“A people proscribed by opinion, and doomed by the laws to opprobrium and ignominy; a race which, driven from all liberal professions, has been for ages, and still is, robbed of its right to hold landed property; which, subjected to special and severe regulations, has learned at once to obey and yet to preserve a manner of independence; which, despite the contempt that it inspires and the hate that it awakes and the prejudices wherewith it is received and judged, still resists this contempt, this hatred, and finally all those causes which ought to disunite, loosen, and annihilate the family, the race, the nation;—such a people, I say, deserves the observer’s attention, if only from the fact of its existence.” Jaubert de Passa. TO THE READER Of general works upon the subject of the Gypsies we have perhaps enough, and more than enough; this objection, however, cannot be urged against specialities, which still are highly desirable in every department of “Chinganology.” I use the latter term in preference to the French Tsiganologie, of which more presently, and the “Romanology,” a term of dubious import, lately introduced into English. I wish to place in extenso before the public the following conclusions which the study of some years has, it is hoped, justified me in drawing with regard to the relation of the Gypsies and the Jats: 1. The mediÆval Gypsies of Europe were the last wave of Aryan emigration that flowed westward during the early fifteenth century; and this wave was possibly preceded by more than one similar exodus. 2. The mediÆval Gypsies show family resemblances, physical and moral, ethnological and linguistic, with the modern Jats, a highly important race, which extends from the mouth of the Indus to the head of the great Valley, thence ramifying over Turkistan and the far North. 3. There are solid reasons for believing the Jats and the Jin-tchi of Tatary to be the modern representatives of the classical GetÆ and the Goths of later days. 4. The language of both tribes (Jat and Gypsy) is of Indo-Persian type, the Indian ingredient not being so much decomposed as in the modern varieties of Prakrit. An absolute isolation of speech, especial reasons for secrecy, and the fact of being oral and never written have preserved its purity among the Gypsies; while the Jats, in close contact with alien tongues, have made those secular linguistic changes which are familiar even to English and French. 5. The most ancient name of the race is ChingÁneh, a term still used in Persia and Turkey, and necessarily corrupted by the Arabs, who have no ch, to JingÁneh. 6. Concerning the origin of the Gypsy article (o—os, a—as, etc.), which is unknown to both Sanskrit and Prakrit, the suit is still pending. Possibly it is original and peculiar to the dialect; more probably it is an European and especially a Greek innovation. Briefly, until we have grammatical and vocabularian sketches of the Central Asian and the Turkoman-Gypsy tongues, we are not in a position to draw conclusions.
I propose to discuss the Indian affinities of the Gypsies. I begin with a detailed critique of the various reviews proceeding from the prolific pen of M. Paul Bataillard, who claims the merit, such as it is, of having first identified the Gypsies and the Jats. I end with topographical notes on both tribes throughout their extension from the Indus to Morocco and even to the Brazil.
Part I
NOTES ON MODERN STUDIES OF “CHINGANOLOGY”
CHAPTER I
THE INDIAN AFFINITIES OF THE GYPSIES The following letter to the Academy (March 27, 1875), which opened the discussion between M. Paul Bataillard and its author, speaks for itself[85]: “In the Academy of February 27, 1875, I had these words: “‘Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, has printed some interesting Contributions to the History of the Gipsies (sic). He accepts the view propounded by Pott,[86] as early as 1853, that the Gipsies are closely related to the Indian Jatt (a name which the Arab historians transform into Zott).... Dr. Trumpp[87] has already pointed out the close resemblance between the European Gipsies and the Jatt of the banks of the Indus.’ “I venture to hope that you will permit me to show the part taken by myself in this question.[88] Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus (London: Allen), my volume written between 1845 and 1849, and published in 1851, thus treats of the peoples of the plains: “‘The Jat, or as others write the word, Jath, Juth, or Jutt, was, in the time of the KalhorÁ dynasty, one of the ruling classes in Sindh. It was probably for this reason that the author of the Tohfat el KirÁm (a well-known book of Sindhi Annals) made them of kindred origin with the Belochis, who now repudiate such an idea with disdain. The Jat’s account of his own descent gives to Ukayl, the companion of Muhammad, the high honour of being his progenitor; but what class of Muslim people, however vile, do not claim some equally high origin? “As JÁtaki, the dialect peculiar to the people, proves, they (i.e. the Sindh division of this extensive race) must have come from the PanjÁb, and the other districts Ubho or BÁlÁdasht, Jhang-SiyÁl, MultÁn, and other regions dependent upon the great Country of the Five Rivers. Driven by war or famine from their own lands, they migrated southwards to Sebi (Sibi or Siwi, Upper Sindh) and to the hills around it. They are supposed to have entered Sindh a little before the accession of the KalhorÁ Princes, and shortly afterwards to have risen to distinction by their superior courage and personal strength. At present they have lost all that distinguished them, and of their multitude of JÁgÍrdÁrs, ZemindÁrs, and SardÁrs now not a single descendant possesses anything like wealth or rank. The principal settlements are in the provinces of KakrÁlo, JÁti, Chediyo, ManiyÁr, PhulÁji, and JohÍ. [Those of Umarkot speak, it is said, a different dialect from the Indine Jats, and not a few migrating tribes graze their herds on the great Delta.[89]] They are generally agriculturists or breeders of camels, and appear to be a quiet, inoffensive race. Throughout the eastern parts of Central Asia, the name Jat is synonymous with thief and scoundrel. “‘The Sindhi Jats have many different Kamus or clans, the principal of which are the following: Babbur, BhÁti, JiskÁni, Kalaru, MagÁsi, Mir-jat, ParhiyÁr, SanjarÁni, SiyÁl, and SolÁngi.’ “To this text were appended the following notes: “Jatu in the Sindhi dialect means: 1. A camel-driver or breeder. 2. The name of a Beloch clan. Generally in the lower Indus Valley it is written Jatu, and pronounced Dyatu. It has three significations: 1. The name of a tribe, the Jats. 2. A Sindhi, as opposed to a Beloch; it is in this sense an insulting expression, and so the Beloch and Brahins of the hills call the Sindhi language JÁthki. 3. A word of insult, a ‘barbarian,’ as in the expression do-dasto Jatu, ‘an utter savage.’ “Lt. Wood’s work shows that the Jats are still found in the PanjÁb and all along the banks of the Indus. “Under the name Jat no less than four races are comprised.
“I continued: “‘It appears probable from the appearance and other peculiarities of the race that the Jats are connected by consanguinity with that peculiar race the Gypsies. Of 130 words used by the Gypsies in Syria, no less than 104 belong to the Indo-Persian class of language. The rest may be either the remains of the barbarous tongues spoken by the aboriginal mountaineers who inhabited the tract between the Indus and Eastern Persia, or the invention of a subsequent age, when their dispersion among hostile tribes rendered a “thieves’ language” necessary. The numerals are almost all pure Persian. There are two words, “kuri” (a house) and “psih” (a cat), probably corrupted from the Pushtu “kor” and “pishu.” Two other words are Sindhi “mÁnna” for “mÁni,” bread, and “hÚi” for “hÚ,” he. As might be expected from a tribe inhabiting Syria, Arabic and Turkish words occasionally occur, but they form no part of the groundwork of the language.’ “It was my fortune to wander far and wide, during four years of staff service, about the Valley of the Indus; and to make personal acquaintance with many, if not all, its wild tribes. I saw much of the Jats, lodged in their huts and tents, and studied the camel under their tuition. They are the best ‘Vets.’ and breeders known to that part of the Indian Empire. My kind friend, now no more, then Colonel, and afterwards General, Walter Scott, of the Bombay Engineers, had a Jat in his service; and the rough old man’s peculiarities afforded us abundant diversion. Thus I was able to publish in 1849 the first known notice of JÁtaki and its literature. The author of the famous ‘Dabistan’[90] applies the term ‘Jat tongue’ to that in which NÁnah ShÁh, the Apostle of the Sikhs, composed his Grauth[91] and other works. Throughout the PanjÁb Jatki bÚt (‘Jat tongue’) is synonymous with the GunwÁr ki boli or ‘peasants’ jargon’ of Hindustan. “I wrote the word JÁtaki with two italics. The first denotes the peculiar Sindhi sound, a blending of j and t; the second is the familiar cerebral of Sanskrit and Prakrit, which survives to a certain extent in our modern English tongue, though unknown to the Latin and the Teutonic languages. The tribal name is Jatu, with the short terminal vowel which in Sindhi, as in Sanskrit, follows the consonant; its plural, JatÁn, ends with a well-marked nasal. “At that time I divided this rude race of semi-Bedawin into four great tribes; namely: “‘The PanjÁbÍ Jat, who is neither a Hindu nor a Hindi (Muslim). He first appears in Indian history as a nomad, alternately shepherd, robber, and temporary tiller of the ground. Many became Sikhs, and did good service to NÁnah Shah’s faith by their zealous opposition to Muhammadan bigotry. As this was their sole occupation for many years, they gradually grew more and more warlike, and at one time they were as fighting a race as any in India. They have been identified by Colonel Sleeman and others with the ancient GetÆ and their descendants the Goths.[92] “‘The Jat or Dyat of the HazÁrah country, Jhang-SiyÁl, Kach (Kutch) GandÁva, and Sindh generally, where they may number two hundred and fifty thousand out of a total population of one million. They are all Muslims, and are supposed to have emigrated from the north during or shortly after the KalhorÁ accession; hence their dialect is commonly called Belochki. In those days the BelochÍs were very little known to Sindh, whose aristocracy, the AmÍrs, JÁgÍrdÁrs, and opulent ZemindÁrs, was either Sindhi or Jats. About PeshÁwur “Jat” is still synonymous with ZemindÁr or landed proprietor; at times, however, it is used as a term of reproach. “‘The third is a clan of BelochÍs, who spell their name with the Arabo-Persian, not the Sindhi j. In the lower Indine Valley they hold the province of JÁti, and other parts to the south-east. The head of the tribe is entitled Malik (literally “King”), e.g. Malik HammÁl Jat.[93] “‘The next is a wandering tribe, many of whom are partially settled in CandahÁr, HerÁt, Meshhed, and other cities of the Persico-Afghan frontier. They are found in Meckran; and they sometimes travel as far as Maskat, Sindh, and even Central India. They are held to be notorious thieves, occupying a low place in the scale of creation. No good account of this tribe has as yet appeared; and the smallest contributions upon the subject would be right thankfully received.’ “The fifth which must now be added is the Jin-tchi of Central Asia. These people are not, as Mr. Schuyler[94] seems to think, ‘KÁfirs from KÁfiristan’; they are apparently true Jats—an idea once advanced by Mr. Andrew Wilson of the Abode of Snow.[95] “These tribes are looked upon as aborigines, which simply means that their predecessors are unknown.[96] “Such were the notices collected by me in manuscript some years before 1849. At that time the Orientalists of Europe were almost unanimous in identifying the Gypsies with the Nat’h, a scattered Indian tribe of itinerant tinkers and musicians, the ‘poor players’ of the great Peninsula, utterly ignorant of horse-couping, cattle-breeding, and even poultry-snatching. And the conviction still holds its ground; only lately my erudite correspondent, Dr. J. Burnard Davis, reminded me of it. “Of course the humble linguistic labours of a perpetual explorer can hardly be familiar to the professionally learned world; but I cherish a hope that you will aid me in resurrecting my buried and forgotten work.”
CHAPTER II
THE CLAIMS AND PRETENSIONS OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD The following letter, which bears the author’s signature and the date Paris, May 28, 1875,[97] was the result of my communication to the Academy.[98] As I had objected to my thunder being stolen by Professor Pott and De Goeje, so M. Paul Bataillard charges me with having purloined his artillery: “The Academy of March 27 last published an interesting letter which only came to my knowledge a few days ago. In this letter Mr. Richard Burton, F.R.G.S., claims the priority in identifying the Gipsies or Tsigans with the Jat of the banks of the Indus, whose name, he adds, is pronounced Dyat. The question has lately been treated at length (25 pages in 8vo, almost entirely consecrated to this subject) by Professor J. de Goeje, of Leyden, who attributes the first idea of this identification to Mr. Pott in 1853, as is stated in the Academy of February 27, in a short article mentioning this Dutch Contribution to the History of the Gipsies. “Mr. Burton, who has wandered far and wide in the Valley of the Indus, and has much frequented the Jats, published in 1849 a grammar of the JÁtaki dialect (41 pages), which contains an interesting classification of this race, reproduced in his letter, and, in 1851, a volume upon Sindh—Sindh and the Races that inhabit the Valley of the Indus—in which he starts the theory of a probable relationship between the Jats and the Gipsies, as proved in the extracts which he commences by giving of this work. “Allow me to claim a still earlier priority (dating from 1849), and to begin by establishing exactly the share belonging to each. “Professor Pott, in his great work, Die Zigeuner, Vol. I. (1844), p. 62, had spoken of the tradition mentioned by Ferdoussy, by the Tarikh-Guzydeh, and ‘by another ...’ that is to say, by the Modjmel-al-Tevarykh, according to which Bahram-Gur, King of Persia, had caused ten or twelve thousand musicians, designated in two at least of these three texts under the name of Luri,[99] to come from India. One or two other names, of which it is not necessary to speak, are added to this one. (See pp. 41, 42 of my memoir, published in 1849, and mentioned by-and-by.) “Five years later, Professor Pott, coming back to the subject in his article ‘Ueber die Zigeuner,’ published, as a second supplement to his great work, in the Zeitschrift der Deut. Morgenl. Gesellschaft, Vol. III., 1849, said (p. 326): “Concerning the tradition of which I spoke, Vol. I., p. 62, of the transmigration of Indian musicians into Persia, ordered by Bahram-Gur, and set forth in the Shahnameh, a tradition which is applied perhaps rightly to the Zigeuner, I owe to Fleischer a very interesting notice, and wholly unknown to me hitherto, drawn from Hamza Ispahani, Gottwaldt edition, 1834 (p. 40 of the translation of Gottwaldt), according to which Bahram-Gur, for the pleasure of his subjects, caused twelve thousand musicians, those designated by the name of Zuth, to come from India. They are called Luri in the Shahnameh[100], which is a proof that Hamza did not simply copy this fact. But Fleischer adds what follows relative to the name of Zuth, which I have not yet met with anywhere, and which was a complete enigma to me: ‘The KamÛz says that the Zotth are a race of men of Indian origin, and that the true pronunciation of this word is Djatt, but that the Arabs pronounce it Zotth.’ (See notes 3 and 4 at p. 43 of my memoir of 1849, concerning the rather free translation of this passage of the KamÛz.) In the French and Arabic Dictionary, by Ellious Bocthor, we find: ‘BohÉmien, Arabe vagabond, TchinghianÉ, qui dit la bonne aventure, vole, etc., is called Zotti at Damascus, plural Zotte.’
“Nothing more. It is clear that, in the identification of the Djat of India with the Tsigans, Professor Pott’s share is very small up to the present. The great Indianist of Halle is rich enough in his own learning to be content with what belongs to him, and the respect I entertain for him and his kind feeling towards me form a sure guarantee that he will not be offended at my setting forth my claim. “I think I may say that it is I (thanks, it is true, to M. Reinaud) who first treated the question. I had published, in 1844, in the BibliothÈque de l’École des Chartes, a rather long memoir upon the Apparition des BohÉmiens en Europe (the tirage À part, which is long ago exhausted, has 59 pages octavo). In 1849 I contributed to the same collection a second paper upon the same subject, examining especially Eastern Europe, and establishing for the first time that the Gipsies were in this region at an epoch far anterior to the date (about 1417) of their appearance in the West. I may add, incidentally, that nearly all those who have since spoken of the appearance of the Gipsies in Europe have done little more than draw upon these two memoirs, without always exactly saying what part belonged to me, so that I have often had the annoyance of seeing such or such an author, Francisque Michel more especially, mentioned afterwards in third-hand notices as the original source of what I had written. Now my second memoir (Nouvelles Recherches sur l’Apparition des BohÉmiens en Europe, 48 pp. in the tirage À part, Paris, 1849: Franck, rue de Richelieu, 67) ends with an ‘Additional Note’ of ten very compact pages, the principal object of which is precisely to identify the Gipsies and the Indian Djath. “In this note, or appendix, I begin by collecting and giving, in French, in order that they may be compared, the accounts that Professor Pott had only pointed out, relating to the ten or twelve thousand musicians that Bahram-Gur, King of Persia (420-440 of our era), had sent for from India, that is to say, the tradition related by Ferdoussy in the Shahnameh (about 1000), by the Modjmel-al-Tevarykh (about 1126), by the Tarikh-Guzydeh (about 1329, for this last I have not been able to give the text), and lastly, by Hamza Ispahani, the Arabian author whom Professor Fleischer had just made known to Professor Pott, and who is the oldest of all, since he belongs to the tenth century, while Professor Pott supposed him to have been posterior to Ferdoussy. It is to be remarked that Hamza mentions the descendants of the twelve thousand musicians as still existing in Persia in his time under the name of Zuth, and that Ferdoussy says the same of the ten thousand Luri, whom he represents as vagabonds and thieves. But the new and important point is the name of Zuth given to them by the Arabo-Persian author of the tenth century; and it is here, as I remark in my work (p. 42 of the tirage À part), ‘that the real interest commences.’ “I again find this name (p. 44) under the form of Djatt and Djatty in a fifth account of the same matter by the Persian Mirkhond (fifteenth century); and, after having remarked that the same name is given by the KamÛz under the form Zotth as the Arabian equivalent of Djatt, an Indian race, and that, according to Ellious Bocthor, it serves precisely, under the form Zott, to designate the Gipsies at Damascus, I start from thence to gather from the important MÉmoire, etc., sur l’Inde, by M. Reinaud, a few data upon the history of the Zath or Djatt of India, and to establish, pp. 45-48, the probable identity of this race and the Gipsies. I repeat that this is precisely the essential object of my ‘Additional Note.’ “I am not an Orientalist, and besides, as I have not failed to mention, this note of ten large pages was written when my memoir was already in the press. But I had the kind assistance of the learned and lamented M. Reinaud, to whose memory I am glad here to render my tribute of gratitude. “Also, the eminent scholar of Leipzig, the same who had first opened the way for discovering the connexion between the Gipsies and the Djatt, Professor Fleischer, in a general account embracing the scientific publications of three years (the same Zeitschrift, Vol IV., 1850, p. 452), has not disdained to mention my work in these terms: “Bataillard, the author, etc., taking up the supplement to Pott, published in our journal, III., pp. 321-335, has, with the aid of Reinaud, shown the great probability of the opinion that the Zigeuner descend from the G’at or G’et, the most ancient inhabitants of the north-west of India; and might not the name Zigeuner, Zingani, Zingari, [Greek: ?????a???: Tzinganoi], etc., by the intermedium of the form Gitanos, be derived from the name of this people?
“This last supposition of Professor Fleischer’s does not appear to me admissible, for there is no doubt that Gitanos is derived from Egipcianos, as Gipsies is from Egyptians. “I come at last to Professor Pott’s article ‘Last Contributions towards the Knowledge of the Gipsies and their Language,’ in the same Zeitschrift of 1853 (Vol. VII., pp. 389-399), mentioned in the Academy, quoting Professor de Goeje, as the starting-point for the identification of the Gipsy and the Jat. What do we find there upon this subject? The following lines (p. 393): “I am indebted to the obliging friendship of Professor Fleischer, of Leipzig (see our Zeitschrift, III., p. 326), for an important passage upon the Zuth of Hamza Ispahani, whose Annals are anterior to the Shahnameh, as M. Bataillard demonstrates in his Nouvelles Recherches, p. 42. For the origin of the Gipsies we ought to consider very attentively these Zotth, who, according to what RÖdiger communicates to me, are also confounded with the Zengi (called also Aethiopes, and whose name is even sometimes employed for Zingari: see my Zigeuner, i., p. 45). In fact, the Zuth appear to be the same as the Jats, or, according to the Turkish KamÛz, Tchatt, concerning whom we find in Elliot, Biogr. Index, i. 270-27 (sic) (and especially, Ibid. in Masson, Journey to Kelat, pp. 351-353), an interesting article. See, moreover, Reinaud, MÉm. sur l’Inde, 1849, p. 273, note 3 upon the Dschats, which may also be compared with the Proverb. Arab. of Freytag, Vol. II., p. 580 (communicated also by Fleischer, to which I must add the further statement of Bataillard). Above all, it would be very important for us to have some details concerning their language.
“Thus the learned professor of Halle here contents himself with the fresh mention of the passage in Hamza, for which he was indebted to Fleischer, and with pointing out some fresh sources to be consulted for the Zotth, Jats, etc., which had been made known to him by the same savant, and refers besides to my ‘further statements (weitere Auseinandersetzung)’; and, as he afterwards devotes a long page to the analysis of the principal part of my Nouvelles Recherches, which he had mentioned at full length (pp. 389-390), and which he quotes again in several other places, one would think that he had done enough. “This mention has none the less escaped, according to all appearances, Professor de Goeje, of Leyden, who nevertheless was acquainted with this passage of Pott (since he mentions it, p. 16, so as to induce the belief that the learned professor of Halle was the first to establish a connexion between the Zott or Djatt and the Tsigans), and who quotes in several places my long articles in the Revue Critique on ‘Les derniers travaux relatifs aux BohÉmiens dans l’Europe Orientale’ (of which the tirage À part forms an octavo volume of 80 pages, 1872), but who says not a word of my work of 1849. This is an omission such as the most conscientious savants sometimes make; and I do not intend to address a reproach to the learned professor of Leyden, whose work must besides have all the superiority belonging to a deep study made twenty-five years later by a most competent Orientalist. But since the question of priority upon this subject has been raised in your paper, you will, I think, perceive, in perusing what I wrote in 1849, which I send you with this letter, that I have a right not to be completely forgotten, especially when it concerns an interesting point in the history of the Gipsies upon which I have hitherto published only some fragmentary works, but to the study of which I have devoted so many years. “My letter is already long: allow me, nevertheless, to add yet a few more words. Although I have in my possession the work of Professor de Goeje (the author has had the kindness to send it to me), I cannot say that I am acquainted with it, because I cannot read Dutch, and have not yet found an opportunity of having it translated, which I doubly regret under the present circumstances. I think, however, that I may say that the point treated by the professor of Leyden, and twenty-five years ago by myself, although it be already sufficiently complex, is only one side of the very much more complicated question of the origin of the Gipsies, considered in all its bearings. I hope to be able to show that the historical documents of Eastern Europe, of Western Asia, and of Egypt itself furnish very important data, hitherto very insufficiently considered, upon the question. I think I have also the means of giving an explanation of the word tsigan, and of the other names approaching to it, more certain and more interesting than those proposed by Professor de Goeje and Mr. Burton. “It is not the less interesting to examine any point of the very complex question of the origin of the Gipsies, and especially one so important as this appears to be of their connexion with the Jats or Djatt. But this point itself has, so to speak, several faces. There is the part belonging to erudition in the strict sense, and I think that Professor de Goeje has treated it very ably; but there is the ethnological, anthropological, and even the linguistic part of the subject, which does not appear to me to be very far advanced up to the present time. It is this part that Mr. Burton has handled; and as he has lived in the midst of the Jats, he was in some respects in the best condition for throwing great light upon it; but, on the one hand, he ought perhaps to have been better acquainted with the Gipsies, and, on the other, it does not appear that the connexion between the Gipsies and the Jats has occupied him much. He has perceived a probable relation between these two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in half a page; but this is not sufficient.[101] No doubt in occupying himself specially with the Jats, in giving in 1849 a grammar of their language (of which I cannot appreciate the value, but which did not prevent Professor Pott, in 1853, from saying that we were wanting in information respecting this idiom),[102] in collecting some very summary data concerning their division into four tribes, and upon their history and manners, he has furnished some materials, but materials quite insufficient,[103] for a comparison, which is still unmade, between this race and the Gipsies. He tells us, for example, that the appearance and other peculiarities of this race authorize as probable the supposition of a relationship between it and the Gipsies. But he does not give us even the smallest information respecting the type (appearance) of the Jats; and the other ‘peculiarities’ which he does not explain, and which we are obliged to seek in scattered traits, furnish such fugitive comparisons that one can conclude nothing from them. In reality nearly every tribe in India (not to speak of certain tribes in other countries) will furnish, when compared with the Gipsies, quite as many, if not more, points of resemblance. Indeed this is, more or less, the defect of nearly all the comparisons which have been made between the Gipsies and such or such populations of India; the authors of these comparisons are not sufficiently acquainted with the Gipsies, and their study of the resemblances is not sufficiently specific. “The Jats must belong, I suppose so at least, to the Hamite (Chamite), and more particularly to the Kuschite stratum of the Hindoo populations,[104] and for my part I do not doubt that the Gipsies, although their idiom is connected with the Aryan languages of India, belong to this same branch of the human species.—I remark, by the way, in the division made by Mr. Burton of the Jats into four tribes, that one of the districts inhabited by the second is called ‘Kach (Kutch).’[105]—But this branch is widely spread in Asia and in Africa. It would be necessary, in the Kuschite family, to remark the particular traits which distinguish, on the one hand, the Jats, on the other, the Gipsies, in all the very complex affinities allowed by ethnography, and start thence to compare them. This is what remains to be done in order to throw light upon this part of one side of the question of Gipsy origin. It is useless to say that, in following out more particularly this comparison between the Gipsies and the Jats, the other points of comparison that may be furnished by other tribes, related or not to the Jats, such as that of the Tchangar, for example, pointed out by Dr. Trumpp in the Panjab (Mittheil. der Anthrop. Gesellschaft in Wien, T. II., 1872, p. 294, quoted by Miklosich in his third memoir on the Zigeuner, 1873, p. 2), and several others, which it would be too long to mention, must not be neglected. But all this can only be well done in India, and by a person who has specially studied the Gipsies of Europe, of Eastern Europe especially, and, if possible, those of Western Asia and even of Egypt. Unfortunately these conditions are very difficult to find. “(Signed) Paul Bataillard.”
CHAPTER III
A REVIEW OF M. PAUL BATAILLARD’S REVIEWS § 1. Preliminaries M. Paul Bataillard—ominous name!—who has thus offered me battle in the Academy, is apparently an indefatigable Tsiganologue,[106] to use his own compound; and he seems to have been studying Chinganology since 1841. Of bookmaking on the Gypsy theme there is no apparent end; even the mighty “Magician of the North” proposed, we are told, adding his item to the heap. The reading public, indeed, seems to hold these HamaxÓbioi an ever virgin subject; and since the days of “Gypsy Borrow’s” Translation of St. Luke (1838),[107] The Zincali, The Bible in Spain (1841), and other popular works, it has ever lent an ear to the charmer, charm he never so unwisely. A modern author was not far wrong when he stated: “A great deal of what is called genius has been expended upon the Gypsies, but wonderfully little common sense.”[108] And the subject has its peculiar charms. These “outlandish persons calling themselves Egyptians or Gypsies”; these cosmopolites equally at home in the snows of Siberia and in the swamps of Sennaar; these Ishmaelites still dwelling in the presence of their brethren, at once on the outskirts and in the very centres of civilized life; this horde of barbarians scattered over the wide world, among us but not of us; these nomads of a progressive age isolated by peculiarities of physique, language, and social habits, of absolute materialism, and of a single rule of conduct, “Self-will,” all distinctly pointing to a common origin; this phenomenon of the glorious epoch which opened a new thoroughfare to the “East Indies,” and which discovered the other half of the globe, is still to many, nay, to most men, an inexplicable ethnic mystery. Englanders mostly take the narrow nursery view of the “Black Man”; at the highest they treat him picturesquely in connexion with creels and cuddies, hammer and tongs, the tin-kettle and the katÚna or tilt-tent. Continental writers cast, as usual, a wider and a more comprehensive glance. M. Perier, with French “nattiness,” thus resumes the main points of interest in the singular strangers: “Une race extraordinaire, forte, belle, cosmopolite, errante, et cependant (?) pure, curieuse par consÉquent, À tant de titres.” The Rumanians have deemed the theme worthy of poetry; witness the heroic-comic-satyric “Tsiganida,” or Gypsy-Camp, of Leonaki Diancu.[109] The “wondrous tale” of the old Gypsy gude-wife concerning the “Things of Egypt” is more wonderful, observe, than aught told of Jewry. Certain of the learned credulous, as we read in the Evidences of Christianity and other such works, essentially one-sided, point to the dispersion and the cohesion of the self-styled “Chosen People” as a manner of miracle, a standing witness to certain marvellous events in its past annals. They ignore or forget the higher miracle of the “tinklers.” Whilst the scattering abroad of the Israelites arose naturally from the same causes which in the present day preserve their union, the powerful principle of self-interest and wealth-seeking, the deeply rooted prejudices, social and religious, fostered by a theocratic faith and by a special and exclusive revelation, the lively tradition of past glories and the promises of future grandeur confirmed by the conviction of being a people holy and set apart, the barbarous RomÁ[110] are held together only by the ties of speech[111] and consanguinity, and by the merest outlines of a faith, such a creed as caste, or rather the outcast, requires. Still the coherence is continuous and complete; still, like the rod of Moses, this ethnological marvel out-miracles the other, and every other, miracle. Hardly less peculiar is the historical relation of the Jew and the Gypsy. They have many points in common. Both have had their exodus, and are dispersed over the world. Both have peculiarities of countenance which distinguish them from the “Gentiles,” whom they hate, the GoyÍm and the Busne. Both have their own languages and preserve their racial names.[112] Similarity of conditions, however, which should breed sympathy, as usual amongst men has borne only hatred. But the Jew was wealthy, like his cousin the Morisco. Hence the horrible persecution of the Israelites in Spain (a.d. 1348-98), when a prevailing pest was attributed to their poisoning the water, and which endured till the Hussites drew down upon themselves the earthly “anger of Heaven.” During those dreadful years many of the Hebrews fled to the mountains, the Alpujarras and the Sierras—Morena and de Toledo—and to the wild banks of the Upper Ebro, the Guadiana, and the Tagus. Meanwhile the Gypsies suffered under the conviction that they were Jews who, denying their forefathers, represented themselves to be of Egyptian blood. Presently, when the revenues of the Catholic kings, Henry III. and John II., amounting to 26,550,000 reals (dollars) reduced to our present value, fell under Henry IV. to 3,540,000, the plethoric money-bags of the Israelites led to the establishment of Holy Office and its inquisitorial tribunal (January, 1481). Finally, as if persecution and death were not sufficient, a wholesale expulsion took place in March, 1492. These horrors are still, after the lapse of ages, fresh in the Jewish mind. I have seen at Jerusalem a KhÁkhÁm (scribe) so moved by the presence of a Spanish official, that the latter asked me in astonishment how he had managed to offend his host. But what could the Santa Hermandad alias La Bruja (the witch) find to plunder and pillage in the tent of the Rom? During three centuries of loose wild life, often stained by ferocious crime, and made bestial by the Draconian laws of mediÆval Christianity, the Gypsies had their seasons of banishment, torture, and execution; but their poverty and isolation saved them from the horrors of a deliberate and official persecution. Mas pobre que cuerpo de Gitano (Nothing poorer than a Gypsy’s body) is still a proverb in Spain, where men also say, Tan ruin es el conde como los Gitanos. All these barbarities ended in Europe with the close of the eighteenth century, where the new Religion of Humanity had been preached by the encyclopedists whose major prophets were Voltaire and Rousseau, Diderot and D’Alembert. No Disraeli has hitherto arisen to vindicate the nobility of these “masterful beggars”; and to chronicle their triumphs in court and camp, in arts and arms; to trace them in the genealogies of titled houses, or to strip off the disguises assumed during the intolerant times when the Jew was compelled to swear himself Gentile and the Muslim a Christian. Yet the Gypsies have had their great men, whilst their pure blood has leavened much dull clay and given fresh life to many an effete noble vein. Witness the “King Zindl” or “Zindelo”; the Dukes Michael and Andrew; Counts Ion (Juan) and Panuel (Manuel) of Little Egypt; the Waywodes (Vaivodes) of Dacia; the noble cavalier Pedro, and the chief, Tomas Pulgar, who in a.d. 1496 aided Bishop Sigismund to beat off the Turk invader. Witness, again, the Hungarian Hunyadis, the Russian Tolstoys, and the Scotch Melvilles, not to speak of the Cassilis and the Contis under Louis XIV. Certain Gypsies became soldiers of renown; and John Bunyan, one of the immortals of the earth, is shrewdly suspected of Gypsy descent. Borrow mentions an archbishop and “four dignified ecclesiastics”; while some of the most learned and famed of the priesthood in Spain have been, according to a Gypsy, of the Gypsies, or at least of Gypsy blood. Such is the Gypsy summed up in a few lines. These pages have no intention, I repeat, of treating the subject of the RomÁ generally. My humbler task is confined to showing the affinities between the Gypsies and the great Jat tribe, or rather nation, which extends from the mouths of the Indus to the Steppes of Central Asia. And my first objection must be to a question of precedence with M. Paul Bataillard. The Tsiganologue claims, as has been seen, “a still earlier priority” in the identification of Gypsy and Jat; and he proposes to “establish exactly the share belonging to each of us.” This is the normal process of the cabinet savant, who is ever appearing, like the deus ex machinÂ, to snatch from the explorer’s hand the meed of originality. The former borrows from his books a dozen different theories; and when one happens to be proved true by the labours of the man of action, he straightway sets himself up as the “theoretical discoverer” of the sources of the Nile, or of any other matter which engages popular attention. But in the present case I deny that my rival has any claim whatever. My personal acquaintance with the Jats began in 1845, and my Grammar and Vocabulary were sent to the Royal Asiatic Society in 1848 before my departure from India. On the other hand, M. Paul Bataillard, I understand, knew nothing of the Indine Jats when he wrote his first paper De l’apparition, etc., in 1844. He honestly owns that he is no Orientalist; and that he required the assistance of the late M. Reinaud, who was a scholar, to identify the Zuth of Hamza Ispahani (tenth century), the Luri musicians of the Shahnameh (eleventh century), and the Zoth or Zutt of the KamÛz dictionary (fourteenth century) with the Zatt or Dyatt of India. This was in 1849. His exposÉ Étendu was accepted by Professor Pott in the same year, and appeared in the Nachtrag before mentioned, which completed the grand travail—Die Zigeuner. Such was the extent of my claimant’s discovery. He had even to learn from Professor Fleischer, of Leipzig, that “the Zigeuner descend from the G’at or G’et, the most ancient inhabitants of North-Western India,”[113] a second-hand opinion, derived from “Gypsy Borrow,” Colonel Sleeman, and other Englishmen. I need hardly say that Professor Pott, the distinguished member of that heroic band which founded comparative philology, knew nothing practically or personally about either the Gypsies or the Jats. And it is evident that Professor de Goeje is in outer darkness when he speaks of “the view propounded by Pott as early as 1853.” At that time, and indeed until I wrote to the Academy in 1875, M. Paul Bataillard evidently ignored “M. Burton”; and no blame be to him for not knowing a paper published by a colonial society a quarter of a century ago. But he also ignored far more important facts. He applies the term petite population Djatte to the great scattered nation called Jat. He was of course not aware that this people preserve in the Indine Delta, the “Salt Country” of the Sindhis, the purity of its tongue, which, farther north, is corrupted by an admixture of Sindhi, Belochki, and Panjabi. Nor could he be alive to the fact that many points of similarity, anthropological and linguistic, connect the Gypsy and the Jat. There are men who are personally averse to new things, and the easy alternative is to depreciate their value. “He,” I am assured by my rival claimant, “has perceived a probable relation between these two tribes of men, and he has expressed it in half a page; but this is not sufficient.” Such an assertion, however, is more than sufficient for estimating and appreciating the Bataillard system of treating a literary question. For “half a page” read a dozen pages,[114] which might easily have been extended to many a dozen. But I had hoped that the statement of a traveller who had met the Gypsies at Oxford (Bagley Wood), in England, and on the Continent, and the knowledge of their racial characteristics, general amongst educated Englishmen, justified a conciseness imperiously demanded whilst treating in one volume the geography, history, and ethnology of a country nearly equalling England in length. Again, when M. Bataillard assures his readers that I have “not given even the smallest information respecting the type (appearance) of the Jats,” he once more makes it evident that he should have read me before pretending to write about me. I will quote my description in full,[115] so that the public may judge between him and me: “We are now in the provinces inhabited by the Jats. Your [i.e. Mr. John Bull’s] eye is scarcely grown critical enough in this short time to see the tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee-like difference between their personal appearance and that of their kinsmen the Scindians; nor can I expect you as yet to distinguish a Jat wandh (village) from a Scinde goth (village). You are certain to take some interest in a race which appears to be the progenitor of the old witch in a red cloak, whose hand, in return for the cunning nonsense to which her tongue gave birth, you once crossed with silver; and of the wiry young light-weight, whose game and sharp hitting you have, in happier days, more than once condescended to admire. “Our authors[116] probably err when they suppose the Jat to be the original Hindu of Scinde converted to Islam. Native historians and their own traditions concur in assigning to them a strange origin; their language, to this day, a corrupt dialect of that spoken throughout the Indine provinces of the Panjab, gives support and real value to the otherwise doubtful testimony.[117] It is probable that, compelled to emigrate from their own lands by one of the two main causes that bring about such movements in the East, war or famine, the Jats of Scinde travelled southward about the beginning of the eighteenth century of our era. “Under the quasi-ecclesiastical KalhorÁ dynasty, when Scindians composed the aristocracy as well as the commonalty of the country, the Jats, in consequence of their superior strength, their courage, and their clannish coalescence, speedily rose to high distinction. The chiefs of tribes became nobles, officials, and ministers at court; they provided for their families by obtaining grants of ground, feoffs incidental to certain military services, and for their followers by settling them as tenants on their broad lands. But the prosperity of the race did not last long. They fell from their high estate when the Belochis, better men than they, entered the country, and began to appropriate it for themselves; by degrees, slow yet sure, they lost all claims to rank, wealth, and office. They are now found scattered throughout Scinde, generally preferring the south-eastern provinces, where they earn a scanty subsistence by agriculture; or they roam over the barren plains feeding their flocks upon the several oases; or they occupy themselves in breeding, tending, training, and physicking the camel. With the latter craft their name has become identified, a Jat and a sarwan (camel-man) sounding synonymous in Scindian ears. “The Jats in appearance are a swarthy and uncomely race, dirty in the extreme, long, gaunt, bony, and rarely, if ever, in good condition. Their beards are thin, and there is a curious (i.e. Gypsy-like) expression in their eyes.[118] They dress like Scindians, preferring blue to white clothes; but they are taller, larger, and more un-Indian in appearance. Some few, but very few, of their women are, in early youth, remarkable for soft and regular features; this charm, however, soon yields to the complicated ugliness brought on by exposure to the sun, by scanty living, and by the labour of baggage-cattle. In Scinde the Jats of both sexes are possessed of the virtues especially belonging to the oppressed and inoffensive Eastern cultivation; they are necessarily frugal and laborious, peaceful, and remarkable for morality in the limited sense of aversion to intrigue with members of a strange Kaum.[119] I say in Scinde; this is by no means the reputation of the race in the other parts of Central Asia, where they have extended (or whence possibly they came).[120] The term ‘Jat’ is popularly applied to a low and servile creature, or to an impudent villain; and despite of the Tohfat el Kiram,[121] a Beloch would consider himself mortally affronted were you to confound his origin with the caste which his ancestors deposed, and which he despises for having allowed itself to be degraded. The Brahins, Afghans, and Persians all have a bad word to say of them.” Thus far M. Paul Bataillard has shown himself only the carpet-slippered littÉrateur de cabinet, who laboriously borrows from others, and who evidently expects his second-hand labours to faire Époque. But my rival claimant, let me hasten to own, has solid merits. His theory that Gypsy emigrations are of ancient date, and probably of high antiquity, deserves consideration. His later notices of the Jats correct the vulgar error which made Taymur the Tatar cause the first exodus of our “sorners.” He notes the especial hatred, possibly racial, nourished by these Gentile vagrants against the other scattered nation, the Jews. Other minor but still interesting matters of which he treats are the history of the Gypsies especially with respect to their slavery and serfdom—Crown captives, not chattels personal; their periodical wanderings and visitings; their vestiges of faith; their vernacular and humble literature; their private and tribal names suggesting those of the modern Israelitic Synagogue; and their supplying the dancing-girls of the nearer East, while in the lupanars of Europe a Gypsy girl is unknown. I now propose to run as rapidly as the subject permits through M. Paul Bataillard’s four papers seriatim. The critique will not only notice novelties, but will also attempt to correct what to a practical man appears to want correction in connexion with the Gypsies. This paper treats chiefly of South-Eastern Europe, which has been estimated to contain at least six hundred thousand of the RomÁ—a number, by-the-bye, wholly inadequate. The author’s self-imposed limits would be the western Slav frontier, a meridian drawn from the southern bend of the Baltic to the Adriatic head. Topographically disposed, upon a line trending from east to west, the review deals in its progress with writers mostly modern; and it forms an excerptive rather than an exhaustive or even a summary bibliography. The first of the two component parts travels with the authorities who treat of Russia, Poland and Lithuania, Germany, Bohemia, Hungary, Transylvania, the Banat, the Rumanian Principalities, and Turkey, or rather Constantinople. The lands about the Balkan Range, so unknown not many years ago and now so much talked of, are justly considered a second Gypsy patria, the “old home” being India. The review is accompanied and followed by side-glances at those who treat of Finland and Norway, of Persia and Basqueland, of Scotland and Holland, of Sicily and Italy, which once owned an exceptional castrum GiptiÆ. This section ends with linguistic and ethnographic remarks borrowed from many sources and specifying a considerable number of requisites. In the second part the critic reviews M. Alexandre G. Paspati, D.M., a famous name in Gypsydom. This learned Greek physician—one of the few children, by-the-bye, who escaped the “gentle and gallant” Turk in the foul Chios massacre of 1822—was educated in America, and is as highly distinguished for his Indian and Byzantine as for his Gypsy studies. The Étude, etc., of 1870, which continued and completed his elaborate memoirs (1857-1862), is the work of a scholar who knew the RomÁ personally, not of a mere littÉrateur. The book teemed with novelties. For instance, it suggested that the article (o or u; Í and e), as unknown to the Asiatic Gypsy (?) as to the Sanskrit and the Prakrit, had been borrowed by his European congener from the Greek [Greek: ?: ho] and [Greek: ?: hÊ], thus suggesting long residence in Hellas and familiarity with its people. Might it not, however, have been a simple development of ÍhÁ and uha, the demonstrative pronouns in JÁtaki—this and that becoming the? But as all Germanic, neo-Latinic, and Slav tongues have either produced or borrowed an article, the same may have been the case with the Gypsy, which comes from the same root. M. Paspati satisfactorily proved that the wandering tribes of the RomÁ, e.g. the wild ZapÁris or DyÁparis (Szapary?),[122] have preserved in Rumelia the langue mÈre of their ancients, whereas the “domigence,” the sedentary dwellers in cities and towns, have “falsified” the tongue. The same is said by the Bedawin concerning the “Jumpers of Walls,” the settled Arabs. This part of the subject leads to notices of Gypsy tales and legends, in which, by the way, Gypsies rarely figure, and to other productions of la pauvre Muse tsigane. After some discursive matter, our critic passes from M. Paspati to M. Bartalus, who has quoted from certain very rare tracts (La VÉritable origine, etc., a.d. 1798 and 1800) on the rise of the Gypsy nation. The BohÉmiens, it appears, are descendants of Cham or Ham, “which is admissible”; and, like their brethren, they were damned by Noah. But, on the destruction of the Plain cities, Sodom and Gomorrah, Adama and Saboim—Segor being honourably excluded—Zoar and its inhabitants were saved because they harboured one Lot. The lands, however, were assigned to this “patriarch”; and the Hamites, being dispersed, became Gypsies. Once more that myth of Noah!—for how much false anthropology is it not responsible? Again, we do not fail to meet another old friend. The wicked king of Egypt appears in a famous “Pharaoh Song,” whilst in Iceland he gave his name to a cavalry of seals. The oath formula of the Hungarian Gypsies prescribed by the courts was: “As King Pharaoh was engulfed in the Red Sea, so may I be accursed and swallowed up by the deepest abyss if I do not speak the truth! May no theft, no traffic, nor any other business prosper with me! May my horse turn into an ass at the next stroke of his hoof, and may I end my days on the scaffold by the hands of the hangman!”[123] The critic then passes to a second and a remarkable characteristic of the Gypsy race, the musical, which is now becoming known throughout Europe. At the Paris Exposition of 1878 the “nightingales of Koursk,” a troop of forty RomÁ from Moscow, followed the Hungarian Cziganes, and were equally admired. Even the celebrated Catalani appreciated the ChingÁneh girl of Moscow, “who performed with such originality and true expression the characteristic melodies of the tribe”; and threw over her shoulders a papal gift in the shape of a rich Cashmere shawl. Most Englishmen now know that Mr. Bunn’s “Bohemian Girl,” thus unhappily translated from La BohÉmienne of St. George, was a Romni girl. The far-famed AbbÉ Liszt[124] attributed to these “tinklers” the chief rÔle in treating the musical ÉpopÉe; but this opinion of the great master is opposed by the artistic M. Bartalus. I, however, incline to Liszt’s view. Let me note that the popular Romani word for musician, Lautar (plural Lautari), may either be the Persian LÚtÍ,[125] or more probably a deformed offspring of the Arabic El `AÚd[126], which gave rise to our “lute.” Our critic holds that the Gypsy’s music, like his tales and poetry, is his own; whilst the matter of the songs and ballads is borrowed from Hungarians, Rumans, and even the unimaginative Turk: he also points out that many of the legends are cosmopolitan. When the Catalan Gypsy, met by the author in 1869 at St. Germain, told him that the État (Dharma or religious duty) of the Romni-chel, the “sons of women” (i.e. their mothers), is to cheat their neighbours; that they learned this whole duty of man from St. Peter, who as our Lord’s servant habitually tricked and defrauded his Master; that le dieu Jesus, who established all human conditions on the creation day, had taught them, by example as well as precept, to beg and to vagabond naked-footed; that his tribe were veritable Christians “who knew only God and the Blessed Virgin”; and that all these things were written in the “Book of the Wanderings of our Lord,”—we recognize the old, old tale. The ancient Rom, like a host of other facetious barbarians, was solemnly hoaxing a simple student, a credulous “civilizee.” Still the joke has its ethnological value; it shows that the pseudo-Christian saints of the Gypsy Evangel are thieves and “sorners.” Highly characteristic also is the address to the Gypsy deity: “Good, happy God of gold!” On the other hand, such laical legends of the Apostles are current even amongst Christian peoples, from whom they may have been kidnapped by the RomÁ. Witness the French peasant’s tale of Jesus and St. Peter, the horseshoe and the cherries, which has for moral the market value of thrift. The supplementary article analyzes the scholarly work of M. Franz Miklosich.[127] This erudite Slavist whose only reproach is that he finds Slavism in every place, distributes the Gypsies into twelve linguistic groups, to which he assigns an inadequate total of six hundred thousand head. Amongst the highly conservative RomÁ of Northern Russia he detects, besides Russian and Polish, Ruman and Magyar words, expressions borrowed from the neo-Greek of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. As these Hellenisms are also adopted by the Spanish Gypsies, the natural deduction is that Greece generally formed an older home long inhabited by the wanderers, who thence passed on vi Poland to Russia. But this theory, if proved to be fact, would not invalidate the general belief that some Gypsy tribes migrated through Egypt and Morocco into Spain without crossing the Pyrenees. The RomÁ, being “sturdy vagabonds,” rather than true nomads, would borrow from one another during their frequent and regular meetings the terms wanting to their scanty and barbarous speech. It appears rich enough in material and sensuous expression, and the same is notably the case with the wandering Arab and the Turkoman. M. Paspati[128] notices that “the [Rumelian] wanderer has more than forty words for his tent and the implements of his trade.” A “Thieves’ Latin” would not be required by these bilinguals; but for the purposes of concealment and villainy they would readily adopt strange vocables. Thus in the Scottish Lowlands they make their English speech unintelligible by French and Gaelic, Welsh and Irish insertions. As will appear, they have invented in Egypt and Spain, and I believe there only, a regular argot. Such irregularities prevent our attributing much importance to the general remark that the Gypsy dialect does not return; i.e. that the Polish RomÁ do not use Russian terms, nor the Turkish RomÁ Magyar words. Finally, M. Miklosich puts to flight the “Tamerlane tenet” of popular belief which would place the last Gypsy exodus after a.d. 1399. He adduces documentary evidence, the well-known donation instruments of a.m. 6894 (= a.d. 1386-87) issued by the Kings of Wallachia; noting that during the fifteenth century, and even between 1832 and 1836, the Principalities, which have still preserved the Jewish disabilities, held the Gypsies to be a Slav race. The Derniers Travaux has the merit of bringing prominently forward the “hypothesis of Hasse,” advanced in 1803 and presently forgotten. It would explain the purity of the Gypsy tongue by the fact of these tinklers being settled in Europe ab antiquo. It has often been remarked that the farther we go eastward, and the nearer we approach the cradle of the race, Sindh or Western India, the more completely the language changes and degrades. This is to be expected. The Jats living in close contact with other dialects would necessarily modify their own after the fashion of their neighbours; such is the rule of the world. The RomÁ have only two ties: one is of blood, the love of “kith, kin, and consequence”; the other is of language which serves to conceal his speech. During the dispersion of centuries the Gypsies, surrounded by alien and hostile races, would religiously adhere to the old tongue; and having a vital interest in preserving a secret instrument, it would war against change. It is the more necessary to insist upon this view, as our critic expects to find after a separation of some four centuries the Jats or other tribes speaking pure old Gypsy. The modern Gypsy may still represent the ancient JÁtaki. Hence also the dialect of their ancestors is dying out amongst the sedentary RomÁ. M. Paul Bataillard has carefully separated, and perhaps too curiously, the historical arrival of the Gypsies in Western Europe and their establishment in the south-eastern regions, Thrace, Dacia, etc. An abuse of his theory makes him urge the identity of his Tsigane with the mysterious Sicani who held Sicily before the Siculi. These and other prehistoric identifications have not yet been generally adopted. Had M. Paul Bataillard reflected a little more, he would not have advocated, considering the extensive habitat of the Jats, the insufficient theory of M. Ascoli—namely, that the Gypsies are Sindhis who dwelt long in Hindustan; nor would M. Ascoli have omitted the widely spoken JÁtaki from his list of neo-Indian tongues, which he unduly reduces to seven. We should have been spared the “conviction” that the RomÁ dwelt in Mesopotamia, which was only one station on their way, Asia Minor and the Lower Danube being the general line of Aryan emigration; that they are aborigines of Kabul, in fact primitive Afghans, as supposed by another French littÉrateur, whose lively imagination strips him of all authority; and, finally, that they are “descendants of those ancient peoples of Bactriana and Arya, successively conquered by Persians, Greeks, IndogetÆ, and Afghans.” A most trivial comparison is made between Segor, the biblical city, and the Gypsy name Cingani (Singani). When Professor Pott and M. de Saulcy find “relationship” and “close connexion” between Sanskrit and Romani-chÍb, they should have explained that the latter is a Prakrit or vulgar tongue with an Aryan vocabulary reposing upon the ruins of a Turanian base. The former, as its name shows, was a refined and city language, never spoken, nor indeed understood, by the peoples of India in general; in fact, a professor’s speech, like the present Romaic of the Athenian logiotÁtoi. The word Berber (Barbar), again, applied to the Gypsies in Persia, means, according to its root, a chatterer, patterer, or speaker of unintelligible cant. It is the Sanskrit Varvvara, [Sanskrit: ???????][129], a low fellow, a savage, the Barbaros of the Greeks and Romans; the Berber, [Sindhi: ????], or Berber, [Arabic: ????], of modern Hindustan; and the racial name of that great scattered people the BarÁbarah, who stretch from the Nile Valley to North-Western Africa. The lunar god, Raho, of the Norwegian Gypsies is a palpable reminiscence and survival of the demon RÁhu. The GhÁzieh of Egypt are not “also called Beremikeh”;[130] the BarÁmikah are a substitute of the Ghagar. The “ChungalÓ,” the “JungalÓ,” and the “ZungalÓ” of Paspati, signifying a non-Gypsy, is evidently JangalÍ, wild or sylvan (jungle) man, the popular title of Europeans, especially of Englishmen, in India. Das also, the term applied by the RomÁ to their Bulgarian and Wallachian neighbours, bears a suspicious resemblance to the Hindu Dashya and Dasa, vulgarly Doss, a low caste or rather a no-caste man, supposed to represent the original Turanian lords of the land. Moreover, why assume with M. Paspati that [Greek: ?: g], [Greek: ?: th], and [Greek: ?: ch] are “Greek importations into the Gypsy tongue”? Of these letters two are Arabo-Persian: [Greek: ?: ch] is = KhÁ, [Arabic: ?]; and [Greek: ?: g] is = Ghayn, [Arabic: ?]; the gamma pronounced GhÁmma in Romaic parlance when preceding the open vowels, Á and o. The third generally corresponds with the Arabic SÁ, [Arabic: ?], pronounced in Persian and Hindi as a simple SÍn (s)[131]. The critic, however, should not have told us, “Le [Greek: ?: th] rÉpond assez bien au ‘th’ Anglais.” Our sibilant has two distinct sounds: one soft, as in thy, answering to the neo-Greek [Greek: d: d]; the other hard, as in theme, = [Greek: ?: th]. The Gypsy Owa, Va (yes) bears a suspicious resemblance to the vulgar Arabic AywÁ, contracted from Ay w' Allah—aye by Allah! A man must have absolutely no practical knowledge of the Rom or of his congener the “mild Hindu” who can ask, “Les esprits grossiers sont-ils donc plus subtils que les nÔtres?” This is the mere morgue and outrecuidance of European ignorance. Let the author try the process of “finessing” upon the first lad, Jat or Sindhi, who comes in his way, and he will readily be made to understand my meaning. Finally, I venture to throw out a hint that the “barbarous helot” may preserve the tribal name Nath, [Sanskrit: ??][132], a mime. This caste, with which the Gypsies used formerly to be identified,[133] certainly did not represent the “wild aboriginal inhabitants of India”; they may have Dravidian affinities, but they are certainly not of Turanian blood. § 3. “Origines, etc.” This paper was published in 1875, when M. Paul Bataillard had the benefit of my letter to the Academy; and apparently its main object is to prove that he preceded me in identifying the Gypsies with the “Djatte” (Jats). It is divided into three parts, which are four. No. 1 contains the author’s reclamation and his notice of Professor de Goeje; No. 2 works out more fully his own theory of Gypsy origin; No. 3 contains a “certain and definitive explanation of the word Tsigane”; and No. 4, by way of colophon and endowment of research, thrusts forward certain preachments upon the direction of future inquiries for the benefit of us rude practical men. Of No. 1, I have already treated, and content myself with energetically objecting to the statement that all who have treated about the peoples of the Indine Valley have imagined either a possible or a probable rapport between the Jats (not Juth) and the Gypsies. M. Paul Bataillard again shows that in 1850, when my paper was published in 1849, neither he nor Professor Fleischer knew aught concerning the modern Sindhi Jats, a mere section of the race, save the corruption of a name. They were ignorant of its extensive habitat scattered between the Indus mouths and the Tatar Steppes. They had never learned that it speaks its own peculiar dialect, which is like that of the Gypsies and the Sindhi to a certain extent, Persico-Indian. Part No. 2 becomes much more sensational. We find that our critic’s ideas have grown, and that the antiquity of the Gypsies in South-Eastern Europe extends deep into the misty regions of the past. In 1872 he merely alluded to the high importance of the ethnic name Sindho or Sinto (feminine Sindhi; plurals Sindhe and Sindhiyan), “meaning the great.” Now he would identify them with the aborigines of Lemnos, those “lords of Vulcan” the [Greek: S??t?e?: Sinties]—a word generally understood to signify robbers ([Greek: s???a?: sinomai]). The connexion is brought about because Homer describes these metal-workers as speaking a wild speech ([Greek: a????f????: agriophÔnoi]), and because Hellanicus of Lesbos derives them from Thrace. Two independent authorities—the original hypothesist Dr. Johannes Gottlieb Hasse in 1803, and M. Vivien de Saint-Martin in 1847—had suggested an idea which M. Paul Bataillard borrowed and adopted. The Tsigane represent, we are assured, not only the Sicani of Sicily, but also the [Greek: S????a?: Sigynai, S??????: Sigynoi, S???????: Siginnoi], whom Herodotus places in the Caucasus, Asia Minor, and Thrace. The broad gap of years is bridged over, in the teeth of M. Paspati, by means of certain mediÆval Byzantine heretics, the [Greek: ?????a???: Athinganoi], ManichÆans like the Albigenses, the Paulicians, and especially the dwellers in Bosnia and its neighbourhood, also called Athigarii, Atingarii, Anthingarii, and Atingani; and this only because certain of the modern Greeks call their Gypsies Athinganoi ([Greek: ?????a???: Athinganoi]). Brosset[134] notices that in the eleventh century, when King Bagrat visited Constantinople, he there heard a marvellous and wholly incredible thing; namely, that a tribe of the Samaritans descended from Simon Magus, and called Atsinkan, were still infamous for their evil-doings and sorceries. And then we have a silly story of how the monk St. George of Athos rendered all their poisons of no account. Moreover, we are told, if the modern Tsigane represent the Sinties and the Siginnoi, they must, ergo, stand in the same relationship to certain mysterious tribes inhabiting the Caucasus and Western Asia, Egypt, the Levantine Islands, and the Danubian basin. Thus we see the origin of the Telchini, the Chalybes, and other “Cabiric peoples.” The latter has the disadvantage of being purely Semitic, KabÍr meaning “the great” applied to the twelve Dii majores of the Phoenicians who sent forth Kadmos (El KadÍn) = the old or the great.[135] But let that pass. Our author proves his fact by showing that these races, like the modern RomÁ, were makers of weapons, especially the assegai or javelin; whilst the Cabiri and the Telchini were renowned for music and soothsaying. And how not recognize the Troglodytic Sibyls of Asia Minor and Egypt, of Greece, and especially Thrace, in the pure Gypsy, when [Greek: S????a: Sibylla] is only a form of [Greek: S????: SibynÊ] or [Greek: ?????: ZibynÊ], which naturally derives from [Greek: S?????: SigynÊ], [Greek: S???????: Sigynnos] = Tsigane? How not perceive that the Egyptian prophetesses turned into black pigeons by Herodotus, and the doves of Dodona, were not identical with the RomnÍ? This becomes a disease—Tsigane on the brain; from which our author evidently suffers in an acute form—so acute as to render his imagination most lively. To the unimaginative ethnologist the “Sindhi” are simply the Sindh tribes of Gypsies, so called from the Sindhu, that mighty stream which gave to Europe a name for the Indian Peninsula. Hence, indeed, some philologists would derive the Spanish word Zincale (Zinkale), making it a compound of Sindh and KÁlo (plural KÁle, black) = dark men of Sindh. Rejecting this treatment, we must consider it a tribal name like KarÁchi (= lower Sindhian), Helebi (Aleppine), LÚri (from LÚristÁn), and many others into which the great Jat nation is divided. But whilst we reject particulars, we must beware how we treat the general theory. Tradition and ethnological peculiarities, far stronger than philological resemblances or coincidences, tend to prove that the earliest metal-workers and weapon-makers were an Indine race whose immigration long preceded the movement of the last ethnic wave, the Gypsy of history. Herodotus notices a caste or corporation of ambulant founders and metal-workers which came from Asia, possibly belonging to the age called by M. de Mortillet de la chaudronnerie, when the hammer took the place of simple fusion. Modern research has shown that these prehistoric artisans affected Gypsy habits like the caldereros (coppersmiths) of the RomÁ in later ages. They had no permanent abodes; their ateliers were not inside the towns, but en plein champ near inhabited centres; here they fashioned their new and recast their old metal, bartering their works for furs, hides, amber, and other articles of local provenance. Hence M. Émile Burnouf[136] assumes these wandering workmen of the Bronze Age to have been a Gypsy race; while the remarkable similarity, I may almost say the identity, of the alloy suggests that it was the produce of a single people. We must, however, be careful how we accept his derivation from Banca and Malacca of the prehistoric tin required for bronze. It would first be supplied by the Caucasus mines to a race of workmen migrating along the southern base from the West to the East. The next source of supply, before passing to Southern France, Spain, and the Cassiterides, would be North-Western Arabia. The Book of Numbers[137] distinctly mentions the metal, placing it between iron and lead, as part of the spoils taken by the children of Israel from their cousins the Midianites (circ. b.c. 1450); and the two Khedivial expeditions (a.d. 1877-78) have brought home proofs that it may still be found there. Indeed, I have a suspicion that the “broken” people of Western Arabia are descended from the ancient Gypsies who may have worked the gold mines of Midian. Part No. 3 corrects Professor de Goeje, M. Fagnan, and myself in our several explanations of Tsigane. The exaggerated value attributed by M. Paul Bataillard to his own “typical proof and the material confirmation of all his system” seems to have hindered his revelation; and he insists upon it naÏvely as if it were proof of Holy Writ. Its venerable “hypothetical origin” must be sought in the root chinÁv, meaning to thrust, throw, fight, cut, kill, write, and eject saliva. It survives in the word Sagaie or Zagaie (our assegai): the latter, when split in two, contains a first part similar to sag-itta, and a second like gais (goe-sum), the heavy, barbed Gallic javelin; whilst the whole resembles the Amazonian Sagaris, an axe. In the name of the Prophet—figs! This dreamery is ushered in as usual by a whole page of discursive matter. The debased Romaic [Greek: ?at??e???: katzibelos], a “maker of javelins,” used by a Byzantine poet of the middle fourteenth century, is shown = Sigynos = Tsigane. Kilinjirides, a GrÆcised form of the Turkish Kilij-ji, or sword-maker, is the same word. Let me here note that the “pure Turkish term Kaldji,” still used at Rhodes, is not the same as Kilij-ji; it is the bastard compound Arabic and Turkish Kala'-jÍ, a tinsmith. Such are some of the linguistic will-o’-the-wisps which have, I fear, habitually misled our critic. I must now consider the origin of the corrupted “typical term” Tsigane, which M. Paul Bataillard has converted into a “generic name.” The old and obsolete derivations of the Zingaro, which with various modifications prevails throughout Europe, are the following.[138] Ciga or Siga, the seaport of Mauretania CÆsariensis, or the Ciga or Cija River mentioned by Lucan; the Magian Cineus; Zeugitania Regio (Zeugis); Singara, the Mesopotamian city; Zigera, a Thracian settlement; the Zinganes, a tribe inhabiting the Indus Delta (?); the Zigier Province in Asia Minor; and “the bird Cinclo” (motacilla or wagtail), a “vagrant bird which builds no nest,” and therefore gave rise to the term Cinli or Cingary. Less absurd is the derivation from Singus, or Cingus, the chief of a horde under “Tamerlane,” who employed these men, not as combatants, but camp-followers and to export trains[139] (a.d. 1401). Arabshah, the biographer of the great Tatar AmÍr, recounts a contrivance by which in a.d. 1406 he rid his city (Samarkand) of the rebellious Zingaros; and the account of this race shows a certain correspondence with the Gypsies. Hence, probably, Borrow (The Zincali) tells us that “the Eastern Gypsies are called Zingarri.” The word is quite unknown to Turkey and Persia. In 1402 they accompanied the Sultan BÁyezÍd on his invasion of Europe along the Danube, and thus settled in Bulgaria and Old Servia. What we know for certain is that the Gypsies have been known in Persia from time immemorial as ChingÁneh, [Persian: ???????]. Professor de Goeje writes the word TsjengÁn (ChengÁn), and would explain it by the Persian plural of Tsenj, a musician, a dancer. Is this word intended for Chang, a harp, or for Zang, in Arabic Zanj, a KÁlo, a “black man,” as the Gypsy is still called in England? ChingÁneh in Syria becomes JingÁneh, the Semites having no ch; and the term now applies, not to the Gypsies generally, but to a small and special tribe. The Greek and Romaic [Greek: ?t????a???: Atzinganos] and [Greek: ?????a???: Athinganos] corruptions of ChingÁneh, are, as we have seen by Atsinkan, as old at Constantinople as the eleventh century. In Turkish the word is written as in Persian, but the pronunciation changes to ChingyÁneh; M. Paspati adopts TchinghianÉ, the Turco-French corruption, with the e = eh. Hence evidently the Hungarian Czigan (Czigany, CzigÁnyok, Czingaricus, etc.), and the Transylvanian Cingani, which appears in writings of the fifteenth century; the former evidently engendered M. Bataillard’s bastard Tsigane. The Poles turned ChingÁneh into Cygan (Cyganaeh, Cyganskiego, etc.), and the Russians into Zigan. Here we see the Italian Ciano, Cingano, and Zingano, the older forms of Zingaro and the Portuguese Cigano. The Spanish Zincali is derived by Borrow from two Gypsy words meaning “KÁle” (the black men) of Zend (Sind or Ind), a theory perfectly inadmissible. The Iberian GitÁno, now a term of opprobrium, is probably a survival of the racial name, and not a corruption of the older Egypciano, the Basque Egipcioac. The latter, evidently from Aigyptos, Ægyptus, Egypt, an “Egyptian,” is itself a corruption of Kupt, [Persian: ???], in modern parlance a Copt. Hence the Turks also call their vagrants Kupti or Gupti. Hence also [Greek: G?ft??: Gyphtos] in Romaic applies indifferently to a Gypsy or a blacksmith, and hence finally our Gypsy, which should be pronounced with a hard g, and written as by the older writers Gypsy. All four derive from a different root, the Egyptian. As regards the German Zigeuner and its older forms Secane and Suyginer (fifteenth century), Professor de Goeje would derive it from SjikÂri (SyikÁri), as he writes ShekÁri, a huntsman, much reminding us of that diction which confounds “srimp” with “shrimp.” The word means a wanderer, and seems to derive from the root that gave us zig-zag. The Dutch call these Indians Heiden af EgyptiËr’s; the French Égyptiens, but preferably BohÉmiens, showing what they believed to be the last halting-place of the tribe before it passed on to Western Europe. A curious irony of fate has connected in the Gallic mind the old land of the Boii with all that is wild and unsettled, when its sons are the stiffest and the most priggish of the Austro-German beamter class. Not a few commentators on the Bible[140] have believed the Gypsies to be that “mixed multitude” which has done so much for romantic ethnology. This medley, the Hebrew’s hasaphsuph, corresponding with the Arabic Habash (Abyssinian), we are told “went up also with the Jews out of Egypt.” The learned add that they marched eastward to India, became veritable Aryans, retraced their steps to Misraim, the two Egypts, upper and lower, and thence spread over Europe. For the first set of words, Tsigane included, I hold ChingÁneh to be the origin, owning at the same time my inability to determine the root or history of the word. For the second, whose type is Gitano, I think it probable that the wanderers may have modified their racial name Jat and its adjective JatÁni into the semblance of Egyptian at the time when they represented themselves to be descendants of the old Nile dwellers and to speak an Egyptian (Coptic) dialect. The Jugo-Slav tongues abound in similar instances of conversion, vernacular and significant terms being often applied to the older terms of conquered or occupied countries. For instance, Aurisina, the Roman station near Trieste, became Nabresina, from na-brek = ad montem. Returning to M. Paul Bataillard, we find him declaring that the Gypsies are generically Chamites (descendants of Ham!), and specifically Kushites, “who lived long enough under the 'Aryas in the Indus region to lose their Kushite tongue and to adopt an Aryan dialect.” This immense assertion, made perfunctorily, as it were, and without acknowledgment of its source, is worthy of the eighteenth century and its “mixed multitude” borrowed from the Book of Exodus. What the learned Movers (Geschichte d. Phoenicier) said of the “Kushites” was that, originally from India, they migrated in prehistoric days westwards, allied themselves with the Semites, and became the peoples speaking such Aryo-Semitic tongues as the Egyptian and Coptic, Himyaritic and GhÍz. To believe that this also was the history of the Gypsy movement is to hold that, whilst other “Kushites” changed their physique and their morale, their eyes and hair, their cheekbones and figures generally, the Gypsies have remained pure Indians without a trace of other blood. A word here upon this “Kushite” theory, which has been accepted by men of the calibre of Heinrich Brugsch Bey. It appears to be simply a labour-saving institution, in fact what algebraists call supposer un inconnu, a pure assumption which spares the pains of working out the origination of the so-called Aryo-Semitic races. These Kushites, who were they? Where are they mentioned in history or legend as emigrants from the plains of Hindustan to the north-eastern angle of Africa? What traces have they left upon the long route across Western Asia which connects the Indus with the Nile? How came it that, without marking their exodus by a single vestige of civilization, they began at once to hew the obelisks and build the pyramids in their new home, the chef-d’oeuvres of artistic Egypt’s golden age? No answer to such objections as these. In Part No. 4, concluding the paper, M. Paul Bataillard attempts to conciliate his “principal thesis” with the views of M. de Goeje. The Leyden professor opines that the first colonies of Djatts (Jats) were founded amongst the Persians and Arabs of the seventh century; and M. Fagnan also speaks of inscriptions in Buddhist characters treating of the Jats in the fourth and fifth centuries. The tribal name, corrupted by Arabization, appears in the “Canal of the Zott” (Zutt) near Babylon, and in the “Zott-land.” Families of “Zotts” were transplanted to Syrian Bosra, Bostra, or Old Damascus during the earliest Muslim conquests in the seventh century (circ. a.d. 670), not in the ninth (a.d. 855), as our author had determined. About a.d. 710 “Zotts” and Indians were transferred from the Indus to the Tigris (KhuzistÁn); and between a.d. 714 and 720 a certain number were sent with their four thousand buffaloes—“which make the lion fly (!)”—to colonize the Antioch regions. Hence possibly the name of the large tribe which is known in Egypt and elsewhere as “El H'aleb,” or “Helebi, the Aleppine.” They waxed powerful enough in their new possessions to contend with the Caliphat till a.d. 820-834, when they were subjugated, and some twenty-seven thousand were transplanted to Bagdad. Thence they were sent north-eastwards to KhÁnikin and westwards to Ayin-Zarba (?) in Syria, a place subsequently (a.d. 855) captured by the Byzantines; and finally the “Zott” and their belongings were carried off and dispersed throughout the empire. So far so good. But our critic appends a rider to Professor de Goeje’s tale. He owns that this race, Zott or Jats, may have transformed itself into Gypsies—not difficult, as they were Gypsies. But he contends that they formed a feeble modern addition to his “Kushites,” to the race which was represented ab antiquo by the Sicani and Sinties et hoc genus omne. Further let me note en passant the vulgar error now obsolete which, confounding Hindi with the UrdÚ-ZabÁn or camp dialect,[141] made the former a bastard modern tongue when its literature is as old as the earliest English and French. And here we may note that, while the Romni-chÍb is in point of vocabulary a sister of the Hindi, the grammar of the noun with its survival of regular cases belongs to a more remote age. It is partly Prakrit and partly Sindhi, a dialect whose numerous harsh consonants make us suspect, despite Dr. Trumpp, a non-Aryan element. Besides the prehistoric occupation of the trans-Indine regions by the Indo-Scythians noticed in Alexander’s day, we find another dating from far later times. The Bactrian kingdom which became independent sixty-nine years after the great Macedonian’s death lasted one hundred and thirty years, and was destroyed about b.c. 126 by the “white Huns,” Chinese Tatars, who crossed the Jaxartes. Hence possibly the Dravidian Brahins still dwelling in the midst of Aryan populations. The apparent anomaly that the wild and vagrant Gypsies have preserved in Europe ancient forms which have died out in the old home has already been accounted for; I may also number amongst the causes of conservation the total want of a written character, which also proves the early date of the Gypsy exodus. § 4. “Notes et Questions, etc.,” “Sur le mot Zagaie, etc.” I treat of Nos. 4 and 5 out of order of date because they are mere ausflugs illustrating Nos. 3 and 6. From the first we learn that when the French occupied Algiers in 1830 they found the city and its territory partly occupied by Gypsies, who did not mix with the Arabs or the Kabyles (KabÁil or the Tribes), with the Jews or the Europeans. They spoke their own tongue, and they were often visited by their congeners of Hungary and other parts of Europe. It is conjectured that these RomÁ may have passed over from Spain, and possibly that they travelled eastward from Morocco, as Blidah contains many of the race. The question becomes interesting when we find the Egyptian Ghagar claiming to be emigrants from the West. According to the Librarian of Algiers, the late M. Berbruger in 1846, they were known as GuesÁni, pronounced G'sÁni or G'zÁne (GezzÁnÍ), the feminine singular being GezzÁna (GezzÁneh).[142] Here of course M. Paul Bataillard finds no difficulty in detecting, through DzÂna and TsÂna, “a corruption of the true name Tsigani or Tchingani.” The latter form, I would observe, retaining the nasal of the original ChingÁneh and the Arabized JingÁneh, is far preferable to the mutilated Tsigane adopted afterwards (1875) with so much pomp and such a flourish of trumpets. A family dislodged from a house in the present Rue de Chartres was found lying upon the straw surrounded by human skulls, serpents, and other instruments of their craft. Whilst being evicted they noisily threatened their molesters with all manner of devilry; but as usual they ended by submitting. The men apparently had no occupation; the women used to wander about the streets in small parties, generally a matron followed by four or five girls, crying, “GezzÁneh! who wants to know the future?”[143] The Durke,[144] or pythoness, carried a tambourine; and when divining she placed upon her drum-head a bit of alum and of charcoal, with pebbles, beans or grains, wheat and barley; these represented the “elements,” water, fire, and earth, thus showing that the process was a rude form of the Arab’s geomancy. Sometimes the “spae-wife” made passes over the consultee’s head, holding in her hand a lump of sugar; this reminds us of the magicians in Morocco and Egypt and their mesmerized “clear-seers.” Between 1837 and 1838 these Gypsies retired into the SaharÁ or Desert; and now they visit the city only in caravans. Their women, tattooed and painted like the Bedawiyyah, are generally robed in rags and tatters, and decorated with the usual tinsel, rings, and hangings. An interesting subject, but by no means easy of treatment, would be the order of Dervishes known as AÏssaoua, also “called AdrÁ, from the name of one of their festivals.”[145] They have been noticed by a multitude of writers each more ignorant than the other. These men are probably Gypsies, to judge by analogy with the RifÁ'i Dervishes, who will be noticed under the head of Egypt. The same may be said of the NaÏlette, the Almah (Álimeh) or dancing-girl of Algiers, who affiliates herself with the AulÁd NÁ'il[146], the large and wealthy Bedawin tribe occupying the inner regions. Similarly the Nawar Gypsies farther east derive themselves from the Beni Nawar. These NaÏlettes are public when young, yet in after-life they become faithful wives; the same is said of the Egyptian Ghagar and the nach-girls of India. According to one authority, there are among the Mozabites two or three Gypsy tribes that live by prostituting their women to caravans. It is curious to compare the rigid chastity of the Gypsy girls in England and Spain, indeed in Europe generally, where a lapse would lead to certain death, with their looseness of life elsewhere. But the RomÁ is une race curieuse entre toutes, and both extremes may be expected from it. It remains only to treat of No. 5, which discusses the origin of the word Zagaie or Sagaie, the Spanish and Portuguese Azagaia, a small kind of Moorish spear which we have named assegai, transferring it to the throwing dart of the BÁsetu or KÁfir race. We have seen (§ 3) that M. Paul Bataillard has fathered upon this term the mysterious racial name Tsigane (ChingÁneh), and there is no reason to repeat what has been said of his derivation. We may accept his dictum: “There are words whose history would, if known, throw vivid light upon human migrations and the affinity of peoples in very ancient ages.” But here we find, in lieu of illumination, outer darkness. The comparison of Zagaie, GÆsum, and Gais is bad enough; but it is worse to transport the assegai into South American speech. Demersay, describing the Paraguayan tribe of “Payagas” (the PayagÚas or Canoe Indians), calls their lance Pagaie, “which,” remarks our author, “may, it appears, be permitted to me to identify with Sagaie.” This is again transcendental etymology applied to ethnic misuse. Pagaie here is simply the popular European, and especially French, corruption of TacapÉ or TangapÉ, the paddle-club of ironwood sharpened to serve as a sword, and used by all the maritime tribes of Eastern South America. Finally Korik, the bellows, so called by the Gypsies of Asia Minor, is not Turkish, but a corruption of the Arabic Kor. Here ends my long notice of M. Paul Bataillard’s four papers; the novelties introduced into them will, it is hoped, be held to justify the prolixity.
Part II
TOPOGRAPHICAL NOTES ON THE GYPSIES AND THE JATS
CHAPTER IV
HISTORICAL SURVEY OF THE GYPSY IN EUROPE Before proceeding to the topographical portion of my subject, it may be well to review summarily the historical accounts of the RomÁ who overspread Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Grellman, a classic upon the subject of “Chinganology,”[147] proved that the last movement to Western Europe set out, not from Bohemia, but from Hungary and the adjacent countries, including (Old) Rumelia and Moldavia. In 1417 some three thousand settled in Moldavia, whilst late in the same year hordes of Tatars, then so called, appeared before the gates of the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic coast, first Luneburg, and then Hamburg, LÜbeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund.[148] Next year they migrated to middle Germany, to Meissen, Leipzig, and Hesse; and presently turned their steps towards Switzerland, entering ZÜrich on August 1, 1418. There they divided their forces. One detachment crossed the Botzberg, and suddenly appeared as “Saracens” before the ProvenÇal town of Sisteron. The main body, led by “the dukes, the earls, and a bevy of knights,”[149] turned towards Alsace, swarmed through Strasburg, and halted under the walls of Nuremburg. It is not easy to determine the date of their arrival in Spain, where they may have dwelt in far more ancient times; indeed, during the fifteenth century the Iberian Peninsula was popularly supposed to be their birthplace.[150] On the other hand, many Spaniards believe them to be Germans, and called their tongue “Germania,” Gypsy German. In 1433 they invaded Bavaria; and thence they spread over Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Their first appearance in French Christendom seems to be when a tribe of one hundred and thirty-two souls, under “a duke,” “a count,” and ten “knights,” startled the people of Paris, August 17, 1427. Pasquier, an eye-witness, who records the arrival of these “Christian penitents” at Paris, where they lodged in La Chapelle, outside the city, gives them ugly features, with crisp black hair.[151] If he be correct, the horde either must have sojourned long in Africa, or must have had intercourse with negro and negroid. There is no more constant characteristic of the modern Gypsy, after his eye, than the long, coarse, black Hindu-Tatar hair. From an old work[152] it would seem that the Gypsies drifted to England about 1500, though this is uncertain. The writer, in his book published in 1612, says: “This kind of people about a hundred years ago began to gather an head about the southern parts. And this I am informed and can gather was their beginning: Certain Egyptians [sic] banished their country (belike not for their good condition) arrived here in England; who for quaint tricks and devices, not known here at that time among us, were esteemed and held in great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loiterers joined with them, and in time learned their crafty cozening. The speech which they used was the right Egyptian [sic] language, with whom our Englishmen conversing at least learned their language.” We first hear of them in Italy in the early part of the fifteenth century. On July 11, 1422, a horde of fully one hundred, led by a “duke,” encamped before Bologna, passing by Forli, where some of them maintained they came from India. At Bologna these “mild Hindus” represented that they were bound on an expiatory visit to the Pope. Elsewhere they became “penitents,” who, expelled by the Saracens from their homes in Lower Egypt, had confessed themselves to his Holiness, and had been condemned to seven years’ wandering and dispersion by way of penance. Thus was visited upon their heads the crime of those “perverse pagans” their forefathers, who refused a drink of water to the Virgin and Child flying from the wrath of Herod. This was only fourteen centuries after, and we know that lenta ira deorum est. There was quoted concerning them the forty years’ dispersion of Ezekiel: “And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries” (xxix. 12). The prophet’s minatory ravings against the old Egyptians, who had been a “staff of reed to the house of Israel,” were also recalled to explain their bondage and vagabondage. Hence some declared that it was sinful to maltreat these pseudo-pilgrims. The Gypsies travelled to Rome and secured a papal safe-conduct twenty years after their first appearance at Bologna. Hypocritical legend secured them passes and passports from the European powers who were then engaged in the perilous Ottoman Wars. They were more or less supported by the Emperor Sigismund and the bishop of the same name, who, a.d. 1540, at FÜnf-Kirchen employed them in casting iron and cannon-balls for the benefit of the Turks; by Ladislas II., King of Hungary, and other potentates. The Gypsies doubtless imitated the Jews in hedging between the two belligerents, and in betraying both of them for their own benefit; and this doubtless was part of the cause of the persecution which the two scattered races endured. Purely religious movements of the kind are rare in history; but they are numerous when religion mixes itself, as it ever has and always will, with politics. Presently public opinion changed, and the natural reaction set in. Lorenzo Palmireno, a.d. 1540, declared in one of his books “that the Gypsies lie,” and the lives they led were not of penitents, but of “dogs and plunderers.” They were now loaded with all the crimes of the Middle Ages—espionage in the cause of the infidel, incendiarism, professional poisoning and other forms of assassination, cannibalism, sorcery and bewitching, blaspheming God and the saints, and personal intercourse with the foul fiend in the shape of a grey bird. In 1499, shortly after the institution of the Holy Office, a.d. 1481, and the expulsion of the Jews, a.d. 1492, the “Great Pragmatic,” signed by Ferdinand and Isabella at Medina del Campo under the influence of Jimenez de Cisneros, the archbishop who disgracefully broke faith with the Moors of Grenada, formally attacked the vagrant race.[153] It decreed that the Egyptians and stranger tinkers, caldereros, should settle as serfs for sixty days, and after that time leave the kingdom under severe personal penalties. This decree was renewed under Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo, in 1523, and of Madrid, in 1528, 1534, and 1560, with the condition that “those found vagabonding for the third time should become the life slaves of their captors.” Under the timorous Philip III., 1619, the Professor of Theology to the Toledo University, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, addressed a discourse to the king justifying the wholesale slaughter of the race, even women and children, by the dictum, “No law pledges us to bring up wolf-cubs.” Following the lead of the Catholic kings, the Diet of Augsburg, 1500-1548, revoking all previous concessions, banished the Gypsies from the Holy German Empire under similar conditions. This ordinance was also revived in 1530, in 1544, in 1548, in 1551, and in 1577, the last time confirmed by a police regulation at Frankfurt. In 1545 the Superior Tribunal of Utrecht punished a Gypsy who had disobeyed a decree of exile by flogging until blood was drawn, by splitting his nostrils, and by shaving his head before he was driven to the frontier.[154] In England the liberal and Protestant Henry VIII.[155] sanctioned an Act of Parliament persecuting the Gypsies to extermination; and it was renewed by Philip and Mary, and by Elizabeth. Francis I. of France followed the example of his neighbours; and under Charles IX. the persecution was renewed by the States-General assembled at Orleans, 1561, who decreed extermination by steel and fire. Another and similar edict appeared in 1612. Charles V., besides his proclamations in Spain and Germany, condemned the Gypsies of the Netherlands to enrolment under pain of death, and this was confirmed by the States-General in 1582. Fanatic Poland in 1578 issued a law forbidding hospitality to Gypsies, and exiling those who received them. Pius V. showed himself equally inhuman, and the RomÁ were driven from the duchies of Parma and Milan, from the republic of Venice, and the kingdom of Denmark. Sweden distinguished herself by the severest laws of expulsion in 1662, 1723, and 1727. From these barbarities arose the Gypsies’ saying, “King’s law has destroyed the Gypsy law.” The latter consisted of fidelity to one another; the code contained only three commandments, of which the first two were addressed to women: “Thou shalt not separate from the Rom (Gypsy law).” “Thou shalt be faithful to thy Rom.” “Thou shalt pay thy debts to the Rom.” These Draconian laws against the Gypsies died out during the development of civilization, and received their death-blow at the hands of the great and glorious French Revolution, 1789.
I propose now to collect a series of notices upon the subject of the Gypsies and the Jats which are not readily procurable by students; many are obtained from books little known to the public, and not a few are gathered by myself. And with a view of introducing some order into the scattered tribes, we will begin from the farthest East, the old home.
CHAPTER V
THE GYPSY IN ASIA § 1. The Punjabi Jats We find the Jats well and copiously described as early as 1835 by Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sleeman.[156] He called them “JÂts,” with a long vowel, and treats them everywhere as low caste, or rather no-caste, Hindus. Their original habitat was upon the Indus about MultÁn, one of the headquarters of Hindu fable, and thence they spread to the Jumna and the Chumbul Valleys. They were alternately robbers and peaceful peasants until about a.d. 1658, when they plundered the ill-fated Dara Shikoh, son of Shah Jehan, the Moghol. Enriched by this feat, they became the nobles and rajahs of the land; and they expended vast sums in building forts like BharatpÚr, Matras, and Gohud, and on public works like the quadrangular garden at DÍg. Incited by a love of conquest and plunder, and united by a feeling of nationality, which may be called patriotism, they would have become, but for the MarÁttÁs and for the English, the dominant race in India. Fate, however, was against them, and those dwelling between the Indus and the Jumna merged into the NÁnah-ShÁkis or Sikhs. As regards the origin of his “JÂts,” Colonel Sleeman reminds us that Sultan Mahmoud carried back with him to Hindustan in a.d. 1011 some two hundred thousand captives, the spoils of his expedition. The way of the new faith presently converted powerful subjects and industrious peasantry into a fighting caste, and every Jat became a soldier. On the other hand, those lying along the Jumna and the Chumbul, never having been inspired with the martial spirit or united under any conqueror, continued to drive the plough. Thus external influence combined to make the Jats restless, and gradually they turned their steps westward.[157] Again, Ghenghis Khan, in a.d. 1206, and his descendant Turmachurn, who in a.d. 1303 invaded India and carried off hosts of prisoners, may have given impulse to the current westward. Lastly, about two centuries after, the great Conqueror whom Europe has apparently determined by sectarian nickname, “Tamerlane,” swept over Northern India in a.d. 1398-1400, and his horde must have caused a wide scattering of the weaker tribes. The Jats, I may here notice, inhabited the Indine Valley, whence emigration westward is easy; the other tribes, like the Nats, fancifully connected with the Gypsies, were by no means so favourably situated for an exodus. Originally the Gypsies must have been outcasts, not Hindu Pariahs, as some have supposed them to be; although they may have borrowed from those Aryans the horse-sacrifice and the burning of the dead—the latter custom has become obsolete in Europe, and now only a few of the deceased person’s clothes are thrown into the fire. They had words for God (Deob) and the Devil (Bad God—Benga), “JÁ li benga” (Go to the Devil) being a popular curse. They were unalphabetic: so clever a race would certainly not have lost a written character, and they became nominal Christians and Muslims in imitation of those among whom they settled. The Jats are still half nomads, and perhaps of old they were wholly nomadic. They are breeders of cattle and rude veterinary surgeons. They are fond of music, as are all these races; and their dances are exactly represented by those of the Egyptian Gypsies, a similarity which has yet to be insisted upon. Their iron-smelting, like that of the Mahabaleshwar tribes, is exactly like that of the RomÁ. Their sword play is that of the Hindu, whereas the Gypsies in Scotland use a direct thrust straight to the front,[158] certainly not learned in India. The village Jats are said to mould the babies’ heads; perhaps the idea arose by the shampooing of the younger children by the mothers. Divination seems to be the growth of the soil, and palmistry palpably derives from India. Snake-charming is also common amongst them. As their history in the Panjab proves, they are disposed to robbing and to violence. Lastly, though the history of the country universally derives them from the Land of the Five Rivers, the modern date of Muslim annals would not be proof against their being a race of remote antiquity. Believing that the Jats may fairly have sent forth the last wave of Aryan emigration, the Gypsies, a western flood which was probably preceded by many others, I attempted during my last trip through Sindh in the spring of 1856 to enlist fellow-workmen in the task of illustrating their ethnology and philology. Able linguists like Lieutenant-Colonel Dunsterville, Collector of Hydrabad, and others, were willing to assist me. But I was much disappointed by the incuriousness of a certain professor who met me at Milan before my visit to Western India and Sindh. He had never seen my Grammar and Vocabulary, of which he desired the republication; but he accepted with enthusiasm my offer to enlist collaborators in the Valley of the Indus for the purpose of proving or disproving his favourite theory that the Gypsies are Sindhis who have long dwelt in Afghanistan.[159] This professor had of course no personal experience; anything he had written on the subject was derived from theory only. Object lessons are not yet popular in Italy; it is easier to visit the camel of the Jardin des Plantes than the camel of the desert, and we can hardly expect a littÉrateur to take interest in gathering together raw new facts. § 2. The Jats of Belochistan. The following interesting extract is borrowed from The Country of Balochistan,[160] by A. W. Hughes (London, 1877): “In returning to a consideration of the Jat race of Kachh Gandava, it may be mentioned that wherever they are found—and they may it seems, from what Masson states, be seen not alone in the Panjab and Sindh and in those countries lying between the Satlej and Ganges Rivers, but even at Kabul, Kandahar, and Herat—they preserve their vernacular tongue, the Jatki. Of this language many dialects are believed to exist, and it may well be suggested by Masson that the labour of reviewing would not be found altogether unprofitable. It appears to be a fact that the Jats in some places preserve the calling of itinerant Gypsies, and this more particularly in Afghanistan; and it is not unlikely that some affinity in their language and habits might very possibly be traced between them and the vagabond races of Zingaris which are spread over so large a portion of Europe. The Jats of Eastern Kachhi, the supposed descendants of the ancient GetÆ, form the cultivating and camel-breeding classes, and are of industrious and peaceable habits, but are dreadfully harried and plundered by the marauding Balochis of the neighbouring hills. They are, so to speak, the original inhabitants of this district, the Rinds,[161] Balochis, and Brahuis having settled in the country at an apparently recent period. The Jats are numerously subdivided among themselves, some tribes amounting, it is said, to nearly forty in number. Some of these are known under the names of Aba, Haura, Kalhora, Khokar, Machni, Manju, Palal, Pasarar, Tunia, and Waddera. In general they are all Muhammadans of the Suni persuasion.” As El Islam was established in these countries before our tenth century, and the Hinduism of the Lower Valley of the Indus and of MultÁn dates from the days of Alexander the Great, the original emigration of Gypsies, who hardly preserve a trace of Hinduism, must either have been outlying pagans or a race of extreme antiquity. § 3. The Gypsies of Persia. Captain Newbold, after visiting the Gypsies in Sindh, Belochistan, and MultÁn, found them in the “great plain of Persepolis; in the blossoming Valley of ShirÁz in the Butchligar Mountains; on the scorched plains of Dashtistan and Chaldea.” He thinks that they may be traced to, and probably far beyond, the Caspian, and easterly to the deserts of Herman and Mekran. They affect but little the scanty fare and the uninteresting life of the desert. Perfectly distinct from the pastoral “IliyÁt,” the Bedawin of nearer Asia, the Turkomans, Kurds, and other nomads who camped far from the abodes of settled men, these tribes wander from town to town and village to village, always pitching tents near the more industrious, on whose credulity they partly subsist, here and elsewhere. The ostensible trades of the Persian Gypsies are those of the blacksmith and tinker, the tinner of iron, makers of winnowing sieves, cattle doctors, and fortune-tellers; they are also workers in gold, and forge the current coins of Persia and Turkey. Others are ZÍngar (saddle-makers); and Newbold adds, evidently without sufficient basis: “Hence the Zinganeh, a Kurdish tribe who are supposed to be of Gypsy origin, the Italian, Spanish, and German word for Gypsy, Zingari, etc.” Finally, they are vendors of charms and philters, conjurers, dancers, mountebanks, and carvers of wooden bowls. The professors of these arts wander about in separate bands; but they must not be confounded with independent tribes of vagabonds and outcasts of various tribes who lead a roving, thieving Gypsy life, but are not Gypsy. Their Persian neighbours hold them to have a separate origin; but identity of feature and language prove them to be one and the same stock. They divide themselves into two classes, the Kaoli or Ghurabti, the Kurbat of Syria and the Gavbar. Both names are of disputed origin, and even the Persians and the Gypsies are at variance. Kaoli is generally supposed to be a corruption of Kabuli (a man from Kabul). From this old and venerable city, Sir John Malcolm states, the DakrÁm-i-GÚr imported into Persia twelve thousand singers and musicians; and the dancing girls of Persia are to this day called Kaoli. Khurbat, of which Kurbat is a corruption, involves, it is said, the idea of wandering. Gavbar is equally obscure; the meaning would be “one who takes pleasure in cattle”; but the Persians call a herdsman “Gan-ban,” never “Gav-bar.” The true Kaoli and Gavbar, who, like their brethren in Sindh, Syria, and Egypt, outwardly profess El Islam, rarely, if ever, intermarry with Persians, Turks, or Arabs. And whilst the latter regard them as distinct in origin from themselves, in fact as Hindus, would their wretched Pariahs, the GÁo-bÁr, claim the honour of being Sayfids, or descendants of the Apostle? § 4. The Gypsies of Syria. According to Newbold, the Gypsies of Palestine and South Syria[162] are called NÁwer; while in Asia Minor and North Syria they style themselves Kurbat, Rumeh, and Jinganeh (Chinganeh). The signification of Kurbat is doubtful, but is only supposed to mean a wanderer from his own land, a stranger, derived from the Arab root Gharaba, “he went far away.” The two last terms he holds related to the Spanish Romani (?) and Zincali, and the German Zigeuner. They are true to the character of their race; they disdain to be shepherds or tillers of the soil; and they feed like vultures and carrion upon the credulity and superstitions of mankind. Bedawin of the intellectual world, they juggle the simpler sons and daughters of cities by pretended skill in the occult, more especially chiromancy. Some are dancers and minstrels, while others vend charms, philters, and poisons. Like their English brethren, the men are profound adepts in horseflesh, in donkey-dealing, and in game-snaring; but instead of tinkering pots and kettles, they spin cotton and woollen yarns for their clothes and tents, and they make and mend osier-baskets. This and making wooden boxes were the favourite handicrafts of the Gypsies when they first entered Europe. In winter they camp on the outskirts of large towns, in a sort of half tent, half hut, which is readily removed. During the fine months they go forth into the plains or mountains, where they affect tents or ruins, but never far from the haunts of their prey, mankind. Their migrations, if regular, are not of a great extent; and they never wholly forsake a country unless driven away by absolute persecution. Shaykh Rasscho, the head of the Aleppine Gypsies, and responsible for their poll tax, informed Newbold that his tribe was divided into thirty houses, of whose names he could only remember twenty-eight. It is not material to give these names, but they are evidently Muslim names of men who probably belonged to “heads of houses.” The old Gypsy declared that Kurbat, Nawar, Rumeli, and Chinganeh were all of the same family, and had lived in Syria and Asia Minor since the creation. These people in no way differ physically from the European tinkers. They have the same slender, well-knit figures, rather below middle size, tawny skins, rather prominent cheekbones, and straight black hair. The facial angle is rather Hindu and Tatar than Turkoman, and they have the Hindu’s long horse-tail hair. Dark eyes are not invariable; in the mountains of Antioch the colour is sometimes grey or blue, and the same occurs occasionally among the Arabs of Petra and Palmyra, among the Syrians, the Zebeks, and other races of Asia Minor. A great mixture of blood is the cause. The Zebeks of Smyrna have now been deputed to represent the bandit regular troops of Turkey as opposed to the bandit police. The Asiatic Gypsy has also that peculiar indescribable appearance and expression of eye which is so strongly developed in the RomÁ of Morocco and Moorish Spain, “a feature which, like the brand on the forehead of the first murderer, stamps this marked race over the whole globe, and when once observed is never forgotten. The ‘Evil Eye’ is not the least of the powers with which this people is superstitiously invested; and if there be any truth in the overstrained (?) doctrines of animal magnetism, one could not possibly frame to the imagination an eye so well calculated, so intense a magnetic force.”[163] These Gypsies have never been seen to pray or perform any religious rite; some of their elders, like the Druzes and other Syrian tribes, circumcise their children, and conform to the exterior observances of El Islam. Shaykh Rasscho could repeat with sundry mistakes the Arabic Faith Formula, omitting the second half, “Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.” He said that he and his tribe acknowledged one supreme, everlasting, omnipotent Being, and believed in an existence after death, a state of reward and punishment connected with metempsychosis. He denied the charges made against the Kurbat by Syrians, Muslims, and Christians that they worshipped the stars or the creative principle under a symbol. He also denied that they abhorred the eel and the celebrated black fish of the Antioch Lake, like the Jews, to whom the Mosaic Law—which, by-the-bye, is equally binding upon Muslims—makes it unclean, because it lacks fins and scales.[164] Newbold, however, was assured that the Kurbat, who, like the India Pariahs, are the flayers of animals dying a natural death, devour the carcases of all animals except the man and the hog. According to the Turks and Syrians, the Kurbat girls are not so chaste as their European sisters; yet they wear till marriage the “lacto diklo,” a certain cloth, in token and in pledge of spotless virginity, which the bridegroom alone is permitted to take off. The women dress like the lower orders in Syria; but they affect more ornaments of silver and brass, ear-and nose-rings, armlets and bracelets, anklets and bangles. They spin, take care of the poultry, ducks, cats, and children, and cook exactly like the English Gypsy women. Especially they tell fortunes, which practice, confined to a certain caste but forbidden to others, seems to be a kind of sacerdotalism. The Kurbat, like their brethren all the world over, have no written characters or symbols for letters or words. Their Shaykh told Newbold that, although they themselves could not write, two men in the tribe could write. As, however, neither the men nor specimens of their writing were produced, the inference drawn from this, and other similar inquiries, was that “the written characters, or symbols, of their language, or rather jargon, have either been lost, or are known to only a few, who superstitiously keep them secret.”[165] In the bazars of Syria they speak Arabic or Turkish; at home they use their own tongue. The following scanty list of Kurbat words was obtained viva voce from the Aleppo tribes, and were subsequently checked by comparison with the tribe near Antioch: Vocabulary: Kurbat-Duman. | Kindred. | | English. | Kurbat. | Duman. | | Father | bÁbÚr | bÁbÚr. | | Mother | aida | aida and ana. | | Brother | bhairÚ | berÁvau. | | Sister | bhanu | kochi. | | Natural Objects. | | Sun | gÁham | gÁham. | | Moon | heiÚf | heiÚf. | | Star | astara | astara. | | Air | vÁl and vÁi | kannad hÁvÁ. | | Heavens | khÚai | ghennader. | | The earth | bar, ard (Arab.) or turra | bar. | | Fire | ag | Ár. | | Water | pÁni | hou (Pers. Áb, Áo). | | Rain | bursenden | bÁrÁn. | | Snow | khÍf | sÚrg. | | Cloud | barÚdi | bullÚt. | | Light | tshek | ar and aidinlik. | | Sea | dÚnguz (Turk.) | daÍreh and dÚnguz. | | Mountain | thull (At. tall) | ghiella. | | A spring | khÁni | khÁni. | | Stone | vÚth | kÁwer. | | Salt | lÓu | khoi. | | Milk | kÍr (Sanak. Pers.)and lebben (Ar.) | shir (pure Persian). | | Barley | jou (jau) | jou. | | Wheat | gheysÚf | ghiannam. | | Iron | nÁhl | khallik. | | Night | arÁt | shou (Pers. shub, shao). | | Day | bedis | ghiundez. | | Onion | lussun, piyaz | piyÁz. | | Dhurra (Holcus, Sorghum) | ak | ar. | | Rice | brinj | silki. | | Animals, etc. | | A hare | kunder | kunder. | | Dog | sÚrunter | kÚchek. | | Cat | psÍk | kadizor. | | Horse | ghora or aghora | asp. | | Mare | mÍno | mÍno. | | Ass | kharr | kharri. | | Sheep | bakrÁ | khaidÚ. | | Cow | gÓru | kaikuz. | | Bull | grouf, or maia gÓru | meshjÚk. | | Fowl | jeysh-chumÁri | mirrishk. | | Pig | dÓnguz (Turk.) | dÓnguz. | | Camel | aubba, asht | ashtur. | | Crow | kÍl, hashzeik and tÁnuk | sereh. | | Snake | sÁnb, sÁmp | marr (Pers.). | | Fish | machchi | machchi. | | Parts of the Human Body. | | Finger | anglÚ, Ángul | pechi. | | Hand | kustÚm, kustÚr | dast. | | Eye | akki and Ánkhi | jow. | | Hair | vÁl or bÁl | khalluf. | | Ear | kÁn and kannir | prÍÚk. | | Neck | gÚrgÚr | kÁntlagu. | | Knee | lÚlÚk, chokyÚm | koppaku. | | Teeth | dÁndeir | ghiÓlu. | | Head | sir, chir | murrÁs. | | Flesh | mÁrsi | gÓsht. | | Miscellaneous Nouns. | | A well | astal, chÁl | chÁl. | | An egg | ÁnÓ | heili. | | A ring | angÚshteri | dastÚri. | | God | KhÁnarje | Allah. | | A ship | ghemmi, durongaye | ghemmi. | | Boat | shÁtÚr | shÁtÚr. | | War | lagÍsh, kÁwye | kÁwye. | | A Christian | kuttÚr (dog?) | nosaru (Nazarene). | | Door | KÁpi (Turk.) | kapi. | | Boy | chÁgÚ | lÁwak. | | Girl | lafti | kechikeh. | | Thief | kuft | khaiÚk. | | Tent | chÁder (Pers.) | chÁder. | | Knife | chÍrÍ | khair. | | Rope | kundÓri | kundÓri and sijÚm. | | Book | kitÁl | kitÁh, mushulleh. | | City | viÁr | viÁr. | | Village | deh, diyÁr | deh, diyÁr. | | Bridge | kienpri (Turk.) | kienpri. | | Castle | killa | kalla. | | Paper | kÁghaz | kÁghaz. | | Bread | manna | nÁn. | | House | kuri or kiri | mÁlÁ. | | King | padshah | beghirtmish. | | Love | mankamri and kamri | kamri. | | Month | muh, mas | viha, mas. | | Colour | tÁwÚl | tÁwul. | | Year | das di mas, varras or barras | deh di mar or dah di viha. | | Personal and Possessive Pronouns. | | I | man | man. | | Thou | tÓ | to. | | He | hÚi | hÚi. | | Mine | maki or man ki | maki or man ki. | | Thine | to ki or toi ki | to ki or toi ki. | | His | hui ki | hui ki. | | Cardinal Numbers. | | One | ek. | The Duman is the | | Two | di. | same, except sih for | | Three | turrun. | “three,” and deh for | | Four | char or shtar. | “ten.” | | Five | penj. | | Six | shesh. | | Seven | heft. | | Eight | hesht. | | Nine | na or nu. | | Ten | das. | | Eleven | das ek. | | Twelve | das di. | | Thirteen | das turrun. | | Fourteen | das char. | | Fifteen | das penj. | | Sixteen | das shesh. | | Seventeen | das heft. | | Eighteen | das hesht. | | Nineteen | das na. | | Twenty | vÍst or bÍst. | | Twenty-one | vÍst ek. | | Twenty-two, etc. | vÍst di, etc. | | Thirty | si. | | Forty | chhil. | | Fifty | penjeh. | | Sixty | turrun vÍst. | | Seventy | turrun vÍst das. | | Eighty | chÁr vÍst. | | Ninety | chÁr vÍst das. | | One hundred | sad. | | Two hundred | di sad. | | A thousand | hazar. | | Adjectives. | | Sick | numshti | bÍmÁr, ruÁr. | | Bad | kumnarrey | kÍÓnÁ. | | Good | gahay | arunder. | | Great | durÓnkay, burro | mÁzin. | | Small | tÚrÓntay, thoranki | chÚchÚk (Pers. kuchik). | | Black | kÁlÁ, kÁlo | kÁni, shippia. | | White | pannarey | suffeid. | | Red | lorey, loley | kunnu. | | Yellow | zard | zara, kulp. | | Green | kark | sukkul. | | Blue | niley | nÍla. | | Cold | siÁ | sÚki. | | Hot | tottey | khunney. | | Adverbs. | | Much | bhÚyih | phurga. | | A little | thorÁki | ennika. | | Enough | basey | nar. | | Here | veshli, itan, idhur | bÚndeh. | | Verbs. | | To come | pÁ | } imperative | pa. | | To go | jÓ | jo. | | To eat | khm | } imperative | khÁm. | | To drink | piÚn | piÚm. | | To bring | nÁn | winni. | | To tell fortune | fÁl | wunnakerim. | [The above list is printed exactly as written by Burton; but it has been found impossible to verify it from other sources.] § 5. The Gypsies of the HaurÁn, South-Eastern Syria. In January, 1871, I accompanied the Damascus Pilgrim Caravan some marches; and at MazÁrÍb in the HaurÁn, the well-known station near which Ali Beg el Abbasi, the Spaniard, was poisoned, I found three Gypsy tents. The inmates called themselves Nawar, a popular term throughout the country. In the same way as the RomÁ of Spain affected to be devout Christians “living in a peaceable Catholic manner,” so the head of the little party I discovered insisted upon all his people being born Muslims, evidently disliking the suspicion that they belonged to the “obsolete faith,” Christianity, with which the ignorant faithful confused all later creeds. (These people thus saved themselves from exile when Sultan “BÁyezÍd” expelled all Gypsies from the Ottoman Empire.) In proof of his assertion he recited a verse of the Koran with peculiar twang. The headquarters of the tribe and the abode of the chief Shaykh were at Ghazzeh, and Muhammad and his “lamentable retinue” had wandered northwards, intending to stay four or five days at MazÁrÍb—in fact, whilst the caravan was passing. Their peculiar industries were metal-work and making sieves, so they stated; but to these their neighbours added plundering and petty larceny, together with trading in asses and horses. According to my informant, many of his people attend the Haj, doubtless to throw dust into Muslim eyes. My Syrian companions compared the general look of the dark-skinned, tanned dwellers with the AshdÁn, whilst they found a certain resemblance between the RoumÍs and the women of a certain Arab tribe who camped about near Damascus; but the long, coarse, lank hair, with the duck-tail under curl, the brown white eyes, whose peculiar glance is never to be mistaken, the prominent Tatar-like cheekbones, and the irregular-shaped mouths, suggested Hindu origin and physiognomy. The beard was long and somewhat wavy, possibly the result of inhabiting for generations a hot dry land. Some have gashed faces like the “Bohemians” when they first entered Paris. Their women, adorned with ear-rings and necklaces, bracelets and anklets of brass and tinsel, were Macbethian witches; and both sexes, like the outcasts of India generally, seem to abhor cold water. I tried them with a few words of Sindhi, introduced into Hindustani, when their faces assumed the normal puzzled expression, and their eyes appeared to close and film over. Of magic and divination they would not speak to a stranger; but they readily gave me the following words: Ag, fire (pure Hindi); Ake, eye (Aukh); ChirÍ, knife (Churi); Goray, horse (Ghora); KÁlÁ, oracle (pure Hindi); MunÁm, bread (an Arabic corruption?); PÁnay, water (Pani); Zari, mouth (?). Conversing with one another they spoke fluently, and introduced few Arabic words. The Nawar make their appearance with the Eastern Bedawin, Wuld Ali, and others about the beginning of summer, and occupy huts built of cane, sticks, and mud. The roofs are hides weighted with sticks. They work at getting in the harvests, and they are said to work much harder than the average husbandman. Of course they are charged with plundering poultry. They speak bad Arabic, and talk together in their own tongue; wherefore the peasants affect to despise them. In fact, here, as elsewhere, they constitute a strange sort of commonwealth amongst themselves—wanderers, impostors, and jugglers.
§ 6. The Gypsies of Damascus. Consul E. T. Rogers, my predecessor at Damascus, made the following brief notes, and obliged me with permission to publish them. His long period of residence led him to study subjects which escaped the passing traveller. “I remember quite distinctly that the Gypsies of Syria, or people resembling them, were divided into three distinct families, not supposed to intermarry, and, as I was told, supplying two distinct languages: “(1) The Nawar[166] follow the ordinary Gypsy vocations, stealing, fortune-telling, tinkering, attending fÊtes and marriages as itinerant musicians, jugglers, etc.; “(2) The Zutt were generally seen with trained animals, goats, donkeys, etc., performing in the streets; and “(3) The BarÁmaki, who give more attention to horse-dealing. They are farriers and blacksmiths, and are generally found on the outskirts of isolated villages, or near the camps of small Arab tribes, where they let out stallions for breeding purposes. They buy broken-down horses and mares of good breed, and are very clever at doctoring them up and rendering them fit for sale.” Mr. Consul Rogers also showed me a sketch he had made of a Zutti boy with a performing goat borne upon sections of bamboo—a common sight in India.
CHAPTER VI
THE GYPSY IN AFRICA § 1. The Egyptian Ghajar or Ghagar If there is anything persistent in Gypsy tradition, it is the assertion that the Gypsies originally came from the banks of the Nile—that Egypt, in fact, gave them a local habitation and a name. Yet, curious to say, this is the country, and the only country, where a tribe of the RomÁ, preserving the physiognomy and the pursuits of its ancestors, has apparently lost its old Aryan tongue, or rather has exchanged it for a bastard argot, mostly derived from Arabic.[167] Nor does this phenomenon seem to be of modern date. A very rare Italian comedy of the middle sixteenth century, La Cingana, pronounced “Tchingana,” was expected to yield treasures of philological lore; but on investigation it proved that the Gypsies spoke only a corrupt Arabic. The following pages are mostly taken from the well-known work Aegypten, etc. (Leipzig: Brockhaus, 1860), by the famous Orientalist, Alfred von Kremer. As will be seen, he made a careful study of the “Zigeuner” or “Aegypten,” the “Ghagar”; whereas these interesting families of the Gypsy race, a people of wanderers, who have nowhere a house, and who have everywhere a home, are most perfunctorily treated of by Lane. “On the banks of the Nile,” says Von Kremer, whose words I shall now quote, as in other places, “the Ghagar men, like the Polloi of Herodotus, are tinkers, ape-leaders, rope-dancers, and snake-charmers; whilst the women are Áhnahs, prostitutes, and fortune-tellers. They are very numerous; they trade in asses, horses, and camels, and, as pedlars (Baddaah), they manage almost all the petit commerce of the country. The Ghagar buy goods wholesale in Cairo, and frequent the two annual fairs of TantÁ; that of May was instituted about 1853, and entitled the Maulid El ShilkÁni (birth-festival of the Shaykh El ShilkÁni), who is buried some three hours’ march from Beni Suef. Thus they not unfrequently become rich. “The HÁwi[168] (snake-charmers) and the snake-eaters (Rifaijjeh) live at Cairo; and many travellers have seen the disgusting spectacle without suspecting that the Dervish’s frock covered the ‘tinkler.’ These classes are useful to the naturalist, as they have always a supply of live or dead serpents, with and without poison-fangs, lizards, uromastix, jerboas, jackals, wolves, ferrets (Stinkthiere), and so forth. They find and catch serpents with surprising dexterity: armed with a bit of palm frond to tap the walls and ceilings, and with a pipe whose tones draw the reptiles from their hiding-places, they rarely fail to make captures, as the older houses of Cairo are mostly haunted by harmless snakes. This proceeding of course awes the ignorant, and none dare to engage a room when the HÁwi has declared it to be snake-possessed. “The term ‘Ghagar’ or ‘Ghajar’ is general; the people, according to their own account, are divided into tribes, who all, however, represent themselves to be pure Arabs and wandering immigrants from the West.[169] The date of this movement is apparently unknown; but its reality is confirmed by the fact that all, without exception, belong to the Maliki school, prevailing in Morocco and in North-West Africa. They are vagrants by profession, and obtain written permission to travel, either from the police or from the Guild Shaykh of the Rifai Dervishes. “The most numerous tribe everywhere in Egypt is the GhawÁzi;[170] in every city, town, and village there are representatives of these arch-seductresses, whose personal beauty makes them dangerous. They call themselves Baramaki,[171] and derive themselves from the Persian Barmekides, the historical house ruined and annihilated by the Khalif Harun-er-Raschid. Yet they are very proud of their Bedawin descent; and they lead the lives of the sons of the desert, dwelling in tents, which they carry from fair to fair. The maidens are dancers, the old women spae-wives;[172] the girls rarely marry before securing a competency, and they often take their slaves to husband. The GhÁziyah’s goodman is generally nothing more than a servant, who brings her new acquaintances, and who pipes or drums when she dances. There are cases of these girls marrying village chiefs; and their after-lives are as correct as their youth was dissolute (compare p. 145, Burckhardt’s Arabic Proverbs: London, 1830). The GhawÁzi speak the Gypsy jargon which is in use amongst all the other tribes. “The Gypsies of the Sa'Íd (Upper Egypt), who call themselves ‘SaÁideh,’ have purely Asiatic, not African, features, with dark brown skins, piercing black eyes, and lank hair, also black. The women tattoo their lips, hands, and bosoms generally in blue, wear heavy brass ear-rings, and hang round their necks strings of blue and red beads. They divine by muscle-shells, broken bits of glass, coloured stones as agates and jaspers, pieces of stained wax, and so forth, carried upon the shoulders in a kirbah, or bag, generally of gazelle-skin. After taking her seat on the mat or carpet, the woman empties her sack, and, choosing one article which shall represent the person who pays, draws her revelations from the grouping. Money is required at various stages of the process; and at the end the Gypsy presents some bits of stone or coloured wax by way of charms to her employer.[173] “These people may be seen in the streets of Cairo, dressed like the FellÁhah (peasant woman), in taubs, or long shirts of home-made indigo-dyed cotton, but lacking the shintiyÁn (drawers) and the burka' (nose-bag). Their features at once distinguish them from the Muslims and the Copts; and they are noted, moreover, by the sheep-skin or gazelle-skin thrown, besides the bag, over their shoulders. They frequent the bazars, and stroll about the principal thoroughfares of the great towns, especially in summer-time, as the Nile begins to rise; and their favourite cries are ‘Nibejjin-ez-zein!’ (We show the good, i.e. luck), ‘Ta'Ál! shuf el Bakht’ (Come and see your fortunes), and ‘Nidmor el Ghaib!’ (We find the lost). “The capital contains a large company of Ghagar women, who speculate upon public credulity; and their quarter is the Hosh Bardak, once a fine quarter, now a squalid hole behind that noble pile the Sultan Hasan Mosque. I visited it in November, 1877, and found the courts still occupied. The people, tinkers and blacksmiths, who sell ear-rings, bracelets, amulets, and other metal articles, exactly resembled Fellahs to a superficial glance. Apparently they had forgotten their favourite craft, fortune-telling. Moreover, they did not like the term Ghagar. There is, or rather was, another colony at Masr el 'AtÍkah (Babylon or Old Cairo). A third used to camp chiefly during winter and spring near a village on the right of the Cairo-ShubrÁ road, and I believe they are still there. Their rivals, the MaghribÍ (North-West African) magicians, and those from the central regions, of which Darfur[174] supplies the greatest number, are known by their sitting in the streets and performing upon cards or sand.[175] Predicting by marks drawn on the sand (Ilm el Raml) is old in the East, and plays a great part in the Arabian Nights. “Other tribal names are H'aleb or Helebi (Aleppine), Schah'aini, and Tatar (T'at'ar). The men of the last class, almost all farriers or tinkers, are also termed A'wwadat or Mua'merratijjeh.[176] Amongst the other Ghagar there are many smiths, who make the brass rings worn on the fingers and arm-joints, in the ears and nose, and around the neck. “The monkey-leaders so numerous in Cairo, especially about the Ezbekijjeh quarter,[177] the Kuraydati,[178] so called from Kird, an ape, also belong to the Gypsy tribes; and these mostly supply the BahlawÁn,[179] gymnasts or strong-men, athletes, and especially wrestlers, who frequent fairs and festivals. During the 'Id ed Dahijjeh[180] they swarm in the capital.[181] “All these subdivisions speak the same Rothwelsch, or ‘Thieves’ Latin,’ which they call El SÍm. It explains the idea prevailing in the middle of the last century; namely, that the Gypsy language was an invented tongue; a ‘Germania,’ as the Spaniards say; a conventional jargon; a jail-bird’s speech, varying with every horde.[182] The origin and full import of the term SÍm are undetermined; but it is understood to mean something hidden or secret;[183] and it is applied to the impure and gilt ‘gold-wires’ imported from Austria. It is said, however, that the BahlawÁn above use another speech; of this I have been unable to collect proofs, nor do I hold the information wholly credible.” The following vocabulary was compiled by Von Eremer at Cairo, where he persuaded many of the Ghagar to frequent the Consulate, especially Muhammad MerwÁn, who pompously styled himself “Shaykh of all the Snake-charmers of Egypt.” He also consulted many Gypsy women from Upper Egypt; these appeared to speak a somewhat different dialect, and the words taken from them are distinguished by an S. The numerals, all save one corrupted Arabic, are as follows: NUMERALS. - 1, Mach[184] (Etruscan, Max): according to Newbold (loc. cit.), Helebi, Ek; NÁwer, Yek.
- 2, Machayu (evidently a dual form purely Arabic): Hel. DÚi; Naw. DÚ.
- 3, Tulit (S), or TelÁt (SalÁs) MÁchÁt (three ones): Hel. DÚi-ek (i.e. 2 + 1), or Sih (Pers.); Naw. SÚso (Sih).
- 4, RÚbi' (S), or Arba'ah MÁchÁt (four ones), and so forth: Hel. and Naw. ChÁr, or DÚi fi dÚi (the fi being pure Arabic “in”).
- 5, KhÚmis (S), or ShammÁleh (i.e. the hand): Hel. Penk, Peng; Naw. Fowi.
- 6, Sutet (S): Hel. and Naw. Penk-ek (5 + 1).
- 7, SÚbi': Hel. and Naw. Penk-i-dÚi (5 + 2).
- 8, TÚmin (S): Hel. and Naw. Ister or Heshter (Nasht, Pers.).
- 9, Tiwa' (S): Hel. and Naw. Enna, Nau, or Peng-i-dui-fi dÚi (5 + 2 in 2).
- 10, Ushir (S): Hel. Das, Des, Desh; Naw. Halaheh.
Evidently Von Kremer’s numerals are altered just enough to be hardly intelligible in a sentence hurriedly spoken; whilst Newbold’s are Persian and Hindi.[185] Vocabulary.[186] - Water, MÓge (evidently MÁych, Moyyeh), Himbe (S). Newbold: H. Hembi, Sheribni (Pers.), or Pani (Hindi); G. PÁni; and N. Óah.
- *Bread, ShenÚb, Bishleh (S).
- Father, Ab (Arab.) or A'rub;[187] my father, Abamru or A'rubi.
- *Mother, Kodde, plur. KadÁid; my mother, KoddÉti; it also means generically woman: H. AmmÁmri; G. Kuddi.
- *Brother, Sem'a or KhawÍj (from AkkawÍ, adj. brotherly?); my brother, Sem'ai; thy brother, Sema'ak or Khawijak;[188] also generically a boy, lad, youth: H. Huwiji; G. BÚrdi.
- Sister, Sema'ah[189] or Ukht (pure Arabic); thy sister, Sem'atak: H. Khawishti; G. Marash; N. Maras: also generically a girl, lass, e.g. Sema'ah bahÍleh, a pretty girl.
- *Night,[190] GhalmÚz'a: H. DÁmÚd; G. RÁtse.
- *Horse, Soh'lÍ (Sohl, neighing), HusÁnÁish (S) (from HusÁn, a stallion): H. Sohli; G. Ghera (Hind.).
- *Ass, Zuwell: H. Zowilli; G. KharÍs (Pers. Khar).
- *Camel, Hantif: H. Huntif; G. Hunt (Hind.), Ashtr (Pers.).
- Buffalo, En NaffÁkheh (from the Arab Nafkh, blowing, the blower?).
- *Lamb, MizghÁl, Minga'esh (from classical Arabic Naja'ah) (S), Khurraf (Arab. KharÚf) (S).[191]
- Tree, KhudrumÁn (Akhdar, green?), ShagarÁish (Arab. Shajar) (S).
- Flesh, A'dwaneh Mahzuzah (S).
- Fowl, En-NebbÁsheh (Nabsh, scratching the ground): H. Churiya (Hind.); G. Kagmiyeh; N. Burah.
- *Fat (subst.), BarÚah.
- Ghost, angel, devil, AstrÚm (ShÚm, Arab, ill-omened?).
- Hell, Ma-anwÁra, ma, the thing which is light, i.e. fire, from nÚr, anwÁr, light, lights (e.g. add el-ma-anwara, light the fire); not the Sa'idi, El-MugÁnwara (S).
- Date, Ma'ahli, Mahalli (S) (the thing sweet).
- Gold, El-ma-asfar (the thing yellow for El-mÁ-asfar, a transposition), Midhabesh (S) (corrupted from Dahab).
- *Silver, BÍtÚg.
- Iron, Hadidaish (Arab. Hadid): H. Megan; G. Sista; N. Shir.
- *Corn, DuhÚbi, DuhÚba (S): H. Dahuba; G. GhiÚ; N. Ghiudem (Pers. Gaudum).
- Hunter, Dabaibi (from DÍb, a wolf-hunter?).
- *Magician, Tur'ai.
- Stone, Hogger (Arab. Hajar, Hagar; dimin. Hujayr): H. Hajar; G. Path.
- *Land, region, Anta, plur. AnÁti.[192]
- *Uncle, A'rÚb; and Aunt, A'rubeh.
- Milk,[193] RaghwÁn, HirwÁn (S) (Arab. Raghwah, foam of milk).
- Onion, MusanÚm, Mubsalcheh (S) (Arab. Basal): H. Musmunum; G. Piyaz (Pers.).
- Cheese, El-Mehartemeh, MahÁrteme (S).[194]
- *Soured milk, Atreshent, Mishsh (the Arabic Laban).
- Millet, Handawil, Mugaddiriyyeh (S) (the dish Mujadderah, rice and lentils mixed, from JudrÁ, the small-pox).
- *Beans, Buhus.[195]
- *Dog, Sanno: H. and G. Sunno.
- Wolf, Dibaish (Arab. Dib).
- Knife, El-KhÚsah: H. TillÚmeh; G. Matwa, Churi (Hind.); N. Chiri.
- Foot, DarrÁgeh (Arab. Daraj, a step), er-raghaleh (Arab. rijl, rigl) (S), MumeshayÁt (S) (Mashi, walking).
- Head, KamÚkhah, DumÁkheh (S) (Pers. DamÁgh, brain): H. Ras; G. Sir (Hind.), Sherit, Kamokhti.
- Eye, BassÁseh (BassÁseh, she that sees?), HuzzÁrah (S): H. HazÁra; G. Ankhi (Hind.).
- *Thief, DamÁni: H. GowÁti; G. DumÁni, KÁlo; N. ShowÚsti.
- Hand,[196] ShammÁleh (Arab. Shamala, he collected; ShimÁl, the left-hand?), also two number five: H. KumÁshteh; G. Gadno, KustÚr (Augushti?), Chang (Pers.); N. FowÍtak.
- North, Baharaish (from Bahar, the sea, i.e. towards the Mediterranean).
- South, Kiblaish (Kibleh, Arab, the fronting-place, i.e. Mecca).
- East, Sharkaish (Arab. Shark; hence probably Saracen).
- West, Gharbaish (Gharb, whence probably Maurus, a Moor).
- Coffee, MagÁswade (MÁ aswad, that which is black).
- *Clothes,[197] Sarme (S).
- Shoe, MerkubÁish (Arab. MerkÁb).
- Nose, ZenÚnÁish.
- Ear, Widu (Arab. Uzu); thy ear, Widuamrak[198] (S) or MudÁusheh (S): H. Wudu; G. Kirkawiyeh.
- Cow, MubgÁrsheh (S) (Arab. Bakar): H. Mubgursha; G. GÓm (Goa, Pers.?).
- Bull, MutwÁresh (S) (Arab. Taur): H. Mutwarish; G. Maia, GÓno (male cow?).
- River, Mistabhar (S) (from Bahr, sea or river).
- Palm (tree), Minkhalesh (S) (Arab. Nakhl).
- Tent, El-MikkwÁshesh (S) (Arab. Khaysheh).
- Wood, Makhshabesh (S) (Arab. Khashab).
- Straw, TibuÁish (Arab. Tibu).
- Christ, El-Annawi (el-NabbÍ, The Prophet?).
- *Egg, Mugahrada (S): H. MejÁhaled; G. WÁin.
- Fire,[199] El-MugÁuwara, (S): light the fire, WallÁish el-MugÁuwara.
- *Food, esh-Shimleh.
- Sack, MigrÁbesh (Arab. Kirbeh, Girbeh).
- Arm, El-KemmÁsheh; my hand hurts, Kemmashtu waga'ani (Arab. Kamasha, he collected, picked up; the last word pure Arab.).
- Hair, Sha'arÁish (S) (Arab. Sha'ar): H. HÁra; G. BÁl or VÁl (Hind.).
- *Tobacco, Tiftaf (S) (possibly formed like the Turk. Tutun).
- Mountain, Migbalish (S) (Arab. Jebel, Egypt. Gebel, whence Monte-Gibello): H. Gebel (Arab.); G. MelÚsh, Durum; N. Koh (Pers.).
- *Nasty (adj.), Shalaf.[200]
Verbs. - *Go, Fell; I went, Felleit (Arab, termination—ayter, ayt). To go: H. Fil; G. JÁ (Hind.).
- Come, E'utib (S); he came, GÁdat. To come: H. Ig; G. Utelo or Á (Hind.).
- *Say, Agmu; I said, Agemtu.
- Strike, Il'big; he struck, H'abash, Habash (S) (Himyaritic?); he still strikes, Hay yihbig (Ha fa hÁza el wakt; vulgar Egyptian).
- *We ate, RakkhaynÁ or Shamalna (Arab. we gathered). To eat: H. Eshna, Shemb; G. Khaba, JÁla; N. Arkus.
- Sit, Watib.
- We drank, MawwajnÁ (from Manj, a wave?); I drank, Mawwagt, Hamball (S). To drink: H. Hunnib; G. Mowwak.
- He cut, Shafar.
- He called, cried, Nabbat'a.
- *He died, Entena.
- He killed, slew, Tena; he kills, Yitni.
- *He sleeps, Yidmukh; I slept, Dammacht. To sleep: H. Dumak; G. Sobelar; N. Suk.
- *He rides, Yita'alwan.
- *He gives, Yikif; he gave, Kaf.
- *He steals, Yiknisk; he stole, Kanash. To rob: H. Gunwani; G. Churabi (Hind.); N. Lahis.
- *He cooks, Yittabig; he cooked, Tabag (Arab. Tabaxa).
- He saw, Haseb.
- *He laughs, Biarr'a.
- *Sit, Ukriz.
- Stand up, Utib.
- *He married, Etkaddad.
“From these philological facts,” says Von Kremer, in conclusion, “I draw no inference, the material being perhaps too scanty to warrant deductions. It is very regrettable that the old original words are dropping out of use, being replaced by a cant or jargon from Arabic according to a purely conventional plan, a changing of the ending, like Kiblas for Kibla. It is also evident that the Ghagar have sunk in favour of the vernacular their own peculiar names for colours, for the sun and moon, for earth and fire, and for other terms of universal use.” In Newbold’s vocabulary, on the other hand, we have distinct signs of an Eastern, not a Western provincialism, as the author says: “There is a marked difference in the three dialects, or jargons; that of the Ghagar most resembles the language of the Kurbat, or Gypsies of Syria. The Gypsy dialect in Borrow’s work contains more words of Indian origin than the Helebi and Nawar jargon. The Helebi comprises a large number of words of Arabic root, indicating a long sojourn in Yemen, or other parts of Arabia. Its numerals, which are also used by the Ghagar when secrecy is required, bear strong marks of Eastern, or Persian, origin. Usually the Helebis adopt the vulgar Arabic numerals in use throughout Egypt.[201] ... The numerals of the Nawars are evidently of Persian origin.... All the tribes disclaim having any written character peculiar to themselves,[202] and it is rare to find one among them who can write the common Arabic of the country. I have been informed, however, by a respectable Copt that they have secret symbols which they sedulously conceal. It seems to me probable that the whole of these tribes had one common origin in India and the adjacent countries on its western frontier, and that the difference in the jargons they now speak is owing to their sojourn in the various countries through which they have passed. It is certain that the Gypsies are strangers and outcasts in the land which has given them a name, and which has long been supposed to have given them birth.” In Sindh I met Captain Newbold, and, assisted by my late friend James Macleod, then Collector of Customs at Karachi, supplied him with a short vocabulary. His studies gained breadth by noting the manners and habits of a singular wandering tribe called the Jats, whose remarkable physical appearance reminded him strongly of the Gypsies of Egypt and Syria. He saw a tribe living in tents and rude movable huts in the wood of Balut, near Jujah, between Karachi and the Indus. Hence he drew the following conclusions: “Since my visit to the banks of the Indus, I am more than ever convinced that from the borders of this classic river originally migrated the horde of Gypsies that are scattered over Europe, Asia, and the northern confines of Africa. The dialects spoken by the numerous tribes which swarm upon the territories adjacent to the Indus, from the sea to the snowy mountains of Himalaya and Tatary, have, with those spoken by the Gypsies, a certain family resemblance, which, like their physical features, cannot be mistaken. I find it impossible at present to place my hand on any particular tribe, and say, ‘This is the parent stock of the Gypsies’; but as far as my researches have gone, I am rather inclined to think that this singular race derives its origin, not from one alone, but from several tribes that constitute the family of mankind dwelling on, or adjacent to, the banks of the Indus.” Captain Newbold’s studies in Egypt, where he was assisted by the Shaykhs of the RomÁ, complete those of Von Kremer, and prove that the latter had chiefly noticed the GhawÁzi and Ghagar families. The former would divide the vagrants into two—the Helebis and their wives, the Fehemis (wise women), who practise palmistry and divination, and look down with supreme contempt upon their distant kinsmen the Ghagar or Ghajar, whose better halves are musicians and rope-dancers. The Helebis, who evidently derive their name from H'abel (Aleppo), claim to be derived from El Yemen, and declare that in the early history of their race a great king persecuted and expelled them. The tribe then wandered over Syria, Egypt, Persia, and Europe under some brother-chiefs, whose tombs are still held holy to this day. The Helebis confined their wandering to the Rif or Nile Valley and the Delta. They rarely go deep into the desert, except when they sally forth to sell cattle medicines, or to buy jaded beasts from the returning pilgrim caravans, and a few perform the pilgrimage in order to win the title of Hagi. The Shaykhs speak of four tribes scattered about Egypt, and each comprising fifty families, a number of which Newbold had reason to believe is much and designedly underrated. According to the Helebis, the sworn chiefs obtained from the sovereign of Egypt the right of wandering unmolested about the country, and the privilege of exemption from taxes. Muhammad Ali Pasha compelled them, however, to pay a poll tax, which accounts for their numbering only two hundred instead of perhaps five thousand families. In 1847 the pasha had ordered the people not residing in their native villages to return to them, causing great distress and scenes of violence and misery. The Gypsies took the hint, struck their tents by night, decamped bag and baggage, and disappeared altogether. They are expert in disguises, and do not yield the palm to European brethren in cunning and deception. Remarkably intelligent and quick in gaining information, they would make capital spies in an enemy’s camp. The women during their halts on the outskirts of towns and villages, and in running about the streets, bazars, and coffeehouses, pick up with wonderful tact and accuracy all requisite information concerning the private history of those on whom they may be expected to exercise their vocation of fortune-telling. In this secret intelligence department they are aided by the men, who, it is said, are numerous in official employment, although unknown to be Gypsies. At all events they mingle with residents on the spot, and with strangers in the caravanserais and other public places. The Helebis, leading a vagabond, wandering life, usually pitch tents or portable huts on the outskirts of towns and large villages. The former resemble in all points those of the pauper Bedawin, and contained little beyond wretched horse and ass furniture, mats, cooking-pots, and similar necessaries. Everything denotes externally the most squalid poverty, except only the enormous mass of fowl, mutton, and savoury vegetables seething in the large caldron suspended from the familiar crossed sticks over the embers of a large fire, thus proving to more senses than one that the care of the flesh-pots of ancient Egypt has not devolved upon a race insensible to their charms. All deny the common charge of eating dogs, cats, and other meat held impure by Muslims. The male Helebis are ostensibly dealers in horses and asses, camels and black cattle. They pretend to great skill in the veterinary art; but their character for honesty does not stand high with those who know them best. Without known religion, priests, or houses of prayer, this tribe, like the Ghagar and all others, conform to El Islam, or to the predominant religion whenever policy or convenience demands. They bury their dead, but have no fixed places of interment. The men will marry Ghagar damsels, but will not give their daughters to Ghagar. The zone of chastity is even made, they say, of plaited things like that of the Nubian, and is cut off on the wedding night. The women, though chaste themselves, will act as Mercuries to the Gentile male and female; and they have been charged with sundry indecencies for money. The Muslims and Copts declare that they kidnap children, and they of course swear they do not. The women never intermarry with strangers, and in this respect they are as rigid as the Hindus. They are not remarkable for cleanliness either of person or apparel. In this respect, and in their passion for trinkets of brass, silver, and ivory, they remind one of certain native women of India. Their special privilege is the practice of palmistry and divination. The Fehemi takes the inquirer’s right hand by the finger tips, and bends them gently backward so as to render the lines more visible. She mutters a spell while with all gravity she reads the book of destiny, and then reads the result; of course her hand must be crossed with silver. Palmistry, I must add, is one of the many superstitions to which India gave birth, and all the world over the lines and mounts and spaces and other distributions of the hands are the same. Newbold says comparatively little of the Ghagar, who claim to be of the same stock as the Helebis, and who speak of brethren in Hungary, while the original tongue is preserved. Comparatively poor in physical appearance and in vagabond habits, they bear a family resemblance to the Helebis and to the Syrian Kurbat. During the summer months they wander about the cultivated land, and pitch tents and Kaysh. A favourite way of gaining a livelihood is by carrying water-jars, and by singing at the birthday fÊtes of saints, etc., during the fine season. In wandering they prefer the towns. In ancient Arabia they have Ghettos, as at Old Cairo and elsewhere. Being subject to the poll tax, they have an interest in understating their numbers, which can scarcely be less than sixteen thousand. When the publican is abroad, they quietly abscond across the Nile, and take refuge in some village on the skirts of the desert. After paying a first visit to them, which aroused their suspicion, Newbold returned the following day, and to his surprise found the quarter quite deserted. Subsequently, however, a better acquaintance was established. With few exceptions the Ghagar are all thieves. Ostensibly the men are athletes, monkey-leaders, and mountebanks attending several fairs. They are also metal-workers and horse-dealers. The women are not allowed to practise palmistry and divination, consequently they are despised by the Fehemis. Many of them are excellent rope-dancers; others are musicians, playing chiefly on the talla, a kind of castanet. They also practise female circumcision upon Muslim girls, bore ears and nostrils, and tattoo lips and chins. The Nawar of Egypt were hereditary robbers, like certain tribes in India. They were protected and even employed by the Billi tribe of Arabs, and the relations of patron and client were those of the Highland chiefs and the crofters upon their properties. Muhammad Ali Pasha succeeded in taming this lawless tribe, which for generations had given immense trouble to his predecessors, upon the principle of setting a thief to catch a thief. He employed them as police and watchmen upon his country estates, and he allowed them 50 per cent. on property recovered from plunderers brought to justice. Since that time they have seldom broken the law, except at Cairo, where there is less chance of detection. They intermarry with the Fellahin, or Egyptians of the soil, from whom in physique and raiment they can hardly be distinguished. Outwardly they profess Muhammadanism, and they have little intercourse with the Helebis and Ghagar. In 1847 their chief was a certain Shaykh Yusuf, one of the most notorious thieves in Egypt.
§ 2. The Gzane of Algeria and Morocco. This race is interesting because it shows the origin of the Darb el-mendel, the Magic Mirror of Egypt, known to the Hindus as Aujan. It was first noticed in India by the learned Dr. Herklots, who in 1832 published a most valuable volume on the manners and customs of the Hindi Muslims. Unfortunately the British public misjudged its title, and held it to be a cookery-book. The next to notice it was Mr. Lane (Modern Egyptians, Vol. II., chap, xii.) in 1835. He tells us that two Europeans, an Englishman and a Frenchman, learned to induce the phenomenon; and he concludes with the normal deprecatory formula of his age: “Neither I nor others have been able to discover any clue by which to penetrate the mystery; and if the reader be alike unable to give the solution, I hope that he will not allow the above account to induce in his mind any degree of scepticism with respect to other portions of this work.” Since that time the Zoist, the Journal de MagnÉtisme, and similar publications took up the subject, and traced it from Cornelius Agrippa and Dr. Dee to the most degraded of existing savages, the Australians: The following is Dr. de Pietra Santa’s account of the two modes of fascination employed by the “magicians” of French Africa (Algiers)[203]: “The first forms part of the baggage of all Arab Gzanes, Gypsies, sorceresses, and fortune-tellers. When one wishes to strike the imagination of the multitude, it is absolutely necessary to find phenomena which are both intelligible to all and which each one can instantly verify for himself. Amongst such there is not one more evident than sleep. It is therefore important for the Gzane, in order to prove in an undeniable manner her moral power and supernatural influence, that she should be able to send to sleep at a given moment the person who has recourse to her occult science. She employs the following means: “Upon the palm of the hand she describes, with some blackish colouring matter, a circle, in whose centre is marked a spot equally black. After looking fixedly at the latter for a few minutes, the eyes grow heavy, they blink, and the sight is confused; the heaviness is presently succeeded by sleep, and sleep by a sort of insensibility,[204] of which the Gypsy profits to exercise her manoeuvres more securely. I give you the simple fact without commentaries; and abjuring any pretensions to determine its importance. “Let us now pass on to the second mode of fascination. Upon a table covered with a white cloth is placed a bottle, usually filled with water and backed by a small lamp lighted. The subject is comfortably seated on a chair, and told to look at the bright point placed before him at the distance of a few steps. After a few minutes the eyelids grow heavy, then they gradually smile, and sleep is induced. With nervous temperaments palpitation of the heart and headache also manifest themselves. “In order to give an odour of the supernatural to these phenomena, the Moroccan, Gypsy or Marabout, has a certain quantity of benzoin burnt behind the table; and while the vapour spreads itself through the room, the person undergoing the process falls into a complete state of anÆsthesia.” Borrow mentions in Barbary sundry “sects of wanderers,” which he shrewdly suspects to be Gypsies, and whom he provides with the worst of characters. The first are the “Beni Aros” (?), who wander about Fez, and have their homes in the high mountains near Tetuan. A comely, well-made race, they are beggars by profession, notorious drunkards, addicted to robbery, murder, and effeminate crimes. They claim to be Moors, and their language is Arabic. The second are the “Sidi Hamed au Muza,” so called from their patron saint. In many respects they not a little resemble the Gypsies; but they speak the Shilhah, or a dialect of that tongue. They earn their livelihood by vaulting, tumbling, and tricks with sword and dagger, to the sound of wild music, which the women, seated on the ground, produce from their uncouth instruments. § 3. The Gypsies in Inner Africa. It is generally believed that the RomÁ have extended far southwards from Morocco and Barbary. Borrow remarks of the Dar-bushi-fal (fortune-tellers), that if they are not Gypsies, the latter people cannot be found in the country. Numerous in Barbary, they wander during the greater part of the year, pilfering, fortune-telling, and dealing in mules and donkeys. Their fixed villages are known as “Char Seharra,” witch hamlets. They can change the colour of an animal, and transform a white man into a negro black as a coal, after which they sell him as a slave. They are said to possess a peculiar language, which, being neither Arabic nor Shilhah, is intelligible only to their own caste. Borrow often conversed with them; but he neglected to apply his favourite Shibboleth, Pani (water). Their faces are described as exceedingly lean, their skins swarthy, and their legs are reeds; “when they run, the devil himself cannot overtake them.” Their vehicles of divination are oil, a plate full of flour, or a shoe placed in the mouth. They are evil people, and powerful enchanters, feared by the emperor himself. M. Paul Bataillard (Notes et Questions) refers, for information concerning the Gypsies, to the Voyage dans le Nord et dans les Parties Centrales de l’Afrique, the journey of Denham and Clapperton, translated by Eyries and another (Paris, 1826, 3 vols. 8vo). These authors, he says, pretend to assimilate the “ChouÂa” Arabs of Bornou with the Gypsies. Indeed, they expressly declare that their Arabic is almost pure Gypsy. This is, however, incompatible with another passage, which declares that these “ChouÂas” have imported into Bornou the Arabic, which they speak purely. I can only find[205] that the women of the ChouÂa Arabs are described as “a very extraordinary race, with scarcely any resemblance to the Arabs of the north: they have fine open countenances, with aquiline noses and large eyes; their complexion is a light copper colour; they possess great cunning with their courage, and resemble in appearance some of our best-formed Gypsies in England, particularly the women; and their Arabic is nearly pure Egyptian.” Major Denman afterwards found the “Shouaas of the tribe of Waled Salamat, extending eastward quite as far as the Tchad.” He notes their difference from the Fellalahs, and their practice of sending plundering parties to Mandara. We also hear of their skill in the chase and their use of the spear on horseback. [167] In Spain this is called “Germania,” which, however, refers not to the true Gypsy, but to the cant slang, or “Thieves’ Latin”; the French argot and the Italian gorgo, a mere farrago, which contained only a few words of Romani.
CHAPTER VII
THE GYPSY IN EUROPE § 1. The Gypsy in Hungary The Czigany, as they are called, appeared early in the fifteenth century, and were supposed to have fled from Moghol persecution. King Sigismund, father of the heroic John Hunyadi,[206] allowed them to settle in his realm, and the law called them “mere peasants.” In 1496 Bishop Sigismund at Funf-Kirchen ordered iron cannon-balls from the Gypsies to be used against the Turkish invaders of Hungary; and he was doughtily supported against the Turks by King Zindelo, Dukes Miguel and Andrew, by Counts Manuel and Juan, by the “noble knight” Pedro, and by the chief Tomas Polgar. The reforms of 1848 found them in a state of slavery, adscripti gleboe, who could not legally take service away from their birthplace. Their condition was worse than that of the Wallach peasant, who says of his haughty Magyar Magnate, “A lord is a lord born in hell.” Some forty years ago Mr. Paget[207] says Gypsies were exposed for sale in the neighbouring province of Wallachia. In the Hungary of the bad old rÉgime the relation of the landowning peasant, however oppressive might have been his obligations, was never that of master and slave. If the agriculturist chose to give up his session-lands, the ground he occupied by hereditary use, he could go where he pleased. Practically this was rare; it was equivalent to giving up his means of subsistence, and he preferred the tax-paying while all the nobles went free, and the odious burden of the “Robot” corvÉe, or forced labour, two and in some cases three days a week. Hence he hated the military conscription, the only means of civilizing him established by Austria in 1849.[208] But the Czigany, however deep-rooted is his love of liberty, never preserved the modicum of freedom to which the Hungarian clung. Though now legally free, the Czigany’s deep respect for everything aristocratic attaches him to the ruling caste. In Transylvania “Magyar” is a distinctive term for class as well as race. The Czigany who do not assimilate with the thrifty Saxons prefer to be mere hangers-on at the castle of the Hungarian Magnate, as in England of old they take his name; and they profess the same faith—Catholic, Protestant, or nothing. Notwithstanding their incurable propensity for pilfering, they are trusted as messengers and carriers; like the old Spanish arriero, they form a general “parcels-delivery company.” And they are ubiquitous, for never a door is left unlocked lest a Gypsy will slip in and steal. In old days they were most efficient spies upon Christian and Muslim, and they trimmed between the twain to their own advantage. They also made the best of smugglers; they dug for treasure, and they washed for paillettes of gold the Transylvanian affluents of the Danube. At times they set out upon plundering excursions, which extended to Italy, France, and Spain. They are still accused of incendiarism by the Wallachs, who apparently thus seek to hide the malpractices resulting from their inordinate lust of revenge, the ugly survival of the savage character. These people forget that “curses, like chickens, come home to roost,” and will play with fire even when it damages themselves. The settled Gypsy’s dwelling is even more primitive than the Wallachs. The hut is formed, like the African’s, with plaited sticks, and swish is plastered into the gaps. Before the hut entrance often stands the nomad cart, two wheeled and tilted, and always stands the tripod supporting the iron pot—a sight, like the scarlet cloak, once familiar to us, but now disappeared from England. In time the earth is grass-grown; and as the hovel is rarely more than seven feet high, it looks rather like an exaggerated ant-hill or a tumulus than a habitation for man. Yet the ragged inmate, whose children go about in nature’s garb, is clever with his hands. He is the best blacksmith in the country, and he fashions simple wooden articles for household use with dexterity and even with taste. Despite his wretched surroundings, he keeps his good spirits, he sings to his work, and he plays the violin in his leisure hours. I need hardly repeat the commonplaces about the music of the Hungarian Gypsy, and the legends concerning Catalani and Liszt. Strolling bands, in civilized attire, and performing upon divers instruments, are and have been for some time well known to the capitals of Europe. So great is the contrast between their art and their surroundings, that more than one traveller has suspected this marvellous gift of pathetic strains to be a “language brought with them in their exile from another and a higher state of existence.” I find in it only the marriage of Eastern with Western melody, the high science of the former, so little appreciated by the ignorant Anglo-Indian, with the perfect practice of the latter. Though utterly unalphabetic, these people have a strange power of stirring their hearers’ hearts. They play by ear, in style unsurpassed by the best training, the violin, the ’cello, and the zither, with which London is now familiarized. The airs, often their own, tell a thrilling national tale in a way that makes an indelible impression upon the stranger. Now it is the expression of turmoil, battle, and defeat, followed by a long wail of woe, of passionate grief, mostly in the minor key. Then it suddenly passes to the major in a wild burst of joy, of triumph, of exultation, of rapture, which carries along with it the hearer in irresistible sympathy. It has all the charm of contrast; of extremes, excitement and depression; subjection and deliverance, delight and despair. The strains rob the excitable Hungarian of his reason; he drinks in the music till he is drunk. The Gypsy is capable of a noble self-sacrifice, and Mr. Crosse tells a tale which proves it. He passed in a wild, romantic glen a steep, overhanging rock known throughout the land as the “Gypsy’s stone.” About the middle of the last century, it is supposed, there was a famine; and the Czigany, poorer than their neighbours, were reduced to beg or starve. When turned away by certain hard-hearted villagers, one poor fellow refused to go, declaring that his children were dying of hunger. “Then,” said one of the boors in a mocking tone, “I will give your family a side of bacon, if you will jump from that rock.” “You hear his promise!” cried the Czigan, appealing to the crowd. Without another word he rushed from amongst them, clambered up the rock, and took the leap, which was—death. This is exactly what we might expect under the circumstances from a Hindu. The system of Badli—in plain English, paying a man to “take blame” and to be hanged for you—is the best proof. It should be remembered that a Hungarian was the first to publish the “Indic origin” of the Romani tongue. At the end of 1765 an interesting communiquÉ was addressed to the Vienna Gazette by Captain Szekely de Doba. He related that the Protestant parson Stephen Vali while studying at Leyden made acquaintance with certain Malabar youths sent there by the Dutch Government, and their vernacular reminded him of the Gypsy tongue which he had heard in his home at Almasch. They also assured him that in Malabar there is a district called Zigania (?), which suggested a comparison with the German Zigeuner. At their dictation he wrote down almost a thousand words, and returning to Almasch he was surprised to find the Czigan understanding them. Then set in the first period (1775-1800) of Sanskrit and Zend study, accompanied by publications of Bengali, Urdu, and others of the eighteen Prakrit tongues still spoken in the great Peninsula. This led to careful study of Romani. The celebrated Mezzofanti did not hesitate to assign it high rank amongst the thirty-two languages he had studied; and when he lost his mind (1832) he never confounded it with other idioms. Then followed in 1837 the Gospel of St. Luke translated into Spanish CalÓ by “Gypsy Borrow,” who, however, inserted Castilian words from Father Scio instead of forming them from Gypsy roots. § 2. The Gypsies of Spain. We have ample material for studying the Spanish Gypsy, or Flamanco, as he is contemptuously called, probably because he entered Andalusia in the train of the Flemings during the first third of the fifteenth century. Yet it is somewhat remarkable that Europe believed up to the end of that century the purely Spanish origin of the Gypsies. Pasquier, describing the arrival of these “penitents” in Paris a.d. 1427, adds that from that time all France was infested by these vagabonds, but that the first horde was replaced by the Biscayan and other peoples of the same origin. This suggests an early occupation of the Peninsula; although Francisca de Cordova in his Didasculia declared they were first known in Germany, and the general belief now is that the last horde entered Europe by the highroads of Andalusia and Bulgaria, or rather Greece, and they must have been settled for many years in these countries. Northern Spaniards find in Andalusian blood a distinct Gypsy innervation. In Spain, as elsewhere, the Gypsy made himself hated by his systematic contempt of the laws of meum and teum; whilst he was protected by two widely different conditions: the first was his poverty (“As poor as a Gypsy” is still a proverb); secondly, he was a spy equally useful to Christian and unbeliever. Yet action was not wanting. In 1499 was published the Gran Pragmatica (Royal Ordinance) of Medina del Campo, under the influence of a fanatic archbishop, banishing on and after the term of sixty days the Egyptian and foreign tinkers (caldereros), and forbidding return under pain of mutilation. This Pragmatica was renewed under Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo and of Madrid, with the additional punishment of perpetual slavery for those found wandering a third time. Yet in 1560, on his marriage at Toledo with Isabelle of France, Gypsy dances formed part of the festivities. He was comparatively mild, and after moderating the old rigorous laws he ordered the outcasts to live in towns. In 1586 the same king allowed them to sell their goods at ten fairs and markets under certain conditions. These nomads picked up information from all classes, and the women, with their black magic, sorcery, and devilry, palmistry, love-potions, and poisons, penetrated into every secret. The Holy Office, established in January, 1481, disdained to persecute such paupers; and the strong arm of the law could not do more than hang a few witches. Ticknor remarks: “Encouraged by the expulsion of the Jews in 1492, also by that of the Moors in 1609-11, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, a professor in the University of Toledo, addressed Philip III. in a discourse published in 1619, urging that monarch to drive out the Gypsies, but he failed.” Another authority says that he himself, 1618, had prepared a memorial to that effect, adding, “It is very vicious to tolerate such a pernicious and perverse race.” Cordova, writing in 1615, accused them of preparing, some years before, an organized attack upon Sogrovo town when the pest raged, and declares that it was saved from such by the arts of a certain wizard who had mysterious relations with the vagabonds. The charges of cannibalism became universal, founded probably upon the fact that Gypsies do not disdain the flesh of animals poisoned by them. That many of the persecuted outcasts were compelled to fly the country we shall see presently in the Morerias of Brazil; and when religious zeal cooled down, political interests took its place, and led to the great legal persecution. Philip IV. in 1633 prohibited the Gypsy dress and dialect, expelled them from the Ghettos, and by rendering intermarriage illegal aimed at fusing the vagrants with other subjects. In 1692 Charles II. ordered them to practise nothing but agriculture. The decree was renewed in 1695, and article 16 threatened punishment to all, gentle and simple, who aided and abetted them. Philip V. in 1726 banished from Madrid certain Gypsy women who had petitioned in favour of their persecuted husbands. Nineteen years afterwards (1745) he ordered the fugitives to return to his dominions under pain of fire and steel, denying to them even the right of asylum in sacred places. This terrible decree was renewed in 1746-49. Better days now began to dawn. The racial hatred and brutality suffered by the Gypsies became by slow degrees to be considered the abrogations of past ages. Already, in 1783, Don Carlos of Spain followed the Emperor Joseph of Germany, 1782, and revoked the ultra-Draconian laws which aimed at the extinction of a people, and substituted decrees contrasting strongly with the Pragmatica of 1499; he even threatened pains and penalties to those who hindered the Gypsies in their occupations. In fact, the Gitano, no longer the Egipciano, was allowed intermarriage with his caste, his family rights were recognized, and he was allowed to choose his own trade. He was forbidden only to wear any special dress, to display his language in public, or to exercise the ignoble parts of his calling. Briefly, after having been for centuries of persecution a social pariah, he became a subject. The change must be attributed only to the French philosophical school, and the works of the encyclopedists, which presently led to the greatest benefits of modern ages, the first French Revolution of 1789. It made men and citizens where it found serfs and slaves. These humanitarian measures bore their natural consequences. Under the effect of toleration the Gypsies lost much of the savage wildness which distinguished them in the depths of the Toledo Mountains, the Sierra Morena, and the wild Alpujarras. They flocked to the valleys of the Ebro, the Tagus, and the Guadiana, where many, waxing rich and caring little for a community of goods, lost much of their devotion to caste and their fear and horror of their Christian fellow-citizens. And the grey-beards did not fail to complain that the ZincÁlo was speedily becoming a Gacho or a Busno, opprobrious terms applied to non-Gypsies. The Gitanos of Spain are supposed to number from fifty to sixty thousand, and the increased toleration of society is rapidly concentrating them into the great towns. They abound in Madrid, Cadiz, Malaga, Granada, Cordova, Ciudad Real, Murcia, Valencia, Barcelona, Pamplona, Valladolid, and Badajoz. In parts of Upper Aragon and the Alpujarras Mountains they are troglodytes rather than nomad hordes. Even in the northern provinces, Old Castile, Asturias, and Galicia, where they formerly were most hated and feared, they are now freely allowed to settle. A complete assimilation is expected from the position which they have acquired in places like Cadiz and Malaga. They are beginning to educate themselves in a country where hardly 20 per cent. can read, and where a grandee of the last generation was a kind of high-caste chalan (horse-cooper) or torero (bull-fighter)—the Gitano’s peculiar trades. Though they preserve the Gypsy tradition, some of them traffic largely in cattle and own extensive butcheries; they keep inns and taverns; they deal with the chief merchants; and they live in luxury. Gitanos of the poorer classes buy and barter animals; act jockeys and race-riders; people the bull-ring (especially in Andalusia); work nails and ironmongery, as at Granada and Cordova; and plait the coloured baskets for which Murcia, Valencia, and Barcelona are famous. Their women sell poultry and old rags; prepare buns (buÑuelos) and black puddings (morcillas de sangre); engage themselves as tavern cooks; are excellent smugglers; and find in interpreting dreams, in philter-selling, and in fortune-telling the most lucrative industries. They sing and play various instruments, accompanying the music with the most voluptuous and licentious dances and attitudes; but woe to the man who would obtain from these Bayaderes any boon beyond their provocative exhibition. From the Indus to Gibraltar the contrast of obscenity in language and in songs with corporal chastity—a lacha ye drupo, “body shame,” as they term it—has ever been a distinctive characteristic. No brothel in Europe can boast of containing a Gypsy woman.[209] The mother carefully watches and teaches her child to preserve the premices for the Rom, the Gypsy husband. At marriages they preserve the old Jewish and Muslim rite, that disappeared from Spain only with the accession of the house of Austria. Even Isabella of Castile, when she was married at Valladolid to Ferdinand of Aragon, allowed her “justificative proofs” to be displayed before the wedding-guest. Gypsy marriages, like those of the high-caste Hindus, entail ruinous expense; the revelry lasts three days; the “Gentile” is freely invited; and the profusion of meats and drinks often makes the bridegroom a debtor for life. I have explained this practice in Hindustan as the desire to prove that the first marriage is the marriage. The Spanish Gypsies are remarkable for beauty in early youth: for magnificent eyes and hair, regular features, light and well-knit figures, easy gait, and graceful bearing. Their locks, like the Hindus, are lamp-black, and without a sign of wave; and they preserve the characteristic eye. The form is perfect, and it has an especial look to which is attributed the power of engendering grandes passions—one of the privileges of the eye. I have often remarked its fixity and brilliance, which flashes like phosphoric light, the gleam which in some eyes denotes madness. I have also noted the “far-off look” which seems to gaze at something beyond you, and the alternation from the fixed stare to a glazing or filming over of the pupil.[210] Hence the English song: A Gypsy stripling’s glossy (?) eye Has pierced my bosom’s core, A feat no eye beneath the sky Could e’er effect before. And in Spain it is remarked that the Gypsy man often makes a conquest of the Busno’s wife. The women are more voluble in language and licentious in manners than the men. These characteristics, combined with the most absolute repulsion for other favours, even to the knife, explain how many sons of grandees and great officials took part in the nightly orgies and by day favoured the proscribed caste. Moreover, the Gitana protected herself by the possession of family secrets. Besides soothsaying and philter-selling, she had a store of the Raiz del buen Baron (the goodman’s, i.e. the devil’s, root), alias Satan’s herb, which relieved incommodious burdens. At fairs, while the husbands were chapping and chaffering, the good-wives made money by the process called coger Á la mano (to catch in hand); that is, pilfering coins by sleight during the process of exchanging. Amongst other malpractices is one called in Romani Youjano bÁro (the great trick), translated gran socaliÑa (great trick) by Jermimo de AlcalÁ in his novel the Historia de Alonzo, mozo de muchos amos (a youth with many uncles), written in the early seventeenth century. Rich and covetous widows were persuaded to deposit jewels and money in dark and unfrequented places, with the idea of finding buried treasure. Useless to say that the Gypsy woman was the only gainer by the transaction. We read that the old Gypsy dress was repeatedly forbidden by law; but Spanish tradition preserves no memory of what the dress was. I have little doubt that the immigrants of the fifteenth century had retained to some extent the Hindu costume, the PagrÍ (head-cloth) and the Dhoti (waist-cloth). So in Moscow I have seen the Gypsy dancing-girls assume the true toilette of the Hindustani Nachni, the Choli, or bodice, and the PeshwÁz, or petticoat of many folds. Some writers imagine that the “picturesque vagabonds,” CalÓs, had borrowed their peculiar garb from the Moors. In these days the well-to-do Spanish Rom affects the Andalusian costume, more or less rich. He delights in white linen, especially the “biled shirt,” often frilled and embroidered. The materials are linen and cotton, silk, plush, velvet, and broadcloth. The favourite tints are blue, red, and marking colours. The short jacket or pelisse (zamarra) is embroidered and adorned with frogs (alamares) or large silver buttons; the waistcoat is mostly red, and a sash of crimson silk with fringed ends supports the waist; the overalls narrow at the ankle, where they meet boots or buskins (borcegÚies), slippers or sandals (alpargatas). Finally, the long lank locks, which hang somewhat like the Polish Jew’s along the cheeks, are crowned with the Gypsy sombrero or porkpie, and sometimes with the red Catalan gorro (bonnet), not unlike the glengarry. The Romi also has retained the dress worn till lately in Andalusia, and now gradually becoming obsolete. The gleaming hair is gathered in a Diana knot at the neck, and lit up with flowers of the gaudiest hue; it lies in bands upon the temples, and the whole is often covered with an embroidered kerchief. A cloak of larger or lesser dimensions thrown over the shoulders hardly conceals the bodice and the short, skimpy petticoat (saya), which is embroidered, adorned with bunches of ribbons, trimmings, and other cheap finery. The Spanish Gypsies have not preserved, like the Hungarian, their old habit of long expeditions for begging and plundering purposes. Consequently they have lost the practice of the Pateran or Trail, the road-marks by which they denote direction. These are fur twigs, or similar heaps of newly gathered grass disposed at short distances. At cross-roads the signs are placed on the right side of that followed. Sometimes they trace upon the ground a cross whose longer arm shows the way, or they nail one stake to another. The Norwegian Gypsies trace with their whips a mark on the snow called Faano; it resembles a sack with a shut mouth. In the course of ages they have lost that marvellous power of following the spoor which their kinsmen on the Indus preserve to perfection. They retain a peculiarly shrill whistle, for which the Guanches were famous. By the signs and the whistles two parties could communicate with each other; and if anything particular occurred, messengers were sent to report it. The Gypsy language was looked upon as a mere conventional jargon, and its Indian origin, as has been shown elsewhere, was not recognized before the middle of last century. It was, moreover, confounded with the Germania (Thieves’ Latin), whose vocabulary, collected by Juan Hidalgo of Saragona, has found its way into the Diccionario de la Academia. The only Gypsy words it contains are those borrowed from the CalÓ by the bullies and ruffians of the days of Quevedo. Many corruptions and barbarisms, however, have been introduced into books by pseudo-literati of “white blood,” who prided themselves upon their knowledge of Romani. For instance, Meriden means Coral; and as in Spanish reduplication of the consonant changes the word, an inventor, in order to express Corral (Curral, Kraal, cattle-yard), produced the most barbarous term Merridden. This was the work of aficionados (fanciers) like the Augustine friar Manso de Sevilla in the Cartuja or Carthusian convent of Jirez, whose famous breed of horses brought them into direct communication with the Gypsies. Happily, however, the language was spoken, not written; and thus, as Mr. Buckle held of legend and tradition, its purity was preserved. Gypsy verse is generally improvised to the twanging and tapping of the guitar, sometimes to the guitar and castanet, and oftentimes without music. Much that has been printed appears to be of that spurious kind unintelligible to the Gypsies themselves. The favourite form is in quartettes, more or less carefully rhymed; they are impressed upon the hearers’ memory; and thus they pass from mouth to mouth throughout Spain. Borrow gives a few translations of Gypsy songs in Romani. The Cantes Flamancos of DemÓfico, in phonetic Andalusian, chanted at the fairs and markets, in the cafÉs and ventas, the streets and alleys of Seville, date from the last century. The poetry is weak, the moral is not always irreproachable; but the sentiment is strong and touching. These Cantes are sung by many a tailor and many a barber who have not a drop of Gypsy blood in their veins. They can hardly be accepted as genuine Gypsy work.
CHAPTER VIII
THE GYPSY IN AMERICA The Gypsies of the Brazil The RomÁ of the North American Republic are well known, and their emigration is of modern date. During the wars between England and France which followed the great Revolution many of them exchanged a wandering life for the service of the country, having been either kidnapped or impressed, or having taken the shilling. Of course, after obtaining a passage to the American colonies, they deserted the army, found friends, and settled in the country. The half-bandit bands of Scottish Gypsies were mostly broken up in this way. On the other hand, South America is very little known; and yet the part with which I am most familiar, the Brazil, is full of Gypsies. When Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic (a.d. 1492) issued the exterminating edict against Moors, Jews, and Gitanos, the latter slunk into hiding-places; they were again proscribed by Charles V. (a.d. 1582); and Philip III. (a.d. 1619) issued from Belem in Portugal an order for all the Gypsies to quit the country within six months—an order renewed by Philip IV. in a.d. 1633. There was some reason for this severity. The “masterful beggars” had made themselves infamous by turning spies to the Turks and Saracens; and if the general prejudice against them was unfounded, it rested at least upon a solid foundation—their hatred of the Christian Busno, Gacho, or non-Gypsy. Thus every maritime city of the Brazil to which the exiles were shipped presently contained a Gypsy bairro, or quarter, the Portuguese Moreria (Moorery) corresponding with the Spanish Gitaneria, and not a little resembling the Ghettos of the Italian Jews. For instance, the Rocco, now the handsomest square in superb Rio de Janeiro, was of old the Campo dos Ciganos—the Gypsies’ Field. The “Egyptian pilgrims” thence spread abroad over the Interior, where their tents often attract the traveller’s eye; and some of them became distinguished criminals, like the Gypsy BeijÚ, one of the chief Thugs, whose career, ended by hanging for the murders which long disgraced the Mantiqueira Mountains, I have described in the Highlands of the Brazil (i. 63). Wandering about the provinces of S. Paulo and Minas Geraes, I often met Gypsy groups whose appearance, language, and occupations were those of Europe. They are here perhaps a little more violent and dangerous, and the wayfarer looks to his revolver as he nears their camp at the dusk hour; yet they are hardly worse than the “Morpheticos” (lepers), who are allowed to haunt the country. Popular books and reviews ignore them; but the peasantry regard them with disgust and religious dread. They protest themselves to be pious Catholics, yet they are so far the best of Protestants, as they protest, practically and energetically, against the whole concern. Their religion, in fact, is embodied in the axiom: “Cras moriemur—post mortem nulla voluptas.” We may well believe the common rumour which charges them with being robbers of poultry and horses, and with doing at times a trifle in the way of assassination. On May 3, 1866, when riding from Rio Claro to Piracicava SaÕ Paulo, I visited a gang of these “verminous ones”; and attended by my armed servants, I spent a night in their tents. The scene was familiar: the tilt-tent swarmed with dark children, the pot hung from the triangle, and horses and ponies for carriage, and perhaps for sale, were picketed about. The features and complexion were those of the foreign tinkler; the women, besides trumpery ornaments of brass, coral, and beads, wore scarlet leg-wraps; and some of the girls were pretty and well dressed as the memorable Selina, of Bagley Wood, Oxford. Apparently they were owners of negro slaves, possibly runaways. According to the Brazilians, they are fond of nomes esquisitos (fancy names); Esmeralda and Sapphira are common, and they borrow from trees, plants, and animals. Their chief occupations are petty trade and fortune-telling, when they reveal for a consideration all the mysteries of “love and law, health and wealth, losses and crosses.” They also “keen” at funerals during the livelong day, and drink, sing, and dance through the night—a regular wake. I could not induce them to use their own tongue, yet they evidently understood me. This desire to conceal their Gypsy origin I have frequently noticed elsewhere. It is probably a relic of the days of their persecution. Fortunately in most civilized countries to-day the Gypsy can count equal rights with other men.
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