THE title-page of this little publication states that it is “particularly
addressed to the students of the universities.” It is based on a History
of the Gipsies, published in 1865, in a prefatory note to which it was
said that this subject,
“When thus comprehensively treated, forms a study for the most
advanced and cultivated mind, as well as for the youth whose
intellectual and literary character is still to be formed; and
furnishes, among other things, a system of science not too abstract
in its nature, and having for its subject-matter the strongest of
human feelings and sympathies.”
This race entered Great Britain before the year 1506, and sooner or later
became legally and socially proscribed. It has been my endeavour for
some years back to have the _social_ proscription removed (the _legal_
one having ceased to exist), so that at least the _name_ and _blood_ of
this people should be acknowledged by the rest of the world, and each
member of the race as such treated according to his personal merits. The
great difficulty I have encountered in this matter is the general
impression that this race is confined to a few wandering people of
swarthy appearance, who live in tents, or are popularly known as Gipsies;
and that these “cease to be Gipsies” when they in any way “fall into the
ranks,” and dress and live, more or less, like other people.
Unfortunately many have so publicly committed themselves to this view of
the subject that it is hardly possible to get them to revise their
opinion, and admit the leading fact of the question, viz.: that the
Gipsies do not “cease to be Gipsies” by any change in their style of life
or character, and that the same holds good with their descendants.
Taking the race or blood in itself, and especially when mixed with
native, it has every reason to call itself, in one sense at least,
English, from having been nearly four hundred years in England. The race
has been a very hardy and prolific one, and (with the exception of a few
families, about which there it no certainty) has got very much mixed with
native blood, which so greatly modified the appearance of that part of it
that it was enabled to _steal_ into society, and escape the observation
of the native race, and their prejudice against everything Gipsy, so far
as they understood the subject.
It is a long stretch for a native family to trace its descent to people
living in the time of Henry VIII., but a very short one for a
semi-barbarous tribe as such, having so singular an origin as a tent, as
applicable to all descending from it, however much part of their blood
may be of the ordinary race; the origin of which is generally unknown to
them. Thus they have no other sense of origin than a Gipsy one, and that
“theirs is a Gipsy family,” of an arrival in England like that of
yesterday, with words and signs, and a cast of mind peculiar to
themselves, leading, by their associations and sympathies of race, to
them generally, if not almost invariably, marrying among themselves, and
perpetuating the race, as something distinct from the rest of the world,
and scattered over its surface, in various stages of civilization and
purity of blood.
Leaving out the tented or more primitive Gipsies, there is hardly
anything about this people, when their blood has been mixed and their
habits changed, to attract the _eye_ of the world; hence it becomes the
subject of a _mental_ inquiry, so far as its _nature_ is concerned. And
the human faculties being so limited in their powers, even when trained
from early youth, it will be, at the best, a difficult matter to get the
subject of the Gipsies understood; while it appears to be a desperate
effort to get people beyond a certain age, or of a peculiar mind or
training, to make anything of it, or even to listen to the mention of it,
which almost seems to be offensive to them. On this account, if the
subject of the Gipsy race, in all its mixtures of blood and aspects of
meaning, can ever become one of interest, or even known, to the rest of
the human family, it must be taken up, for the most part, by young people
whose minds are open to receive information, as illustrated by what I
wrote in connexion with Scotch university students:—
“At their time of life they are more easily impressed with the truth
of what can be demonstrated, than after having acquired modes of
thought and feeling in regard to it, which have to be modified or got
rid of, after more or less trouble and sometimes pain.”
This subject does not in any way clash with what is generally held in
dispute among men, but touches many traits of their common humanity. Its
investigation illustrates the laws of evidence on whatever subject to
which evidence may be applicable—that all questions should be settled by
facts, and not by suppositions; and that no one has a right to maintain
capriciously that anything is a truth until it is proved to be an
untruth. As regards John Bunyan, it is not in dispute that he was an
English _man_, but whether he was of the _native_ English race, or of the
_Gipsy_ English one, or of both, and holding by the Gipsy connexion.
What is necessary to be done is not merely to correct, but to create, and
permanently establish a knowledge that has now no existence with people
generally, in consequence of the habits of the original Gipsies leading
to their legal and social proscription, and the naturally secretive
nature of the race, which has been intensified by the way in which they
were everywhere treated or regarded.
Apart from this subject in itself, it may be said to be one of those side
questions which it is always advisable for a student to have on hand, as
a mental relief after severe studies, and to liberalize or expand his
mind generally.
The question of John Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race, discussed in
the following pages, is merely an incidental part of the subject of the
Gipsies. What I have said there about the Rev. John Brown, of Bedford,
makes it unnecessary for me to add much here, except to say that, as he
has no standing in the discussion of the Gipsy question as applicable to
Bunyan, he would not be listened to but for his being minister of
Bunyan’s Church, and setting forth theories as to his nationality that
meet the preconceived opinions and ardent wishes of others. His
discovery of Bunyan’s descent is of great interest; but for it to be of
any use, he should have taken it to such as were able to interpret it,
instead of proclaiming that he had thereby done away with the idea of
Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race, to the apparent welcome of those
who will have it so. He had previously “done away with” the same idea by
discovering that the name of Bunyan existed in England before the Gipsies
arrived in it! As the occupant of Bunyan’s pulpit, it was clearly his
sacred duty to carefully scrutinize the information left by Bunyan as to
“what he said he was and was not, and his calling and surroundings,” for
these exclusively constitute the question at issue, and as carefully
study everything bearing on the subject. Had he done so, he would have
found that the family of the illustrious dreamer did not enter England
from Normandy with William the Conqueror (whatever might have been the
blood of William and Thomas Bonyon in 1542), or were native English
vagabonds, as some have thought, but Gipsies whose blood was mixed; so
that John Bunyan doubtless spoke the language of the race in great
purity, and was capable, after a little effort, to have written it. In
England to-day there are many such men as Bunyan, barring his piety and
genius, following his original calling, that speak the Gipsy language
with more or less purity, saying nothing of others in much higher
positions in life. Of the former especially I have met and conversed in
America with a number, who had no doubt of John Bunyan having been one of
their race.
Whatever the future may bring forth, I have no reason to change what I
wrote in _Contributions to Natural History_, _etc._, in 1871, in regard
to the only bar in the way of receiving Bunyan as a Gipsy being the
prejudice of caste against the name:—
“Even in the United States I find intelligent and liberal-minded
Scotchmen, twenty years absent from their native country, saying, ‘I
would _not like_ it to be said,’ and others, ‘I would _not have_ it
said,’ that Bunyan was a Gipsy” (p. 158).
This feeling cannot be changed in a day, however involuntary it
frequently is, or however much it may be repudiated in public.
The Gipsy, whatever his position in life, and however much his blood may
be mixed, is exceedingly proud of the romance of his descent. The
following extracts are taken from the Disquisition on the Gipsies on that
subject:—
“He pictures to himself these men [John Faw, Towla Bailyow, and
others, in 1540], as so many swarthy, slashing heroes, dressed in
scarlet and green, armed with pistols and broad-swords, mounted on
blood-horses, with hawks and hounds in their train. True to nature,
every Gipsy is delighted with his descent, no matter what other
people, in their ignorance of the subject, may think of it, or what
their prejudices may be in regard to it” (p. 500).—“If we refer to
the treaty between John Faw and James V., in 1540, we will very
readily conclude that, three centuries ago, the leaders of the
Gipsies were very superior men in their way; cunning, astute, and
slippery Oriental barbarians, with the experience of upwards of a
century in European society generally; well up to the ways of the
world and the general ways of Church and State, and, in a sense, at
home with kings, popes, cardinals, nobility, and gentry. That was
the character of a superior Gipsy in 1540. In 1840 we find the race
represented by as fine a man as ever graced the Church of Scotland”
(p. 465).—“Scottish Gipsies are British subjects as much as either
Highland or Lowland Scots; their being of foreign origin does not
alter the case; and they are entitled to have that justice meted out
to them that has been accorded to the ordinary natives. They are not
a heaven-born race, but they certainly found their way into the
country as if they had dropped into it out of the clouds. As a race,
they have that much mystery, originality, and antiquity about them,
and that inextinguishable sensation of being a branch of the same
tribe everywhere, that ought to cover a multitude of failings
connected with their past history. Indeed, what we do know of their
earliest history is not nearly so barbarous as that of our own; for
we must contemplate our own ancestors at one time as painted and
skin-clad barbarians. What we do know for certainty of the earliest
history of the Scottish Gipsies is contained more particularly in the
Act of 1540; and we would naturally say that, for a people in a
barbarous state, such is the dignity and majesty, with all the
roguishness displayed in the conduct of the Gipsies of that period,
one could hardly have a better, certainly not a more romantic
descent; provided the person whose descent it is, is to be found amid
the ranks of Scots, with talents, a character, and a position equal
to those of others around him. For this reason, it must be said of
the race, that whenever it shakes itself clear of objectionable
habits, and follows any kind of ordinary industry, the cause of every
prejudice against it is gone, or ought to disappear; for then, as I
have already said, the Gipsies become ordinary citizens of the Gipsy
clan. It then follows, that in passing a fair judgment upon the
Gipsy race, we ought to establish a principle of progression, and set
our minds upon the best specimens of it, as well as the worst, and
not judge of it solely from the poorest, the most ignorant, or the
most barbarous part of it” (p. 479).
Satisfied with, even proud of, their descent, the Gipsies hide it from
the rest of the world, for reasons that are obvious, however much I have
explained them on previous occasions. And thus, as I wrote in
_Contributions to Natural History_, _etc._,
“It unfortunately happens that, owing to the peculiarity of their
origin, and the prejudice of the rest of the population, the race
hide the fact of their being Gipsies from the rest of the world, as
they acquire settled habits, or even leave the tent, so that they
never get the credit of any good that may spring from them as a
people” (158). And this may have been going on from the time of
their arrival in England.
With reference to this phenomenon, I wrote thus in the Disquisition on
the Gipsies:—
“Now, since John Bunyan has become so famous throughout the world,
and so honoured by all sects and parties, what an inimitable
instrument Providence has placed in our hands wherewith to raise up
the name of Gipsy! Through him we can touch the heart of
Christendom!” (p. 530).
It would be a sad thing to have the century close without the Gipsy race
being acknowledged by the rest of the world, in some form or other, or
that that should be deemed unworthy of our boasted civilization! To get
this subject completely before the British public would resemble the
recovery of a lost art, or the discovery of a new one. People taking it
up there would require to show a high degree of courage, candour, and
courtesy, and all the better qualities of their nature.
On the 8th September I wrote thus to the editor of the _Daily News_:—“I
intend printing the articles sent you as the bulk of a pamphlet, . . . so
that I am in hopes you will have previously printed them in the _Daily
News_,” which he does not seem to have done.
NEW YORK, 2d _October_, 1882.