THE DESTINY OF THE SPANISH GIPSIES. 



127 



Gipsies. His wishing to pass for a 

 Spaniard had nothing to do with his be- 

 ing, but not wishing to be known as, a 

 Gipsy. The same is done by almost all 

 our Scottish Gipsies. In England, those 

 who do not follow the tent I mean the 

 more mixed and better class are even 

 afraid of each other. " Afraid of what ?" 

 said I, to such an English Gipsy; 

 "ashamed of being Gipsies?" "No, 

 sir " (with great emphasis) ; " not 

 ashamed of being Gipsies, but of being 

 known to other people as Gipsies!' " A 

 world of difference," I replied. What 

 does the world hold to be a Gipsy, and 

 what does it hold to be \hefeelmgs of a 

 man ? If we consider these two ques- 

 tions, we can have little difficulty in 

 understanding the wish of such Gipsies 

 to disguise themselves. It is in this 

 way, and in the mixing of the blood, 

 that this so-called " dying out of the 

 Gipsies " is to be accounted for. If Mr. 

 Borrow found in Spain a half-pay cap- 

 tain in the service of Donna Isabel, with 

 flaxen hair, a thorough Gipsy, who 

 spoke Gipsy and Latin with great 

 fluency, and his cousin, Jara, in all pro- 

 bability another Gipsy, what difficulty 

 can there be in believing that the " for- 

 eign tinkers," or tinkers of any kind, now 

 to be met with in Spain, are, like the 

 same class in Great Britain and Ireland, 

 Gipsies of mixed blood? Indeed, the 

 young Spaniard, to whom I have alluded, 

 informs me that the Gipsies in Spain are 

 very much mixed. Mr. Borrow himself 

 admits that the Gipsy blood in Spain has 

 been mixed ; for, in speaking of the old 

 Gipsy counts, he says : " It was the 

 counts who determined what individ- 

 uals were to .be admitted into the 

 fellowship and privileges of the Gitanos. 

 . . . . They [the Gipsies] were not 

 to teach the language to any but those 

 who, by birth or inauguration, belonged 

 to that sect." And he gives a case in 

 point, in the bookseller of Logrono, who 

 was married to the only daughter of a 

 Gitano count ; upon whose death, the 

 daughter and son-in-law succeeded to 

 the authority which he had exercised in 

 the tribe. If the Gipsies in Spain were 

 not mixed in point of blood, why should 

 they have taken Mr. Borrow for a 

 Gipsy, as he said they did ? The perse- 

 cutions to which the race in Spain were 

 subjected were calculated to lead to a 

 mixture of the blood, as in Scotland, for 

 reasons given in the Preface ; but per- 

 haps not to the same extent; as the 



Spanish Acts seem to have given the 

 tribe an opportunity of escape, under 

 the condition of settling, etc., which 

 would probably be complied with nomi- 

 nally, for the time being ; while the face 

 of part of the country would afford a 

 refuge till the storm had blown over * 

 (Ed., pp. 385-397). 



I have said a great deal in the 

 History of the Gipsies about the 

 blood getting mixed, and how it 

 maintains and perpetuates its iden- 

 tity in that state. The following are 

 extracts bearing on the subject gen- 

 erally : 



Even in England, those that pass for 

 Gipsies are few in number, compared to 



* The popular idea of a Gipsy, at the 

 present day, is very erroneous as to its 

 extent and meaning. The nomadic Gip- 

 sies constitute but a portion of the race, 

 and a very small portion of it. A grad- 

 ual change has come over their outward 

 condition all over Europe, from about the 

 commencement of the first American war, 

 but from what time previous to that, 

 we have no certain data from which to 

 form an opinion. In the whole of Great 

 Britain they have been very much mixed 

 with the native blood of the country, but 

 nowhere, I believe, so much so as in 

 Scotland. There is every reason to sup- 

 pose that the same mixture has taken 

 place in Europe generally, although its 

 effects are not so observable in the South- 

 ern countries from the circumstance of 

 the people there being, for the most part, 

 of dark hair and complexion as in those 

 lying further toward the North. But this 

 circumstance would, to a certain extent, 

 prevent the mixture which has taken 

 place in countries the inhabitants of 

 which have fair hair and complexions 

 (Ed., p. 8). 



In Great Britain, the Gipsies are enti- 

 tled, in one respect at least, to be called 

 Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen ; 

 for their general ideas as men, as distin- 

 guished from their being Gipsies, and 

 their language, indicate them, at once, to 

 be such, nearly as much as the common 

 natives of these countries. A half or 

 mixed breed might more especially be 

 termed .or pass for a native ; so that, by 

 clinging to the Gipsies, and hiding his 

 Gipsy descent and affiliation from the na- 

 tive race, he would lose nothing of the 

 outward character of an ordinary inhabit- 

 ant ; while any benefit arising from his 

 being a Gipsy would, at the same time, 

 be enjoyed by him (Ed., p. 372). 



