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THE SPANISH GIPSIES.

It would appear as though gipsies, both men and women, came into the world for no other end or purpose than to be thieves their parents before them are thieves, they grow up among thieves, the art of thieving is their study, and they finish with being thieves, rogues and robbers in every sense of the word; and the love and practice of theft are in their case a sort of inseparable accidents, ceasing only with death. Such is the sweeping judgment passed upon the Gitànos or gipsies of Spain by Cervantes, at the opening of his beautiful tale the Gitanilla. This censure it is true, is not borne out in the progress of the story by the conduct of the fascinating heroine Preciosa, even though her fictitious grandmother is said to have instructed her in all her gipsy tricks, and devices for fraud and robbery » but the graces and virtues of that all-accomplished fair-one can hardly be alleged in their exculpation, since the denouement discovers her to be (like Victor Hugo's Esmeralda, of whom she is the prototype) no true daughter of Egypt, but the stolen child of a Spanish grandee. Severe, however as is the denunciation of Cervantes,

(') The Zincali; or an account of the Gipsies of Spain; with an Original Collection of their Songs and Poetry, and a copious Dictionary of their Language. By George Borrow, late agent of the British and Foreign Bible Society in Spain. 2 vol. 12mo. London. 4 1.

it falls far short of the list of enormities attributed to the Gitános in the present work, by one who has enjoyed such opportunities of observing the manners and scrutinizing the feelings of that wild and singular race, as have rarely, if ever before, fallen to the lot of a Busno, () or stranger; and whose devotion to Gitanismo, could only be accounted for on the supposition of the gipsies themselves, by his soul having, in some previous state of being, inhabited the corporeal tenement of one of their errate or blood. For twenty years, as he informs us, he has been in constant habits of familiar intercourse with the Roma, (2) who are certainly,» (as he naïvely observes,) a very mysterious people, come from some distant land no mortal knows why; and who made their first appearance in Europe at a dark period, when events were not so accurately recorded as at the present time. »

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This vexata quæstio of the origin of the gipsies, and the causes which prompted their migration into Europe, has been left by Mr. Borrow almost untouched; and the few allusions he has made to it do not throw much light on the subject (5). At the present day the Spaniards in general consider the Gitános as descendants of the Moriscos, apparently for no other reason than their dark complexion, their disregard of Christianity, and their having a peculiar language among them

The word used in Spanish Romany, or gipsy-tongue, to indicate all who are not gipsies in the English dialect the phrase is Tororo.

(2) Rom, pl. Roma, the husbands or married men,» is the national designation of the gipsies in all parts of the world, though they bear other local names in different countries. May not the vulgar phrase rum be originally identical with this word-a «rum-looking» man, implying one with the features of a gipsy?

(3) A quotations given at vol. I p. 3 from the life of Timour by Arabsha, as demonstrating the existence of gipsies at Samarkand at that period, and their extirpation by Timour. The word Zingar, however, on which this inference rests, is found only in a single known MS., and is dismissed as erroneous by the editor Manger : and even if we admit it, its more obvious signification would be «men of Zungaria» or western Mogulistan. In fact, notwithstanding the author's high attaiments as an Oriental linguist, his acquaintance with Eastern history does not appear to be very accurate. At vol. II. p. 113, note, we are told that Timour, who was a bigoted Moslem from his cradle, «abandoned the old religion of the steppes, a kind of fetish or sorcery, and became a Mahometan, to obtain popularity among these soldiers. (Turcomans and Persians.)

selves, unintelligible to the other natives of Spain. But the close affinity of all the seven jargons or dialects of this language, however disguised or corrupted by that or other nations, to the Sanscrit stock, points out India as their veritable father-land; while the large proportion of Sclavonian words incorporated with it shows that they halted in the eastern regions of Europe, (where they are still most numerous,) for some years before they continued their progress towards the west, and this is nearly the sum of what is certainly known of their earlier history. Some have imagined them to have been natives of Moultan and Guzerat, driven from their native land by the sword of Timour; but this hypothesis cannot well be reconciled with the date of their appearance in Europe, which coincides so nearly with the conquests of that scourge of Asia, as scarcely to afford due time for the performance of their long pilgrimage It may also be urged as improbable, that they should have directed their flight through Persia, then immediately subject to the Tartar conqueror, instead of choosing the safer route towards the Dekkan, where his destroying arms never penetrated. The Zincali themselves, as might be expected from a degraded race without writings or records, « are unable to give any rational account of themselves, and preserve no recollection of the places where their forefathers wandered. In default of traditions of their own, they have even adopted the fables current among the hated Busné; from which they have concocted the following wild legend of their expatriation from Chal or Egypt-in allusion to the popular belief which attributes to them an Egyptian descent :

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There was a great king in Egypt, and his name was Pharaoh (). He had numerous armies, with which he made war on all countries, and conquered them all. And when he had conquered the entire world, he became sad and sorrowful; for as he delighted in war, he no longer knew on what to employ himself. At last he bethought him on making war on

{') This tradition appears to be current also in Hungary, as one name for the Czigany there is Pharaoh nepek, «Pharoah's people.»>

God: so he sent a defiance to God, daring him to descend from the sky with his angels, and contend with Pharaoh, and his armies; but God said, I will not measure my strength with that of man. But God was incensed against Pharaoh, and resolved to punish him; and he opened a hole in the side of an enormous mountain, and he raised a raging wind and drove before it Pharaoh and his armies to that hole; and the abyss received them, and the mountain closed upon them: but whosoever goes to that mountain on the night of St. John, can hear Pharaoh and his armies singing and yelling therein. And it came to pass, that when Pharaoh and his armies had disappeared, all the kings and the nations which had become subject to Egypt, revolted against Egypt, which having lost her king and her armies, was left utterly without defence; and they made war against her, and prevailed against her, and took her people and drove them forth, dispersing them all over the world." So that now, say the Chai, (Egyptians or people of Chal) Apilyela gras Chai la panee LucaleeOur horses drink the waters of the Guadiana. »

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Our horses should drink of no river but one;

It sparkles through Chal, 'neath the smile of the sun;
But they taste of all streams save that only, and see!
Apilyela gras Chai la panee Lucalee.» (').

Though the present volumes are devoted almost wholly to those of the gipsy race inhabiting the Peninsula, we find from the notices scattered through the work that the personal researches of the author have equally extended to those of Great Britain (2), Russia, Hungary, and, in fact, every country where

(') Though the biblical origin of this strange fiction is sufficiently evident, it is not without some points of resemblance to those mythological tales of India, in which Bali and other mortals, intoxicated by the possession of universal rule on earth, are overthrown in a vain attempt to rival and subdue the heavenly powers

(') On the British gipsies, we will only quote the following passage as it serves to illustrate a well-known and delightful work :- «The name Curraple is a favorite among the gipsies. It excited the curiosity of the amiable White of Selborne, who conceived it to be partly Greek, from the termination aple or ople, which put him in mind of «polis». Curraple, however, means a smith, a name very appropriate to a gipsy. The root is carraw, to strike, hammer.»> &c.

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they are found, and we regret that he has not more frequently enabled us to judge, by references to their comparative condition in these various remote lands, how far the odious colours, in which he paints the crimes and dark malignity of the Zincalo of Spain, are mitigated in their brethren of the" more northern climes. The demoralized state of society in Spain, the notorious corruption of justice, and the open opposition to the law in which many of the lower orders live, would scarcely have a favourable effect on a race, whose natural tendency was to prey upon those around them; it was not from the example of the manolo, the contrabandista, or the bragante, that the Gitáno would learn honesty or the love of good order. But the Russian Gipsies or Zigany are principally remarkable for their skill in music, and the matchless melody of their voices; and Mr. Borrow records the spontaneous tribute paid by Catalani herself, to the powers of a cantatrice of this race, who sung in her presence at Moscow. Those of Hungary are equally eminent in this respect; and many of our readers must be familiar with Mr. Paget's amusing account of the gipsey band at Füred, and its youthful leader, who had instructions on the violin from Strauss himself, and had furthermore learned, «what certainly he had not intended to teach, a most perfect imitation of those extraordinary movements by which the body of the great waltz-player seems convulsed during his performance, and which our little Czigany took off so admirably, as to keep his audience in a roar of laughter. The Hungarian gipsies, indeed, seem to have become rather favorites with Mr. Paget (1), in spite of their dirt, and their vagabondism; and we should be unwilling to believe that the pretty gipsey-girl Lilla, by whose good-humour and alacrity the party were extricated at Hunyad, was all the while pouring forth, sotto voce, a string of muttered curses on the Busnà, like the hag encountered by Mr. Borrow in the inn at Tarifa.

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(2) The same agreeable traveller records, however, a remarkable instance of the aversion with which the peasants regard them:-«As I was travelling after my return from Turkey, my servant turned round, as we met a gang of gipsies, and exclaimed, 'After all, sir, our negroes are not so ugly as those in Turkey"

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