Part 32 (1/2)

Mr. Borrow speaks of the Gipsies ”declining” in Spain. Ask a Scotchman about the Scottish Gipsies, and he will answer: ”The Scotch Gipsies have pretty much died out.” ”Died out?” I ask; ”that is impossible; for who are more prolific than Gipsies?” ”Oh, then, they have become settled, and civilized.” ”And _ceased to be Gipsies_?” I continue. ”Exactly so,”

he replies. What idea can be more ridiculous than that of saying, that if a Gipsy leaves the tent, settles in a town, and attends church, he ceases to be a Gipsy; and that, if he takes to the tent again, he becomes a Gipsy again? What has a man's occupation, habits, or character, to do with his clan, tribe, or nationality? Does education, does religion, remove from his mind a knowledge of who he is, or change his blood? Are not our own Borderers and Highlanders as much Borderers and Highlanders as ever they were? Are not Spanish Gipsies still Spanish Gipsies, although a change may have come over the characters and circ.u.mstances of some of them? It would be absurd to deny it.[268]

[268] The principle, or rather fact, here involved, simple as it is in itself, is evidently very difficult of comprehension by the native Scottish mind. Any person understands perfectly well how a Highlander, at the present day, is still a Highlander, notwithstanding the great change that has come over the character of his race. But our Scottish _literati_ seem to have been altogether at sea, in comprehending the same principle as applicable to the Gipsies. They might naturally have asked themselves, whether _Gipsies_ could have procreated _Jews_; and, if not Jews, how they could have procreated _gorgios_, (as English Gipsies term natives.) A writer in Blackwood's Magazine says, in reference to Billy Marshall, a Gipsy chief, to whom allusion has already been made: ”Who were his descendants I cannot tell; I am sure he could not do it himself, if he were living. It is known that they were prodigiously numerous; I dare say numberless.” And yet this writer gravely says that ”the _race_ is in some risk of becoming extinct(!)” Another writer in Blackwood says: ”Their numbers may perhaps have since been diminished, in particular States, by _the progress of civilization_(_!_)” We would naturally p.r.o.nounce any person crazy who would maintain that there were no Highlanders in Scotland, owing to their having ”changed their habits.” We could, with as much reason, say the same of those who will maintain this opinion in regard to the Gipsies. There has been a great deal of what is called genius expended upon the Gipsies, but wonderfully little common sense.

As the Jews, during their pilgrimage in the Wilderness, were protected from their enemies by a cloud, so have the Gipsies, in their encrease and development, been s.h.i.+elded from theirs, by a mist of ignorance, which, it would seem, requires no little trouble to dispel.

Mr. Borrow has not sufficiently examined into Spanish Gipsyism to pa.s.s a reliable opinion upon it. He says: ”One thing is certain, in the history of the Gitanos; that the sect flourished and encreased, so long as the law recommended and enjoined measures the most harsh and severe for its suppression... . The caste of the Gitanos still exists, but is neither so extensive, nor so formidable, as a century ago, when the law, in denouncing Gitanismo, proposed to the Gitanos the alternatives of death for persisting in their profession, or slavery for abandoning it.” These are very singular alternatives. The latter is certainly not to be found in any of the Spanish laws quoted by Mr. Borrow. I am at a loss to perceive the point of his reasoning. There can be no difficulty in believing that Gipsies would rather _encrease_ in a state of peace, than if they were hunted from place to place, like wild beasts; and consequently, having renounced their former mode or life, they would, in Mr. Borrow's own words, ”cease to play a distinct part in the history of Spain, and the _law_ would no longer speak of them as a distinct people.” And the same might, to a certain extent, be said of the Spanish _people_. Mr. Borrow again says: ”That the Gitanos are not so numerous as in former times, witness those _barrios_, in various towns, still denominated _Gitanerias_, but from whence the Gitanos have disappeared, even like the Moors from the _Morerias_.” But Mr. Borrow himself, in the same work, gives a good reason for the disappearance of the Gipsies from these _Gitanerias_; for he says: ”The _Gitanerias_ were soon considered as public nuisances, on which account the Gitanos were forbidden to live together in particular parts of the town, to hold meetings, and even to intermarry with each other.” If the disappearance of the Gipsies from Spain was like that of the Moors, it would appear that they had left, or been expelled from, the country; a theory which Mr. Borrow does not advance. The Gipsies, to a certain extent, may have left these barriers, or been expelled from them, and settled, as tradesmen, mechanics, and what not, in other parts of the same or other towns; so as to be in a position the more able to get on in the world. Still, many of them are in the colonies. In Cuba there are many, as soldiers and musicians, dealers in mules and red pepper, which businesses they almost monopolize, and jobbers and dealers in various wares; and doubtless there are some of them innkeepers, and others following other occupations. In Mexico there are not a few. I know of a Gitano who has a fine wholesale and retail cigar store in Virginia.[269]

[269] In Olmstead's ”Journey in the Seaboard Slave States” it is stated, that in Alexandria, Louisiana, when under the Spanish rule, there were ”French and Spanish, _Egyptians_ and Indians, Mulattoes and Negroes.” This author reports a conversation which he had with a planter, by which it appears that these Egyptians came from ”some of the Northern Islands;” that they spoke a language among themselves, but could talk French and Spanish too; that they were black, but not very black, and as good citizens as any, and pa.s.sed for white folk.

The planter believed they married mostly with mulattoes, and that a good many of the mulattoes had Egyptian blood in them too. He believed these Egyptians had disappeared since the State became part of the Union. Mr. Olmstead remarks: ”The Egyptians were probably Spanish Gipsies, though I have never heard of any of them being in America in any other way.”

Mr. Borrow concludes, in regard to the Spanish Gipsies, thus: ”We have already expressed our belief that the caste has diminished of latter years; whether this diminution was the result of one or many causes combined; of a _partial change of habits_, of pestilence or sickness, of war or famine, or of a _freer intercourse with the Spanish population_, we have no means of determining, and shall abstain from offering conjectures on the subject.” In this way does he leave the question just where he found it. Is there any reason to doubt that Gipsydom is essentially the same in Spain as in Great Britain; or that its future will be guided by any other principles than those which regulate that of the British Gipsies? Indeed, I am astonished that Mr. Borrow should advance the idea that Gipsies should _decrease_ by ”changing their habits;” they might not _encrease so fast_, in a settled life, as when more exposed to the air, and not molested by the Spanish Government. I am no less astonished that he should think they would decrease by ”a freer intercourse with the Spanish population;” when, in fact, such mixtures are well known to go with the Gipsies; the mixture being, in the estimation of the British Gipsies, calculated to strengthen and invigorate the race itself. Had Mr. Borrow kept in mind the case of the half-blood Gipsy captain, he could have had no difficulty in learning what became of mixed Gipsies.[270]

[270] Mr. Borrow surely cannot mean that a Gipsy ceases to be a Gipsy, when he settles down, and ”turns over a new leaf;” and that this ”change of habits” changes his descent, blood, appearance, language and nationality! What, then, does he mean, when he says that the Spanish Gipsies have decreased by ”a partial change of habits?”

And does an infusion of Spanish blood, implied in a ”freer intercourse with the Spanish population,” lead to the Gipsy element being wiped out; or does it lead to the Spanish feeling being lost in Gipsydom?

Which is the element to be operated upon--the Spanish or the Gipsy?

Which is the _leaven_? The Spanish element is the _pa.s.sive_, the Gipsy the _active_. As a question of philosophy, the most simple of comprehension, and, above all, as a matter of fact, the foreign element introduced, _in detail_, into the _body_ of Gipsydom, goes with that body, and, in feeling, becomes incorporated with it, although, in physical appearance, it changes the Gipsy race, so that it becomes ”confounded with the residue of the population,” but remains Gipsy, as before. A Spanish Gipsy is a Spaniard as he stands, and it would be hard to say what we should ask him to do, to become more a Spaniard than he is already.

It doubtless holds in Spain, as in Great Britain, that as the Gipsy enters into settled life, and engages in a respectable calling, he hides his descent, and even mixes his blood with that of the country, and becomes ashamed of the name before the public; but is as much, at heart, a Gipsy, as any others of his race. And this theory is borne out by Mr.

Borrow himself, when he speaks of ”the unwillingness of the Spanish Gipsies to utter, when speaking of themselves, the detested expression Gitano; a word which seldom escapes their mouths.” We might therefore conclude, that the Spanish Gipsies, with the exception of the more original and bigoted stock, would _hide their nationality_ from the common Spaniards, and so escape their notice. It is not at all likely that the half-pay Gipsy captain would mention to the public that he was a Gipsy, although he admitted it to Mr. Borrow, under the peculiar circ.u.mstances in which he met him. My Spanish acquaintance informs me that the Gitanos, generally, hide their nationality from the rest of the world.

Such a case is evidently told by Mr. Borrow, in the vagabond Gipsy, Antonio, at Badajoz, who termed a rich Gipsy, living in the same town, a hog, because he evidently would not countenance him. Antonio may possibly have been kicked out of his house, in attempting to enter it.

He accused him of having married a Spaniard, and of fain attempting to pa.s.s himself for a Spaniard. As regards the wife, she might have been a Gipsy with very little of ”the blood” in her veins; or a Spaniard, reared by Gipsies; or an ordinary Spanish maiden, to whom the Gipsy would teach his language, as sometimes happens among the English Gipsies. His wis.h.i.+ng to pa.s.s for a Spaniard had nothing to do with his being, but not wis.h.i.+ng to be known as, a Gipsy. The same is done by almost all our Scottish Gipsies. In England, those who do not follow the tent--I mean the more mixed and better-cla.s.s--are even afraid of each other. ”Afraid of what?” said I, to such an English Gipsy; ”ashamed of being Gipsies?” ”No, sir,” (with great emphasis;) ”not ashamed of being Gipsies, but of being _known to other people as Gipsies_.” ”A world of difference,” I replied. What does the world hold to be a _Gipsy_, and what does it hold to be the _feelings of a man_? If we consider these two questions, we can have little difficulty in understanding the wish of such Gipsies to disguise themselves. It is in this way, and in the mixing of the blood, that this so-called ”dying out of the Gipsies” is to be accounted for.[271]

[271] Mr. Borrow mentions, in the twenty-second chapter of the ”Bible in Spain,” having met several cavalry soldiers from Granada, Gipsies _incog._ who were surprised at being discovered to be Gipsies. They had been impressed, but carried on a trade in horses, in league with the captain of their company. They said: ”We have been to the wars, but not to fight; we left that to the Busne. We have kept together, and like true Calore, have stood back to back. We have made money in the wars.”

It is singular that Mr. Borrow should attribute the change which has come over the Spanish Gipsies, so much to the law pa.s.sed by Charles III.

in 1783; and that he should characterize it as an enlightened, wise, and liberal law; distinguished by justice and clemency; and as being calculated to exert considerable influence over the destiny of the race; nay, as being the princ.i.p.al, if not the only, cause for the ”decline” of it in Spain. It was headed: ”Rules for _repressing_ and _chastising_ the vagrant mode of life, and other excesses, of those who are called Gitanos.” Article II. forbids, under penalties, the Gipsies ”using their _language_, dress, or vagrant kind of life, which they had hitherto followed.” Article XI. prohibits them from ”wandering about the roads and uninhabited places, even with the pretext of _visiting markets and fairs_.” Article IX. reads thus: ”Those _who have abandoned the dress, name, language or jargon, a.s.sociations and manners of Gitanos_, and shall have, moreover, chosen and established a domicile, but shall not have devoted themselves to any office or employment, though it be only that of day-labourer, shall be _proceeded against as common vagrants_.”

Articles XVI. and XVII. enact, that ”the children, and young people of both s.e.xes, who are not above sixteen years of age, shall be separated from their parents, _who wander about and have no employment_, [which was forbidden by the law itself,] and shall be destined to learn something, or shall be placed out in hospices or houses of instruction.”

Article XX. _dooms to death, without remission, Gipsies who, for the second time, relapse into their old habits_.

I cannot agree with Mr. Borrow, when he says, that this law ”differs in _character_” from any which had hitherto been enacted, in connection with the body in Spain, if I take those preceding it, as given by himself. The only difference between it and some of the previous laws is, that it allowed the Gipsy to be admitted to whatever office or employment _to which he might apply himself_, and likewise to any guilds or communities; but it prohibited him from settling in the capital, or any of the royal residences; and forbade him, _on pain of death_, to publicly profess what he was--that is, a Gipsy. With the trifling exceptions mentioned, the law of Charles III. was as foolish a one as ever was pa.s.sed against the Gipsies. These very exceptions show what the letter, whatever the execution, of previous laws must have been. Nor can we form any opinion as to the effects the law in question had upon the Gipsies, unless we know how it was carried out. The law of the Empress Maria Theresa produced no effect upon the Gipsies in Hungary. ”In Hungary,” says Mr. Borrow, ”two cla.s.ses are free to do what they please--the n.o.bility and the Gipsies--the one above the law, the other below it.” And what did Mr. Borrow find the Gipsies in Hungary? In England, the last instances of condemnation, under the old sanguinary laws, happened a few years before the Restoration, although these were not repealed till 23d Geo. III., c. 54. The Gipsies in England can follow any employment, common to the ordinary natives, they please: and how has Mr. Borrow described them there? In Scotland, the tribe have been allowed to do nothing, not even acknowledge their existence, as Gipsies: and this work describes what they are in that country.

Instead of the law of Charles III. exercising any great beneficial influence over the character of the Spanish Gipsies, I would attribute the change in question to what Mr. Borrow himself says: ”It must be remembered that during the last seventy years, a revolution has been progressing in Spain, slowly it is true; and such a revolution may have affected the Gitanos.” The Spanish Gipsy proverb, ”Money is to be found in the town, not in the country,” has had its influence on bringing the race to settle in towns. And by residing in towns, and not being persecuted, they have, in Mr. Borrow's own words, ”insensibly become more civilized than their ancestors, and their habits and manners less ferocious.” The only good which the law of Charles III. seems to have done to the Spanish Gipsies was, as already said, to permit them to follow any occupation, and be admitted to any guilds, or communities, (barring the capital, and royal residences,) they pleased; but only on the condition, and that _on the pain of death_, that they _renounced every imaginable thing connected with their tribe_; which, we may reasonably a.s.sume, no Gipsy submitted to, however much in appearance he might have done so.

But it is doubtful if the law of Charles III. was anything but the one which it was customary for every Spanish monarch to issue against the tribe. Mr. Borrow says: ”Perhaps there is no country in which more laws have been framed, having in view the suppression and extinction of the Gipsy name, race, and manner of life, than Spain. Every monarch, during a period of three hundred years, appears, at his accession to the throne, to have considered that one of his first and most imperative duties consisted in suppressing and checking the robberies, frauds, and other enormities of the Gitanos, with which the whole country seems to have resounded since the time of their first appearance.” The fact of so many laws being pa.s.sed against the Gipsies, is, to my mind, ample proof, as I shall afterwards explain, that few, if any, of them were put, to any extent, in force; and that the act in question, viewed in itself, as distinct from the laws previously in existence, was little more than a form. It contains a flourish of liberality, implied in the Gitanos being allowed to enter, if they pleased, any guilds, (which they were not likely to do,) or communities, (where they were doubtless already;) but it debars, (that is, expels,) them from the king's presence, at the capital or any of the royal residences. Moreover, it allowed the Gitano to be ”admitted to whatever office or employment to which he might apply himself,” (against which, there probably was, or should have been, no law in existence.) His majesty must also impose his pragmatical conceit upon his loyal subjects, by telling them, that ”Gitanos are _not_ Gitanos”--that they ”do _not_ proceed from any infected root;” and threaten them, that if they maintain the contrary, and call them Gitanos, he will have them punished for slander!

The Gipsies, after a residence of 350 years in the country, would have comparatively little notice taken of them, under this law, except when they made themselves really obnoxious, or gave an official an occasion to display his authority, or his zeal for the public service.[272]

Whatever may have been the treatment which the Gipsies experienced at the hands of the _civil_ authorities, the _church_ does not seem to have disturbed, and far less distressed, them. Mr. Borrow represents a priest of Cordova, formerly an Inquisitor, saying to him: ”I am not aware of one case of a Gitano having been tried or punished by the Inquisition.

The Inquisition always looked upon them with too much contempt, to give itself the slightest trouble concerning them; for, as no danger, either to the State or to the Church of Rome, could proceed from the Gitanos, it was a matter of perfect indifference to the holy office whether they lived without religion or not. The holy office has always reserved its anger for people very different; the Gitano having, at all times, been _Gente barrata y despreciable_.”

[272] It would seem that the law in Spain, in regard to the Gipsies, stands pretty much where it did--that is, the people are, in a sense, tolerated, but that the use of their language is prohibited, as may be gathered from an incident mentioned in the ninth chapter of the ”Bible in Spain,” by Mr. Borrow.

Should the Spanish Gipsies not now a.s.sist each other, to the extent they did when banditti, under the special proscription of the Government, it would be absurd to say that they were therefore not as much Gipsies as ever they were. The change in this respect arose, to some extent, from the toleration extended to them, as a people and as individuals, whether by the law, or society in general. Such Gipsies as Mr. Borrow seems to have a.s.sociated with, in Spain, were not likely to be very reliable authority on the questions at issue; for he has described them as ”being endowed with a kind of instinct, (in lieu of reason,) which a.s.sists them to a very limited extent, and no further.”

Might it not be in Spain as in Great Britain? Even in England, those that pa.s.s for Gipsies are few in number, compared to the mixed Gipsies, following various occupations; for a large part of the Gipsy blood in England has, as it were, been spread over a large surface of the white.

In Scotland it is almost altogether so. There seems considerable reason for believing that Gipsydom is, perhaps, as much mixed in Spain as in Great Britain, although Mr. Borrow has taken no notice of it. We have seen, (page 92.) how severe an enactment was pa.s.sed by Queen Elizabeth, against ”any person, whether natural born or _stranger_, to be seen in the fellows.h.i.+p of the Gipsies, or disguised like them.” In the law of Ferdinand and Isabella, the first pa.s.sed against the Gipsies, in Spain, a cla.s.s of people is mentioned, in conjunction with them, but distinguished from them, by the name of ”foreign tinkers.” Philip III., at Belan, in Portugal, in 1619, commands all Gipsies to quit the kingdom within six months. ”Those who should wish to remain are to establish themselves in cities, and are not to be allowed to use the dress, name, and language, in order, that forasmuch as they are not such by nation,(!) this name, and manner of life, may be for evermore confounded and forgotten(!)” Philip IV., on the 8th May, 1633, declares ”that they are not Gipsies by origin or nature, but have adopted this form of life(!)” This idea of ”Gitanos _not_ being Gitanos, and _not_ proceeding from any infected root,” was not original with Charles III., in 1783; his proclamation having been in formal keeping with previous ones, whether of his own country, or, as in Scotland, in 1603, ”recommended by the example of some other realm,” (page 111.) There had evidently been a great curiosity to know who some of the ”not Gipsies by origin and nature,” (evidently judging from their appearance,) could be; for Philip IV. enacts, ”that they shall, within two months, leave the quarters where now they _live with the denomination of Gitanos_, and that they shall _separate from each other_, and _mingle with the other inhabitants_: that the ministers of justice are to observe, _with particular diligence_, whether they _hold communication with each other_, or _marry among themselves_.”

The ”foreign tinkers” mentioned in the Act of Ferdinand and Isabella, and the individuals distinguished from the Gipsies in that of Queen Elizabeth, were doubtless _mixed_ Gipsies; whose relations.h.i.+p with the Gipsies proper, and isolation from the common natives, are very distinctly pointed out in the above extract from the law of Philip IV.

Mr. Borrow expresses a great difficulty to understand who these people could be, _if not Gipsies_. How easy it is to get quit of the difficulty, by concluding that they were Gipsies whose blood, perhaps for the most part, was native; and who had been brought into the body in the manner explained in the Preface to this work, and more fully ill.u.s.trated in this Disquisition. If Mr. Borrow found in Spain a half-pay captain, in the service of Donna Isabel, with _flaxen_ hair, a _thorough Gipsy_, who spoke Gipsy and Latin, with great fluency, and his cousin, Jara, in all probability another Gipsy, what difficulty can there be in believing, that the ”foreign tinkers,” or tinkers of any kind, now to be met with in Spain, are, like the same cla.s.s in Great Britain and Ireland, Gipsies of mixed blood? Indeed, the young Spaniard, to whom I have alluded, informs me that the Gipsies in Spain are very much mixed. Mr. Borrow himself admits that the Gipsy blood in Spain has been mixed; for, in speaking of the old Gipsy counts, he says: ”It was the counts who determined what individuals were to be admitted into the fellows.h.i.+p and privileges of the Gitanos... . . They (the Gipsies) were not to teach the language to any but those who, by birth or _inauguration_, belonged to that sect.” And he gives a case in point, in the bookseller of Logrono, who was married to the only daughter of a Gitano count; upon whose death, the daughter and son-in-law succeeded to the authority which he had exercised in the tribe. If the Gipsies in Spain were not mixed in point of blood, why should they have taken Mr.