The Wind on the Heath - A Gypsy Anthology (Romany History Series)

I

The Dark Race

Lords of the Universe

WE are the Lords of the Universe, of fields, fruits, crops, foress, mountains, of the rivers and springs, of the sars and all the elements. Having learned early to suffer, we suffer not at all. We sleep as calmly and easily on the ground as on the softes bed, and our hard skin is an impregnable armour agains the assaults of the air. We are insensible to pain; the cruelles torment does not make us tremble; and we shrink from no form of the death which we have learned to scorn. When we see fit, we make no difference between yes and no; well can we be Martyrs, but Confessors never. We sing loaded with chains and irons, and in the deepes dungeons, but in Gehenna we are ever mute. Our sole livelihood is to take to ourselves the goods of others, and, since to gain our ends we need no betraying witnesses, we busy ourselves from policy in some petty work, and it is by night that we ply our true craft. Fame, honour, and ambition have no power over us; we are therefore free from that base servitude in which mos of the Great are illusrious and unhappy, nay rather, very slaves. But our Palaces are the tents we carry with us, and nothing can be compared to the elegance of these moving houses. For these have such beauty as nature herself displays, and are far above the sumptuous hangings and gilded furniture, which man’s silly pride and effeminate weakness have devised. We dwell in these tents, busied in the present, and without overmuch care for the future. We look indifferently upon what may come, and living by our toil, abandon ourselves blindly to our sar, and avoid only three things;—the Church, the Sea, and the King’s Court.

Cervantes.

In Praise of Gypsies

THEY are changeless; the world has no power over them. They live by rote and by faith and by tradition, which is part of their blood. They go about in our mids, untouched by us, but reading our secrets, knowing more about us than we do about ourselves, prophets, diviners, soothsayers. They are our only link with the Eas, with mysery, with magic. They dance and play for money; they dance in Spain, they play in Hungary; they are better dancers than the Spaniards in their national dances, and they play Hungarian music better than the Hungarians. They do few things, but they do these things better than others. They create nothing; they perpetuate. They make theirs whatever is of use to them, they rejec whatever their insinc forbids them to take. They reach their own ends by scheming and are the deftes flatterers on the earth. . . .

Can the world repress this race which is so evasive and slips through its gross fingers like wind? ‘Like one on a secret errand,’ they pass through the world. They are the symbols of our aspirations, and we do not know it. They sand for the will for freedom, for friendship with nature, for the open air, for change and sight of many lands. The Gypsy represents nature before civilisation. He is the wanderer whom all of us, who are poets or love the wind, are summed up in. He does what we dream. He is the las romance left in the world. His is the only free race. . . .

The Gypsies are nearer to the animals than any race known to us in Europe. They have the lawlessness, the abandonment, the natural physical grace in form and gesure, of animals. Only a sealthy, wary something in their eyes makes them human. Their speech which is their own, known to them, known to few outside them, keeps them to themselves. Their lilting voices are unacquainted with anything but the essential parts of speech for the open air needs.

Then they are part of the specacle of the world, which they pass through like a great procession to the sound of passionate and myserious music. They are here to-day and there to-morrow; you cannot follow them for all the leafy tracks that they leave for each other on the ground. They are disinguishable from the people of every land which they inhabit. There is something in them finer, sranger, more primitive, something baffling to all who do not undersand them through a natural sympathy. The sullen mysery of Gypsy eyes, especially in the women, their way of coiling their hair, of adorning themselves with bright colours and many rings and long earrings are to be found whenever one travels eas or wes. Yet it is easward that we mus go to find their leas touched beauty, their original splendour.

Arthur Symons.

Honeses of the Human Race

TO my thinking he is, in the firs place, quite the leas of imposors now abroad. He proclaims to you, by his or her, to both convenient, not immodes, not insolent, dress that he belongs to an outcas tribe, yet patient of your rejecion—unvindicive—ready always to give you good words and pleasant hopes for half a crown, and sound tinkering of pot or kettle for less money. He wears no big wigs—no white ties; his kingship is crownless, his shepherding unmitred; he pins on his rough cloak no asrology of honour. Of your parliamentary machineries, are any a Gipsy’s job?—of your cunningly devised shoddies, any a Gipsy’s manufacture? Not agains the Gipsy’s blow you iron-clad yourself;—not by the Gipsy’s usury do your children sarve. Honeses, harmlesses of the human race—under whose roof but a Gipsy’s may a wandering Madonna res in peace?

John Ruskin.

The Nomades

SCYTHIANS, with Nature not at srife,

Light Arabs of our complex life,

They build no houses, plant no mills

To utilise Time’s sliding river,

Content that it flow wase for ever,

If they, like it, may have their wills.

An hour they pitch their shifting tents,

In thoughts, in feelings, and events;

Beneath the palm-trees, on the grass,

They sing, they dance, make love and chatter,

Vex the grim temples with their clatter,

And make Truth’s fount their looking-glass.

James Russell Lowell.

The Cuckoo

‘YOU should learn to read, Jasper.’

‘We have not time, brother.’

‘Are you not frequently idle?’

‘Never, brother; when we are not engaged in our traffic, we are engaged in taking our relaxation, so we have not time to learn.’

‘You really should make an effort. If you were disposed to learn to read, I would endeavour to assis you. You would be all the better for knowing how to read.’

‘In what way, brother?’

‘Why, you could read the Scriptures, and by so doing learn your duty towards your fellow-creatures.’

‘We know that already, brother; the consables and jusices have contrived to knock that tolerably into our heads.’

‘Yet you frequently break the laws.’

‘So, I believe, do now and then those who know how to read, brother.’

‘Very true, Jasper; but you really ought to learn to read, as by so doing you might learn your duty towards yourselves, and your chief duty is to take care of your own souls; did not the preacher say: In what is a man profited, provided he gain the whole world?’

‘We have not much of the world, brother.’

‘Very little, indeed, Jasper. Did you not observe how the eyes of the whole congregation were turned towards our pew, when the preacher said: There are some people who lose their souls, and get nothing in exchange; who are outcas, despised, and miserable. Now, was not what he said quite applicable to the gypsies?’

‘We are not miserable, brother.’

‘Well, then, you ought to be, Jasper. Have you an inch of ground of your own? Are you of the leas use? Are you not spoken ill of by everybody? What’s a gypsy?’

‘What’s the bird noising yonder, brother?’

‘The bird! Oh, that’s the cuckoo tolling; but what has the cuckoo to do with the matter?’

‘We’ll see, brother; what’s the cuckoo?’

‘What is it? you know as much about it as myself, Jasper.’

‘Isn’t it a kind of roguish, chaffing bird, brother?’

‘I believe it is, Jasper.’

‘Nobody knows whence it comes, brother?’

‘I believe not, Jasper.’

‘Very poor, brother, not a nes of its own?’

‘So they say, Jasper.’

‘With every person’s bad word, brother?’

‘Yes, Jasper, every person is mocking it.’

‘Tolerably merry, brother?’

‘Yes, tolerably merry, Jasper.’

‘Of no use at all, brother?’

‘None whatever, Jasper.’

‘You would be glad to get rid of the cuckoos, brother?’

‘Why, not exacly, Jasper; the cuckoo is a pleasant, funny bird, and its presence and voice give a great charm to the green trees and fields; no, I can’t say I wish exacly to get rid of the cuckoo.’

‘Well, brother, what’s a Romany chal?’

‘You mus answer that quesion yourself, Jasper.’

‘A roguish, chaffing fellow, a’n’t he, brother?’

‘Ay, ay, Jasper.’

‘Of no use at all, brother?’

‘Jus so, Jasper; I see——’

‘Something very much like a cuckoo, brother?’

‘I see what you are after, Jasper.’

‘You would like to get rid of us, wouldn’t you?’

‘Why, no, not exacly.’

‘We are no ornament to the green lanes in spring and summer time, are we, brother? and the voice of our chies with their cukkerin and dukkerin don’t help to make them pleasant?’

‘I see what you are at, Jasper.’

‘You would wish to turn the cuckoos into barn-door fowls, wouldn’t you?’

‘Can’t say I should, Jasper, whatever some people might wish.’

‘And the chals and chies into radical weavers and facory wenches, hey, brother?’

‘Can’t say that I should, Jasper. You are certainly a picuresque people, and in many respecs an ornament both to town and country; painting and lil-writing too are under great obligations to you. What pretty picures are made out of your campings and groupings, and what pretty books have been written in which gypsies, or at leas creatures intended to represent gypsies, have been the principal figures. I think if we were without you, we should begin to miss you.’

‘Jus as you would miss the cuckoos, if they were all converted into barn-door fowls. I tell you what, brother, frequently as I have sat under a hedge in spring or summer time and heard the cuckoo, I have thought that we chals and cuckoos are alike in many respecs, but especially in characer. Everybody speaks ill of us both, and everybody is glad to see both of us again.’

George Borrow.

Wildness and Wet

. . . WHAT would the world be, once bereft

Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,

O let them be left, wildness and wet;

Long live the weeds and the wilderness yet.

Gerard Hopkins.

The Oldes Race on Earth

THE gipsy loves the crescent moon, the evening sar, the clatter of the fern-owl, the beetle’s hum. He was born on the earth in the tent, and he has lived like a species of human wild animal ever since. Of his own free will he will have nothing to do with rites or litanies; he may perhaps be married in a place of worship—to make it legal, that is all. At the end, were it not for the law, he would for choice be buried beneath the ‘fireplace’ of his children’s children. He will not dance to the pipe ecclesiasic, sound it who may—Churchman, Dissenter, pries, or laic. Like the trees, he is simply indifferent. All the great wave of teaching and text and tracs and missions and the produce of the printing-press has made no impression upon his race any more than upon the red deer that roam in the fores behind his camp. The negroes have their fetich, every nation its idols; the gipsy alone has none—not even a supersitious observance; they have no idolatry of the Pas, neither have they the exalted thought of the Present. It is very srange that it should be so at this the height of our civilisation, and you might go many thousand miles and search from Africa to Ausralia before you would find another people without a Deity. That can only be seen under an English sky, under English oaks and beeches.

Are they the oldes race on earth? and have they worn out all the gods? Have they worn out all the hopes and fears of the human heart in tens of thousands of years, and do they merely live, acquiescent to fate? For some have thought to trace in the older races an apathy as with the Chinese, a religion of moral maxims and some few joss-house supersitions, which they themselves full well know to be nought, worshipping their ancesors, but with no vital living force, like that which drove Mohammed’s bands to zealous fury, like that which sent our own Puritans over the sea in the Mayflower. No living faith. So old, so very, very old, older than the Chinese, older than the Copts of Egypt, older than the Aztecs; back to those dim Sanskrit times that seem like the clouds on the far horizon of human experience, where space and chaos begin to take shape, though but of vapour. So old, they went through civilisation ten thousand years since; they have worn it all out, even hope in the future; they merely live acquiescent to fate, like the red deer. The crescent moon, the evening sar, the clatter of the fern-owl, the red embers of the wood fire, the pungent smoke blown round about by the occasional puffs of wind, the shadowy trees, the sound of the horses cropping the grass, the night that seals on till the subbles alone are light among the fields—the gipsy sleeps in his tent on mother earth; it is, you see, primeval man with primeval nature.

Richard Jefferies.

The Youthful Ruskin speaks

BUT, mids the wandering tribe, no reverenced shrine

Attess a knowledge of the Power Divine.

By these alone, of mortals mos forlorn,

Are pries and pageant met with only scorn. . . .

‘Ye abjec tribes, ye nations poor and weak!’

(Thus might, methinks, the haughty wanderer speak),

‘Yours be the life of peace, the servile toil;

Yours be the wealth, its despicable spoil;

Stoop to your tyrant’s yoke with mildness meet,

Cringe at his throne, and worship at his feet;

Revere your prieshood’s consecrated guilt;

Bow in the temples that your dreams have built;

Adore your gods—the visionary plan

Of dotards grey, in mockery of man:—

To me the life hath wildes welcoming,

That fears nor man, nor spirit, pries, nor king.

Be mine no simple home, no humble hearth,—

My dome, the heaven,—my dwelling, all the earth.

No birth can bind me, in a nation’s cause,

To fight their battles, or obey their laws.

The pries may speak, and women may grow pale;

Me he derides not with his ghasly tale;

Virtue and vice, the names by which the wise

Have governed others, I alike despise.

No love can move me, and no fear can quell,

Nor check my passions, nor control my will.

The soul, whose body fears no change of clime,

Aims at no virtue, trembles at no crime;

But, free and fearless as its clay, shall own

No other will upon its fiery throne.

When fate commands it, come the mortal srife!

I fear not dying, nor an after life.

Such as it hath been mus my spirit be,—

Desroyed, not shackled,—if exisent, free.

John Ruskin.

Fantasical Personages

I HAVE a great toleration for all kinds of vagrant, sunshiny exisence, and mus confess I take a pleasure in observing the ways of gipsies. . . . I like to behold their clear olive complexions, their romantic black eyes, their raven locks, their lithe, slender figures, and to hear them, in low, silver tones, dealing forth magnificent promises, of honours and esates, of world’s worth, and ladies’ love.

Their mode of life, too, has something in it very fanciful and picuresque. They are the free denizens of nature, and maintain a primitive independence, in spite of law and gospel, of county gaols and country magisrates. It is curious to see the obsinate adherence to the wild, unsettled habits of savage life transmitted from generation to generation, and preserved in the mids of one of the mos cultivated, populous, and sysematic countries in the world. They are totally disinc from the busy, thrifty people about them. They seem to be like the Indians of America, either above or below the ordinary cares and anxieties of mankind. Heedless of power, of honours, of wealth; and indifferent to the flucuations of the times, the rise or fall of grain, or sock, or empires, they seem to laugh at the toiling, fretting world around them. . . .

In this way they wander from county to county, keeping about the purlieus of villages, or in plenteous neighbourhoods, where there are fat farms and rich country seats. Their encampments are generally made in some beautiful spot; either a green shady nook of a road; or on the border of a common, under a sheltering hedge; or on the skirts of a fine spreading wood. They are always to be found lurking about fairs and races, and rusic gatherings, wherever there is pleasure, and throng, and idleness. They are the oracles of milkmaids and simple serving girls; and sometimes have even the honour of perusing the white hands of gentlemen’s daughters, when rambling about their fathers’ grounds. They are the bane of good housewives and thrifty farmers, and odious in the eyes of country jusices; but, like all other vagabond beings, they have something to commend them to the fancy. They are among the las traces, in these matter-of-fac days, of the motley population of former times; and are whimsically associated in my mind with fairies and witches, Robin Goodfellow, Robin Hood, and the other fantasical personages of poetry.

Washington Irving.

Children of the Wilderness

NOW, in that part of merry England, at the time of our sory, gipsies were not an unusual sight. In summer time, these dusky wanderers might be seen encamped upon the commons, or on the sprawling borders of some quiet road, beneath a sheltering hedge, with the wild bird, the mole, the weasel, and the field-mouse for their only neighbours; or lounging, with furtive grace, among the busle of some country fair, plying the hereditary arts of their race, as tinkers, besom-makers, musicians, beggars, and fortune-tellers; or creeping along some lonely rusic way, in slow nomadic trail, towards another camping-ground. Gipsies were a familiar sight in that green nook of the bonny north. From the great rural plain of the Fylde, on the wes coas of Lancashire, up to the wild hills and beautiful vales of the Scottish border, gipsies were well known.

. . . And who are these children of the wilderness, roving ‘homeless, ragged, and tanned, under the changeful sky,’ as free as the wild bird that flits at will from bough to bough; and despising alike the trammels and the comforts of settled life? These tawny, trinketed aliens, clad in gaudy tatters,—so poor and yet so proud,—found amongs all peoples of the earth, yet belonging to none—and among all such changes of climes and nations, clinging with such tenacity to the habits, and the language, and the supersitions of their forefathers—who are they? Whence come these ragged, landless, vagabond lordlings of the wase,—these wild-eyed dwellers in tents, gliding about the solitudes of the land, like half-tamed panthers; and sreaking the conventional web of wesern civilisation with a weird thread of lurid hue? What burning trac of Egypt, or of Hindosan, was the ancient home of this myserious race of resless outlaws?

Edwin Waugh.

Gais Bohémiens

SORCIERS, bateleurs ou filous,

Rese immonde

D’un autre monde,

Sorciers, bateleurs, ou filous,

Gais Bohémiens, d’où venez-vous?

D’où nous venons? l’on n’en sait rien.

L’hirondelle

D’où vous vient-elle?

D’où nous venons, l’on n’en sait rien;

Où nous irons, le sait-on bien?

Sans pays, sans prince et sans lois,

Notre vie

Doit faire envie.

Sans pays, sans prince et sans lois,

L’homme es heureux un jour sur trois.

Tous indépendans nous naissons,

Sans église

Qui nous baptise,

Tous indépendans nous naissons,

Au bruit du fifre et des chansons.

Nos premiers pas sont dégagés,

Dans ce monde

Où l’erreur abonde,

Nos premiers pas sont dégagés

Du vieux maillot des préjugés.

Au peuple en butte à nos larcins,

Tout grimoire

En fait accroire;

Au peuple, en butte à nos larcins,

Il faut des sorciers et des saints.

Trouvons-nous Plutus en chemin,

Notre bande

Gaîment demande.

Trouvons-nous Plutus en chemin,

En chantant nous tendons la main.

Pauvres oiseaux que Dieu bénit,

De la ville

Qu’on nous exile;

Pauvres oiseaux que Dieu bénit,

Au fond des bois pend notre nid.

A tâtons l’amour, chaque nuit,

Nous attèle

Tous pêle-mêle;

A tâtons l’amour, chaque nuit,

Nous attèle au char qu’il conduit.

Ton œil ne peut se détacher,

Philosophe

De mince étoffe,

Ton œil ne peut se détacher

Du vieux coq de ton vieux clocher.

Voir, c’es avoir. Allons courir!

Vie errante

Es chose enivrante.

Voir, c’es avoir; allons courir;

Car tout voir, c’es tout conquérir.

Mais à l’homme on crie en tout lieu,

Qu’il s’agite,

Ou croupisse au gîte,

Mais à l’homme on crie en tout lieu:

‘Tu nais, bonjour! tu meurs, adieu!’

Quand nous mourons, vieux ou bambin,

Homme ou femme,

A Dieu soit notre âme!

Quand nous mourons, vieux ou bambin,

On vend le corps au carabin.

Nous n’avons donc, exempts d’orgueil,

De lois vaines,

De lourdes chaînes;

Nous n’avons donc, exempts d’orgueil,

Ni berceau, ni toit, ni cercueil.

Mais croyez-en notre gaîté,

Noble ou prêtre,

Valet ou maître;

Mais croyez-en notre gaîté:

Le bonheur, c’es la liberté.

Oui, croyez-en notre gaîté,

Noble ou prêtre,

Valet ou maître,

Oui, croyez-en notre gaîté:

Le bonheur, c’es la liberté.

Béranger.

Arabs of Europe

WHETHER from India’s burning plains,

Or wild Bohemia’s domains,

Your seps were firs direced;

Or whether ye be Egypt’s sons,

Whose sream, like Nile’s, for ever runs

With sources undeteced:

Arabs of Europe! Gipsy race!

Your Easern manners, garb, and face

Appear a srange chimera;

None, none but you can now be syled

Romantic, picuresque, and wild,

In this prosaic era.

Ye sole freebooters of the wood,

Since Adam Bell and Robin Hood:

Kept everywhere asunder

From other tribes,—King, Church, and State

Spurning, and only dedicate

To freedom, sloth, and plunder;

Your fores-camp,—the forms one sees

Banditti-like amid the trees,

The ragged donkeys grazing,

The Sybil’s eye prophetic, bright

With flashes of the fitful light

Beneath the caldron blazing,—

O’er my young mind srange terrors threw:

Thy Hisory gave me, Moore Carew!

A more exalted notion

Of Gipsy life; nor can I yet

Gaze on your tents, and quite forget

My former deep emotion.

For ‘auld lang syne’ I’ll not maltreat

Yon pseudo-tinker, though the cheat,

As sly as thievish Reynard,

Insead of mending kettles, prowls,

To make foul havoc of my fowls,

And decimate my hen-yard.

Come thou, too, black-eyed lass, and try

That potent skill in palmisry,

Which sixpences can wheedle;

Mine is a friendly cottage—here

No snarling masiff need you fear,

No Consable or Beadle.

’Tis yours, I know, to draw at will

Upon futurity a bill,

And Plutus to importune;—

Discount the bill—take half yourself,

Give me the balance of the pelf,

And both may laugh at fortune.

Horace Smith.

Where do we come from?

WHERE we comes from, the dear Lord only knows, and He’s too high and mighty to tell the likes of us.

Charley Smith, a Gypsy.

The Region of Chal

THE region of Chal was our dear native soil,

Where in fulness of pleasure we lived without toil;

Till dispersed through all lands, ’twas our fortune to be—

Our seeds, Guadiana, mus now drink of thee.

Once kings came from far to kneel down at our gate,

And princes rejoic’d on our meanes to wait;

But now who so mean but would scorn our degree—

Our seeds, Guadiana, mus now drink of thee.

For the Undebel saw, from his throne in the cloud,

That our deeds they were foolish, our hearts they were proud;

And in anger he bade us his presence to flee—

Our seeds, Guadiana, mus now drink of thee.

Our horses should drink of no river but one;

It sparkles through Chal, ’neath the smile of the sun;

But they tase of all sreams save that only, and see—

Apilyela gras Chai la panee Lucalee.

George Borrow.

How Bahrám Gur brought the Gipsies from India to Persia

THEREAFTER he sent letters to each arch’mage,

Gave clothing to the mendicants, and asked:—

‘In all the realm what folk are free from toil,

And who are mendicants and desitute?

Tell me how things are in the world, and lead

My heart upon the pathway toward the light.’

An answer came from all the archimages,

From all the nobles, and the men of lore:—

‘The face of earth appeareth prosperous,

Continuous blessings are in every part,

Save that the poor complain agains the ills

Of fortune and the Sháh. The rich, they say,

"Wear wreaths of roses in their drinking-bouts,

And quaff to minsrelsy, but as for us

They do not reckon us as men at all.

The empty-handed drinketh with no rose

Or harp." The king of kings should look to it.’

The Sháh laughed heartily at this report,

And sent a camel-pos to king Shangul

To say thus: ‘O thou monarch good at need!

Selec ten thousand of the Gipsy-tribe,

Both male and female, skilful on the harp,

And send them to me. I may gain mine end

Through that notorious folk.’

Now when the letter

Came to Shangul he raised his head in pride

O’er Saturn’s orbit and made choice of Gipsies,

As bidden by the Sháh who, when they came,

Accorded them an audience and gave each

An ox and ass, for he proposed to make

The Gipsies husbandmen, while his officials

Gave them a thousand asses’ loads of wheat,

That they might have the ox and ass for work,

Employ the wheat as seed for raising crops,

And should besides make music for the poor,

And render them the service free of cos.

The Gipsies went and ate the wheat and oxen,

Then at a year’s end came with pallid cheeks.

The Sháh said: ‘Was it not your task to plough,

To sow, and reap? Your asses yet remain,

So load them up, prepare your harps, and sretch

The silken chords.’

And so the Gipsies now,

According to Bahrám’s jus ordinance,

Live by their wits; they have for company

The dog and wolf, and tramp unceasingly.

Firdausi.

The Family of Ham

HERE also we saw a race outside the city, following the Greeks’ rite, and asserting themselves to be of the family of Ham. They rarely or never sop in one place beyond thirty days, but always wandering and fugitive, as though accursed by God, after the thirtieth day remove from field to field with their oblong tents, black and low like the Arabs’, and from cave to cave.

Symon Simeonis (1322).

A very Odd Sort of Gentry

ONE day there came to Rheims a very odd sort of gentry. They were beggars and truands, srolling about the country, led by their duke and their counts. Their faces were tawny, their hair all curly, and they’d rings of silver in their ears. The women were sill uglier than the men. Their faces were darker, and always uncovered; they wore a sorry kirtle about their body; an old piece of linen cloth interwoven with cords bound upon their shoulder; and their hair hanging like a horse’s tail. The children scrambling under their feet would have frightened an ape. An excommunicated gang! They were all come in a sraight line from lower Egypt to Rheims, through Poland. The Pope had confessed them, it was said, and had ordered them by way of penance to wander through the world for seven years together without sleeping in a bed; and so they called themselves penancers, and sank. It seems they’d formerly been Saracens, and that’s why they believed in Jupiter, and demanded ten Tours pounds from all archbishops, bishops, and abbots that carried crosier and mitre. It was a bull of the Pope gave them this right. They came to Rheims to tell fortunes in the name of the King of Algiers and the Emperor of Germany. You may suppose that was quite enough for them to be forbidden to enter the town. Then the whole gang encamped of their own accord near the Braine gate, upon that mound where there’s a windmill, close by the old chalkpits. Then none of the folk in Rheims could res till they’d been to see them. They looked into your hand and told you marvellous prophecies—they were bold enough to have foretold to Judas himself that he should be pope. At the same time there were shocking sories told about them—of child-sealing, purse-cutting, and eating of human flesh. The wise folks said to the foolish ones, ‘Don’t go!’ and then went themselves by sealth. It was quite the rage. The fac is that they said things enough to asonish a cardinal.

Vicor Hugo.

Of Gypsies

GREAT wonder it is not, we are to seek, in the original of Æthiopians, and natural Negroes, being also at a loss concerning the original of Gypsies and counterfeit Moors, observable in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa.

Common opinion deriveth them from Egypt, and from thence they derive themselves, according to their own account hereof, as Munser discovered in the letters and pass which they obtained from Sigismund the Emperour. That they firs came out of lesser Egypt, that having defeced from the Chrisian rule, and relapsed unto Pagan rites, some of every family were enjoined this penance to wander about the world. Or, as Aventinus delivereth, they pretend for this vagabond course a judgement of God upon their forefathers, who refused to entertain the Virgin Mary and Iesus, when she fled into their country.

Which account notwithsanding is of little probability: for the generall sream of writers, who enquire into their originall, insis not upon this; and are so little satisfied in their descent from Egypt, that they deduce them from several other nations. Polydore Virgil accounting them originally Syrians; Philippus Bergomas fetcheth them from Chaldea; Æneas Sylvius from some part of Tartary; Bellonius no further then Wallachia and Bulgaria; nor Aventinus then the confines of Hungaria.

That they are no Egyptians, Bellonius maketh evident: who met great droves of Gypsies in Egypt, about Gran Cairo, Mataerea, and the villages on the banks of Nilus, who notwithsanding were accounted srangers unto that nation, and wanderers from foreign parts, even as they are eseemed with us.

That they came not out of Egypt is also probable, because their firs appearance was in Germany, since the year 1400; nor were they observed before in other parts of Europe, as is deducible from Munser, Genebrard, Crantsius and Ortelius.

But that they firs set out not far from Germany, is also probable from their language, which was the Sclavonian tongue; and when they wandred afterward into France, they were commonly called Bohemians, which name is sill retained for Gypsies. And therefore when Crantsius delivereth, they firs appeared about the Baltick Sea; when Bellonius deriveth them from Bulgaria and Wallachia, and others from about Hungaria, they speak not repugnantly hereto: for the language of those nations was Sclavonian, at leas some dialec thereof.

But of what nation soever they were at firs, they are now almos of all: associating unto them some of every country where they wander. When they will be los, or whether at all again, is not without some doubt; for unsettled nations have out-lased others of fixed habitations. And though Gypsies have been banished by mos Chrisian Princes, yet have they found some countenance from the great Turk,