{7} These two letters, dated the 5th and 19th of May, 1882, were in
answer to a short one from a clergyman of the Church of England,
acknowledging the receipt of a copy of my _Reminiscences of Childhood_,
_etc._, which contained an Appendix on John Bunyan and the Gipsies.
{11a} The text represents the article as originally written.
{11b} I endeavoured, unsuccessfully, to get another reading of this book
before saying that “no reference was made in it to mine.” I alluded,
from memory, to _my_ part of it. On examination I find that the only
indirect reference to it is the following:—“Mr. Simson, in his _History
of the Gipsies_ [that is, in the _Disquisition on the Gipsies_] asserts
that there is not a tinker or scissors-grinder in Great Britain that
cannot talk this language; and my own experience agrees with his
declaration, to this extent—that they all have some knowledge of it, or
claim to have it, however slight it may be,” (p. 4). I did not express
myself so absolutely as represented by Mr. Leland, who did not see fit to
mention the double authorship of the book; the subject of which I took up
from where it was left by Walter Simson. This double authorship may
prove a little confusing to the reader when the book is alluded to.
{11c} See second note at page 19.
{12} In _The English Gipsies_, _etc._, Mr. Leland writes:—“I asked a
Copt scribe if he were Muslim, and he replied, ‘_La_, _ana Gipti_’ (‘No,
I am a Copt’) pronouncing the word _Gipti_, or Copt, so that it might
readily be taken for ‘Gipsy.’ And learning that _romi_ is the Coptic for
a man, I was again startled; and when I found _tema_ (tem, land) and
other Romany words in ancient Egyptian (_vide_ Brugsch. _Grammaire_,
_etc._) it seemed as if there were still many mysteries to solve in this
strange language.” Of some Egyptian Gipsies Mr. Leland says that “they
all resembled the one whom I have described . . . They all differed
slightly, as I thought, from the ordinary Egyptians in their appearance”
(p. 193).
{14} Tacitus makes Caius Cassius, in the time of Nero, say:—“At present
we have in our service whole nations of slaves, the scum of mankind,
collected from all quarters of the globe; a race of men who bring with
them foreign rites, and the religion of their country, _or probably no
religion at all_.”—_Murphy’s Translation_.
{15} Perhaps the most interesting scene connected with the Gipsy
language in Scotland, given in the _History_, is that at St. Boswell’s
(pp. 309–318). The word “Tinkler,” assumed by and applied to the Scotch
Gipsies, seems to have been used from a desire to escape the legal
responsibility attaching to the word “Gipsy.”
{16} It is not only puzzling, but provoking to decide how to treat a
writer like Mr. Leland, for sometimes he shows a great deal of knowledge
of his subject, and sometimes apparently nothing of it—one assertion
contradicting another on the same question. What in reality has an
antipathy between birds, or the idea of “people of self-conscious culture
and the man and factory,” or the destiny of the American Indians to do
with the destiny of the Gipsies? For he says, “Gipsies in England are
passing away as rapidly as Indians in North America” (_The English
Gipsies_, _Pref. X._). As a native of the United States, Mr. Leland must
know that these Indians become extinct, and of the Gipsies in England
that although there are comparatively few “dwellers in tents” of full
blood, so called, there are many, many thousands of more or less mixed
blood following various callings, or in various positions in life, as he
has frequently admitted. The distinction between “old-fashioned” Gipsies
and other members of the tribe is but trifling with the subject.
The following extracts from _The English Gipsies and their Language_ are
interesting:—
“Other writers have had much to say of their incredible distrust of
_Gorgios_ and unwillingness to impart their language, but I have
always found them obliging and communicative” (Pref. V.).—“In every
part of the world it is extremely difficult to get Romany words even
from intelligent Gipsies, _although they may be willing with all
their heart to communicate them_” (p. 17).—“Now the reader is
possibly aware that of all difficult tasks, one of the most difficult
is to induce a disguised Gipsy, or even a professed one, to utter a
word of Romany to a man not of the blood” (p. 37).—“Be it remembered,
reader, that in Germany, at the present day, the mere fact of being a
Gipsy is still treated as a crime” (p. 74).—“Though the language of
the Gipsies has been kept a great secret for centuries, still a few
words have in England oozed out here and there from some unguarded
crevice” (p. 78).—“The very fact that they hide as much as they can
of their Gipsy life and nature from the _Gorgios_ would of itself
indicate the depths of singularity concealed beneath their apparent
life” (p. 153).—“Behind it all . . . . the fierce spirit of social
exile from the world in which they lived . . . and the joyous
consciousness of a secret tongue and hidden ways” (p. 156).—“A
feeling of free-masonry, and of guarding a social secret, long after
they leave the roads and become highly reputable members of society.
But they have a secret, and no one can know them who has not
penetrated it” (p. 174).
With all that has been said, the words which I have put in italics have a
curious meaning—that the Gipsies in giving their language to “strangers”
“may be willing with all their heart to communicate them”! I have
explained this subject at length in the Disquisition (pp. 281 and 282) in
reference to Mr. Borrow and others, not in regard to the willingness and
stupidity, but the shuffling of the Gipsy in giving the meaning of words,
although isolated and abstract ideas might occasionally puzzle some of
them; for they translated to Mr. Borrow the Apostles’ Creed, sentence by
sentence. The Lord’s Prayer, given by Mr. Borrow, Mr. Leland admits to
be “pure English Gipsy” (p. 70). I do not think Mr. Leland states, with
what stock of words and how acquired, he first approached the Gipsies,
and how he used them, to get inside of the guard of the tribe.
{18} In the Preface to _The English Gipsies and their Language_, Mr.
Leland says that all that it contains “was gathered directly from the
Gipsies themselves” (v.); that he did not take “anything from Simson,
Hoyland, or any other writer on the Romany race in England”; and that
nothing is a “re-warming of that which was gathered by others” (x.). All
that appears strictly true; yet he says nothing of how he was “put on the
track for repeating or illustrating an ‘oft-told tale.’” But he says:—
“If I have not given in this book a sketch of the history of the
Gipsies, or statistics of their numbers, or accounts of their social
condition in different countries, it is because nearly everything of
the kind may be found in the works of George Borrow and Walter
Simson” (xi.).
He did not find much of the kind mentioned in Mr. Borrow’s books, so far
as I remember, and omitted to say that I had written very fully on the
points stated. It would have been interesting to have been told by Mr.
Leland about his being “puzzled and muddled” at what he saw at Cobham
Fair, how he came to write, nine years before that, as follows:—
“There have been thousands of _swell_ Romany chals who have moved in
sporting circles of a higher class than they are to be found in at
the present day” (p. 92).—“It may be worth while to state, in this
connection, that Gipsy blood intermingled with Anglo-Saxon, when
educated, generally results in intellectual and physical vigour” (p.
174).—And where was it that he found the idea that John Bunyan was a
member of the Gipsy race (p. 63), if it was not as elaborately given
in my Disquisition?
{19a} One of Mr. Leland’s “confident assertions” is that “the English
Gipsy cares not a farthing ‘to know anything about his race as it exists
in foreign countries, or whence it came’”; which is not a fact. He seems
to have misinterpreted the _English Gipsy_ peculiarity which assimilates
_in appearance_ to the _native English_ one, as I have written thus in
the _History of the Gipsies_:—“Though Gipsies everywhere, they differ in
some respects in the various countries which they inhabit. For example,
an English Gipsy of pugilistic tendencies will, in a vapouring way,
engage to _thrash_ a dozen of his Hungarian brethren” (p. 359). And of
the more mixed kind of Gipsies, I have said:—“In Great Britain the
Gipsies are entitled, in one respect at least, to be called Englishmen,
Scotchmen, or Irishmen; for their general ideas as men, as distinguished
from their being Gipsies, and their language indicate them at once to be
such, nearly as much as the common natives of these countries” (p.
372).—What is described very fully throughout the _History_, and
especially in the note at pp. 342 and 343, about the different colours or
castes of the Gipsies, meets Mr. Leland’s remarks about those who left
India. Thus:—“What are full-blood Gipsies, to commence with? The idea
itself is intangible; for, by adopting, more or less, wherever they have
been, others into their body, during their singular history, a pure
Gipsy, like the pure Gipsy language, is doubtless nowhere to be found”
(p. 342).
{19b} With the limited space at his disposal for his cyclopædia article,
Mr. Leland could not be expected to tell us much in it about the Gipsies.
In it he says that “their hair seldom turns gray, even in advanced age,
unless there be ‘white’ blood in their veins”; that, “like North American
Indians, the Gipsies all walk with their feet straight”; and that “there
are nearly 100 English Gipsy family names, most of which are represented
in America.” And further:—“At the present day the Romany is the life of
the entire vagabond population of the roads in England, it being almost
impossible to find a tinker or petty hawker who is not part Gipsy. There
are now but a few hundred full-blooded _tent_ Gipsy persons in England
(1874), but of . . . house-dwellers, who keep their Gipsy blood a secret,
and of half-breeds . . . or of those affiliated by blood, all of whom
possess the great secret of the Romany language to a greater or less
degree, there are perhaps 20,000.” “The tinkers in England are all
Gipsies.”
Including _all_ of “the blood” in _various_ positions in life, there are
doubtless _vastly_ more of the tribe in England than 20,000, considering
the time they have been in the country, and the healthy and prolific
nature of the race.
{21} The same remark applies to _The English Gipsies and their
Language_.