_On the Religion of the Gipseys_.
THESE people did not bring any particular religion with them from their
native country, by which, as the Jews, they could be distinguished among
other persons; but regulate themselves, in religious matters, according
to the country where they live. Being very inconstant in their choice of
residence, they are likewise so in respect to religion. No Gipsey has an
idea of submission to any fixed profession of faith: it is as easy for
him to change his religion at every new village, as for another person to
shift his coat. They suffer themselves to be baptised in Christian
countries; among Mahometans to be circumcised. They are Greeks with
Greeks, Catholics with Catholics, and again profess themselves to be
Protestants, whenever they happen to reside where protestantism prevails.
From this mutability, we may conceive what ideas they have, and thence
deduce their general opinions of religion. As parents suffer their
children to grow up without education or instruction, and were reared in
the same manner themselves, so neither have any knowledge of God or
morality. Few of them will attend to any discourse on religion: they
hear what is said with indifference, nay rather with impatience and
repugnance; despising all remonstrance, believing nothing, they live
without the least solicitude concerning what shall become of them after
this life. An instance, quoted by Toppeltin, will fully illustrate this
matter: One of the more civilised Gipseys in Transylvania took the
resolution of sending his son to school: leave being obtained from the
government, the lad was admitted, and was going on very well, under his
teachers’ hands. The child died; whereupon the relations applied to the
magistrates and clergy for permission to give the young man Christian
burial, he being a student at the time of his death. On this occasion
the priest asked, whether they believed the deceased would rise again at
the last day?—“_Strange idea_!” they answered; “_to believe that a
carcase_, _a lifeless corpse_, _should be reanimated_, _and rise
again_!—_In our opinion_, _it would be no more likely to happen to him_,
_than to the horse we flayed a few days ago_.” Such are the opinions of
the greatest part of these people with regard to religion; it naturally
follows, that their conduct should be conformable to such ideas and
conceptions. Every duty is neglected, no prayer ever passes their lips:
as little are they to be found in any assembly of public worship; whence
the Wallachian adage—“The Gipsey’s church was built with bacon, and the
dogs ate it.” The religious party from which a Gipsey apostatises, as
little loses a brother believer, as the one into which he goes acquires
one. He is neither Mahometan nor Christian; for the doctrines of Mahomet
and of Christ are alike unknown or indifferent to him, producing no other
effect than that in Turkey his child is circumcised, and baptised in
Christendom. The Turks are so fully convinced of the little sincerity
the Gipseys entertain in regard to religion, that although a Jew, by
becoming a Mahometan, is freed from the payment of the charadsch, the
Gipseys are not, at least in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. They
are compelled to pay this polltax even though their ancestors, for
centuries back, had been Mahometans; or though they should actually have
been a pilgrimage to Mecca: the privilege of wearing a white turban is
the only advantage their conversion gives them over unbelieving Jews and
Gipseys.
Such is the respect paid by the Gipseys to moral institutions, in every
country where they are found. It is true that in this, as well as in
other things, there may be exceptions, but they are very rare; by much
the greatest part of them are as above described. Wherefore the more
ancient, as well as the more modern, writers agree, in positively denying
that the Gipseys have any religion; placing them even below the heathens.
This sentence cannot be contradicted; since, so far from having a respect
for religion, they are adverse to every thing which in the least relates
to it.