in brief that the people known as Zingari, or Zigeuner, call 

 themselves Egyptians, and say they are condemned to wander 

 up and down the earth because, when the Holy Virgin with the 

 Divine Child fled from the cruel Herod into Egypt, the people 

 of that land refused them hospitality. In every country they 

 are vagrants who occupy themselves in fortune telling, sor- 

 cery and mischief of every kind ; those in Bohemia are great 

 thieves and are probably Turkish spies. Whatever may have 

 been their origin they fraternize in every land with only the 

 lowest of the rabble, and as the proverb says : ''Those who run 

 with wolves must howl with them." Some of the men know 

 how to make superior charcoal and excel in blacksmithing, 

 others are good judges of horses and very sharp at a bar- 

 gain; the women practice chiromancy, juggling and non- 

 sense that has an evil influence on the people with whom 

 they come in contract ; as a whole they are good-for-nothing 

 vagabonds and dangerous to the state.- The disastrous con- 

 flagration that destroyed many imperial buildings on the 

 Hradschin in 1541, was thought by the authorities to have 

 been started by gipsies at the instigation of the Turks, with 

 whom as enemies of Christianity they sympathize. This ca- 

 lamity and another terrible fire that nearly destroyed Konig- 

 gratz, with other suspicious circumstances, led Ferdinand I. 

 to issue a decree forbidding all nobles, knights, cities and 

 people to harbor the vile gipsies, and commanding magis- 

 trates to send bands of the vagrants from one district to 

 another under guard until they crossed the borders of the 

 Empire. The latter part of this mandate was not carried 

 out, but the Egyptians were hunted like wild beasts, even 

 women and children were ruthlessly murdered, so that seven 

 years later Ferdinand issued another decree, ordering that 

 the gipsies, especially the women and children, should not be 

 killed by drowning and by other shameful methods, but they 



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