THE first notice of my pamphlet, under the title of _John Bunyan and the
Gipsies_, that has come under my observation I found in the _Daily News_
of the 15th August. In the preface to it I said:—“This little
publication is intended, in the first place, for the British Press,” as
an appeal for a hearing on the subjects discussed in it. The time that
elapsed between receiving the pamphlet and writing the notice of it was
too short to enable almost any one to do justice to it, for that required
time to think over it as having reference to my previous writings, to
which the two letters to an English clergyman contained in it were merely
an allusion.
The writer is hardly correct when he speaks of the “long debated question
of whether the illustrious author of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ was of
Gipsy race.” This question has not been even once “debated” in England,
so far as I, living in America, am aware of. I stated it fully in _Notes
and Queries_ on the 12th December, 1857, and more fully in the _History
of the Gipsies_, published by Sampson, Low & Co. in 1865; again in _Notes
and Queries_ on the 27th March, 1875, with reference to the “fairish
appearance” of Bunyan, and the existence of his surname (variously spelt)
in England before the Gipsies arrived in it; then in _Contributions to
Natural History and Papers on Other Subjects_, and _The English
Universities and John Bunyan_, and _The Encyclopædia Britannica and the
Gipsies_; then in _The Scottish Churches and the Gipsies_; and, finally,
in the pamphlet alluded to. So that, instead of having “nothing to say”
to the “fairish appearance” and the surname of Bunyan, I fully
anticipated these questions, and disposed of them as they were brought
forward by people at a venture, who seemed to know nothing of the subject
they were treating. Much as I have published on this question, I am not
aware that any one has ever attempted to set aside my facts, arguments,
and proof that John Bunyan was of the Gipsy race. My “opponents” (so
called) _assume_ that he was of the ordinary English race, and
_therefore_ was, and must be held to have been, such till it is _proved_
that he was _not_ that, but of the Gipsy race, or something else; a most
unreasonable position for any one to take up. So far from people stating
the kind of _proof_ they want, they simply pass over everything I have
written on the subject, and repeat their untenable, meaningless, and
oft-refuted assertions. Thus the Rev. John Brown, of Bunyan Church,
Bedford, apparently knowing nothing of the Gipsy subject, and
disregarding everything printed on it, and looking neither to the right
nor the left, makes out from the surname that the illustrious dreamer’s
family was a broken-down branch of the English aristocracy, instead of,
as Bunyan himself told us, “the meanest and most despised of _all_ the
families in the land,” and “not of the Israelites,” that is, _not Jews_,
but tinkers, that is, Gipsies of more or less mixed blood; so that his
having been a tinker was in itself amply sufficient to prove Bunyan to
have been of the Gipsy race; while it illustrated and confirmed his
admission about “his father’s house” having been of the Gipsy tribe.
Having written so frequently, and at such length, on this subject, it
would be impossible, at least unreasonable, to repeat in a newspaper
article what I have done, and I must refer the reader to the various
publications mentioned. I may allude to the scepticism of _Blackwood_,
who will not believe that Bunyan was of the Gipsy race because he did not
say so plainly, in the face of the legal and social responsibility; {10a}
and to that of Mr. Groome, the writer on the Gipsies in the _Encyclopædia
Britannica_, because he alluded to a Gipsy woman carrying off a child,
and because his children did not bear the old-fashioned Gipsy _Christian_
names which were adopted by the race after their arrival in Europe. I
disposed of these trifling and meaningless objections in their proper
places, and need not reproduce them here. {10b} The strangest thing
advanced about Bunyan is the assertion that it is impossible he could
have been a Gipsy, because the name existed in England before the race
arrived in it. From this it would follow that there can be no Gipsies in
England, or anywhere else, because they bear surnames common to the
natives of the soil. The circumstances under which they adopted these,
and how Gipsies of mixed blood are found of all colours, I have on
previous occasions elaborately explained. Hence it can be said that the
writer in the _Daily News_ is not strictly correct when, in allusion to
the two letters to an English clergyman, contained in the pamphlet, he
says that I “have nothing to say to all this;” and that “this is really
all the evidence, as well as all the argument, forthcoming on the
subject.” This subject has no standing if we do not admit of the
existence of a “ferocious prejudice of caste against the name of Gipsy”;
and that in regard to the nationality of John Bunyan, “the question at
issue is really not one of evidence, but of an unfortunate feeling of
caste that bars the way against all investigation and proof.”
Apart from John Bunyan personally, the subject of the race to which he
belonged has a very important bearing on the “social emancipation of the
Gipsies” in the British Isles. There cannot be less than several hundred
thousand of these in various positions in life—many, perhaps most of
them, differing in no other way from the “ordinary natives” but that in
respect to that part of their blood which is Gipsy, they have sprung,
really or representatively, from _the tent_—the hive from which the whole
of the Gipsy tribe have swarmed. Notwithstanding that, this fact carries
certain mental peculiarities with it, which should be admitted as a
preliminary step to a full social equality, should the incognito Gipsy
element in society present itself for that purpose.
Since the above was written I have read with great interest the letter
from “Thomas Bunyan, chief warder, Tower of London, and born in
Roxburghshire,” in the _Daily News_ of the 17th. The origin which he
gives of the _name_ is apparently the correct one, viz.: that “the first
Bunyan was an Italian mason, who came to Melrose, and was at the building
of that famous abbey in the year 1136;” and that “the oldest gravestone
in the graveyard around Melrose Abbey has on it the name of Bunyan.” In
my Disquisition on the Gipsies, published in 1865, I said:—“The name
Bunyan would seem to be of foreign origin” (p. 519). It does not
necessarily follow that the blood of the Italian mason flowed in John
Bunyan’s veins, except by it having in some way got mixed with and merged
in that of the Gipsy race. {11a}