THE _History of the Gipsies_, by Walter Simson, which I edited and
published in 1865, was ready for the press in 1858. In a prefatory note
to it I said:—
“In the present work the race has been treated of so fully and
elaborately, in all its aspects, as in a great measure to fill and
satisfy the mind, instead of being, as heretofore, little better than
a myth to the understanding of the most intelligent person.”
In 1872 Mr. Leland published his work on _The English Gipsies and their
Language_, in which no reference was made to mine, [that is, my part of
it]. {11b}
In 1874 he wrote, for _Johnson’s Cyclopædia_, an article on the Gipsies,
in which he made use of the History proper to illustrate the race in
Scotland, and my addition (which made about half of the book) exclusively
to illustrate it in America, and giving my words. It did not appear from
this article that he had any personal knowledge of the subject, {11c}
excepting that he said that he knew of one Gipsy who had travelled from
Canada to Texas, as confirmatory of what I had written; and asserted that
“there is probably _not one_ theatre or circus in England or America in
which there are not one or more performers of more or less mixed Gipsy
blood.” The only other remark he made of that nature was the
following:—“The reader who will devote a very few weeks to either Dr. B.
Smart’s _Vocabulary_, to G. Borrow’s _Romano Lavo Lil_, or G. C. Leland’s
_English Gipsies_ (London, 1872), can speak the language better than most
English or American Gipsies.” In other words, that any person with tact
and a turn to pick up, remember and use Gipsy words could do just what he
had done; and by going over the same ground produce, in a varied form as
regards circumstances, scenes described by others. It is exceedingly
probable that the work edited and published by me specially stimulated
Mr. Leland to take up the subject so fully treated in it.
In his book entitled _The Gipsies_ (New York, 1882), Mr. Leland complains
of “a reviewer” saying of his _English Gipsies and their Language_ that
it “had added nothing to our knowledge on the subject;” which was morally
if not literally true, that on the language excepted, which was mainly an
illustration and continuation of the collections of others, acquired with
great labour. He has made several allusions to my work, without
indicating it, such as frequently using the word “Gipsydom,” although
that might have been done by any one; which could not have been said of
“the old thing” (p. 274), which I used on several occasions to describe a
settled Gipsy visiting a Gipsy tent, to view the style of life of his
primitive ancestor. He has also made unfair allusion to the “mixed
multitude” of the Exodus as being the origin of the Gipsies, (p. 89); and
to the subject of the Scottish Tinklers or Gipsies, (p. 371). In _The
Gipsies_ he says, “No one will accuse me of wide discussion or padding,”
(p. 84). That is obvious to any one, for almost every chapter contains
an intolerable amount of extraneous matter or padding, that has no
reference to the title page or headings of the chapters. In some parts
of the book there are several pages at a stretch—once as much as seven
pages—of such extraneous matter; and it would be interesting to make an
analysis of it, line by line, to ascertain the proportion of the two
kinds of matter.
But what I wish more particularly to allude to is Mr. Leland’s discovery
that the Gipsies are a tribe from India that are known there under the
name of “Syrians,” and therefore not originally natives of India; which
latter conclusion, however, he does not admit, but accounts for the
phenomenon in this way:—“I offer as an hypothesis that bands of Gipsies
who roamed from India to Syria have, after returning, been called Trablûs
or Syrians, just as I have known Germans after returning from the
fatherland to America to be called Americans” (p. 338). That is, a
family or company of Indian nomads returning from a visit to Syria would
afterwards be called, and cause the whole of the race who never left
India to be called, Syrians for ever! Again he says:—“It will probably
be found that they are Hindoos who have roamed from India to Syria and
back again, here and there, until they are regarded as foreigners in both
countries” (!). The allusion to Germans in illustration is not merely
inapplicable, but unintelligible. Of the “Syrians” in India Mr. Leland
writes:—“Whether they have or had any connection with the migration to
the West we cannot establish” (p. 339). For this reason he should not
have identified them with the Gipsies out of India. “Their language and
their name would seem to indicate it; but then it must be borne in mind
that the word _rom_, like _dom_, is one of wide dissemination, _dum_
being a Syrian Gipsy word for the race” (p. 339); and “among the Copts . . .
the word for man is _romi_” (p. 20). {12} “Among the hundred and
fifty wandering tribes of India and Persia . . . it is of course
difficult to identify the exact origin of the European Gipsy” (p. 18).
For that reason he should not have written so positively that he had
“definitely determined the existence in India of a peculiar tribe of
Gipsies who are _par eminence_ the Romanys of the East, and whose
language is there what it is in England, the same in vocabulary and the
chief slang of the roads. This I claim as a discovery, having learned it
from a Hindoo who had been himself a Gipsy in his native land” (Pref.
iv.). He describes them as “thieves, fortune-tellers and vagrants” (p.
339), yet his informant, John Nano, said he was, or had been, one of
them; which would imply that there were different kinds of “Syrians,”
inasmuch as he was found to be a maker of curry powder in London, and the
husband of an English woman, a Mahometan by religion, and sufficiently
educated to have written an autobiography, which had unfortunately been
burnt. According to John’s account, these “Syrians” were “full blood
Hindoos, and not Syrians,” and he “was very sure that his Gipsies were
Indians.” The term “full-blood Hindoos” who are “thieves,
fortune-tellers and vagrants,” and strollers out of and back to India,
requires explanation. John’s information as to these people being called
by the other natives of India “Syrians” may be very reliable; but that
they were “full-blood Hindoos” could have been, at its best, nothing but
a supposition on his part. As I said in the Introduction to the _History
of the Gipsies_, “I can conceive nothing more difficult than an attempt
to elucidate the history of any of the infinity of sects, castes or
tribes to be met with in India” (p. 41). The nature of the population of
India is such that there would hardly be a possibility of its people at
large becoming acquainted with the movements of a few families of
outcasts leaving their race behind and going to and returning from Syria
(if they ever did that), so as to give the whole race the name of
Syrians. The name must have had its origin from the people having come
originally from Syria, or from parts surrounding it.
In _The Gipsies_ Mr. Leland says that he has “carefully read everything
ever printed on the Romany” (Pref. v.); and that it is his “opinion that
one ought, when setting forth any subject, to give quite as good an
opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves” (p. 88).
And yet, although he made exclusive use of the work I edited and
published for parts of his article in _Johnson’s Cyclopædia_, and has
alluded to Messrs. Borrow, Smart, Palmer and Groome, he has carefully
abstained from mentioning my name, however much he may have been indebted
to my work. By referring to it, he cannot but remember having “carefully
read” the following:—
“I am inclined to believe that the people in India corresponding to
the Gipsies in Europe will be found among those tented tribes who
perform certain services to the British armies; at all events there
is such a tribe in India who are called Gipsies by the Europeans who
come in contact with them. A short time ago, one of these people,
who followed the occupation of a camel driver, found his way to
England, and ‘pulled up’ with some English Gipsies, whom he
recognized as his own people; at least he found that they had the
ways and ceremonies of them. But it would be unreasonable to suppose
that such a tribe in India did not follow various occupations” (p.
40). “What evidently leads Mr. Borrow and others astray in the
matter of the origin of the Gipsies, is that they conclude that
because the language spoken by the Gipsies is apparently, or for the
most part, Hindostanee, therefore the people speaking it originated
in Hindostan; as just a conclusion as it would be to maintain that
the Negroes in Liberia originated in England because they speak the
English language!” (p. 41). [Mr. Leland alludes to this simile by
saying that English spoken by American Negroes does not prove Saxon
descent (p. 20).]
In discussing the question of the origin of the Gipsies with some English
members of the race, I found that “a very intelligent Gipsy informed me
that his race sprang from a body of men—a cross between the Arabs and
Egyptians—that left Egypt in the train of the Jews” (p. 14). And I wrote
when I published this, that “the intelligent reader will not differ with
me as to the weight to be attached to the Gipsy’s remark on this point.”
To that question I devoted ten (13–23) closely printed pages to
demonstrate that the “mixed multitude,” or part of it, that left Egypt
with Moses, after separating from the Jews, travelled East into Northern
Hindostan, where they formed the Gipsy caste (p. 21); becoming in every
way a people like the Gipsy so far as he is known to the public to-day.
I further said that this people “travelled East, _their own masters_, and
became the origin of the Gipsy nation throughout the world” (p. 40).
“What objection could any one advance against the Gipsies being the
people that left Egypt in the train of the Jews? Not certainly an
objection as to race, for there must have been many captive people or
tribes introduced into Egypt from the many countries surrounding it .
. . That the ‘mixed multitude’ travelled into India, acquired the
language of that part of Asia, _and perhaps modified its appearance
there_, and became the origin of the Gipsy race, we may safely assume
. . . Everything harmonizes so beautifully with the idea that the
Gipsies are the ‘mixed multitude’ of the Exodus that it may be
admitted by the world. Even in the matter of religion, we could
imagine Egyptian captives losing a knowledge of their religion, as
has happened with the Africans in the New World, {14} and, not having
had another taught them, leaving Egypt under Moses without any
religion at all. After entering India they would in all probability
become a wandering people, and for a certainty live aloof from all
others” (pp. 494–496). “If we could but find traces of an Egyptian
origin among the Gipsies of Asia, say Central and Western Asia, the
question would be beyond dispute. But that might be a matter of some
trouble” (p. 40).
In this way Mr. Leland’s informant, John Nano, if he was correct in what
he said, confirmed my conjecture as to the Gipsies’ Egyptian or rather
Syrian origin; for after escaping from Egypt they would remain for some
time in Syria or its neighbourhood before they would become a body and
proceed East. As illustrative of Mr. Leland’s desire to “give quite as
good an opportunity to others who are in our business as to ourselves,” I
find him writing thus:—
“Here I interrupt the lady,” a writer on Magyarland, “to remark that
I cannot agree with her nor with her probable (!) authority, Walter
(!) Simson, in believing that the Gipsies are the descendants of the
mixed races who followed Moses out of Egypt. The Rom in Egypt is a
Hindoo stranger, as he ever was (!)” (p. 89).
The “authority” was mine, not Walter Simson’s, which Mr. Leland perhaps
did not care to state. One would naturally think that a people who left
Egypt under Moses would be looked upon there as “strangers” to-day,
rather than that a straggling family or company of Gipsies returning to
India from Syria (if they ever did that) would cause all their race that
never left India to be called Syrians for ever! According to Mr.
Leland’s style of reasoning it would follow that he and Americans
generally could not have originated in England, because they are
“strangers” there, and are looked upon as foreigners by the law and by
people whose sentiments are not of the most delicate nature!