WHEN the six hundred thousand men, {122} and the mixed multitude of women
and children, went forth from the land of Egypt, the God whom they
worshipped, the only true God, went before them by day in a pillar of
cloud, to lead them the way, and by night in a pillar of fire to give
them light; this God who rescued them from slavery, who guided them
through the wilderness, who was their captain in battle, and who cast
down before them the strong walls which encompassed the towns of their
enemies, this God they still remember, after the lapse of more than three
thousand years, and still worship with adoration the most unbounded. If
there be one event in the eventful history of the Hebrews which awakens
in their minds deeper feelings of gratitude than another, it is the
exodus; and that wonderful manifestation of olden mercy still serves them
as an assurance that the Lord will yet one day redeem and gather together
his scattered and oppressed people. ‘Art thou not the God who brought us
out of the land of bondage?’ they exclaim in the days of their heaviest
trouble and affliction. He who redeemed Israel from the hand of Pharaoh
is yet capable of restoring the kingdom and sceptre to Israel.
If the Rommany trusted in any God at the period of _their_ exodus, they
must speedily have forgotten him. Coming from Ind, as they most
assuredly did, it was impossible for them to have known the true, and
they must have been followers (if they followed any) either of Buddh, or
Brahmah, those tremendous phantoms which have led, and are likely still
to lead, the souls of hundreds of millions to destruction; yet they are
now ignorant of such names, nor does it appear that such were ever
current amongst them subsequent to their arrival in Europe, if indeed
they ever were. They brought with them no Indian idols, as far as we are
able to judge at the present time, nor indeed Indian rites or
observances, for no traces of such are to be discovered amongst them.
All, therefore, which relates to their original religion is shrouded in
mystery, and is likely so to remain. They may have been idolaters, or
atheists, or what they now are, totally neglectful of worship of any
kind; and though not exactly prepared to deny the existence of a Supreme
Being, as regardless of him as if he existed not, and never mentioning
his name, save in oaths and blasphemy, or in moments of pain or sudden
surprise, as they have heard other people do, but always without any
fixed belief, trust, or hope.
There are certainly some points of resemblance between the children of
Roma and those of Israel. Both have had an exodus, both are exiles and
dispersed amongst the Gentiles, by whom they are hated and despised, and
whom they hate and despise, under the names of Busnees and Goyim; both,
though speaking the language of the Gentiles, possess a peculiar tongue,
which the latter do not understand, and both possess a peculiar cast of
countenance, by which they may, without difficulty, be distinguished from
all other nations; but with these points the similarity terminates. The
Israelites have a peculiar religion, to which they are fanatically
attached; the Romas have none, as they invariably adopt, though only in
appearance, that of the people with whom they chance to sojourn; the
Israelites possess the most authentic history of any people in the world,
and are acquainted with and delight to recapitulate all that has befallen
their race, from ages the most remote; the Romas have no history, they do
not even know the name of their original country; and the only tradition
which they possess, that of their Egyptian origin, is a false one,
whether invented by themselves or others; the Israelites are of all
people the most wealthy, the Romas the most poor—poor as a Gypsy being
proverbial amongst some nations, though both are equally greedy of gain;
and finally, though both are noted for peculiar craft and cunning, no
people are more ignorant than the Romas, whilst the Jews have always been
a learned people, being in possession of the oldest literature in the
world, and certainly the most important and interesting.
Sad and weary must have been the path of the mixed rabble of the Romas,
when they left India’s sunny land and wended their way to the West, in
comparison with the glorious exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, whose
God went before them in cloud and in fire, working miracles and
astonishing the hearts of their foes.
Even supposing that they worshipped Buddh or Brahmah, neither of these
false deities could have accomplished for them what God effected for his
chosen people, although it is true that the idea that a Supreme Being was
watching over them, in return for the reverence paid to his image, might
have cheered them ‘midst storm and lightning, ‘midst mountains and
wildernesses, ‘midst hunger and drought; for it is assuredly better to
trust even in an idol, in a tree, or a stone, than to be entirely
godless; and the most superstitious hind of the Himalayan hills, who
trusts in the Grand Foutsa in the hour of peril and danger, is more wise
than the most enlightened atheist, who cherishes no consoling delusion to
relieve his mind, oppressed by the terrible ideas of reality.
But it is evident that they arrived at the confines of Europe without any
certain or rooted faith. Knowing, as we do, with what tenacity they
retain their primitive habits and customs, their sect being, in all
points, the same as it was four hundred years ago, it appears impossible
that they should have forgotten their peculiar god, if in any peculiar
god they trusted.
Though cloudy ideas of the Indian deities might be occasionally floating
in their minds, these ideas, doubtless, quickly passed away when they
ceased to behold the pagodas and temples of Indian worship, and were no
longer in contact with the enthusiastic adorers of the idols of the East;
they passed away even as the dim and cloudy ideas which they subsequently
adopted of the Eternal and His Son, Mary and the saints, would pass away
when they ceased to be nourished by the sight of churches and crosses;
for should it please the Almighty to reconduct the Romas to Indian
climes, who can doubt that within half a century they would entirely
forget all connected with the religion of the West! Any poor shreds of
that faith which they bore with them they would drop by degrees as they
would relinquish their European garments when they became old, and as
they relinquished their Asiatic ones to adopt those of Europe; no
particular dress makes a part of the things essential to the sect of
Roma, so likewise no particular god and no particular religion.
Where these people first assumed the name of Egyptians, or where that
title was first bestowed upon them, it is difficult to determine;
perhaps, however, in the eastern parts of Europe, where it should seem
the grand body of this nation of wanderers made a halt for a considerable
time, and where they are still to be found in greater numbers than in any
other part. One thing is certain, that when they first entered Germany,
which they speedily overran, they appeared under the character of
Egyptians, doing penance for the sin of having refused hospitality to the
Virgin and her Son, and, of course, as believers in the Christian faith,
notwithstanding that they subsisted by the perpetration of every kind of
robbery and imposition; Aventinus (_Annales Boiorum_, 826) speaking of
them says: ‘Adeo tamen vana superstitio hominum mentes, velut lethargus
invasit, ut eos violari nefas putet, atque grassari, furari, imponere
passim sinant.’
This singular story of banishment from Egypt, and Wandering through the
world for a period of seven years, for inhospitality displayed to the
Virgin, and which I find much difficulty in attributing to the invention
of people so ignorant as the Romas, tallies strangely with the fate
foretold to the ancient Egyptians in certain chapters of Ezekiel, so much
so, indeed, that it seems to be derived from that source. The Lord is
angry with Egypt because its inhabitants have been a staff of reed to the
house of Israel, and thus he threatens them by the mouth of his prophet.
‘I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries
that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid
waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians
among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries.’
Ezek., chap. xxix. v. 12. ‘Yet thus saith the Lord God; at the end
of forty years will I gather the Egyptians from the people whither
they were scattered.’ v. 13.
‘Thus saith the Lord; I will make the multitude of Egypt to cease, by
the hand of Nebuchadnezzar, king of Babylon.’ Chap. xxx. v. 10.
‘And I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and disperse
them among the countries; and they shall know that I am the Lord.’
Chap. xxx. v. 26.
The reader will at once observe that the apocryphal tale which the Romas
brought into Germany, concerning their origin and wanderings, agrees in
every material point with the sacred prophecy. The ancient Egyptians
were to be driven from their country and dispersed amongst the nations,
for a period of forty years, for having been the cause of Israel’s
backsliding, and for not having known the Lord,—the modern
pseudo-Egyptians are to be dispersed among the nations for seven years,
for having denied hospitality to the Virgin and her child. The prophecy
seems only to have been remodelled for the purpose of suiting the taste
of the time; as no legend possessed much interest in which the Virgin did
not figure, she and her child are here introduced instead of the
Israelites, and the Lord of Heaven offended with the Egyptians; and this
legend appears to have been very well received in Germany, for a time at
least, for, as Aventinus observes, it was esteemed a crime of the first
magnitude to offer any violence to the Egyptian pilgrims, who were
permitted to rob on the highway, to commit larceny, and to practise every
species of imposition with impunity.
The tale, however, of the Romas could hardly have been invented by
themselves, as they were, and still are, utterly unacquainted with the
Scripture; it probably originated amongst the priests and learned men of
the east of Europe, who, startled by the sudden apparition of bands of
people foreign in appearance and language, skilled in divination and the
occult arts, endeavoured to find in Scripture a clue to such a
phenomenon; the result of which was, that the Romas of Hindustan were
suddenly transformed into Egyptian penitents, a title which they have
ever since borne in various parts of Europe. There are no means of
ascertaining whether they themselves believed from the first in this
story; they most probably took it on credit, more especially as they
could give no account of themselves, there being every reason for
supposing that from time immemorial they had existed in the East as a
thievish wandering sect, as they at present do in Europe, without history
or traditions, and unable to look back for a period of eighty years. The
tale moreover answered their purpose, as beneath the garb of penitence
they could rob and cheat with impunity, for a time at least. One thing
is certain, that in whatever manner the tale of their Egyptian descent
originated, many branches of the sect place implicit confidence in it at
the present day, more especially those of England and Spain.
Even at the present time there are writers who contend that the Romas are
the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, who were scattered amongst the
nations by the Assyrians. This belief they principally found upon
particular parts of the prophecy from which we have already quoted, and
there is no lack of plausibility in the arguments which they deduce
therefrom. The Egyptians, say they, were to fall upon the open fields,
they were not to be brought together nor gathered; they were to be
dispersed through the countries, their idols were to be destroyed, and
their images were to cease out of Noph! In what people in the world do
these denunciations appear to be verified save the Gypsies?—a people who
pass their lives in the open fields, who are not gathered together, who
are dispersed through the countries, who have no idols, no images, nor
any fixed or certain religion.
In Spain, the want of religion amongst the Gitános was speedily observed,
and became quite as notorious as their want of honesty; they have been
styled atheists, heathen idolaters, and Moors. In the little book of
Quiñones’, we find the subject noticed in the following manner:—
‘They do not understand what kind of thing the church is, and never
enter it but for the purpose of committing sacrilege. They do not
know the prayers; for I examined them myself, males and females, and
they knew them not, or if any, very imperfectly. They never partake
of the Holy Sacraments, and though they marry relations they procure
no dispensations. {130a} No one knows whether they are baptized.
One of the five whom I caused to be hung a few days ago was baptized
in the prison, being at the time upwards of thirty years of age. Don
Martin Fajardo says that two Gitános and a Gitána, whom he hanged in
the village of Torre Perojil, were baptized at the foot of the
gallows, and declared themselves Moors.
‘They invariably look out, when they marry, if we can call theirs
marrying, for the woman most dexterous in pilfering and deceiving,
caring nothing whether she is akin to them or married already, {130b}
for it is only necessary to keep her company and to call her wife.
Sometimes they purchase them from their husbands, or receive them as
pledges: so says, at least, Doctor Salazar de Mendoza.
‘Friar Melchior of Guelama states that he heard asserted of two
Gitános what was never yet heard of any barbarous nation, namely,
that they exchanged their wives, and that as one was more comely
looking than the other, he who took the handsome woman gave a certain
sum of money to him who took the ugly one. The licentiate Alonzo
Duran has certified to me, that in the year 1623–4, one Simon
Ramirez, captain of a band of Gitános, repudiated Teresa because she
was old, and married one called Melchora, who was young and handsome,
and that on the day when the repudiation took place and the bridal
was celebrated he was journeying along the road, and perceived a
company feasting and revelling beneath some trees in a plain within
the jurisdiction of the village of Deleitosa, and that on demanding
the cause he was told that it was on account of Simon Ramirez
marrying one Gitána and casting off another; and that the repudiated
woman told him, with an agony of tears, that he abandoned her because
she was old, and married another because she was young. Certainly
Gitános and Gitánas confessed before Don Martin Fajardo that they did
not really marry, but that in their banquets and festivals they
selected the woman whom they liked, and that it was lawful for them
to have as many as three mistresses, and on that account they begat
so many children. They never keep fasts nor any ecclesiastical
command. They always eat meat, Friday and Lent not excepted; the
morning when I seized those whom I afterwards executed, which was in
Lent, they had three lambs which they intended to eat for their
dinner that day.—Quiñones, page 13.
Although what is stated in the above extracts, respecting the marriages
of the Gitános and their licentious manner of living, is, for the most
part, incorrect, there is no reason to conclude the same with respect to
their want of religion in the olden time, and their slight regard for the
forms and observances of the church, as their behaviour at the present
day serves to confirm what is said on those points. From the whole, we
may form a tolerably correct idea of the opinions of the time respecting
the Gitános in matters of morality and religion. A very natural question
now seems to present itself, namely, what steps did the government of
Spain, civil and ecclesiastical, which has so often trumpeted its zeal in
the cause of what it calls the Christian religion, which has so often
been the scourge of the Jew, of the Mahometan, and of the professors of
the reformed faith; what steps did it take towards converting, punishing,
and rooting out from Spain, a sect of demi-atheists, who, besides being
cheats and robbers, displayed the most marked indifference for the forms
of the Catholic religion, and presumed to eat flesh every day, and to
intermarry with their relations, without paying the vicegerent of Christ
here on earth for permission so to do?
The Gitános have at all times, since their first appearance in Spain,
been notorious for their contempt of religious observances; yet there is
no proof that they were subjected to persecution on that account. The
men have been punished as robbers and murderers, with the gallows and the
galleys; the women, as thieves and sorceresses, with imprisonment,
flagellation, and sometimes death; but as a rabble, living without fear
of God, and, by so doing, affording an evil example to the nation at
large, few people gave themselves much trouble about them, though they
may have occasionally been designated as such in a royal edict, intended
to check their robberies, or by some priest from the pulpit, from whose
stable they had perhaps contrived to extract the mule which previously
had the honour of ambling beneath his portly person.
The Inquisition, which burnt so many Jews and Moors, and conscientious
Christians, at Seville and Madrid, and in other parts of Spain, seems to
have exhibited the greatest clemency and forbearance to the Gitános.
Indeed, we cannot find one instance of its having interfered with them.
The charge of restraining the excesses of the Gitános was abandoned
entirely to the secular authorities, and more particularly to the Santa
Hermandad, a kind of police instituted for the purpose of clearing the
roads of robbers. Whilst I resided at Cordova, I was acquainted with an
aged ecclesiastic, who was priest of a village called Puente, at about
two leagues’ distance from the city. He was detained in Cordova on
account of his political opinions, though he was otherwise at liberty.
We lived together at the same house; and he frequently visited me in my
apartment.
This person, who was upwards of eighty years of age, had formerly been
inquisitor at Cordova. One night, whilst we were seated together, three
Gitános entered to pay me a visit, and on observing the old ecclesiastic,
exhibited every mark of dissatisfaction, and speaking in their own idiom,
called him a _balichow_, and abused priests in general in most unmeasured
terms. On their departing, I inquired of the old man whether he, who
having been an inquisitor, was doubtless versed in the annals of the holy
office, could inform me whether the Inquisition had ever taken any active
measures for the suppression and punishment of the sect of the Gitános:
whereupon he replied, ‘that he was not aware of one case of a Gitáno
having been tried or punished by the Inquisition’; adding these
remarkable words: ‘The Inquisition always looked upon them with too much
contempt to give itself the slightest trouble concerning them; for as no
danger either to the state, or the church of Rome, could proceed from the
Gitános, it was a matter of perfect indifference to the holy office
whether they lived without religion or not. The holy office has always
reserved its anger for people very different; the Gitános having at all
times been _Gente barata y despreciable_.
Indeed, most of the persecutions which have arisen in Spain against Jews,
Moors, and Protestants, sprang from motives with which fanaticism and
bigotry, of which it is true the Spaniards have their full share, had
very little connection. Religion was assumed as a mask to conceal the
vilest and most detestable motives which ever yet led to the commission
of crying injustice; the Jews were doomed to persecution and destruction
on two accounts,—their great riches, and their high superiority over the
Spaniards in learning and intellect. Avarice has always been the
dominant passion in Spanish minds, their rage for money being only to be
compared to the wild hunger of wolves for horse-flesh in the time of
winter: next to avarice, envy of superior talent and accomplishment is
the prevailing passion. These two detestable feelings united, proved the
ruin of the Jews in Spain, who were, for a long time, an eyesore, both to
the clergy and laity, for their great riches and learning. Much the same
causes insured the expulsion of the Moriscos, who were abhorred for their
superior industry, which the Spaniards would not imitate; whilst the
reformation was kept down by the gaunt arm of the Inquisition, lest the
property of the church should pass into other and more deserving hands.
The faggot piles in the squares of Seville and Madrid, which consumed the
bodies of the Hebrew, the Morisco, and the Protestant, were lighted by
avarice and envy, and those same piles would likewise have consumed the
mulatto carcass of the Gitáno, had he been learned and wealthy enough to
become obnoxious to the two master passions of the Spaniards.
Of all the Spanish writers who have written concerning the Gitános, the
one who appears to have been most scandalised at the want of religion
observable amongst them, and their contempt for things sacred, was a
certain Doctor Sancho De Moncada.
This worthy, whom we have already had occasion to mention, was Professor
of Theology at the University of Toledo, and shortly after the expulsion
of the Moriscos had been brought about by the intrigues of the monks and
robbers who thronged the court of Philip the Third, he endeavoured to get
up a cry against the Gitános similar to that with which for the last
half-century Spain had resounded against the unfortunate and oppressed
Africans, and to effect this he published a discourse, entitled ‘The
Expulsion of the Gitános,’ addressed to Philip the Third, in which he
conjures that monarch, for the sake of morality and everything sacred, to
complete the good work he had commenced, and to send the Gitános packing
after the Moriscos.
Whether this discourse produced any benefit to the author, we have no
means of ascertaining. One thing is certain, that it did no harm to the
Gitános, who still continue in Spain.
If he had other expectations, he must have understood very little of the
genius of his countrymen, or of King Philip and his court. It would have
been easier to get up a crusade against the wild cats of the sierra, than
against the Gitános, as the former have skins to reward those who slay
them. His discourse, however, is well worthy of perusal, as it exhibits
some learning, and comprises many curious details respecting the Gitános,
their habits, and their practices. As it is not very lengthy, we here
subjoin it, hoping that the reader will excuse its many absurdities, for
the sake of its many valuable facts.