Feb. 25, 1856.] KAWLINSON. THE GIPSIES. , 39 



latter offering frequently the most symmetrical form and feminine 

 beauty, have a rude clothing. Their implements and carriages, of a 

 peculiar construction, display much ingenuity. They are in fact very 

 able artisans and labourers, industrious and active, but are cruelly and 

 barbarously treated. In the houses of their masters they are employed 

 in the lowest offices, live in the cellars, have the lash continually ap- 

 plied to them,' and are still subjected to the iron collar and a kind of 

 spiked iron mask or helmet, which they are obliged to wear as a mark 

 of punishment and degradation, for every petty offence. They are sub- 

 jected to other servile regulations. When required by the master for 

 any work as masons or artificers in town, they are not allowed to quit the 

 premises during the hours of labour, and they are encamped beyond the 

 barriers of the city during the night, where they remain ; their proximity 

 being always noted by the firing of guns and pistols from the inmates of 

 the neighbouring houses, to warn them that they are on their guard. 

 They have the worst of reputations, as robbers, thieves, murderers 

 even, and I have travelled at night with a Boyardess of rank with her 

 young family through their tented villages, who seemed to regard the 

 incident as one of some danger and alarm. For myself, I have never 

 regarded them otherwise than a poor outcast race, injured and ill- 

 treated, have never felt the least apprehension of being amongst them, 

 and have invariably found them kind and obliging. The force of pre- 

 judice is great, and the fears entertained of these poor helots are the 

 strongest condemnation of their treatment." 



Sir Henry Eawlinson said that on a former occasion, about iSve years ago, 

 he had read a paper before the Society on the Comparative Geography of Baby- 

 lonia, in the course of which he had explained his views with regard to the 

 migrations of the Gipsies. As the subject was now again before the Meeting, 

 he would, if permitted, repeat his observations. 



The Asiatic origin of the Gipsies has long been regarded as an established 

 point in ethnographical science. The swarthy features of the race, their 

 Oriental cast of countenance, and above all, their language, which, wherever 

 they may be found, resembles more or less the vernacular dialect of India, have 

 been admitted to afford evidence of an Eastern origin which cannot be con- 

 tested. At the same time, how or where the Gipsies could have passed over 

 the intervening continent of Asia, has hitherto baffled all research, and caused 

 their settlement in Europe to be considered a sort of ethnographical puzzle. 

 He (Sir Henry Eawlinson) had, however, in the course of his reading, lighted 

 on many passages in Eastern writers which seemed to refer to this movement 

 of the Gipsies, and he would accordingly give an abstract of the notes he had 

 collected on the subject. 



There were certain Indo-Scythic tribes located on the banks of the Indus 

 soon, after the Christian era, whose language probably formed the germ of the 

 modern Hindostanee ; for this dialect, though much overlaid with Sanscrit 

 colouring, is in its structure essentially Turanian. Among such tribes the 



