_National Quarterly Review_.—“The title of this work gives a correct idea
of its character; the matter fully justifies it. Even in its original
form it was the most interesting and reliable history of the Gipsies with
which we were acquainted. But it is now much enlarged, and brought down
to the present time. The disquisition on the past, present, and future
of that singular race, added by the editor, greatly enhances the value of
the work, for it embodies the results of extensive research and careful
investigation.” “The chapter on the Gipsy language should be read by all
who take any interest either in comparative philology or ethnology; for
it is much more curious and instructive than most people would expect
from the nature of the subject. The volume is well printed and neatly
bound, and has the advantage of a copious alphabetical index.”
_Congregational Review_. (Boston.)—“The senior partner in the authorship
of this book was a Scotchman who made it his life-long pleasure to go a
‘Gipsy hunting,’ to use his own phrase. He was a personal friend of Sir
Walter Scott . . . His enthusiasm was genuine, his diligence great, his
sagacity remarkable, and his discoveries rewarding.” “The book is
undoubtedly the fullest and most reliable which our language contains on
the subject.” “This volume is valuable for its instruction, and
exceedingly amusing anecdotically. It overruns with the humorous.” “The
subject in its present form is novel, and we freely add, very
sensational.” “Indeed, the book assures us that our country is full of
this people, mixed up as they have become, by marriage, with all the
European stocks during the last three centuries. The amalgamation has
done much to merge them in the general current of modern education and
civilization; yet they retain their language with closest tenacity, as a
sort of Freemason medium of intercommunion; and while they never are
wiling to own their origin among outsiders, they are very proud of it
among themselves.” “We had regarded them as entitled to considerable
antiquity, but we now find that they were none other than the ‘mixed
multitude’ which accompanied the Hebrew exode (Ex. XII 38) under
Moses—straggling or disaffected Egyptians, who went along to ventilate
their discontent, or to improve their fortunes. . . . . We are not
prepared to take issue with these authors on any of the points raised by
them.”
_Methodist Quarterly Review_.—“Have we Gipsies among us? Yea, verily, if
Mr. Simson is to be believed, they swarm our country in secret legions.
There is no place on the four quarters of the globe where some of them
have not penetrated. Even in New England a sly Gipsy girl will enter the
factory as employe, will by her allurements win a young Jonathan to marry
her, and in due season, the ’cute gentleman will find himself the father
of a young brood of intense Gipsies. The mother will have opened to her
young progeny the mystery and the romance of its lineage, will have
disclosed its birth-right connection with a secret brotherhood, whose
profounder Freemasonry is based on blood, historically extending itself
into the most dim antiquity, and geographically spreading over most of
the earth. The fascinations of this mystic tie are wonderful. Afraid or
ashamed to reveal the secret to the outside world, the young Gipsy is
inwardly intensely proud of his unique nobility, and is very likely to
despise his alien father, who is of course glad to keep the late
discovered secret from the world. Hence dear reader, you know not but
your next neighbour is a Gipsy.” “The volume before us possesses a rare
interest, both from the unique character of the subject, and from the
absence of nearly any other source of full information. It is the result
of observation from real life.” The language “is spoken with varying
dialects in different countries, but with standard purity in Hungary. It
is the precious inheritance and proud peculiarity of the Gipsy, which he
will never forget and seldom reveal. The varied and skillful manœuvres
of Mr. Simson to purloin or wheedle out a small vocabulary, with the
various effects of the operation on the minds and actions of the Gipsies,
furnish many an amusing narrative in these pages.” “Persecutions of the
most cruel character have embittered and barbarized them. . . . Even now
. . . they do not realize the kindly feeling of enlightened minds toward
them, and view with fierce suspicion every approach designed to draw from
them the secrets of their history, habits, laws and language.” “The age
of racial caste is passing away. Modern Christianity will refuse to
tolerate the spirit of hostility and oppression based on feature, colour,
or lineage.” The “book is an intended first step for the improvement of
the race that forms its subject, and every magnanimous spirit must wish
that it may prove not the last. We heartily commend the work to our
readers as not only full of fascinating details, but abounding with
points of interest to the benevolent Christian heart.” “The general
spirit of the work is eminently enlightened, liberal, and humane.”
_Evangelical Quarterly Review_.—“The Gipsies, their race and language
have always excited a more than ordinary interest. The work before us,
apparently the result of careful research, is a comprehensive history of
this singular people, abounding in marvelous incidents and curious
information. It is highly instructive, and there is appended a full and
most careful index—so important in every work.”
_National Freemason_.—“We feel confident that our readers will relish the
following concerning the Gipsies, from the British Masonic Organ: That an
article on Gipsyism is not out of place in this Magazine will be admitted
by every one who knows anything of the history, manners, and customs of
these strange wanderers among the nations of the earth. The Freemasons
have a language, words, and signs peculiar to themselves; so have the
Gipsies. A Freemason has in every country a friend, and in every climate
a home, secured to him by the mystic influence of that worldwide
association to which he belongs; similar are the privileges of the Gipsy.
But here, of course, the analogy ceases. Freemasonry is an Order banded
together for purposes of the highest benevolence. Gipsyism, we fear, has
been a source of constant trouble and inconvenience to European nations.
The interest, therefore, which as Masons we may evince in the Gipsies
arises principally, we may say wholly, from the fact of their being a
secret society, and also from the fact that many of them are enrolled in
our lodges. . . . There are in the United Kingdom a vast multitude of
mixed Gipsies, differing very little in outward appearance, manners, and
customs from ordinary Britons; but in heart thorough Gipsies, as
carefully and jealously guarding their language and secrets, as we do the
secrets of the Masonic Order.” “Mr. Simson makes masterly establishment
of the fact that John Bunyan, the world-renowned author of the ‘Pilgrim’s
Progress,’ was descended from Gipsy blood.”
_New York Independent_.—“Such a book is the History of the Gipsies.
Every one who has a fondness for the acquisition of out-of-the-way
knowledge, chiefly for the pleasure afforded by its possession, will like
this book. It contains a mass of facts, of stories, and of legends
connected with the Gipsies; a variety of theories as to their origin . . .
and various interesting incidents of adventures among these modern
Ishmaelites. There is a great deal of curious information to be obtained
from this history, nearly all of which will be new to Americans.” “It is
singular that so little attention has been heretofore given to this
particular topic; but it is probably owing to the fact that Gipsies are
so careful to keep outsiders from a knowledge of their language that they
even deny its existence.” “The history is just the book with which to
occupy one’s idle moments; for, whatever else it lacks, it certainly is
not wanting in interest.”
_New York Observer_.—“Among the peoples of the world, the Gipsies are the
most mysterious and romantic. Their origin, modes of life, and habits
have been, until quite recently, rather conjectural than known. Mr.
Walter Simson, after years of investigation and study, produced a history
of this remarkable people which is unrivalled for the amount of
information which it conveys in a manner adapted to excite the deepest
interest.” “We are glad that Mr. James Simson has not felt the same
timidity, but has given the book to the public, having enriched it with
many notes, an able introduction, and a disquisition upon the past,
present, and future of the Gipsy race.” “Of the Gipsies in Spain we have
already learned much from the work of Borrow, but this is a more thorough
and elaborate treatise upon Gipsy life in general, though largely devoted
to the tribe as it appeared in England and Scotland.” “Such are some
views and opinions respecting a curious people, of whose history and
customs Mr. Simson has given a deeply interesting delineation.”
_New York Methodist_.—“The Gipsies present one of the most remarkable
anomalies in the history of the human race. Though they have lived among
European nations for centuries, forming in some districts a prominent
element in the population, they have succeeded in keeping themselves
separate in social relations, customs, language, and in a measure, in
government, and excluding strangers from real knowledge of the character
of their communities and organizations. Scarcely more is known of them
by the world in general than was know when they first made their
appearance among civilized nations.” “Another curious thing advanced by
Mr. Simson is that of the perpetuity of the race . . . He thinks that it
never dies out, and that Gipsies, however much they may intermarry with
the world’s people, and adopt the habits of civilization, remain Gipsies,
preserve the language, the Gipsy mode of thought, and loyalty to the race
and its traditions to remote generations. His work turns, in fact, upon
those two theories, and the incidents, facts, and citations from history
with which it abounds, are all skillfully used in support of them.”
“There are some facts of interest in relation to the Gipsies in Scotland
and America, which are brought out quite fully in Mr. Simson’s book,”
which “abounds in novel and interesting matter . . . and will well repay
perusal.” “Pertinent anecdotes, illustrating the habits and craft of the
Gipsies, may be picked up at random in any part of the book.”
_New York Evening Post_.—“The editor corrects some popular notions in
regard to the habits of the Gipsies. They are not now, in the main, the
wanderers they used to be. Through intermarriage with other people, and
from other causes, they have adopted more stationary modes of life, and
have assimilated to the manners of the countries in which they live . . .
As the editor of this volume says: ‘They carry the language, the
associations, and the sympathies of their race, and their peculiar
feelings toward the community with them; and, as residents of towns, have
greater facilities, from others of their race residing near them, for
perpetuating their language, than when strolling over the country.’” “We
have no space for such full extracts as we should like to give.”
_New York Journal of Commerce_.—“We have seldom found a more readable
book than Simson’s History of the Gipsies. A large part of the volume is
necessarily devoted to the local histories of families in England
(Scotland), but these go to form part of one of the most interesting
chapters of human history.” “We commend the book as very readable, and
giving much instruction on a curious subject.”
_New York Times_.—“Mr . . . has done good service to the American public
by reproducing here this very interesting and valuable volume.” “The
work is more interesting than a romance, and that it is full of facts is
very easily seen by a glance at the index, which is very minute, and adds
greatly to the value of the book.”
_New York Albion_.—“An extremely curious work is a History of the
Gipsies.” “The wildest scenes in ‘Lavengro,’ as for instance the fight
with the Flaming Tinman, are comparatively tame beside some of the
incidents narrated here.”
_Hours at Home_ (_now Scribner’s Monthly_).—“Years ago we read, with an
interest we shall never forget, Borrow’s book on the Gipsies of Spain.
We have now a history of this mysterious race as it exists in the British
Islands, which, though written before Borrow’s, has just been published.
It is . . . the result of much time and patient labor, and is a valuable
contribution toward a complete history of this extraordinary people. The
Gipsy race and the Gipsy language are subjects of much interest, socially
and ethnologically.” “He estimates the number of Gipsies in Great
Britain at 250,000, and the whole number in Europe and America at
4,000,000.” “The work is what it professes to be, a veritable history—a
history in which Gipsy life has been stripped of everything pertaining to
fiction, so that the reader will see depicted in their true character
this strange people. . . . And yet, these pages of sober history are
crowded with facts and incidents stranger and more thrilling than the
wildest imaginings of the romantic school.”