Chapter VI: Part I: Rambles in Gipsydom (2)

"'Although the Gipsies are not persecuted in Turkey, the antipathy
and disdain felt for them evinces itself in many ways, and appears to
be founded upon a strange legend current in the country. This legend
says that when the Gipsy nation were driven out of their country and
arrived at Mekran, they constructed a wonderful machine to which a
wheel was attached.' From the context of this imperfectly told
story, it would appear as if the Gipsies could not travel further
until this wheel should revolve:--'Nobody appeared to be able to turn
it, till in the midst of their vain efforts some evil spirit
presented himself under the disguise of a sage, and informed the
chief, whose name was Chen, that the wheel would be made to turn only
when he had married his sister Guin. The chief accepted the advice,
the wheel turned round, and the name of the tribe after this incident
became that of the combined names of the brother and sister,
Chenguin, the appellation of all the Gipsies of Turkey at the present
day.' The legend goes on to state that, in consequence of this
unnatural marriage, the Gipsies were cursed and condemned by a
Mohammedan saint to wander for ever on the face of the earth. The
real meaning of the myth--for myth it is--is very apparent. Chen is
a Romany word, generally pronounced Chone, meaning the moon, while
Guin is almost universally rendered _Gan_ or _Kan_. _Kan_ is given
by George Borrow as meaning sun, and we have ourselves heard English
Gipsies call it _kan_, although _kam_ is usually assumed to be right.
Chen-kan means, therefore, moon-sun. And it may be remarked in this
connection that the Roumanian Gipsies have a wild legend stating that
the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister,
was condemned as the sun to wander for ever in pursuit of her turned
into the moon. A similar legend exists in Greenland and the island
of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish. It was very natural
that the Gipsies, observing that the sun and moon were always
apparently wandering, should have identified their own nomadic life
with that of these luminaries. It may be objected by those to whom
the term 'solar myth' is as a red rag that this story, to prove
anything, must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far
to seek. If it can be found among any of the wanderers in India, it
may well be accepted, until something better turns up, as the
possible origin of the greatly disputed Zingan. It is quite as
plausible as Dr. Mikliosch's derivation from the Acingani--[Greek
text]--'an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt in Phrygia
and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century.' The
mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon-sun story came from
India before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name. And if
the Romany call themselves Jengan, or Chenkan, or Zin-gan, in the
East, it is extremely unlikely that they ever received such a name
from the Gorgios in Europe."

Professor Bott, in his "Die Zigeuner in Europa und Asien," speaks of the Gipsies or _Lury_ as follows:--"In the great Persian epic, the 'Shah-Nameh'--in 'Book of Kings,' Firdusi--relates an historical tradition to the following effect. About the year 420 A.D., Behram Gur, a wise and beneficent ruler of the Sassanian dynasty, finding that his poorer subjects languished for lack of recreation, bethought himself of some means by which to divert their spirits amid the oppressive cares of a laborious life. For this purpose he sent an embassy to Shankal, King of Canaj and Maharajah of India, with whom he had entered into a strict bond of amity, requesting him to select from among his subjects and transmit to the dominions of his Persian ally such persons as could by their arts help to lighten the burden of existence, and lend a charm to the monotony of toil. The result was the importation of twelve thousand minstrels, male and female, to whom the king assigned certain lands, as well as an ample supply of corn and cattle, to the end that, living independently, they might provide his people with gratuitous amusement. But at the end of one year they were found to have neglected agricultural operations, to have wasted their seed corn, and to be thus destitute of all means of subsistence. Then Behram Gur, being angry, commanded them to take their asses and instruments, and roam through the country, earning a livelihood by their songs. The poet concludes as follows:--'The Lury, agreeably to this mandate, now wander about the world in search of employment, associating with dogs and wolves, and thieving on the road, by day and by night.'" These words were penned nearly nine centuries ago, and correctly describe the condition of one of the wandering tribes of Persia at the present day, and they have been identified by some travellers as members of the Gipsy family.

Dr. Von Bott goes on to say this:--"The tradition of the importation of the Lury from India is related by no less than five Persian or Arab writers: first, about the year 940 by Hamza, an Arab historian, born at Ispahan; next, as we have seen, by Firdusi; in the year 1126 by the author of the 'Modjmel-al-Yevaryk;' in the fifteenth century by Mirkhoud, the historian of the Sassanides. The transplanted musicians are called by Hamza _Zuth_, and in some manuscripts of Mirkhoud's history the same name occurs, written, according to the Indian orthography, _Djatt_. These words are undistinguishable when pronounced, and, in fact, may be looked upon as phonetically equivalent, the Arabic _z_ being the legitimate representative of the Indian _dj_. Now Zuth or Zatt, as it is indifferently written, is one of the designations of the Syrian Gipsies, and Djatt is the tribal appellative of the ancient Indian race still widely diffused throughout the Punjab and Beloochistan. Thus we find that the modern Lury, who may, without fear of error, be classed as Persian Gipsies, derive a traditional origin from certain Indian minstrels called by an Arab author of the tenth century _Zuth_, and by a Persian historian of the fifteenth, _Djatt_, a name claimed, on the one hand by the Gipsies frequenting the neighbourhood of Damascus, and on the other by a people dwelling in the valley of the Indus." The Djatts were averse to religious speculation, and rejected all sectarian observances; the Hindu was mystical and meditative, and a slave to the superstitions of caste. From a remote period there were Djatt settlements along the shores of the Persian Gulf, plainly indicating the route by which the Gipsies travelled westward from India, as I have before intimated, rather than endure the life of an Indian slave under the Mohammedan task-masters. Liberty! liberty! free and wild as partridges, with no disposition to earn their bread by the sweat of the brow, ran through their nature like an electric wire, which the chirp of a hedge-sparrow in spring-time would bring into action, and cause them to bound like wild asses to the lanes, commons, and moors. They have always refused to submit to the Mohammedan faith: in fact, the Djatts have accepted neither Brahma nor Budda, and have never adopted any national religion whatever. The church of the Gipsies, according to a popular saying in Hungary, "was built of bacon, and long ago eaten by the dogs." Captain Richard F. Burton wrote in 1849, in his work called the "Sindh, and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus:"--"It seems probable, from the appearance and other peculiarities of the race, that the Djatts are connected by consanguinity with that singular race, the Gipsies." Some writers have endeavoured to prove that the Gipsies were formerly Egyptians; but, from several causes, they have never been able to show conclusively that such was the case. The wandering Gipsies in Egypt, at the present day, are not looked upon by the Egyptians as in any way related to them. Then, again, others have tried to prove that the Gipsies are the descendants of Hagar; but this argument falls to the ground simply because the connecting links have not been found. The two main reasons alleged by Mr. Groom and those who try to establish this theory are, first, that the Ishmaelites are wanderers; second, that they are smiths, or workers in iron and brass. The Mohammedans claim Ishmael as their father, and certainly they would be in a better position to judge upon this point eleven centuries ago then we possibly can be at this late date. And so, in like manner, where it is alleged that the Gipsies sprang from, Roumania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Spain, and Hungary.

The following are specimens of Indian characters, taken from "The People of India," prepared under the authority of the Indian Government, and edited by Dr. Forbes Watson, M.A., and Sir John William Kaye, F.R.S. In speaking of the Changars, they say that these Indians have an unenviable character for thieving and general dishonesty, and form one of the large class of unsettled wanderers which, inadmissible to Hinduism and unconverted to the Mohammedan faith, lives on in a miserable condition of life as outcasts from the more civilised communities. Changars are, in general, petty thieves and pickpockets, and have no settled vocation. They object to continuous labour. The women make baskets, beg, pilfer, or sift and grind corn. They have no settled places of residence, and live in small blanket or mat tents, or temporary sheds outside villages. They are professedly Hindus and worshippers of Deree or Bhowanee, but they make offerings at Mohammedan shrines. They have private ceremonies, separate from those of any professed faith, which are connected with the aboriginal belief that still lingers among the descendants of the most ancient tribes of India, and is chiefly a propitiation of malignant demons and malicious sprites. They marry exclusively among themselves, and polygamy is common. In appearance, both men and women are repulsively mean and wretched; the features of the women in particular being very ugly, and of a strong aboriginal type. The Changars are one of the most miserable and useless of the wandering tribes of the upper provinces. They feed, as it were, on the garbage left by others, never changing, never improving, never advancing in the social rank, scale, or utility--outcast and foul parasites from the earliest ages, and they so remain. The Changars, like other vagrants, are of dissolute habits, indulging freely in intoxicating liquors, and smoking ganjia, or cured hemp leaves, to a great extent. Their food can hardly be particularised, and is usually of the meanest description; occasionally, however, there are assemblies of the caste, when sheep are killed and eaten; and at marriages and other domestic occurrences feasts are provided, which usually end in foul orgies. In the clothes and person the Changars are decidedly unclean, and indeed, in most respects the repulsiveness of the tribes can hardly be exceeded.

The Doms are a race of Gipsies found from Central India to the far Northern frontier, where a portion of their early ancestry appear as the Domarr, and are supposed to be pre-Aryan. In "The People of India," we are told that the appearance and modes of life of the Doms indicate a marked difference from those who surround them (in Behar). The Hindus admit their claim to antiquity. Their designation in the Shastras is Sopuckh, meaning dog-eater. They are wanderers, they make baskets and mats, and are inveterate drinkers of spirits, spending all their earnings on it. They have almost a monopoly as to burning corpses and handling all dead bodies. They eat all animals which have died a natural death, and are particularly fond of pork of this description. "Notwithstanding profligate habits, many of them attain the age of eighty or ninety; and it is not till sixty or sixty-five that their hair begins to get white." The Domarr are a mountain race, nomads, shepherds, and robbers. Travellers speak of them as "Gipsies." A specimen which we have of their language would, with the exception of one word, which is probably an error of the transcriber, be intelligible to any English Gipsy, and be called pure Romany. Finally, the ordinary Dom calls himself a Dom, his wife a Domni, and the being a Dom, or the collective Gipsydom, Domnipana. _D_ in Hindustani is found as _r_ in English Gipsy speech--_e.g._, _doi_, a wooden spoon, is known in Europe as _roi_. Now in common Romany we have, even in London:--

Rom A Gipsy. Romni A Gipsy wife. Romnipen Gipsydom.

Of this word _rom_ we shall more to say. It may be observed that there are in the Indian _Dom_ certain distinctly-marked and degrading features, characteristic of the European Gipsy, which are out of keeping with the habits of warriors, and of a daring Aryan race which withstood the caliphs. Grubbing in filth as if by instinct, handling corpses, making baskets, eating carrion, living for drunkenness, does not agree with anything we can learn of the Jats. Yet the European Gipsies are all this, and at the same time 'horsey' like the Jats. Is it not extremely probable that during the "out-wandering" the Dom communicated his name and habits to his fellow-emigrants?

The marked musical talent characteristic of the Slavonian and other European Gipsies appears to link them with the Luri of Persia. These are distinctly Gipsies; that is to say, they are wanderers, thieves, fortune-tellers, and minstrels. The Shah-Nameh of Firdusi tells us that about the year 420 A.D., Shankal, the Maharajah of India, sent to Behram Gour, a ruler of the Sassanian dynasty in Persia, ten thousand minstrels, male and female, called _Luri_. Though lands were allotted to them, with corn and cattle, they became from the beginning irreclaimable vagabonds. Of their descendants, as they now exist, Sir Henry Pottinger says:--

"They bear a marked affinity to the Gipsies of Europe." ["Travels in Beloochistan and Scinde," p. 153.] "They speak a dialect peculiar to themselves, have a king to each troupe, and are notorious for kidnapping and pilfering. Their principal pastimes are drinking, dancing, and music. . . . They are invariably attended by half a dozen of bears and monkeys that are broken in to perform all manner of grotesque tricks. In each company there are always two or three members who profess . . . modes of divining which procure them a ready admission into every society." This account, especially with the mention of trained bears and monkeys, identifies them with the Ricinari, or bear-leading Gipsies of Syria (also called Nuri), Turkey, and Roumania. A party of these lately came to England. We have seen these Syrian Ricinari in Egypt. They are unquestionably Gipsies, and it is probable that many of them accompanied the early migration of Jats and Doms.

The following is the description of another low-caste, wandering tribe of Indians, taken from "The People of India," called "Sanseeas," vagrants of no particular creed, and make their head-quarters near Delhi. The editor, speaking of this tribe, says that they have been vagrants from the earliest periods of Indian history. They may have accompanied Aryan immigrants or invaders, or they may have risen out of aboriginal tribes; but whatever their origin, they have not altered in any respect, and continue to prey upon its population as they have ever done, and will continue to do as long as they are in existence, unless they are forcibly restrained by our Government and converted, as the Thugs have been, into useful members of society.

They are essentially outcasts, admitted to no other caste fellowship, ministered to by no priests, without any ostensible calling or profession, totally ignorant of everything but their hereditary crime, and with no settled place of residence whatever; they wander as they please over the land, assuming any disguise they may need, and for ever preying upon the people. When they are not engaged in acts of crime, they are beggars, assuming various religious forms, or affecting the most abject poverty. The women and children have the true whine of the professional mendicant, as they frequent thronged bazaars, receiving charity and stealing what they can. They sell mock baubles in some instances, but only as a cloak to other enterprises, and as a pretence of an honest calling. The men are clever at assuming disguises; and being often intelligent and even polite in their demeanour, can become religious devotees, travelling merchants, or whatever they need to further their ends. They are perfectly unscrupulous and very daring in their proceedings. The Sanseeas are not only Thugs and Dacoits, but kidnappers of children, and in particular of female children, who are readily sold even at very tender ages to be brought up as household slaves, or to be educated by professional classes for the purpose of prostitution. These crimes are the peculiar offence of the women members of the tribe. Generally a few families in company wander over the whole of Northern India, but are also found in the Deccan, sometimes by themselves, sometimes in association with Khimjurs, or a class of Dacoits, called Mooltanes. It is, perhaps, a difficult question for Government to deal with, but it is not impossible, as the Thugs have been employed in useful and profitable arts, and thus reclaimed from pursuits in which they have never known in regard to others the same instincts of humanity which exist among ourselves. Sanseeas have as many wives and concubines as they can support. Some of the women are good-looking, but with all classes, women and men, exists an appearance of suspicion in their features which is repulsive. They are, as a class, in a condition of miserable poverty, living from hand to mouth, idle, disreputable, restless, without any settled homes, and for the most part without even habitations. They have no distinct language of their own, but speak a dialect of Rajpootana, which is disguised by slang or _argot_ terms of their own that is unintelligible to other classes. In "The People of India" mention is made of another class of wandering Indians, called Nuts, or Naths, who correspond to the European Gipsy tribes, and like these, have no settled home. They are constant thieves. The men are clever as acrobats. The women attend their performances, and sing or play on native drums or tambourines. The Nuts do not mix with or intermarry with other tribes. They live for the most part in tents made of black blanket stuff, and move from village to village through all parts of the country. They are as a marked race, and generally distrusted wherever they go.

They are musicians, dancers, conjurers, acrobats, fortune-tellers, blacksmiths, robbers, and dwellers in tents. They eat everything, except garlic. There are also in India the Banjari, who are spoken of by travellers as "Gipsies." They are travelling merchants or pedlars. Among all of these wanderers there is a current slang of the roads, as in England. This slang extends even into Persia. Each tribe has its own, but the general name for it is _Rom_.

It has never been pointed out, however, that there is in Northern and Central India a distinct tribe, which is regarded even by the Nats and Doms and Jats themselves, as peculiarly and distinctly Gipsy. "We have met," says one writer, "in London with a poor Mohammedan Hindu of Calcutta. This man had in his youth lived with these wanderers, and been, in fact, one of them. He had also, as is common with intelligent Mohammedans, written his autobiography, embodying in it a vocabulary of the Indian Gipsy language. This MS. had unfortunately been burned by his English wife, who informed the writer that she had done so 'because she was tired of seeing a book lying about which she could not understand.' With the assistance of an eminent Oriental scholar who is perfectly familiar with both Hindustani and Romany, this man was carefully examined. He declared that these were the real Gipsies of India, 'like English Gipsies here.' 'People in India called them Trablus or Syrians, a misapplied word, derived from a town in Syria, which in turn bears the Arabic name for Tripoli. But they were, as he was certain, pure Hindus, and not Syrian Gipsies. They had a peculiar language, and called both this tongue and themselves _Rom_. In it bread was called Manro.' Manro is all over Europe the Gipsy word for _bread_. In English Romany it is softened into _maro_ or _morro_. Captain Burton has since informed us that _manro_ is the Afghan word for bread; but this our ex-Gipsy did not know. He merely said that he did not know it in any Indian dialect except that of the Rom, and that Rom was the general slang of the road, derived, as he supposed, from the Trablus."

These are, then, the very Gipsies of Gipsies in India. They are thieves, fortune-tellers, and vagrants. But whether they have or had any connection with the migration to the West we cannot establish. Their language and their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind that the word Rom, like Dom, is one of wide dissemination, Dom being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race. And the very great majority of even English Gipsy words are Hindu, with an admixture of Persian, and not belonging to a slang of any kind. As in India, _churi_ is a knife, _nak_, the nose, _balia_, hairs, and so on, with others which would be among the first to be furnished with slang equivalents. And yet these very Gipsies are _Rom_, and the wife is a _Romni_, and they use words which are not Hindu in common with European Gipsies. It is therefore not improbable that in these Trablus, so called through popular ignorance, as they are called Tartars in Egypt and Germany, we have a portion at least of the real stock. It is to be desired that some resident in India would investigate the Trablus.

Grellmann in his German treatise on Gipsies, says:--"They are lively, uncommonly loquacious and chattering, fickle in the extreme, consequently inconstant in their pursuits, faithless to everybody, even their own kith and kin, void of the least emotion of gratitude, frequently rewarding benefits with the most insidious malice. Fear makes them slavishly compliant when under subjection, but having nothing to apprehend, like other timorous people, they are cruel. Desire of revenge often causes them to take the most desperate resolutions. To such a degree of violence is their fury sometimes excited, that a mother has been known in the excess of passion to take her small infant by the feet, and therewith strike the object of her anger. They are so addicted to drinking as to sacrifice what is most necessary to them that they may feast their palates with ardent spirits. Nothing can exceed the unrestrained depravity of manners existing among them. Unchecked by any idea of shame they give way to every libidinous desire. The mother endeavours by the most scandalous arts to train up her daughter for an offering to sensuality, and she is scarcely grown up before she becomes the seducer of others. Laziness is so prevalent among them that were they to subsist by their own labour only, they would hardly have bread for two of the seven days in the week. This indolence increases their propensity to stealing and cheating. They seek to avail themselves of every opportunity to satisfy their lawless desires. Their universal bad character, therefore, for fickleness, infidelity, ingratitude, revenge, malice, rage, depravity, laziness, knavery, thievishness, and cunning, though not deficient in capacity and cleverness, renders them people of no use in society. The boys will run like wild things after carrion, let it stink ever so much, and where a mortality happens among the cattle, there these wretched creatures are to be found in the greatest numbers."

So devilish are their hearts, deep-rooted their revenge, and violent their language under its impulse, that it is woe to the man who comes within their clutches, if he does not possess an amount of tact sufficient to cope with them. A man who desires to tackle the Gipsies must have his hands out of his pockets, "all his buttons on," "his head screwed upon the right place," and no fool, or he will be swamped before he leaves the place. This I experienced myself a week or two since. During the months of November and December of last year, my friend, the _Illustrated London News_, had a number of faithful sketches showing Gipsy life round London; these, it seems, with the truthful description I have given of the Gipsies, in my letters, papers, &c., encouraged by the untruthful, silly, and unwise remarks of a clergyman, not overdone with too much wisdom and common sense, residing in the neighbourhood of N--- Hill, seemed to have raised the ire of the Gipsies in the neighbour hood of L--- Road (I will not go so far as to say that the minister of Christ Church did it designedly, if he did, and with the idea of stopping the work of education among the Gipsy children--it is certain that this farthing rushlight has mistaken his calling) to such an extent that a friend wrote to me, stating that the next time I went to the neighbourhood of N--- Hill I "must look out for a warm reception," to which I replied, that "the sooner I had it the better, and I would go for it in a day or two;" accordingly I went, believing in the old Book, "Resist the devil and he will flee from thee." Upon my first approach towards them, I was met with sour looks, scowls, and not over polite language, but with a little pleasantry, chatting, and a few little things, such as Christmas cards, oranges to give to the children, the sun began to beam upon their countenances, and all passed off with smiles, good humour, and shakes of the hands, till I came to a man who had the colour and expression upon his face of his satanic majesty from the regions below. It took me all my time to smile and say kind things while he was pacing up and down opposite his tent, with his hands clenched, his eye like fire, step quick, reminding me of Indian revenge. He was speaking out in no unmistakable language, "I should like to see you hung like a toad by the neck till you are dead, that I should, and I mean it from my heart." When I asked him to point out anything I had said or done that was not correct, he was in a fix, and all he could say was, that "I would be likely to stop his game." Every now and then he would thrust his hands into his pockets, as if feeling for his clasp-knife, and then again, occasionally, he would give a shrug of the shoulders, as if he felt not at all satisfied. I felt in my pocket, and opened my small penknife. I thought it might do a little service in case he should "close in upon me." Just to feel his pulse, and set his heart a beating, I told him, good-humouredly, that "I was not afraid of half-a-dozen better men than he was if they would come one at a time, but did not think I could tackle them all at once." This caused him to open his eyes wider than I had seen them before, as if in wonder and amazement at the kind of fellow he had come in contact with. I told him I was afraid that he would find me a queer kind of customer. Gipsies as a rule are cowards, and this feature I could see in his actions and countenance. However, after talking matters over for some time we parted friends, feeling thankful that the storm had abated.

The Gipsies plan of attacking a house, town, city, or country for the sake of pillage, plunder, and gain remains the same to-day as it did eight centuries ago. They do not generally resort to open violence as the brigands of Spain, Turkey and other parts of the East. They follow out an organised system, at least, they go to work upon different lines. In the first place, they send a kind of advance-guard to find out where the loot and soft hearts lay and the weaknesses of those who hold them, and when this has been done they bring all the arts their evil disposition can devise to bear upon the weak points till they are successful. When Mahmood was returning with his victorious army from the war in the eleventh century with the spoils and plunder of war upon their backs, and while the soldiers were either lain down to rest or allured away with the Gipsy girls' "witching eyes," the old Gipsies, numbering some hundreds, who where camping in the neighbourhood, bolted off with their war prizes; this so enraged Mahmood, after finding out that he had been sold by a lot of low-caste Indians or Gipsies, that he sent his army after them and slew the whole band of these wandering Indians.

[Picture: A gentleman gipsy's tent, and his dog, "Grab," Hackney Marshes]

Sometimes they will put on a hypocritical air of religious sanctity; at other times they will dress their prettiest girls in Oriental finery and gaudy colours on purpose to catch the unwary; at other times they will try to lay hold of the sympathic by sending out their old women and tottering men dressed in rags; and at other times they will endeavour to lay hold of the benevolent by sending out women heavily laden with babies, and in this way they have Gipsyised and are still Gipsyising our own country from the time they landed in Scotland in the year 1514, until they besieged London now more than two centuries ago, planting their encampments in the most degraded parts on the outskirts of our great city; and this holds good of them even to this day. They are never to be seen living in the throng of a town or in the thick of a fight. In sketching the plan of campaigning for the day, the girls with pretty "everlasting flowers" go in one direction, the women with babies tackle the tradesmen and householders by selling skewers, clothes-pegs, and other useful things, but in reality to beg, and the old women with the assistance of the servant girls face the brass knockers through the back kitchen. The men are all this time either loitering about the tents or skulking down the lanes spotting out their game for the night, with their lurcher dogs at their heels. Thus the Gipsy lives and thus the Gipsy dies, and is buried like a dog; his tent destroyed, and his soul flown to another world to await the reckoning day. He can truthfully say as he leaves his tenement of clay behind, "No man careth for my soul." Charles Wesley, no doubt, in his day, had seen vast numbers of these wandering English heathens in various parts of the country as he travelled about on his missionary tour, and it is not at all improbable but that they were in his mind when those soul-inspiring, elevating, and tear-fetching lines were penned by him in 1748, and first published by subscription in his "Hymns and Sacred Poems," 2 vols., 1749, the profits of which enabled him to get a wife and set up housekeeping on his own account at Bristol. They are words that have healed thousands of broken hearts, fixed the hopes of the downcast on heaven, and sent the sorrowful on his way rejoicing; and they are words that will live as long as there is a Methodist family upon earth to lisp its song of triumph.

"Come on, my partners in distress,
My comrades through the wilderness,
Who still your bodies feel;
A while forget your griefs and fears,
And look beyond this vale of tears,
To that celestial hill.

"Beyond the bounds of time and space,
Look forward to that heavenly place,
The saints' secure abode;
On faith's strong eagle-pinions rise,
And force your passage to the skies,
And scale the mount of God.

"Who suffer with our Master here,
We shall before His face appear,
And by His side sit down;
To patient faith the prize is sure;
And all that to the end endure
The cross, shall wear the crown."

It is impossible to give anything like a correct number of Gipsies that are outside Europe. Many travellers have attempted to form some idea of the number, and have come to the conclusion that there were not less than 3,000 families in Persia in 1856, and in 1871 there were not less than 67,000 Gipsies in Armenia and Asiatic Turkey. In Egypt of one tribe only there are 16,000. With regard to the number of Gipsies there are in America no one has been able to compute; but by this time the number must be considerable, for stragglers have been wending their way there from England, Europe, and other parts of the world for some time.

Mikliosch, in 1878, stated that there are not less than 700,000 in Europe. Turkey, previous to the war with Russia, 104,750, Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1874 contained 9,537. Servia in 1874 had 24,691; in 1873 Montenegro had 500, and in Roumania there are at the present time from 200,000 to 300,000. According to various official estimates in Austria there are about 10,000, and in 1846 Bohemia contained 13,500, and Hungary 159,000. In Transylvania in 1850 there were 78,923, and in Hungary proper there were in 1864, 36,842. In Spain there are 40,000; in France from 3,000 to 6,000; in Germany and Italy, 34,000; Scandinavia, 1,500; in Russia they numbered in 1834, 48,247, exclusive of Polish Gipsies. Ten years later they numbered 1,427,539, and in 1877 the number is given as 11,654. It seems somewhat strange that the number of Gipsies should be in 1844, 1,427,539, and thirty-five years later the number should have been reduced to 11,654. Presuming these figures to be correct, the question arises, What has become of the 1,415,885 during the last thirty-five years?

As regards the number of Gipsies in England, Hoyland in his day, 1816, calculated that there were between 15,000 and 18,000, and goes on to say this:--"It has come to the knowledge of the writer what foundation there has been for the report commonly circulated that a member of Parliament had stated in the House of Commons, when speaking on some question relating to Ireland, that there were not less than 36,000 Gipsies in Great Britain.

"To make up such an aggregate the numerous hordes must have been included who traverse most of the nation with carts and asses for the sale of earthenware, and live out of doors great part of the year, after the manner of the Gipsies. These potters, as they are commonly called, acknowledge that Gipsies have intermingled with them, and their habits are very similar. They take their children along with them on travel, and, like the Gipsies, regret that they are without education." Mr. Hoyland says that he endeavoured to obtain the number of pot-hawking families of this description who visited the earthenware manufactories at Tunstall, Burslem, Longport, Hanley, Stoke-on-Trent, Fenton, Longton, and other places in Staffordshire, but without success.

Borrow, in his time, 1843, put the number as upwards of 10,000. The last census shows that there were under 4,000; but then it should be borne in mind that the Gipsies decidedly objected to their numbers being taken. Their reason for taking this step and putting obstacles in the way of the census-takers has never been stated, except that they looked upon it with a superstitious regard and dislike, the same as they look upon photographers, painters, and artists, as kind of _Bengaw_, for whom Gipsy models will sit for _soonakei_, _Roopeno_, or even a _posh-hovi_. They told me that during the day the census was taken they made it a point to always be upon the move, and skulking about in the dark. The census returns for the number of canal-boatmen gives under 12,000. The Duke of Richmond stated in the House of Lords, August 8, 1877, that there were between 29,000 and 80,000 canal boatmen. The number I published in the daily papers in 1873, viz., 100,000 men, women, and children is being verified as the Canal Boats Act is being put into operation.

At a pretty good rough estimate I reckon there are at least from 15,000 to 20,000 Gipsies in the United Kingdom. Apart from London, if I may take ten of the Midland counties as a fair average, there are close upon 3,000 Gipsy families living in tents and vans in the by-lanes, and attending fairs, shows, &c.; and providing there are only man, wife, and four children connected with each charmless, cheerless, wretched abodes called domiciles, this would show us 18,000; and judging from my own inquiries and observation, and also from the reliable statements of others who have mixed among them, there are not less than 2,000 on the outskirts of London in various nooks, corners, and patches of open spaces. Thus it will be seen, according to this statement, we shall have 1,000 Gipsies for every 1,750,000 of the inhabitants in our great London; and this proportion will be fully borne out throughout the rest of the country; so taking either the Midland counties or London as an average, we arrive at pretty much the same number--_i.e._, 15,000 to 20,000 in our midst, and moving about from place to place. Upon Leicester Race Course, at the last races, I counted upwards of ninety tents, vans, and shows; connected with each there would be an average of man, woman, and three children. A considerable number of Gipsies would also be at Nottingham, for the Goose Fair was on about the same time. One gentleman tells me that he has seen as many as 5,000 Gipsies collected together at one time in the North of England.

Of this 20,000, 19,500 cannot read a sentence and write a letter. The highest state of their education is to make crosses, signs, and symbols, and to ask people to tell them the names of the streets, and read the mile-posts for them. The full value of money they know perfectly well. Out of this 20,000 there will be 8,000 children of school age loitering about the tents and camps, and not learning a single letter in the alphabet. The others mostly will tell you that they have "finished their education," and when questioned on the point and asked to put three letters together, you put them into a corner, and they are as dumb as mutes. Of the whole number of Gipsy children probably a few hundreds might be attending Sunday-schools, and picking up a few crumbs of education in this way. Then, again, we have some 1,500 to 2,000 families of our own countrymen travelling about the country with their families selling hardware and other goods, from Manchester, Sheffield, Birmingham, Leeds, Leicester, the Staffordshire potteries, and other manufacturing towns, from London, Liverpool, Nottingham, and other places, the children running wild and forgetting in the summer, as a show-woman told me, the little education they receive in the winter.

Caravans will be moving about in our midst with "fat babies," "wax-work models," "wonders of the age," "the greatest giant in the world," "a living skeleton," "the smallest man alive," "menageries," "wild beast shows," "rifle galleries," and like things connected with these caravans; there will be families of children, none of whom, or at any rate but very few of them, are receiving an education and attending any school, and living together regardless of either sex or age, in one small van. In addition to these, we have some 3,000 or 4,000 children of school age "on the road" tramping with their parents, who sleep in common lodging-houses, and who might be brought under educational supervision on the plan I shall suggest later on in this book. Altogether, with the Gipsies, we have a population of over 30,000 outside our educational and sanitary laws, fast drifting into a state of savagery and barbarism, with our hands tied behind us, and unable to render them help.

"I was a bruised reed
Pluck'd from the common corn,
Play'd on, rude-handled, worn,
And flung aside, aside."

DR. GROSART, "Sunday at Home."