no longer pure and simple vagrants. They are tinkers, or scissor-grinders, or basket-makers, or travel from fair to fair with knock-’em-downs, or rifle galleries, or itinerant shows. Often they have some ostensible place of residence. But they preserve their inner life as carefully as the Jews in Spain, under the searching persecution of the Inquisition, preserved their faith for generation upon generation; and even now it is a belief that when, for the sake of some small kindness or gratuity, a Gipsy woman has allowed her child to be baptised, she summons her friends, and attempts to undo the effect of the ceremony by subjecting the infant to some weird, horrible incantation of Eastern origin, the original import of which is in all probability a profound mystery to her. There is a quaint story of a Yorkshire Gipsy, a prosperous horse-dealer, who, becoming wealthy, came up to town, and, amongst other sights, was shown a goldsmith’s window. His soleremark was that the man must be a big thief indeed to have so many spoons and watches all at once. The expression of opinion was as naïve and artless as that of Blucher, when observing that London was a magnificent city ‘for to sack.’ Mr. Smith’s benevolent intentions speak for themselves. But if he hopes to make the Gipsy ever other than a Gipsy, to transform the Romany into a Gorgio, of to alter habits of life and mind which have remained unchanged for centuries, he must be singularly sanguine, and must be somewhat too disposed to overlook the marvellously persistent influences of race and tongue.”