Spain is one of those countries where we find to-day in the greatest
numbers those nomads who are scattered over all Europe, and are
known by the names of _Bohemians_, _Gitanos_, _Gypsies_, _Zigeuner_,
etc. Most of them live, or rather lead a wandering existence, in the
provinces of the south and east, in Andalusia, Estremadura, and the
kingdom of Murcia; there are many in Catalonia. These latter often
cross the frontier into France. They are to be seen at all the fairs
in the Midi. Ordinarily the men carry on the trades of horse-dealer,
veterinary, and clipper of mules; they combine therewith the industry
of mending kettles and copper implements, to say nothing of smuggling
and other illicit traffic. The women tell fortunes, beg, and sell all
sorts of drugs, innocent or not.
The physical characteristics of the gypsy are easier to distinguish
than to describe, and when you have seen a single one, you can readily
pick out a person of that race from a thousand others. Features and
expression--these above all else separate them from the natives of
the countries where they are found. Their complexion is very dark,
always darker than that of the peoples among whom they live. Hence the
name _Cale_--black--by which they often refer to themselves. Their
eyes, which are perceptibly oblique, well-shaped, and very black, are
shaded by long, thick lashes. One can compare their look to nothing
save that of a wild beast. Audacity and timidity are depicted therein
at once, and in that respect their eyes express accurately enough
the character of the race--crafty, insolent, but _naturally afraid
of blows_, like Panurge. As a general rule, the men are well-knit,
slender, and active; I believe that I have never seen a single one
overburdened with flesh. In Germany, the gypsy women are often very
pretty; beauty is very rare among the _gitanas_ of Spain. When they are
very young, they may pass for rather attractive ugly women; but when
they have once become mothers, they are repulsive. The uncleanliness
of both sexes is beyond belief, and one who has never seen the hair
of a gypsy matron would find it hard to form an idea of it, even by
imagining it as like the coarsest, greasiest, dustiest horsehair. In
some large cities of Andalusia, some of the girls who are a little
more attractive than the rest take more care of their persons. They go
about dancing for money--dances very like those which are forbidden at
our (Parisian) public balls during the Carnival. M. Borrow, an English
missionary, the author of two very interesting works on the gypsies of
Spain, whom he had undertaken to convert at the expense of the Bible
Society, asserts that there is no known instance of a _gitana_ having
a weakness for a man not of her race. It seems to me that there is
much exaggeration in the eulogium which he bestows on their chastity.
In the first place, the great majority of them are in the plight of
Ovid’s ugly woman: _Casta quam nemo rogavit_. As for the pretty ones,
they are, like all Spanish women, exacting in the choice of their
lovers. A man must please them and deserve them. M. Borrow cites as a
proof of their virtue an instance which does honour to his own virtue,
and above all to his innocence. An immoral man of his acquaintance,
he says, offered several ounces of gold to a pretty _gitana_, to no
purpose. An Andalusian to whom I told this anecdote declared that
that same immoral man would have had better luck if he had shown only
two or three piastres, and that to offer ounces of gold to a gypsy
was as poor a way to persuade her as to promise a million or two to a
servant girl at an inn. However that may be, it is certain that the
_gitanas_ display a most extraordinary devotion to their husbands.
There is no peril or privation which they will not defy, in order to
assist them in their need. One of the names by which the gypsies call
themselves--_romi_ or _spouses_--seems to me to bear witness to the
respect of the race for the marriage state. In general, we may say that
their principal virtue is patriotism, if we may call by that name the
fidelity which they observe in their relations with persons of the same
origin as themselves, the zeal with which they help one another, and
the inviolable secrecy which they maintain in respect to compromising
affairs. Indeed, we may remark something similar in all associations
that are shrouded in mystery and are outside of the law.
A few months ago, I visited a tribe of gypsies settled in the Vosges.
In the cabin of an old woman, the patriarch of the tribe, there was a
gypsy unknown to her family, suffering from a fatal disease. That man
had left a hospital, where he was well cared for, to die among his
compatriots. For thirteen weeks he had been in bed in the cabin of
his hosts, and much better treated than the sons and sons-in-law who
lived in the same house. He had a comfortable bed of straw and moss,
with reasonably white sheets, whereas the rest of the family, to the
number of eleven, slept on boards three feet long. So much for their
hospitality. The same woman who was so humane to her guest said in his
presence: “_Singo, singo, homte hi mulo.”_ “Before long, before long,
he must die.” After all, the life of those people is so wretched that
the certainty of death has no terrors for them.
A remarkable feature of the gypsy character is their indifference in
the matter of religion. Not that they are atheists or skeptics. They
have never made profession of atheism. Far from that, they adopt the
religion of the country in which they live; but they change when they
change countries. The superstitions which among ignorant peoples
replace religious sentiments are equally foreign to them. Indeed, how
could superstition exist among people who, in most cases, live on the
credulity of others! I have observed, however, among Spanish gypsies, a
strange horror at the thought of touching a dead body. There are few of
them whom money could hire to carry a corpse to the cemetery.
I have said that most gypsy women dabble in fortune-telling. They are
very skillful at it. But another thing that is a source of very great
profit to them is the sale of charms and love-philtres. Not only do
they keep frogs’ feet to fix fickle hearts, or powdered lodestone to
force the unfeeling to love; but at need they make potent conjurations
which compel the devil to lend them his aid. Last year a Spanish
woman told me the following story: She was passing one day along Rue
d’Alcala, sad and distraught, when a gypsy sitting on the sidewalk
called after her: “Your lover has been false to you, fair lady.”--It
was the truth.--“Do you want me to bring him back?”--You will imagine
how joyfully the offer was accepted, and what unbounded confidence
was naturally inspired by a person who could thus divine at a glance
the inmost secrets of the heart. As it would have been impossible to
proceed to magic rites in the most frequented street in Madrid, they
made an appointment for the morrow.--“Nothing easier than to bring
the unfaithful one back to your feet,” said the _gitana_. “Have you a
handkerchief, a scarf, or a mantilla that he has given you?”--The lady
gave her a silk handkerchief.--“Now sew a piastre into a corner of it,
with crimson silk; half a piastre into another; a _piecette_ here; a
two real piece here. Then you must sew a gold piece in the centre; a
doubloon would be best.”--The doubloon and the rest were duly sewn
into the handkerchief.--“Now, give it to me; I will take it to the
Campo-Santo when the clock strikes twelve. Come with me, if you want
to see some fine deviltry. I promise you that you will see the man you
love to-morrow.”--The gypsy started alone for the Campo-Santo, for the
lady was too much afraid of the devils to accompany her. I leave you to
guess whether the poor love-lorn creature saw her handkerchief or her
faithless lover again.
Despite their poverty and the sort of aversion which they inspire, the
gypsies enjoy a certain consideration none the less among unenlightened
peoples, and they are very proud of it. They feel a haughty contempt
for intelligence, and cordially despise the people who give them
hospitality. “The Gentiles are such fools,” said a gypsy of the Vosges
to me one day, “that there’s no merit in tricking them. The other day
a peasant woman called to me on the street, and I went into her house.
Her stove was smoking, and she asked me for a spell, to make it burn.
I told her to give me first of all a big piece of pork. Then I mumbled
a few words in _rommani_. ‘You are a fool,’ I said, ‘you were born a
fool, a fool you will die.’--When I was at the door, I said to her in
good German: ‘The infallible way to keep your stove from smoking is not
to make any fire in it.’--And I ran off at full speed.”
The history of the gypsies is still a problem. To be sure, we know that
the first bands of them, very small in numbers, showed themselves in
the east of Europe early in the fifteenth century; but no one can say
whence they came to Europe, or why; and, which is more extraordinary,
we have no idea how they multiplied so prodigiously, in a short time,
in several countries at a great distance from one another. The gypsies
themselves have preserved no tradition concerning their origin, and,
although most of them speak of Egypt as their original fatherland, it
is because they have adopted a fable that was spread abroad concerning
them many, many years ago.
Most Orientalists who have studied the gypsy language believe that they
came originally from India. In fact, it seems that a great number of
the roots of the _rommani_ tongue and many of its grammatical forms
are found in phrases derived from the Sanskrit. We can understand
that, in their long wanderings, the gypsies may have adopted many
foreign words. In all the dialects of the _rommani_, we find many
Greek words. For example: _cocal_, bone, from κόκκαλον; _petalli_,
horseshoe, from πέταλον; _cafi_, nail, from καρφί, etc. To-day, the
gypsies have almost as many different dialects as there are bands of
their race living apart from one another. Everywhere they speak the
language of the country in which they live more readily than their
own, which they seldom use except as a means of speaking freely before
strangers. If we compare the dialect of the gypsies of Germany with
that of the Spaniards, who have had no communication with the former
for centuries, we discover a very great number of words common to the
two; but the original tongue has been noticeably modified everywhere,
although in different degrees, by the contact with the more cultivated
tongues, which these nomads have been constrained to employ. German
on the one side, Spanish on the other, have so modified the substance
of the _rommani_ that it would be impossible for a gypsy of the Black
Forest to converse with one of his Andalusian brethren, although they
need only exchange a few sentences to realise that each of them is
speaking a dialect derived from the same parent tongue. A few words in
very frequent use are common, I believe, to all dialects; for instance,
in all the vocabularies which I have had an opportunity to see, _pani_
means water, _manro_, bread, _mas_, meat, and _lon_, salt.
The names of the numbers are almost the same everywhere. The German
dialect seems to me much purer than the Spanish; for it has retained
a number of the primitive grammatical forms, while the _gitanos_
have adopted those of the Castilian tongue. A few words, however,
are exceptions to this rule and attest the former community of the
dialects. The preterit tenses in the German dialect are formed by
adding _ium_ to the imperative, which is always the root of the verb.
The verbs in the Spanish _rommani_ are all conjugated like Castilian
verbs of the first conjugation. From the infinitive _jamar_, to eat,
they regularly make _jamé_, I have eaten; from _lillar_, to take,
_lillé_, I have taken. But some old gypsies say, on the other hand,
_jayon_, _lillon_. I know no other verbs which have retained this
ancient form.
While I am thus parading my slight acquaintance with the _rommani_
tongue, I must note a few words of French argot, which our thieves
have borrowed from the gypsies. The _Mystères de Paris_ has taught
good society that _chourin_ means knife. The word is pure _rommani_;
_tchouri_ is one of the words common to all the dialects. M. Vidocq
calls a horse _grès_--that is another _rommani_ word--_gras_, _gre_,
_graste_, _gris_. Add the word _romanichel_, which in Parisian
slang means gypsies. It is a corruption of _rommane tchave_, gypsy
youths. But an etymology of which I am proud is that of _frimousse_,
expression, face--a word which all schoolboys use, or did use in my
day. Observe first that Oudin, in his curious dictionary, wrote in 1640
_firlimouse_. Now, _firla_, _fila_, in _rommani_ means face; _mui_
has the same meaning, it exactly corresponds to the Latin _os_. The
combination _firlamui_ was instantly understood by a gypsy purist, and
I believe it to be in conformity with the genius of his language.
This is quite enough to give the readers of _Carmen_ a favourable idea
of my studies in _rommani_. I will close with this proverb, which is
quite apropos: _En retudi panda nasti abela macha_--“a fly cannot enter
a closed mouth.”
1845.