THE SPANISH GYPSY. 279 



they use is a feigned one, got up by thieves for the purpose 

 of conceahng their robberies, hke the jargon of bhnd 

 beggars." 



From their earhest appearance in Spain the roving 

 bands of the Eommany were found to be a pubHc nuisance ; 

 but so rapidly grew the evil weed and took root in the soil, 

 that by the middle of the fifteenth century the gypsies had 

 established a rudelj^-organized system of violence, robbery 

 and roguery from Biscay to the Mediterranean. The 

 country roads were unsafe, infested with dark-skinned 

 highwaymen ; while rural districts were subjected to whole- 

 sale depredation, bands of these outcasts settling them- 

 selves in the adjacent hills, wastes, or forests, whence 

 they plundered and virtually beleaguered the sparse and 

 defenceless villages of all the country around. Once 

 established amidst the sierras and wildernesses, it was 

 no easy matter to dislodge them, or even to hold them 

 in check. Spain has ever been a land of the fincrilla — 

 little war — and of the giicrillero ; and the gypsies, 

 though by no means a warlike race, were not lacking 

 in courage and in those qualities of hardihood and 

 dash which constitute the most dangerous guerilleros. 

 They possessed, moreover, the strength of union, an 

 Ishmaelitish bond of brotherhood which held the out- 

 laws together, while dividing them as by a great gulf 

 from the peoples amidst whom they had come to 

 dwell. They had also their secret language. Neither 

 civil nor military power could make itself effective against 

 " Will-o'-the-wisps," who are here to-day, gone to-morrow, 

 whose homes were the forest-thicket and mountain-cave, 

 who, with their fast and trusty horses and donkeys (their 

 " stock-in-trade ") could transport their whole tribe in dead 

 of night to distant places with a speed almost equal to 

 that of the wild beasts of the sierras, to whom they were 

 so near akin. 



The nominal employment of the gypsies was that of 

 tinkers, workers in iron, and horse-traffickers : under 

 which guise they really subsisted by cattle-lifting and 

 horse- stealing, either by force, or fraud, according as 



