The History of the Gipsies, by Walter Simson, which I edited and published in 1865, was ready for the press in 1858. In a prefatory note to it I said:—

“In the present work the race has been treated of so fully and elaborately, in all its aspects, as in a great measure to fill and satisfy the mind, instead of being, as heretofore, little better than a myth to the understanding of the most intelligent person.”

In 1872 Mr. Leland published his work on The English Gipsies and their Language, in which no reference was made to mine, [that is, my part of it]. [11b]

In 1874 he wrote, for Johnson’s CyclopÆdia, an article on the Gipsies, in which he made use of the History proper to illustrate the race in Scotland, and my addition (which made about half of the book) exclusively to illustrate it in America, and giving my words. It did not appear from this article that he had any personal knowledge of the subject, [11c] excepting that he said that he knew of one Gipsy who had travelled from Canada to Texas, as confirmatory of what I had written; and asserted that “there is probably not one theatre or circus in England or America in which there are not one or more performers of more or less mixed Gipsy blood.” The only other remark he made of that nature was the following:—“The reader who will devote a very few weeks to either Dr. B. Smart’s Vocabulary, to G. Borrow’s Romano Lavo Lil, or G. C. Leland’s English Gipsies (London, 1872), can speak the language better than most English or American Gipsies.” In other words, that any person with tact and a turn to pick up, remember and use Gipsy words could do just what he had done; and by going over the same ground produce, in a varied form as regards circumstances, scenes described by others. It is exceedingly probable that the work edited and published by me specially stimulated Mr. Leland to take up the subject so fully treated in it.

In his book entitled The Gipsies (New York, 1882), Mr. Leland complains of “a reviewer” saying of his English Gipsies and their Language that it “had added nothing to our knowledge on the subject;” which was morally if not literally true, that on the language excepted, which was mainly an illustration and continuation of the collections of others, acquired with great labour. He has made several allusions to my work, without indicating it, such as frequently using the word “Gipsydom,” although that might have been done by any one; which could not have been said of “the old thing” (p. 274), which I used on several occasions to describe a settled Gipsy visiting a Gipsy tent, to view the style of life of his primitive ancestor. He has also made unfair allusion to the “mixed multitude” of the Exodus as being the origin of the Gipsies, (p. 89); and to the subject of the Scottish Tinklers or Gipsies, (p. 371). In The Gipsies he says, “No one will accuse me of wide discussion or padding,” (p. 84). That is obvious to any one, for almost every chapter contains an intolerable amount of extraneous matter or padding, that has no reference to the title page or headings of the chapters. In some parts of the book there are several pages at a stretch—once as much as seven pages—of such extraneous matter; and it would be interesting to make an analysis of it, line by line, to ascertain the proportion of the two kinds of matter.

But what I wish more particularly to allude to is Mr. Leland’s discovery that the Gipsies are a tribe from India that are known there under the name of “Syrians,” and therefore not originally natives of India; which latter conclusion, however, he does not admit, but accounts for the phenomenon in this way:—“I offer as an hypothesis that bands of Gipsies who roamed from India to Syria have, after returning, been called TrablÛs or Syrians, just as I have known Germans after returning from the fatherland to America to be called Americans” (p. 338). That is, a family or company of Indian nomads returning from a visit to Syria would afterwards be called, and cause the whole of the race who never left India to be called, Syrians for ever! Again he says:—“It will probably be found that they are Hindoos who have roamed from India to Syria and back again, here and there, until they are regarded as foreigners in both countries” (!). The allusion to Germans in illustration is not merely inapplicable, but unintelligible. Of the “Syrians” in India Mr. Leland writes:—“Whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish” (p. 339). For this reason he should not have identified them with the Gipsies out of India. “Their language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that the word rom, like dom, is one of wide dissemination, dum being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race” (p. 339); and “among the Copts . . . the word for man is romi” (p. 20). [12] “Among the hundred and fifty wandering tribes of India and Persia . . . it is of course difficult to identify the exact origin of the European Gipsy” (p. 18). For that reason he should not have written so positively that he had “definitely determined the existence in India of a peculiar tribe of Gipsies who are par eminence the Romanys of the East, and whose language is there what it is in England, the same in vocabulary and the chief slang of the roads. This I claim as a discovery, having learned it from a Hindoo who had been himself a Gipsy in his native land” (Pref. iv.). He describes them as “thieves, fortune-tellers and vagrants” (p. 339), yet his informant, John Nano, said he was, or had been, one of them; which would imply that there were different kinds of “Syrians,” inasmuch as he was found to be a maker of curry powder in London, and the husband of an English woman, a Mahometan by religion, and sufficiently educated to have written an autobiography, which had unfortunately been burnt. According to John’s account, these “Syrians” were “full blood Hindoos, and not Syrians,” and he “was very sure that his Gipsies were Indians.” The term “full-blood Hindoos” who are “thieves, fortune-tellers and vagrants,” and strollers out of and back to India, requires explanation. John’s information as to these people being called by the other natives of India “Syrians” may be very reliable; but that they were “full-blood Hindoos” could have been, at its best, nothing but a supposition on his part. As I said in the Introduction to the History of the Gipsies, “I can conceive nothing more difficult than an attempt to elucidate the history of any of the infinity of sects, castes or tribes to be met with in India” (p. 41). The nature of the population of India is such that there would hardly be a possibility of its people at large becoming acquainted with the movements of a few families of outcasts leaving their race behind and going to and returning from Syria (if they ever did that), so as to give the whole race the name of Syrians. The name must have had its origin from the people having come originally from Syria, or from parts surrounding it.

In The Gipsies Mr. Leland says that he has “carefully read everything ever printed on the Romany” (Pref. v.); and that it is his “opinion that one ought, when setting forth any subject, to give quite as good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves” (p. 88). And yet, although he made exclusive use of the work I edited and published for parts of his article in Johnson’s CyclopÆdia, and has alluded to Messrs. Borrow, Smart, Palmer and Groome, he has carefully abstained from mentioning my name, however much he may have been indebted to my work. By referring to it, he cannot but remember having “carefully read” the following:—

“I am inclined to believe that the people in India corresponding to the Gipsies in Europe will be found among those tented tribes who perform certain services to the British armies; at all events there is such a tribe in India who are called Gipsies by the Europeans who come in contact with them. A short time ago, one of these people, who followed the occupation of a camel driver, found his way to England, and ‘pulled up’ with some English Gipsies, whom he recognized as his own people; at least he found that they had the ways and ceremonies of them. But it would be unreasonable to suppose that such a tribe in India did not follow various occupations” (p. 40). “What evidently leads Mr. Borrow and others astray in the matter of the origin of the Gipsies, is that they conclude that because the language spoken by the Gipsies is apparently, or for the most part, Hindostanee, therefore the people speaking it originated in Hindostan; as just a conclusion as it would be to maintain that the Negroes in Liberia originated in England because they speak the English language!” (p. 41). [Mr. Leland alludes to this simile by saying that English spoken by American Negroes does not prove Saxon descent (p. 20).]

In discussing the question of the origin of the Gipsies with some English members of the race, I found that “a very intelligent Gipsy informed me that his race sprang from a body of men—a cross between the Arabs and Egyptians—that left Egypt in the train of the Jews” (p. 14). And I wrote when I published this, that “the intelligent reader will not differ with me as to the weight to be attached to the Gipsy’s remark on this point.” To that question I devoted ten (13–23) closely printed pages to demonstrate that the “mixed multitude,” or part of it, that left Egypt with Moses, after separating from the Jews, travelled East into Northern Hindostan, where they formed the Gipsy caste (p. 21); becoming in every way a people like the Gipsy so far as he is known to the public to-day. I further said that this people “travelled East, their own masters, and became the origin of the Gipsy nation throughout the world” (p. 40).

“What objection could any one advance against the Gipsies being the people that left Egypt in the train of the Jews? Not certainly an objection as to race, for there must have been many captive people or tribes introduced into Egypt from the many countries surrounding it . . . That the ‘mixed multitude’ travelled into India, acquired the language of that part of Asia, and perhaps modified its appearance there, and became the origin of the Gipsy race, we may safely assume . . . Everything harmonizes so beautifully with the idea that the Gipsies are the ‘mixed multitude’ of the Exodus that it may be admitted by the world. Even in the matter of religion, we could imagine Egyptian captives losing a knowledge of their religion, as has happened with the Africans in the New World, [14] and, not having had another taught them, leaving Egypt under Moses without any religion at all. After entering India they would in all probability become a wandering people, and for a certainty live aloof from all others” (pp. 494–496). “If we could but find traces of an Egyptian origin among the Gipsies of Asia, say Central and Western Asia, the question would be beyond dispute. But that might be a matter of some trouble” (p. 40).

In this way Mr. Leland’s informant, John Nano, if he was correct in what he said, confirmed my conjecture as to the Gipsies’ Egyptian or rather Syrian origin; for after escaping from Egypt they would remain for some time in Syria or its neighbourhood before they would become a body and proceed East. As illustrative of Mr. Leland’s desire to “give quite as good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves,” I find him writing thus:—

“Here I interrupt the lady,” a writer on Magyarland, “to remark that I cannot agree with her nor with her probable (!) authority, Walter (!) Simson, in believing that the Gipsies are the descendants of the mixed races who followed Moses out of Egypt. The Rom in Egypt is a Hindoo stranger, as he ever was (!)” (p. 89).

The “authority” was mine, not Walter Simson’s, which Mr. Leland perhaps did not care to state. One would naturally think that a people who left Egypt under Moses would be looked upon there as “strangers” to-day, rather than that a straggling family or company of Gipsies returning to India from Syria (if they ever did that) would cause all their race that never left India to be called Syrians for ever! According to Mr. Leland’s style of reasoning it would follow that he and Americans generally could not have originated in England, because they are “strangers” there, and are looked upon as foreigners by the law and by people whose sentiments are not of the most delicate nature!

II.

Mr. Leland’s style of reasoning, his lack of candour, and his reserve as to how he took up the Gipsy question, and to whom he had been indebted at first for some of his ideas, detract very much from the desire that one would naturally have to put confidence in him. His many confident assertions about what others have grave doubts and his frequent contradictions have a similar effect.

In The Gipsies there is very little told us of the race in America (not American Gipsies) of any kind, and yet Mr. Leland says that it will

“Possess at least the charm of novelty, but little having as yet been written on this extensive and very interesting branch of our nomadic population” (Pref. III.).

In my Preface I said:—

“To the American reader generally the work will illustrate a phase of life and history with which it may be reasonably assumed he is not much conversant; for, although he must have some knowledge of the Gipsy race generally, there is no work, that I am aware of, that treats of the body like the present” (p. 7).

And I illustrated the race in America in notes to the work, and in as much as I could well introduce in my long Disquisition, bringing in that part of it which had its origin perhaps from the settlement of the American Colonies. When Mr. Leland borrowed from my work for his article in Johnson’s CyclopÆdia he gave the name of the book with the London imprint, while from the first page to the last it showed that it was an American book, based on a Scotch MS.; and the copy which he used in all probability bore a New York imprint.

I admit this of Mr. Leland, that, by availing himself of the hard labours of others, at least to give him a start, he has added greatly to our knowledge of the Gipsy language, so far as I know and can judge; but that is nearly all that can be said of him. What he has told us of the information got from a native of India as to the Gipsies there being called “Syrians” shows that he was merely in good luck in falling in with the man from whom he obtained it; while, if it is reliable, it confirms my conjecture, although of that it does not seem to have been his business to inform the world. His chapter on the “Shelta or Tinkers’ Talk,” picked up also as it were by accident from a stray tinker, is indeed of great interest; but the world has reason to question his judgment when he says that “it is, in fact, a language, for it can be spoken grammatically, and without using English or Romany” (p. 371). Another occasion for questioning his judgment is when he says that “Mr. [Walter] Simson, had he known the ‘Tinklers’ better, would have found that, not Romany, but Shelta was the really secret language which they employed, although Romany is also more or less familiar to them all” (p. 371); for almost anyone by reading the History can see the absurdity of it. [15]

This book of Mr. Leland (although described in the Preface as “Sketches of experiences among the Gipsies”), to justify its title of The Gipsies, should have been constructed on some plan and scientifically arranged, with a great variety of particulars, and no extraneous matter or padding in it. In place of that we have little but random sketches or scenes connected with the race. There is no principle running through it, for we are told in the Introduction that

“The day is coming when there will be no . . . wild wanderers . . . and certainly no Gipsies” (p. 15). And after describing how English sparrows have driven so many kinds of native birds out of Philadelphia, he says, “So the people of self-conscious culture and the mart and factory are banishing the wilder sort . . . As a London reviewer said when I asserted in a book that the child was perhaps born who would see the last Gipsy, ‘Somehow we feel sorry for that child’” (p. 15). And in describing English fairs, as represented by that at Cobham, he says, “In a few years the last of them will have been closed, and the last Gipsy will be there to look on” (p. 142).

Profound research and philosophical observation and reasoning do not seem to constitute Mr. Leland’s forte. It is a little puzzling to decide how to treat a man like him; for his “confident assertions” in regard to the disappearance, or what some would call the extinction, of the race are but “contradictions” of his own information and opinions; saying nothing of what I published at great length on the perpetuation of the Gipsies in a settled state, all of which he admits having “carefully read.” Among Mr. Leland’s information is the following:—

“Go where we may we find the Jew. Has any other wandered so far? Yes, one; for wherever Jew has gone there too we find the Gipsy” (p. 18). “It . . . . has penetrated into every village which European civilization has ever touched. He who speaks Romany . . . . will meet those with whom a very few words may at once establish a peculiar understanding . . . This widely spread brotherhood . . . are honestly proud that a gentleman is not ashamed of them” (p. 25). “Communities of gentlemanly and lady-like Gipsies’” in Russia (p. 25). “All the Gipsies in the country are not upon the roads. Many of them live in houses, and that very respectably, nay, even aristocratically. Yea, and it may be, O reader, that thou hast met them and knowest them not . . . It is intelligible enough” that such a Gipsy “should say as little as possible of his origin, . . . and ever carefully keep the lid of silence on the pot of his birth” (p. 272). “The Gipsy of society, not always, but yet frequently, retains a keen interest in his wild ancestry. He keeps up the language; it is a delightful secret; he loves now and then to take a look at ‘the old thing’ [one of my phrases, as I have already mentioned] . . . I know ladies in England and in America, both of the blood and otherwise, who would give up a ball of the highest flight in society to sit an hour in a Gipsy tent, and on whom a whispered word in Romany acts like wild-fire. Great as my experience has been I can really no more explain the intensity of this yearning, this rapport, than I can fly. My own fancy for Gipsydom is faint and feeble compared to what I have found in many others” (p. 274).

One would naturally conclude that this race is not disappearing as “British birds are chasing American ones out of Philadelphia”; and that it could not be said that “the child is perhaps born who will see the last Gipsy,” even in his primitive condition. [16]Mr. Leland explains, in his chapter on Cobham Fair, how the Gipsy problem “puzzled and muddled” him.

“I was very much impressed at this fair with the extensive and unsuspected amount of Romany existent in our rural population . . . There were many men in the common room, mostly well dressed, and decent even if doubtful looking. I observed that several used Romany words in casual conversation. I came to the conclusion at last that all who were present knew something of it” (p. 140). And of eleven kinds of people that were at the fair, he said that “there is always a leaven and a suspicion of Gipsiness. If there be no descent, there is affinity by marriage, familiarity, knowledge of words and ways, sweethearting and trafficking, so that they know the children of the Rom as the house-world does not know them, and they in some sort belong together” (p. 140).

In my Disquisition on the Gipsies I said:—

“In Scotland the prejudice towards the name of Gipsy might be safely allowed to drop, were it only for this reason, that the race has got so much mixed up with the native blood, and even with good families of the country, as to be, in plain language, a jumble, a pretty kettle of fish, indeed” (p. 427).

Mr. Leland continues:—

“No novelist, no writer whatever, has as yet clearly explained the curious fact that our entire nomadic population, excepting tramps, is not, as we thought in our childhood, composed of English people like ourselves. It is leavened with direct Indian blood; it has, more or less modified, a peculiar morale.” “It is a muddle, perhaps, and a puzzle; I doubt if anybody quite understands it” (p. 140).

Had Mr. Leland said that, with the exception of myself, “no writer whatever” had even alluded to the phenomenon described, I believe he would have stated what was true. I endeavoured to explain it in a Disquisition of 171 pages, which he indirectly admitted he “carefully read”; so that if I did not “clearly explain” the “puzzle and muddle” it must have proceeded from a lack of intellect on my part, or on his in not understanding me. Since then I have frequently expatiated on and described it, but I am not aware that Mr. Leland has seen what I wrote on these occasions. In The Scottish Churches and the Gipsies I said that the Gipsy problem “may at first present an aspect of a ‘labyrinth of difficulties’”; but that to solve it “there is little intellect wanted for the occasion, but such as it is it should be allowed to act freely on the subject of inquiry” (p. 23). To judge of Mr. Leland’s works on the Gipsies one would think that he had been indebted to no one for anything; so that it is remarkable he should have complained that novelists should not have “clearly explained” to him what he himself should have told us—particularly as he spoke of his “great experience” among the Gipsies—unless it appears that even to novelists he—as a professional writer taking up a subject that came to his hand—has been indebted for putting him on the track for repeating or illustrating an “oft-told tale.” [18] We can easily imagine how Mr. Leland got “puzzled and muddled” in contemplating his subject when he says so positively that the Gipsies are disappearing as “British birds are chasing American ones out of Philadelphia”; and that the mixed state of Gipsydom seen at Cobham Fair “was old before the Saxon Heptarchy” (p. 140). What he said he could find in “no writer whatever” was elaborately described in the book which I published. That he used for his own purposes, and then apparently turned round and threw out his heels at it.

I have spoken of Mr. Leland’s “confident assertions,” but I have space merely to allude to some of them. Among these are the following:—That there is no mystery about the origin of the Gipsies (p. 331), and that “it is a matter of history that, since the Aryan morning of mankind, the Romany have been chiromancing” (p. 225); that “among those who left India were men of different castes and different colours, ranging from the pure Northern invader to the Negro-like Southern Indian” (p. 24); that the Gipsies in Egypt have lost their tongue (p. 296); that the English Gipsy cares not a farthing “to know anything about his race as it exists in foreign countries, or whence it came” (p. 34); and that there is hardly a travelling company of dancers, musicians, singers, or acrobats, or theatre “in Europe or America in which there is not at least one person with some Romany blood” (p. 332). This at least is common, I dare say very common. On one occasion I looked over the show-bill while in MS. of an English Gipsy company who travelled in America with a small panorama. [19a]

The conclusion which I drew of Mr. Leland after reading his CyclopÆdia article was that, apart from the language, he knew little of the subject of the Gipsies. The knowledge of the language has given him the entrÉe into the circle of a certain class of the Gipsies, leading to a “flash-in-the-pan” knowledge of them; but not constituting him a reliable guide on the whole question under consideration; for, in keeping with his “confident assertions” generally, he disposes of it by saying that “the child is perhaps born who will see the last Gipsy.” [19b]

As long as Mr. Leland has stuck to his subject he has confirmed what I said in the work published by me, although he has made no acknowledgment of it in any way. Even on the subject of the tinkers in England, he—so far as he may be considered an authority—has confirmed what I said of their being Gipsies of mixed blood:—“These are but instances of, I might say, all the English tinkers. Almost every old countrywoman about the Scottish Border knows that the Scottish tinkers are Gipsies” (p. 508). He also speaks of John Bunyan having been a “half-blood Gipsy tinker” (p. 213). He was only justified in saying that he was of “mixed blood”; but he made no allusion to my long argument (pp. 313 and 506–523) in defence of it, which I published in Notes and Queries on the 12th December, 1857, and illustrated it in two shorter articles in the early part of 1858, in which the outline of the History of the Gipsies was given; so that the question of Bunyan’s nationality has been before “all England” for a quarter of a century unanswered.

What I wrote in The Scottish Churches and the Gipsies is equally applicable to Mr. Leland:—

“As I have said of Mr. Borrow, any one treating of such a subject as the Gipsies should, so far as space allowed, ‘comment on and admit or reject the facts and opinions of his case as discovered and advanced by others,’ and not ‘put forth his own ideas only, as if nothing had been said by others before or besides him’” (p. 12).—“I think that what I have written and published on the Gipsies should have been treated with more candour and courtesy, at least with more care and consideration, by others who have done likewise, saying nothing of the press. I also think that I have embraced almost all, if not all, of the principles connected with the existence and perpetuation of the race; so that others in discussing them should ‘comment on and admit or reject’ what I have advanced, and I think proved, in place of putting forth opinions apparently without due investigation” (p. 14).—“His illustrations of their language, in common with those of other writers, are very interesting, . . . and the occasional, as if accidental, remarks made by the Gipsies, at intervals, bearing on the Gipsy question proper, are of importance” (p. 17).—“He gives us nothing of the philosophy of the existence, history, perpetuation, development and destiny of the tribe and its off-shoots. He seems to use his eyes and ears only, and with those and his turn for writing he has given us some really good sketches and scenes . . . But besides using the eyes and ears in connection with such a subject, it is necessary to exercise the intellect to discover and explain what is not obvious or hidden, and illustrate the meaning and bearing of what is described . . . His book however interesting parts of it may be, is not calculated to serve any ultimate purpose of importance; nor is it written in a regular or systematic manner . . . Nothing can make a subject like that of the Gipsies attractive (if it can ever be made attractive) to the better classes of readers, and perpetuate an interest in it, but by treating it in such a way as will combine a variety of facts, well arranged and illustrated, and principles; out of which can be constructed a theory or system that can be discussed and proved by a reference to the facts and principles given . . . These writers are useful in their ways, but beyond that they spoil the subject of the Gipsies, in consequence of the ‘utter absence in them of everything of the nature of a philosophy of the subject’; which is peculiar to ‘all the works that have hitherto appeared on the Gipsies’ (Dis., p. 532), so far as I have seen or heard of them” (p. 18).—“A knowledge of the science of race, in the essential meaning of the word, and especially as it applies to the Gipsies, cannot be said to be even in its infancy. Still, it might have been asked, what could two Scotch Gipsies propagate, in body and mind, but Gipsies? They certainly could not give origin to Jews or common Scotch; but Gipsy Scotch or Scotch Gipsy would infallibly follow” (p. 19).—“Of late years a number of publications and articles, of more or less importance, on the Gipsies have appeared in Great Britain. Some of these doubtless had their origin in the work published by me in 1865, although no acknowledgment was made of it in any way; and yet the most of the original MS. of it was prepared before Mr. Borrow had apparently even thought of writing on the race” (p. 17), (that is, between 1817 and 1831).—“If they really have at heart the desire of knowing and informing the public ‘all about the Gipsies,’ why do they so persistently lead it inferentially to believe that the mass of information on the subject, in all its bearings, published by me has no existence? One would naturally think that they would grasp at it, and illustrate and supplement it; and prove anything in it to be wrong that they allege or suppose to be so, and let me hear of their objections” (p. 17).

With all his professed candour in regard to all who have written on the subject of the Gipsies, and cooperating with his “colleagues” in connection with it, why did Mr. Leland not take it up from where it was left by me, and used by him for his article in Johnson’s CyclopÆdia! In place of amusing the world with the fictions that the Gipsy race is disappearing as “British birds are chasing American ones out of Philadelphia,” and that “the child is perhaps born who will see the last Gipsy,” he might have assisted me in “breaking down the middle wall of partition” between them and the rest of the world; so that the Gipsy race, at least in its off-shoots, may be acknowledged openly, and allowed as such to take their places in society, as “men and brethren,” which in many instances they do now, although unknown to the world.

Notwithstanding all that has been and could be said of Mr. Leland as a writer on the Gipsies, and of the work under review, The Gipsies, taking it all in all, is an interesting book, and deserves to be well read. [21]