278 WILD SPAIN. 



imports, or from India, as the term Zincali indicates — it is 

 not our intention to inquire.* Suffice it that nearly five 

 centuries ago, this invasion of tinkers, horse-thieves, sor- 

 cerers, and all-round rogues poured into Europe, and dur- 

 ing the long period that has since elapsed have maintained 

 themselves there — not, it is true, in luxury, rather in rags 

 and apparent poverty — by means of robbery and deceit, at 

 the expense of the various peoples upon whom, as a swarm 

 of wasps or locusts, they have thought good to descend. 

 All this time, too, they have maintained intact both their 

 racial individuality, their peculiar language, and their 

 inveterate habits of lying and thieving. 



" Who are these gitanos ? " querulously asks the learned 

 Lorenzo Palminero more than three hundred years ago 

 (" El Estudioso Cortesano," Alcala, 1587) . " Who are these 

 Gitanos ? I answer : these vile people first began to show 

 themselves in Germany in the year 1417, where they call 

 them Tartars, or Gentiles ; in Italy they are termed Ciani. 

 [In Spain the Arabs (Moors) knew the gypsies by only one 

 name, charami = thieves.] They pretend that they come 

 from Lower Egypt, and that they wander about as a 

 penance, and to prove this they show letters from the King 

 of Poland. They lie, however, for they do not lead the 

 lives of penitents, but of dogs and thieves. A learned 

 person [himself] in the year 1540 prevailed upon them, 

 by dint of much persuasion, to show him the King's 

 letter, and from it he gathered that the time of pen- 

 ance had already expired. He spoke to them in the 

 Egyptian tongue. They said, however, as it was a long 

 time since their departure from Egypt, they could no 

 longer understand it. He then spoke to them in the vulgar 

 Greek, such as is used at present in the Morea and Archi- 

 pelago. Some understood it, others did not, so that as all 

 did not understand it, we may conclude that the language 



* Whatever may have been their origin, their language demonstrates 

 that the Spanish gypsies are not (as has been suggested) relics of 

 the expelled Moors, Arabs, or Moriscos, with whose tongue theirs has 

 no affinity. Many of the Bommany words appear to be of Sanscrit 

 derivation. 



