NATURAL HISTORY OF SELBORNE 93 



September was as wet a month as ever was known ; and 

 yet during those deluges did a young gypsy-girl lie-in in 

 the midst of one of our hop-gardens, on the cold ground, 

 with nothing over her but a piece of a blanket extended 

 on a few hazel-rods bent hoop-fashion, and stuck into the 

 earth at each end, in circumstances too trying for a cow in 

 the same condition : yet within this garden there was a 

 large hop-kiln, into the chambers of which she might have 

 retired, had she thought shelter an object worthy her 

 attention. 



Europe itself, it seems, cannot set bounds to the rovings 

 of these vagabonds ; for Mr. Bell, in his return from Peking, 

 met a gang of these people on the confines of Tartary, who 

 were endeavouring to penetrate those deserts, and try their 

 fortune in China} 



Gypsies are called in French, Bohemiens ; in Italian and 

 modern Greek, Zingani? 



I am, &c. 



1 See Bell's Travels in China. 



8 The following interesting nofe is given by Mr. William Jardine (ed. 

 "Selborne," p. 190): Borrow in his " Zincale " observes, "Bearing the same 

 analogy to the Sanscrit tongue as the Indian dialects, we find the Rommany or 

 the speech of Roma or Zincali as they style themselves, known in England and 

 Spain as Gypsies or Gitanos. This speech, wherever it is spoken, is in all principal 

 points one and the same, though more or less corrupted by foreign words, picked 

 up in the various countries to which those who use it have penetrated. One 

 remarkable feature must not be passed over without notice, namely, the very 

 considerable number of Sclavonic words, which are to be found imbedded within 

 it, whether it be spoken in Spain or Germany, in England or Italy ; from which 

 circumstance we are led to the conclusion, that these people in their way from the 

 East travelled in one large compact body, and that their route lay through some 

 region where the Sclavonian language or a dialect thereof was spoken. This region, 

 I have no hesitation in asserting to have been Bulgaria, where they probably tarried 

 for a considerable period, as Nomade herdsmen, and where numbers of them are 

 still found at the present day. Besides the many Sclavonian words in the Gypsy 

 tongue, another curious feature attracts the attention of the philologist ; an equal 

 or still greater quantity of terms from the modern Greek ; indeed we have full 

 warranty for assuming that at one period the Spanish section, if not the rest of 

 the Gypsy nation, understood the Greek language well, and that besides their own 

 Indian dialect they occasionally used it for considerably upwards of a century 

 subsequent to their arrival, as amongst the Gitanos there were individuals to whom 

 it was intelligible so late as the year 1540." [R. B. S.] 



