488 



GYPSIES 



till long after specimens of the Gypsy language had 

 begun to be published by Andrew Boorde (q.v.) 

 in 1547, whose twenty-six words, taken down seem- 

 ingly in an English alehouse, were intended to 

 illustrate the language of Egypt ; by Bonaventura 

 Vulcanius (1597), whose vocabulary of seventy- 

 one words, collected probably in Belgium, nils up 

 some blank pages in a work on the Goths ; and 

 by Ludolphus ( 1691 ), whose thirty -eight words are 

 embedded in a history of Ethiopia. First in 1782 

 Riidiger in Germany, followed next year by Grell- 

 inann, and in England (independently) by Mars- 

 den, observed the resemblance of Romani to Hin- 

 dustani ; and Grellmann straightway leaped to the 

 conclusion that the Gypsies who showed themselves 

 in western Europe in 1417 had newly come also to 

 south-eastern Europe, and were a low-caste Indian 

 tribe expelled from their native country about 1409 

 by Tamerlane. In 1783 the older languages of India 

 were a sealed book to Europeans, and Grellmann's 

 opinion found almost unanimous approval for 

 upwards of sixty years ; but thanks to the lin- 

 guistic labours of Pott, Ascoli, and Miklosich, 

 combined with the historical researches of Batail- 

 lard, the question has now assumed a new aspect. 

 For while on the one hand it has been proved that 

 Europe had its Gypsies long before 1417, so on the 

 other Romani has been shown to be a sister, not a 

 daughter and it may be an elder sister of the 

 seven principal New Indian dialects. Not a few 

 of its forms are more primitive than theirs, or even 

 than those of Pali and the Prakrits e.g. the 

 Turkish Romani vast, ' hand ' ( Sansk. hasta ; Pali, 

 hattha), arid vusht, 'lip' (Sansk. ostha ; Pali, 

 ottha}. Miklosich, however, has pointed out that 

 many of these seemingly archaic forms in R6mani 

 may be matched from the less-known dialects of 

 India, especially north-west India that we find, 

 for example, in Dardu both hast and usht. 



In the Romani vocabulary (five thousand words 

 rich perhaps ), besides the Indian elements that con- 

 stitute its basis, there is also a largish percentage 

 of borrowed words Persian, Armenian, Slavonic, 

 Roumanian, Magyar, &c. Thus, the English 

 dialect has ambrol, 'pear'(Pers. amrud) ; grdsni, 

 ' mare ' ( Arm. grast, ' beast of burden ' ) ; para- 

 misin, 'scandal' (Mod. Gr. paramuthi, 'story'); 

 hdlevas, ' stockings ' ( Slav, choleva ) ; vari, ' any ' 

 ( Roum. vare ) ; and stiffi-pen, ' sister-in-law ' ( Ger. 

 stief-). These words and the like are a record of 

 the route by which the English Gypsies arrived 

 in England ; and as the fifty Greek and the thirty 

 Slavonic words outnumber all the other borrowed 

 words put together, it follows that the Gypsies 

 tarried longest in Greek- and Slavonic-speaking 

 lands. Again, drom, drum, or dron (Gr. dromos) 

 is the R6mani word for ' road' not only in England, 

 but in Turkey, Roumania, Hungary, Bohemia, 

 Poland, Lithuania, Russia, Scandinavia, Germany, 

 Italy, Spain, and Brazil ; and the like holds more or 

 less good of the Gypsy words for ' Sunday,' ' chair,' 

 'hat,' 'anger,' 'bone,' 'soup,' 'pawn,' &c. from the 

 Greek ; for ' pease,' ' beer,' ' inn,' ' cat,' ' cloak,' &c. 

 from the Slavonic. This is important as indicating 

 that the modern Gypsies are descended not from 

 successive waves of Oriental immigration, but all 

 from the self-same European -Gypsy stock, when- 

 ever that stock may have first been transplanted to 

 Europe. It conclusively negatives a theory like 

 Kounavine's, that the Italian, Spanish, Basque, 

 and French Gypsies arrived at their present hab- 

 itats by way of Africa, and the Scandinavian 

 Gypsies by way of the Ural Mountains. Still more 

 important is the question of the presence or the 

 absence of Arabic words in European R6mani. 

 According to De Goeje (1875) there are ten such 

 words ; according to Miklosich (1878) and rightly 

 as it seems there are none. Neither, however, of 



the two scholars has perceived the possible import- 

 ance of the presence or the absence ( especially the 

 absence) of Arabic elements. Romani undoubtedly 

 contains Persian words ; would it not have cer- 

 tainly contained also Arabic words if the ancestors 

 of our modern European Gypsies had sojourned in 

 Persia, or even passed through Persia, at a date 

 later than the Arab conquest of Persia ? If Mik- 

 losich is right in his contention that there are no 

 Arabic words in European R6mani, it follows 

 almost inevitably that the Gypsies must have 

 passed through Persia on their way to Europe at 

 some date prior to the middle of the 7th century 

 A.D. In this connection it should be pointed out 

 that the dialect of the Gypsies of Asia Minor 

 differs far more, alike in grammar and in vocabu- 

 lary, from that of the Gypsies of Turkey than 

 does the latter from that of their brethren in 

 Wales. 



The Gypsies of Montenegro are said to have 

 completely lost their language ; elsewhere R6niani 

 has suffered more in grammar than in vocabulary. 

 In Spain, in Brazil, in Scotland, find in Norway 

 its genuine inflections have been wholly or almost 

 wholly superseded by those of Spanish, Portuguese, 

 English, and Norwegian. In England this process 

 is still going on, affording an unquestionable 

 instance of ' mixed grammar,' such as Max Miiller 

 has pronounced an impossibility. There is every 

 variety of shade, from almost absolute purity to 

 as almost absolute corruption. Thus, a Welsh 

 Gypsy writes in a letter, Dava ma temen borro 

 parchyben for temorro camlo drom ( ' Give I you 

 great thanks for your loving way ' ) ; and an 

 English Gypsy, Mandy kek gin so to pen ( ' Me not 

 know what to say ' ), where the pure R6mani would 

 run, Kek tie jindva me so te pendv. No Gypsy 

 dialects have been better preserved than those of 

 Turkey at one end of Europe, and of Wales at the 

 other end ; from a comparison of these it is easy 

 to see how little they can have altered since the 

 ancestors of those who now speak them parted 

 company five centuries ago. Thus, the twenty-one 

 forms in Turkish R6mani of the third personal pro- 

 noun (masc., fern., and plur. ), with two exceptions, 

 reappear almost or quite unchanged in the Welsh 

 dialect. The plural, for instance, runs in Turkish 

 R6mani, ol, ' they ; ' len, ' them ; ' lengoro, ' their ; ' 

 lendhe or linghe, 'to them;' lendja, 'with them;' 

 lendar, 'from them;' and in W'elsh Romani the 

 corresponding forms, occurring in letters written by 

 a self-educated Gypsy, are yon, len, lengo, lendy and 

 lengey, lensa, and lenda. Four of the cases, it will 

 be seen, are formed by suffixing postpositions to 

 the accusative ; and this, too, holds good of the 

 nouns. Many of the verbal inflections are almost 

 equally simple, and may be as readily analysed by 

 means of Romani itself. In the final syllables of 

 dd-va, ' I give ; ' de-sa, ' thou givest ; ' and de-la, 

 ' he gives,' we recognise the first, second, and third 

 pronouns. From the past participle din6 and is6m 

 or horn, 'I am;' isomas or homas, 'I was,' are 

 formed dinidm, 'I gave;' and dinidmas, 'I had 

 given ' formations recalling those of Latin depon- 

 ents. The future, formed by prefixing kama 

 ( ' will ') to the present, as kamaddva, ' I will give,' 

 was modelled probably on the Modern Greek thelo 

 or thd. 



So far, our ablest Gypsiologists are divided in 

 opinion as to the probable antiquity of R6mani. 

 On the one hand Ascoli maintains that, ' having 

 retained certain nexus, or combinations of conson- 

 ants, which had almost wholly disappeared at the 

 epoch of the oldest known Prakrit texts, this lowly 

 idiom herein surpasses Pali itself in nobility, and 

 more nearly approaches Sanskrit.' Miklosich, on 

 the other hand, contends that ' from the agreement 

 of R6mani in so many important points with the 



