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 AngloIndian, 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 hardhearted 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. TheGypsiesofSpain.
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
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 (morcillasdesangre); engage themselves as tavern cooks; are excellent smugglers; and find in interpreting dreams, in philterselling, 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 themarriage.
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 grandespassions—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 Raizdelbuen Baron (the goodman’s, i.e. the devil’s, root), alias Satan’s herb, which relieved incommodious burdens. At fairs, while the husbands
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.
FOOTNOTES:
[206] Hence probably the Hungarian Hunyadis are popularly supposed to have Gypsy blood. John’s mother (A.D. 1400) is said to have been a fair Wallach, Elizabeth Marsinai, possibly of Romani blood. The legend of the boy recovering his unknown father’s ring from a plundering jackdaw, his appearance at Buda, and his receiving the gift of Hunyad town and sixty villages, is well known. The Turk’s bell was first heard in invaded Hungary during the reign of Sigismund. John Hunyadi drove them from Servia and Bosnia, and vainly proposed a league of Christian powers. When Corvinus passed away after a reign of forty-two years, the lieges said of him, and still say, “King Matthias is dead, and Justice died with him.”
[207] Hungary and Transylvania, 1839. Before 1848 the Church, the State, and the nobles were the only landowners; the peasant, however, had leave to occupy certain tracts (session-lands) under his lord.
[208] Mr. Andrew F. Crosse, Round about the Carpathians (Blackwoods, 1878), declares (p. 146) that this “conscription was enforced with every species of official brutality.” Austria was dealing with a conquered and a peculiar, stiff-necked people. Lord Palmerston’s hatred of Austria was, we are told, the best passport to Hungarian sympathy.
[209] The brothels of Buda-Pesth and other large cities of AustroHungary have often one Gypsy woman among their inmates.
[210] I find my opinion confirmed by an older observer: “The peculiarity of the Gypsy eye consists chiefly in a strange, staring expression, which, to be understood, must be seen, and in a thin glaze which steals over it when in repose, and seems to emit phosphoric light” (The Gypsies, by Samuel Roberts).
CHAPTER VIII
THE GYPSY IN AMERICA
TheGypsiesoftheBrazil
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 HighlandsoftheBrazil(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.
