TROOPS O? HUNGARIAN GIPSIES 



Photo by A. W. Cutler 



They are an exceedingly hardy race of people, rarely, if ever, sick, and the children may 

 frequently be seen quite naked, even when the weather is cold 



THi: HUNGARIAN GIPSY 



That natural music which finds its 

 home in the Magyar soul finds its inter- 

 preter to an alien world in the Magyar 

 Czigany (Gipsy). The Czigany himself 

 is music embodied; he was born in the 

 purple, but apart from his role he has 

 nothing in common with a true Magyar. 

 The Czigany is a Hungarian in nothing 

 but name. His affinities lie rather with 

 the Romany of Andalusia or Poland than 

 with Gentile peoples. But a Czigany 

 born among a people whose poetry, 

 whose language, whose whole emotional 

 environment is a succession of chords 

 rnust needs obey the law of natural selec- 

 tion. Each has his special forte. Each 

 is the proper complement of the other. 

 The Czigany is no singer, no creator of 



the songs that live ; the Magyar is no in- 

 terpreter. But between them they em- 

 brace all of the nature and much of the 

 poetry of music. 



Not only are the Magyar songs and 

 the music distinctively national, but one 

 or two of the instruments which serve 

 their truest expression are known to no 

 other peoples. One indeed is so ancient 

 that for centuries it was to the mere lay- 

 man as rare as the purples of Tyre. 



But now, after three centuries, the 

 tarogato, once played by national bards 

 in Angevin camps, has come to light and 

 being. It would appear to be an instru- 

 ment of the clarinet family, singularly 

 soft, singularly sweet, singularly fitted 

 for the interpretation of the sad, retro- 

 spective musing which, however it be 

 disguised by a gaiety half affected, is still 



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