t) 



282 WILD SPAIN. 



the bosoms of those who are not of their race, which 

 passion of course becomes the more violent when the 

 ahnost utter impossibiHty of gratifying it is known. No 

 females in the world can be more licentious in word or 

 gesture, in dance and song, than the gitanas, but there 

 they stop ; and so of old, if their titled visitors presumed 

 to seek for more, an unsheathed dagger or gleaming 

 knife speedily repulsed those who expected that the gift 

 most dear among the sect of the Eoma was within the 

 reach of a Busne. 



" Such visitors, however, were always encouraged to a 

 certain point, and by this and various other means the 

 gitanos acquired connections which frequently stood them 

 in good stead in the hour of need. What availed it to the 

 honest labourers of the neighbourhood, or the citizens of 

 the town to make complaints to the Corregidor respecting 

 thefts and frauds committed by the gitanos when perhaps 

 the sons of that very Corregidor frequented the nightly 

 dances at the gitaneria, and were deeply enamoured of 

 some of the dark-eyed singing girls '? What availed com- 

 plaints when perhaps a gypsy sybil, the mother of those 

 very girls, had free admission to the house of the Cor- 

 regidor at all times and seasons, and spa'ed the hiicna 

 vcniuya of his daughters, promising them counts and dukes, 

 or Andalucian knights in marriage, or prepared philtres 

 for his lady by which she was always to reign supreme in 

 the affections of her husband ? And above all, what 

 availed it to the plundered to complain that his mule or 

 horse had been stolen when the gitano robber, perhaps 

 the husband of the sybil and the father of the black-eyed 

 Gitanillas, was at that moment actually in treaty with my 

 lord the Corregidor himself, to supply him with some 

 splendid, thick-maned, long-tailed steed at a small price, 

 to be obtained, as the reader may well suppose, by an 

 infraction of the laws ? The favour and protection which 

 the gitanos experienced from persons of high rank is 

 alluded to in the Spanish laws, and can only be accounted 

 for by the motives above detailed." 



By the middle of the fifteenth centui-y the bands of the 



