486 



GYPSIES 



maelites) are terms for Gypsies at the present date. 

 Finally, the komodromoi ( ' village-roamers ' ) of 

 Greek writers were probably Gypsies. The term 

 is a vague one, but no vaguer than landlooper, 

 which does in Dutch stand for 'Gypsy.' And 

 the komodromoi, we find, were both copper 

 and gold smiths, roaming about the country, 

 and using bellows made of skins, like those 

 of HarfTs Naupliote Gypsies in 1497. The verb 

 komodromein occurs in Pollux, who flourished 

 about 183 A.D. ; and Theophanes Isaurus (758-818' 

 A.D.) speaks under the date 544 A.D. of a komo- 

 dromos from Italy. A komodromos figures, more- 

 over, in a Greek apocryphal gospel of unascer- 

 tained date as helping to crucify Christ, which at 

 once recalls the current Montenegrin legend that 

 the founder of the Gypsy race was accursed for 

 having forged the nails for the crucifixion.* Thus, 

 on the one hand, it is certain that in Wallachia 

 the Gypsies were already reduced to bondage in 

 1370 ; it is almost certain that Gypsies were nothing 

 new in Austria in 1122; and it is at least highly 

 probable that more than a thousand years ago 

 there were Gypsies roaming through the Byzantine 

 empire. On the other hand, of the Gypsies passage 

 of the Bosphorus, and their first arrival in Europe, 

 no record has yet been discovered. 



From numbers of scattered notices we may safely 

 infer that the Gypsies in early times possessed every 

 art that they possess to-day, with many besides 

 since lost. Thus, in Scotland in 1530 they ' dan- 

 sit before the king in Halyrudhouse ; ' between 1559 

 and 1628 they yearly ' acted severall plays ' at 

 Roslin, where Sir William St Clair, Lord Chief- 

 justice, ' allowed them two towers for their resi- 

 dence, the one called Robin Hood, the other 

 Little John ; ' in 1726 they cast the church bell at 

 Edzell, in Forfarshire ; about 1740 in the Border 

 country they practised engraving on pewter, lead, 

 and copper, as well as rude drawing and painting ; 

 and during that century they were famous as 

 fiddlers and pipers, and they worked the small 

 iron-foundry of Little Carron, near St Andrews. 

 In England, again, in 1549 they were capable of 

 counterfeiting the great seal ; in Hungary they 

 made bullets and cannon-balls in 1496 and 1565 ; 

 and there, too, we find them celebrated as musi- 

 cians as early as the 15th century. A gifted and 

 insinuating race, equal nay, often superior to the 

 nations whose lands they roamed, the early Gypsies 

 met with a good reception, as from kaiser and pope 

 on the Continent, so in England from the Earl of 

 Surrey, who about 1519 entertained ' Gypsions ' at 

 Tendring Hall, Suffolk ; in Scotland from James 

 IV., who in 1505 gave Anthonius Gaginus, 'Earl 

 of Little Egypt,' a letter of commendation to the 

 king of Denmark. In Scotland, too, in 1540, 

 James V. recognised the right of ' oure louit 

 Johnne Faw, lord and erle of Litill Egipt,' to 

 execute justice upon his company and folk, con- 

 form to the laws of Egypt. Indeed, it were easy to 

 multiply proofs that Gypsies at a much later date 

 have been held in consideration and regarded with 

 interest. Charles Bosvile, a Gypsy 'king,' who 

 was buried in 1709 at Rossington, Yorkshire, had 

 200 a year, and ' was a mad spark, mighty fine 



* The Gypsies of both Alsace and Lithuania have a legend of 

 their own that a Gypsy stole one of the four nails with Which 

 Christ was to be crucified, and that therefore God gave them 

 express permission to steal. This curious legend offers a 

 possible explanation of the hitherto unexplained transition from 

 four nails to three in Crucifixes (q.v.) during the 12th and 13th 

 centuries. The earliest known example of this daring innova- 

 tion is a copper crucifix, of seemingly Byzantine workmanship, 

 dating from the close of the 12th century. Now, if Gypsies had 

 then, as now, a practical monopoly of metal-working in south- 

 eastern Europe, that crucifix must have been fashioned by a 

 Gypsy, when the three nails would be an easily intelligible pro- 

 test against the libel that those nails were forged by the founder 

 of his race. 



and brisk, keeping company with a great many 

 gentlemen, knights, and esquires ; ' ' Queen ' Mar- 

 garet was visited at Norwood in 1750 by the Prince 

 and Princess of Wales, and Lazarus Petulengro at 

 the Liverpool Exhibition of 1886 by Prince Albert 

 Victor ; whilst the Archduke Josef of Austria- 

 Hungary is a prince among Romany Ryes (or 

 ' Gypsy gentlemen ' ), as Gypsies designate lovers of 

 their race. Still, liking and pity changed sooner 

 or later to enmity and distrust. For the knaveries 

 of the first immigrants were copied by their succes- 

 sors, and to actual malpractices, charges, more or 

 less baseless, were added they were kidnappers, 

 cannibals, emissaries of the Turks. The last 

 charge is as old as 1424, the second as 1547, and 

 the first as 1629. Gypsies were used as spies by 

 Wallenstein and Frederick the Great, but of can- 

 nibalism and child-stealing there is no just ground 

 to suspect them, though for cannibalism forty-five 

 Hungarian Gypsies were racked, beheaded, quar- 

 tered, or hanged in 1782, for child-stealing forty- 

 seven German Gypsies imprisoned in 1872. The 

 charge in each case proved false. Truly, any 

 wrong-doings of the Gypsies fade into insignifi- 

 cance by the side of the wrongs that were done 

 them. In Germany so lately as the first half of 

 the 18th century, they were hunted down like wild 

 beasts ; in one Rhenish principality, says Freytag, 

 the record of a day's ' bag ' includes, among other 



fime, 'a Gypsy woman with her sucking-child.' 

 ngland and Scotland were comparatively merci- 

 ful, yet at Durham in 1592 ' Simson, Arington, 

 Fetherstone, Fenwicke, and Lanckaster were 

 hanged for being Egyptians;' at Banff in 1701 

 three young Egyptian rogues were sentenced to 

 have ' their ears cropt, be publicklie scourged 

 through the toune, burnt upon the cheek by the 

 executioner, and banished the shyre for ever under 

 the paine of death. ' Such are two samples of the 

 cases whose records have come down to us, few prob- 

 ably in proportion to the cases whose records are 

 lost ; anyhow, these show that in England and 

 Scotland fully four-score men and women were 

 hanged or drowned between 1577 and 1701 for the 

 offence of being what Nature had made them. The 

 penal laws passed against the race between 1530 

 and 1596 were repealed in 1784 ; but even in 1819 

 it was carried unanimously at the Norfolk Quarter 

 Sessions ' that all persons M'andering in the habit 

 or form of Egyptians are punishable by imprison- 

 ment and whipping.' One important factor in the 

 geographical distribution of the Gypsies has been 

 deportation from England to France and Norway 

 (1544); from Scotland to Barbadoes and the 

 American plantations (1665, 1699, 1715, &c.) ; 

 from Portugal to Africa till 1685, and thereafter 

 to Brazil; from Spain to Louisiana (some time 

 prior to 1800); and from the Basque country en 

 masse to Africa ( 1802). 



At Tobolsk in 1721 Bell of Antermony heard 

 of sixty Tsigans, journeying from Poland to 

 China ; in 1851 a hundred Hungarian Gypsies 

 passed through Frankfort en route for Algeria ; 

 since 1866 large bands of Calderari, or Gypsy 

 smiths from south-eastern Europe, have made the 

 round of the Continent, visiting Norway, England, 

 even Corsica ; in 1879 fez- wearing Gypsies were 

 camping in Sweden ; and in 1886 ninety-nine 'Greek' 

 Gypsies were stopped at Liverpool on their way 

 from Corfu to the United States. Thus the nomad 

 instinct survives, and with it a marvellous faculty 

 for picking up foreign languages a Hungarian 

 Gypsy will speak even Basque like a native. 

 British Gypsies, however, hardly ever visit the 

 Continent ; and almost everywhere there are 

 sedentary as well as nomadic Gypsies, though in 

 what proportion it were hard to guess. Sometimes 

 they go into houses only for the winter, but some- 



