2°<i S. No 34., Aug. 23. '56.] 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



143 



2. Important Considerations by the Secular Priests. By 

 William Watson, 1681. 3. The Jesuits' Reasons Unrea- 

 sonable, or Doubts proposed to the Jesuits upon their 

 Paper presented to Seven Persons of Honour- for Non- 

 Exception from the common favour voted to Catholics. 

 1688. 4to. Second edition corrected." 



" Some Considerations about the new Test of the Church 

 of England's Loyalty in a Letter to a Country Gentleman 

 on the occasion of the present Invasioa 4to. 1688." 



BiBLIOTHECAR. ChETHAM. 



(To be continued.) - 



THE GTPSIES AND THEIR NAME, " EOMEES." 



It appears that the gypsies, though they receive 

 in various countries various names according to the 

 ideas which people may entertain regarding them, 

 yet apply to themselves one and the same name 

 everywhere. They call themselves Romees, or 

 the Romino people ; and the meaning of the term 

 has been quite puzzling enough. Some philo- 

 logists have supposed it to be derived from the 

 Sanskrit rham, a husband, but the sound of the 

 word is not much alike, and besides, Jiiisbands is 

 not a happy term to apply to young and old alike, 

 to both the married and unmarried. Neither can 

 Romee and Romino be well derived from the 

 Arabic word which signifies Greece or the Greeks, 

 as no one has ever imagined that the gypsies have 

 either come from Greece, or are in any degree 

 allied to the inhabitants of that land. 



It were, perhaps, a satisfactory solution of the 

 difficulty if it could be admitted that Romees is 

 the ancient Egyptian word which signifies men — 

 men or human beings as distinguished from the 

 deities. This name the Egyptians adopted, con- 

 sidering themselves as eminently the men of the 

 great and foremost nation of the world. That 

 Romees bore this meaning can be learned from 

 the works of ChampoUion le jeune and others, 

 who have written on these subjects. The classical 

 scholar will not forget the curious blunder into 

 which Herodotus fell about the meaning of this 

 very word. The historian had pointed out to him 

 in a spacious temple the statues of the high priests, 

 and he was told that each of the persons whom 

 they commemorated had been ' a pi-romis, the son 

 of a pi-romis,'" that is, a man the son of a man 

 (not of a god). Herodotus quite misapprehended 

 the information communicated to him, and instead 

 of taking pi-romis son of a pi-romis to be a man 

 the son of a man, he thought it meant KoXhs koI 

 ayaOhs, " beautiful and good ! " (Vide Euterpe, 

 cap. 143.) It may be worth reminding the reader 

 that the pi of the pi-romis is the article attached 

 to the noun. 



If the name Romees, which the gypsies apply 

 to themselves, means men, that is, the men of 

 Egypt, some additional light may be thrown on 



the obscure question of the origin of the race. 

 Certainly, for the last four hundred years they 

 have declared themselves to be Egyptians (the 

 English name gypsies is a corruption of Egyptians), 

 and at this day were anyone to enter their tents 

 and dispute their right to call themselves the de- 

 scendants of the great nation of the olden world, 

 it is likely he would be kicked out without any 

 ceremony. " We are Romees," say the gypsies 

 everywhere, " and Egypt was our fatherland." 



Romino Rye. 



ILLUSTRATIONS OI" MACAULAT. 



Passive Obedience, Sfc. — I enclose these two 

 sets of lines, which are written in a copy of the 

 History of Passive Obedience since the Reformation, 

 Amst., 1689, now in my possession. J. B. 



An Epitaph 



Upon Passive Obedience 



for High Treason against our 



Sovereign Lords y* People, 



by virtue of a warrant fro 



y® Bishops and most of the 



Inferiour Clergy. 



Here 

 Certain and sure beneath this stone, 

 In hopes of Resurrection, 

 Passive obedience lyes interred, "j 



By Church of England men averred, |- 

 As long as for 't they were prseferred. J 



She was not long since in great favour 

 As any doctrine of our Saviour, 

 With Burnet, Tillotson, and Patrick. 

 Tho' some will tell you 'twas but a trick 

 To curry favour w*'* y® Town"", 

 And make praeferments all their own. 

 Fforf when she brought the into danger 

 They all, w*'' one consent, cryd hang her. 

 And being then | arraigned and try d, 

 Condemn'd and sentenc'd. Thus she dy'd : 

 Beware ye Christian doctrines all, 

 And set before your eyes my§ fall. 

 Beware, I say, how ye contest 

 With y' Supreme Grate Interest ; 

 Ffor my || great crime upon niy*j[ Trial 

 Was Antichristian Self-denial. 



{Dom. Xti "I 

 et j- 1688. 



^tat. suae J 



On the Church of E. 



Stay, ffreind, and see 



A miracle of villany. 



This sacred urn contains 



A Matrons Reverend remains. 



* Crown. 

 § Her. 



t But. 

 II Her. 



t Wherefore she was. 

 \ Her. 



