THE TZIGANES: THEIR LIFE AND OCCUPATIONS.
In every other country where the gypsies made their appearance they
were oppressed and persecuted—treated as slaves or hunted down like
wild beasts. So in Prussia in 1725 an edict was issued ordering that
each gypsy found within the confines of the country should be forthwith
executed; and in Wallachia, until quite lately, they were regarded
as slaves or beasts of burden, and bought and sold like any other
marketable animal. Thus a Bucharest newspaper of 1845 advertises for
sale two hundred gypsy families, to be disposed of in batches of five
families—a handsome deduction being offered to wholesale purchasers.
In Moldavia, up to 1825, a master who killed one of his own gypsies was
never punished by law, but only if he killed one which was the property
of another man—the crime in that case not being considered to be
murder, but merely injury to another man’s property.
In Hungary alone these wanderers found themselves neither oppressed
nor repulsed, and if the gypsy can be said to feel at home anywhere
on the face of the globe it is surely here; and although Hungarians
are apt to resent the designation, Tissot was not far wrong when he
named their country “Le pays des Tziganes,” for the Tziganes are in
Hungary a picturesque feature—a decorative adjunct inseparable alike
from the solitude of its plains as from the dissipation of its cities.
Like a gleam of dusky gems they serve to set off every picture of
Hungarian life, and to play to it a running accompaniment in plaintive
minor chords. No one can travel many days in Hungary without becoming
familiar with the strains of the gypsy bands. And who has journeyed by
night without noting the ruddy light of their myriad camp-fires, which,
like so many gigantic glowworms, dot the country in all directions?
At the present time there are in Hungary above one hundred and fifty
thousand Tziganes, of which about eighty thousand fall to the share
of Transylvania, which therefore in still more special degree may be
termed the land of gypsies.
The Transylvanian gypsies used to stand under the nominal authority of
a nobleman bearing the title of a Gypsy Count, chosen by the reigning
prince; as also in Hungary proper the Palatine had the right of naming
four gypsy Woywods. To this Gypsy Count the chieftains of the separate
hordes or bands were bound to submit, besides paying to him a yearly
tribute of one florin per head of each member of the band; and every
seventh year they assembled round him to receive his orders. The minor
chieftains were elected by the votes of the separate communities; and
to this day every wandering troop has its own self-elected leader,
although these have no longer any recognized position in the eyes of
the law.
The election usually takes place in the open field, often on the
occasion of some public fair; and the successful candidate is thrice
raised in the air on the shoulders of the people, presented with gifts,
and invested with a silver-headed staff as badge of his dignity. Also,
his wife or partner receives similar honors, and the festivities
conclude with much heavy drinking.
Strictly speaking, only such Tziganes are supposed to be eligible as
are descended from a Woywod family; but in point of fact the gypsies
mostly choose whoever happens to be best dressed on the occasion.
Being of handsome build, and not over-young, are likewise points in a
candidate’s favor; but such superfluous qualities as goodness or wisdom
are not taken into account.
This leader—who is sometimes called the Captain, sometimes the
_Vagda_, or else the _Gako_, or uncle—governs his band, confirms
marriages and divorces, dictates punishments, and settles disputes;
and as the gypsies are a very quarrelsome race the chief of a large
band has got his hands pretty full. He has likewise the power to
excommunicate a member of the band, as well as to reinstate him in
honor and confidence by letting him drink out of his own tankard.
Certain taxes are paid to the Gako; also, he is entitled to percentages
on all booty and theft. In return it is his duty to protect and defend
his people to the best of his ability, whenever their irregularities
have brought them within reach of the law.
Whether, besides the chieftains of the separate hordes, there yet
exists in Hungary a chief judge or monarch of the Tziganes, cannot be
positively asserted; but many people aver such to be the case, and
designate either Mikolcz or Schemnitz as the seat of his residence.
In his hands are said to be deposited large sums of money for secret
purposes, and he alone has the right to condemn to death, and with his
own hands to put his sentence into execution.
No Tzigane durst ever accept the position of a gendarme or policeman,
for fear of being obliged to punish his own folk; and only very rarely
is it allowed for one of them to become a game-keeper or wood-ranger.
Only the necessity of obtaining a piece of bread to still his hunger,
or of providing himself with a rag to cover his nakedness, occasionally
obliges the Tzigane to turn his hand to labor of some kind. Most
sorts of work are distasteful to him—more especially all work of a
calm, monotonous character. For that reason the idyllic calm of a
shepherd’s existence, which the Roumanian so dearly loves, could never
satisfy the Tzigane; and equally unpalatable he finds the sweating
toils of the agriculturist. He requires some occupation which gives
scope to the imagination and amuses the fancy while his hands are
employed—conditions he finds united in the trade of a blacksmith,
which he oftenest plies on the banks of a stream or river outside the
village, where he has been driven by necessity. The snorting bellows
seem to him like a companionable monster; the equal cadence of the
hammer against the anvil falls in with melodies floating in his brain;
the myriads of flying sparks, in which he loves to discern all sorts of
fantastic figures, fill him with delight; horses and oxen coming to be
shod, and the varied incidents to which these operations give rise, are
never-tiring sources of interest and amusement.
Instinctively expert at some sorts of work, the Tzigane will be found
to be as curiously awkward and incapable with others. Thus he is always
handy at throwing up earthworks, which he seems to do as naturally as
a mole or rabbit digs its burrow; but as carpenter or locksmith he is
comparatively useless, and though an apt reaper with the sickle he is
incapable of using the scythe.
[Illustration: GYPSY TINKER.]
All brickmaking in Hungary and Transylvania is in the hands of the
Tziganes, and formerly they were charged with the gold-washing
in the Transylvanian rivers, and were in return exempted from
military service. They are also flayers, broom-binders, rat-catchers,
basket-makers, tinkers, and occasionally tooth-pullers—dentist is too
ambitious a denomination.
[Illustration: BASKET-MAKER.]
Up to the end of the sixteenth century in Transylvania the part of
hangman was always enacted by a gypsy, usually taken on the spot. On
one occasion the individual to be hanged happening to be himself a
gypsy, there was some difficulty in finding an executioner, and the
only one produced was a feeble old man, quite unequal to the job. A
table placed under a tree was to serve as scaffold, and with trembling
fingers the old man proceeded to attach the rope round the neck of
his victim. All his efforts were, however, vain to fix this rope to
the branch above, and the doomed man, at last losing patience at the
protracted delay, gave a vigorous box on the ear to his would-be
hangman, which knocked him off the table. Instantly all the spectators,
terrified, took to their heels; whereon the culprit, securely fastening
the rope to the branch above, proceeded unaided to hang himself in the
most correct fashion.
When obliged to work under supervision, the Tzigane groans and moans
piteously, as though he were enduring the most acute tortures; and
a single Tzigane locked up in jail will howl so despairingly as to
deprive a whole village of sleep.
The Tzigane makes a bad soldier but a good spy; his cowardice has
passed into a proverb, which says that “with a wet rag you can put to
flight a whole village of gypsies.”
The Tziganes are by no means dainty with regard to food, and have a
decided leaning towards carrion, indiscriminately eating of the flesh
of all fallen animals, or, as they term it, whatever has been killed by
“God,” and consider themselves much aggrieved when forced at the point
of the bayonet to abandon the rotting carcass of a sheep or cow, over
which they had been holding a harmless revelry.
A hedgehog divested of its spikes is considered a prime delicacy;
likewise a fox baked under the ashes, after having been laid in running
water for two days to reduce the flavor. Horse-flesh alone they do not
touch.
The only animals whose training the gypsy cares to undertake are the
horse and bear. For the first he entertains a sort of respectful
veneration, while the second he regards as an amusing _bajazzo_. He
teaches a young bear to dance by placing it on a sheet of heated iron,
playing the while on his fiddle a strongly accentuated piece of dance
music. The bear, lifting up its legs alternately to escape the heat,
unconsciously observes the time marked by the music. Later on, the
heated iron is suppressed when the animal has learned its lesson, and
whenever the Tzigane begins to play on the fiddle the young bear lifts
its legs in regular time to the music.
Of the tricks practised upon horses, in order to sell them at fairs,
many stories are told of the gypsies. Sometimes, it is said, they will
make an incision in the animal’s skin, and blow in air with the bellows
in order to make it appear fat; or else they introduce a living eel
into its body under the tail, which serves to give an appearance of
liveliness to the hind-quarters. For the same reason live toads are
forced down a donkey’s throat, which, moving about in the stomach,
produce a sort of fever which keeps it lively for several days.
The gypsies are attached to their children, but in a senseless animal
fashion, alternately devouring them with caresses and violently
ill-treating them. I have seen a father throw large, heavy stones
at his ten-year-old daughter for some trifling misdemeanor—stones
as large as good-sized turnips, any one of which would have been
sufficient to kill her if it had happened to hit; and only her agility
in dodging these missiles—which she did, grinning and chuckling as
though it were the best joke in the world—saved her from serious
injury.
They are a singularly quarrelsome people, and the gypsy camp is the
scene of many a pitched battle, in which men, women, children, and dogs
indiscriminately take part with turbulent enjoyment. When in a passion
all weapons are good that come to the gypsy’s hand, and, _faute de
mieux_, unfortunate infants are sometimes bandied backward and forward
as _improvisé_ cannon-balls. A German traveller mentions having been
eye-witness to a quarrel between a Tzigane man and woman, the latter
having a baby on the breast. Passing from words to blows, and seeing
neither stick nor stone within handy reach, the man seized the baby
by the feet, and with it belabored the woman so violently that when
the by-standers were able to interpose the wretched infant had already
given up the ghost.
[Illustration: BEAR DRIVER.]
The old-fashioned belief that gypsies are in the habit of stealing
children has long since been proved to be utterly without foundation.
Why, indeed, should gypsies, already endowed with a numerous progeny,
seek to burden themselves with foreign elements which can bring them
no sort of profit? That they frequently have beguiled children out
of reach in order to strip them of their clothes and ornaments has
probably given rise to this mistake; and when, as occasionally, we
come across a light-complexioned child in a gypsy camp, it is more
natural to suppose its mother to have been the passing fancy of some
fair-haired stranger than itself to have been abstracted from wealthy
parents.
Tzigane babies are at once inured to the utmost extremes of heat
and cold. If they are born in winter they are rubbed with snow; if
in summer, anointed with grease and laid in the burning sun. Though
trained to resist all weathers, the Tzigane has a marked antipathy
for wind, which seems for the time to weaken his physical and mental
powers, and deprive him of all life and energy. Cold he patiently
endures; but only in summer can he really be said to live and enjoy
his life. There is a legend which tells how the gypsies, pining under
the heavy frosts and snows with which the earth was visited, appealed
to God to have pity on them, and to grant them always twice as many
summers as winters. The Almighty, in answer to this request, spoke as
follows: “Two summers shall you have to every winter; but as it would
disturb the order of nature if both summers came one on the back of the
other, I shall always give you two summers with a winter between to
divide them.” The gypsies humbly thanked the Almighty for the granted
favor, and never again complained of the cold, for, as they say, they
have now always two summers to every winter.
Another legend relates how the Tziganes once used to have cornfields
of their own, and how, when the green corn had grown high for the
first time, the wind caused it to wave and shake like ripples on the
water, which seeing, a gypsy boy came running in alarm to his parents,
crying, “Father, father! quick, make haste! the corn is running
away!” On hearing this the gypsies all hastened forth with knives and
sickles to cut down the fugitive corn, which of course never ripened,
and discouraged by their first agricultural essay the gypsies never
attempted to sow or reap again.
Both Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. did much to induce the
Transylvanian gypsies to renounce their vagrant habits and settle
down as respectable citizens, but their efforts did not meet with the
success they deserved. The system of Maria Theresa was no less than to
recast the whole gypsy nature in a new mould, and by fusion with other
races to cause them by degrees to lose their own identity; the very
name of gypsy was to be forgotten, and the Empress had ordained that
henceforward they were to be known by the appellation of _Neubauer_
(new peasants). With a view to this all marriages between gypsies were
forbidden, and the Empress undertook to _dot_ every young gypsy girl
who married a person of another race. The Tziganes, however, too often
accepted these favors, and took the earliest opportunity of deserting
the partners thus forced upon them; while the houses built expressly
for their use were frequently used for the pigs or cattle, the gypsies
themselves preferring to sleep outside in the open air.
A gypsy girl, who had married a young Slovack peasant some years ago,
used to run away and sleep in the woods whenever her husband was
absent from home; while in another village, where the Saxon pastor
had with difficulty induced a wandering Tzigane family to take up
their residence in a vacant peasant house, he found them oddly enough
established in their old ragged tent, which had been set up _inside_
the empty dwelling-room. A story is also told of a gypsy man who,
having attained a high military rank in the Austrian army, disappeared
one day, and was later recognized with a strolling band.
There is, I am told, a certain method in the seemingly aimless roamings
of each nomadic gypsy tribe, which always pursues its wanderings in a
given circle, keeping to the self-same paths and the identical places
of bivouac in plain or forest; so that it can mostly be calculated with
tolerable accuracy in precisely how many years such and such a band
will come round again to any particular neighborhood.
Nowadays the proportion of resident gypsies in towns and villages is,
of course, considerably larger than it used to be, and nearly each
Saxon or Hungarian town and village has a _faubourg_ of miserable
earth-hovels tacked on to it at one end. It is not uncommon, in
these gypsy hovels, to find touches of luxury strangely out of
keeping with the rest of the surroundings: pieces of rare old china,
embroidered pillow-cases, sometimes even a silver goblet or platter of
distinct value—to which things they often cling with a sort of blind
superstition, always contriving to reclaim from the pawnbroker whatever
of these articles they have been compelled to deposit there in a season
of necessity. In the same way it is alleged that many of the wandering
gypsy hordes in Hungary and Transylvania have in their possession
valuable gold and silver vessels (some of these engraved in ancient
Indian characters), which they carry about wherever they go, and bury
in the earth wherever they pitch their temporary camp.
In order to count the treasures of one of the resident gypsies, it
suffices to watch him when there is a fire in the village; ten to one
it will be his fiddle which he first takes care to save, and next his
bed and pillows—a soft swelling bed and numerous downy pillows being
among the principal luxuries to which he is addicted.
Characteristic of the Tzigane’s utter incomprehension of all social
organization and privileges is an anecdote related by a Transylvanian
proprietor. “In 1848,” he told me, “when serfdom was abolished in
Austria, and the gypsies residing in my village became aware that
henceforward they were free, they were at first highly delighted at
the news, and spent three days and nights in joyful carousing. On the
fourth day, however, when the novelty of being free had worn off, they
were at a loss what use to make of their novel dignity, and numbers of
them came trooping to me begging to be taken back. They did not care to
be free after all, they said, and would rather be serfs again.”
Of their past history the only memory the Tziganes have preserved
is that of the disastrous day of Nagy Ida, when a thousand of their
people were slain. This was in 1557, when Perenyi, in want of soldiers,
had intrusted to a thousand gypsies the fortress of Nagy Ida, which
they defended so valiantly that the imperial troops beat a retreat.
But, intoxicated with their triumph, the Tziganes called after the
retreating enemy, that but for the lack of gunpowder they would have
served them still worse. On hearing this the army turned round again,
and easily forcing an entrance into the castle cut down the gypsies to
the last man.
All Hungarian gypsies keep the anniversary of this day as a day of
mourning, and have a particular melody in which they bewail the loss of
their heroes. This tune, or _nota_, they never play before a stranger,
and the mere mention of it is sufficient to sadden them.
Only the higher class of Tzigane musicians (of which hereafter) are
fond of calling themselves Hungarians, and of wearing the Hungarian
national costume. This reminds me of a story I heard of a gypsy player
who, brought to justice for a murder he had committed, obstinately
persisted in denying his crime.
“Come, be a good fellow,” said the judge at last, fixing on the weak
side of the culprit; “show what a good Hungarian you are by speaking
the truth. A true Hungarian never tells a lie.”
The poor gypsy was so much flattered at being called a Hungarian that
he instantly confessed the murder, and was, of course, hanged as the
reward of his veracity.
Though without any regular social organization, the Hungarian gypsies
may yet be loosely divided into five classes, which range as follows:
1. The musicians.
2. The gold-washers, who also make bricks and spoons.
3. The smiths.
4. The daily laborers, such as whitewashers, masons, etc.
5. The nomadic tent gypsies.
If, however, we reverse the order of things, and turn the social ladder
upside down, these latter may well be ranked as the first, and so they
deem themselves to be, for do they not enjoy privileges unknown to most
respectable citizens?—free as the birds of the air, paying no taxes,
acknowledging no laws, and making the whole world their own!