THE NATURAL PERPETUA TION OF THE GIPSY RACE. 



kinds of " travelling people " to be 

 found in England, as described by 

 him. They will deny that they be- 

 long to the tribe ; so will the pure- 

 blood or more original kind of Gip- 

 sies say the same of them. But 

 there is no difficulty in the way of 

 believing that they, or many, or 

 most of them, " belong to the tribe," 

 however remote the descent from 

 the original Gipsies, even if they had 

 only " a few words of Bastard Roma- 

 ny," or none at all for that matter, 

 excepting, perhaps, a few catch or 

 pass-words. For a full discussion 'of 

 the whole subject, I refer the reader 

 to the History of the Gipsies, and 

 will add here the following extracts 

 from it : 



In expatiating on the subject of the 

 Gipsy race always being the Gipsy race, 

 I have had it remarked to me : " Sup- 

 pose Gipsies should not mention to their 

 children the fact of their being Gipsies ? " 

 In that case, I replied, the children', 

 especially if, for the most part, of white 

 blood, would simply not be Gipsies ; 

 they would, of course, have some of 

 ''the blood," but they would not be 

 Gipsies if they had no knowledge of the 

 fact. But to suppose that Gipsies should 

 not learn that they are Gipsies, on ac- 

 count of their parents not telling them 

 of it, is to presume that they had no 

 other relatives. Their being Gipsies is 

 constantly talked of among themselves ; 

 so that, if Gipsy children should not 

 hear their " wonderful story " from their 

 parents, they would readily enough hear 

 it from their other relatives. This is as- 

 suming, however, that the Gipsy mind 

 can act otherwise than the Gipsy mind ; 

 which it cannot. It sometimes happens, 

 as the Gipsies separate into classes, like 

 all other races or communities of men, 

 that a great deal of jealousy is stirred 

 up in the minds of the poorer members 

 of the tribe, on account of their being 

 shunned by the wealthier kind. They 

 are then apt to say that the exclusive 

 members have left the tribe ; which, 

 with them, is an undefined and confused 

 idea, at the best, principally on account 

 of their limited powers of reflection, 

 and the subject never being alluded to 

 by the others. This jealousy sometimes 

 leads them to dog these straggling 

 sheep, so that, as far as lies in their 



power, they will not allow them to leave, 

 as they imagine, the Gipsy fold (Ed., p. 

 413). 



There is a point which I have not 

 explained so fully as I might have 

 done, and it is this : " Is any of the 

 blood ever lost? that is, does it ever 

 cease to be Gipsy, in knowledge and 

 feeling ? " That is a question not easily 

 answered in the affirmative, were it only 

 for this reason : how can it ever be as- 

 certained that the knowledge and feel- 

 ing of being Gipsies become lost ? Let 

 us suppose that a couple of Gipsies leave 

 England, and settle in America, and 

 that they never come in contact with 

 any of their race, and that their chil- 

 dren never learn anything of the mat- 

 ter from any quarter. In such an ex- 

 treme, I may say, such an unnatural case, 

 the children would not be Gipsies, but, 

 if born in America, ordinary Americans. 

 The only way in which the Gipsy blood 

 that is, the Gipsy feeling can pos- 

 sibly be lost, is by a Gipsy (a man espe- 

 cially) marrying an ordinary native, and 

 the children never learning of the cir- 

 cumstance. But, as I have said be- 

 fore, how is that ever to be ascertained ? 

 The question might be settled in this 

 way : Let the relatives of the Gipsy 

 interrogate the issue, and if it answers, 

 truly, that it knows nothing of the 

 Gipsy connexion, and never has its 

 curiosity in the matter excited, it holds, 

 beyond dispute, that "the blood" has 

 been lost to the tribe. For any loss the 

 tribe may sustain, in that way, it gains, 

 in an ample degree, by drawing upon 

 the blood of the native race, and trans- 

 muting it into that of its own fraternity 

 (Ed., p. 532). 



The subject of the Gipsies has hither- 

 to been treated as a question of natural 

 history only, in the same manner as we 

 would treat ant-bears. Writers have 

 sat down beside them, and looked at 

 them little more than looked at them 

 described some of their habits, and 

 reported their chaff. To get to the 

 bottom of the subject, it is necessary to 

 sound the mind of the Gipsy, lay open 

 and dissect his heart, identify one's self 

 with his feelings and the bearings of 

 his ideas, and construct, out of these, a 

 system of mental science, based upon 

 the mind of the Gipsy, and human na- 

 ture generally. For it is the mind of the 

 Gipsy that constitutes the Gipsy; that 

 which, in reference to its singular origin 



