Part 37 (2/2)
But the use of the Gipsy language is not the only, not even the princ.i.p.al, means of maintaining a knowledge of being Gipsies; perhaps it is altogether unnecessary; for the mere consciousness of the fact of being Gipsies, transmitted from generation to generation, and made the basis of marriages, and the intimate a.s.sociations of life, is, in itself, perfectly sufficient. The subject of two distinct races, existing upon the same soil, is not very familiar to the mind of a British subject. To acquire a knowledge of such a phenomenon, he should visit certain parts of Europe, or Asia, or Africa, or the New World.
Since all (I may say all) Gipsies hide the knowledge of their being Gipsies from the other inhabitants, as they leave the tent, it cannot be said that any of them really deny themselves, even should they hide themselves from those of their own race. The ultimate test of a person being a Gipsy would be for another to catch the internal response of his mind to the question put to him as to the fact; or observe the workings of his heart in his contemplations of himself. It can hardly be said that any Gipsy denies, at heart, the fact of his being a Gipsy, (which, indeed, is a contradiction in terms,) let him disguise it from others as much as he may. If I could find such a man, he would be the only one of his race whom I would feel inclined to despise as such.
From all that has been said, the reader can have no difficulty in believing, with me, as a question beyond doubt, that the immortal John Bunyan was a Gipsy of mixed blood. He was a tinker. And who were the tinkers? Were there any itinerant tinkers in England, before the Gipsies settled there? It is doubtful. In all likelihood, articles requiring to be tinkered were carried to the nearest smithy. The Gipsies are all tinkers, either literally, figuratively, or representatively. Ask any English Gipsy, of a certain cla.s.s, what he can do, and, after enumerating several occupations, he will add: ”I can tinker, of course,”
although he may know little or nothing about it. Tinkering, or travelling-smith work, is the Gipsy's representative business, which he brought with him into Europe. Even the intelligent and respectable Scottish Gipsies speak of themselves as belonging to the ”tinker tribe.”
The Gipsies in England, as in Scotland, divided the country among themselves, under representative chiefs, and did not allow any other Gipsies to enter upon their walks or beats. Considering that the Gipsies in England were estimated at above ten thousand during the early part of the reign of Queen Elizabeth, we can readily believe that they were much more numerous during the time of Bunyan. Was there, therefore, a pot or a kettle, in the rural parts of England, to be mended, for which there was not a Gipsy ready to attend to it? If a Gipsy would not tolerate any of his own race entering upon his district, was he likely to allow any native? If there were native tinkers in England before the Gipsies settled there, how soon would the latter, with their organization, drive every one from the trade by sheer force! What thing more like a Gipsy?
Among the Scotch, we find, at a comparatively recent time, that the Gipsies actually murdered a native, for infringing upon what they considered one of their prerogatives--that of gathering rags through the country.
Lord Macaulay says, with reference to Bunyan: ”The tinkers then formed a hereditary caste, which was held in no high estimation. They were generally vagrants and pilferers, and were often confounded with the Gipsies, whom, in truth, they nearly resembled.” I would like to know on what authority his lords.h.i.+p makes such an a.s.sertion; what he knows about the origin of this ”_hereditary_ tinker caste,” and if it still exists; and whether he holds to the purity-of-Gipsy-blood idea, advanced by the Edinburgh Review and Blackwood's Magazine, but especially the former.
How would he account for the existence of a hereditary caste of any kind, in England, and that just one--the ”tinker caste”? There was no calling at that time hereditary in England, that I know of; and yet Bunyan was born a tinker. In Scotland, the collier and salter castes were hereditary, for they were in a state of slavery to the owners of these works.[314] But who ever heard of any native occupation, so free as tinkering, being hereditary in England, in the seventeenth century?
Was not this ”tinker caste,” at that time, exactly the same that it is now? If it was then hereditary, is it not so still? If not, by what means has it ceased to be hereditary? The tinkers existed in England, at that time, exactly as they do now. And who are they now but mixed Gipsies? It is questionable, very questionable indeed, if we will find, in all England, a tinker who is not a Gipsy. The cla.s.s will deny it; the purer and more original kind of Gipsies will also deny it; still, they are Gipsies. They are all _chabos_, _calos_, or _chals_; but they will play upon the word Gipsy in its ideal, purity-of-blood sense, and deny that they are Gipsies. We will find in Lavengro two such Gipsies--the Flaming Tinman, and Jack Slingsby; the first, a half-blood, (which did not necessarily imply that either parent was white;) and the other, apparently, a very much mixed Gipsy. The tinman termed Slingsby a ”mumping villain.” Now, ”mumper,” among the English Gipsies, is an expression for a Gipsy whose blood is very much mixed. When Mr. Borrow used the word _Petulengro_,[315] Slingsby started, and exclaimed: ”Young man, you know a thing or two.” I have used the same word with English Gipsies, causing the same surprise; on one occasion, I was told: ”You must be a Scotch Gipsy yourself.” ”Well,” I replied, ”I may be as good a Gipsy as any of you, for anything you may know.” ”That may be so,” was the answer I got. Then Slingsby was very careful to mention to Lavengro that his _wife_ was a white, or Christian, woman; a thing not necessarily true because he a.s.serted it, but it implied that _he_ was different. These are but instances of, I might say, all the English tinkers. Almost every old countrywoman about the Scottish Border knows that the Scottish tinkers are Gipsies.[316]
[314] See pages 111 and 121.
[315] _Petul_, according to Mr. Borrow, means a horse-shoe; and _Petulengro_, a lord of the horse-shoe. It is evidently a very high catch-word among the English Gipsies.
[316] Various of the characters mentioned in Mr. Borrow's ”Lavengro,”
and ”Romany Rye,” are, beyond doubt, Gipsies. Old Fulcher is termed, in a derisive manner, by Ursula, ”a _gorgio_ and basket-maker.” She is one of the Hernes; a family which _gorgio_ and basket-maker Gipsies describe as ”an ignorant, conceited set, who think nothing of other Gipsies, owing to the quality and quant.i.ty of their own blood.” This is the manner in which the more original and pure and the other kind of English Gipsies frequently talk of each other. The latter will deny that they are Gipsies, at least hide it from the world; and, like the same kind of Scottish Gipsies, speak of the others, exclusively, as Gipsies. I am acquainted with a fair-haired English Gipsy, whose wife, now dead, was a half-breed. ”But I am not a Gipsy,” said he to me, very abruptly, before I had said anything that could have induced him to think that I took him for one. He spoke Gipsy, like the others. I soon caught him tripping; for, in speaking of the size of Gipsy families, he slipped his foot, and said: ”For example, there is our family; there were (so many) of us.” There is another Gipsy, a neighbour, who pa.s.ses his wife off to the public as an Irish woman, while she is a fair-haired Irish Gipsy. Both, in short, played upon the word Gipsy; for, as regards fullness of blood, they really were not Gipsies.
The dialogue between the Romany Rye and the Horncastle jockey clearly shows the Gipsy in the latter, when his attention is directed to the figure of the Hungarian. The Romany Rye makes indirect reference to the Gipsies, and the jockey abruptly asks: ”Who be they? Come, don't be ashamed. I have occasionally kept queerish company myself.” ”Romany _chals_! Whew! I begin to smell a rat.” The remainder of the dialogue, and the _spree_ which follows, are perfectly Gipsy throughout, on the part of the jockey; but, like so many of his race, he is evidently ashamed to own himself up to be ”one of them.” He says, in a way as if he were a stranger to the language: ”And what a singular language they have got!” ”Do you know anything of it?” said the Romany Rye. ”Only a very few words; they were always chary in teaching me any.” He said he was brought up with the _gorgio_ and basket-maker Fulcher, who followed the caravan. He is described as dressed in a coat of green, (a favourite Gipsy colour,) and as having curly brown or black hair; and he says of Mary Fulcher, whom he married: ”She had a fair complexion, and nice red hair, both of which I liked, being a bit of a black myself.” How much this is in keeping with the Gipsies, who so frequently speak of each other, in a jocular way, as ”brown and black rascals!”
I likewise claim Isopel Berners, in Lavengro, to be a _thumping_ Gipsy la.s.s, who travelled the country with her donkey-cart, taking her own part, and _wapping_ this one, and _wapping_ that one. It signifies not what her appearance was. I have frequently taken tea, at her house, with a young, blue-eyed, English Gipsy widow, perfectly English in her appearance, who spoke Gipsy freely enough. It did not signify what Isopel said of herself, or her relations. How did she come to speak Gipsy? Do Gipsies _teach_ their language to _strangers_, and, more especially, to strange women? a.s.suredly not. Suppose that Isopel was not a Gipsy, but had married a Gipsy, then I could understand how she might have known Gipsy, and yet not have been a Gipsy, except by initiation. But it is utterly improbable that she, a strange woman, should have been taught a word of it.
In England are to be found Gipsies of many occupations; horse-dealers, livery stable-keepers, public-house keepers, sometimes grocers and linen-drapers; indeed, almost every occupation from these downwards. I can readily enough believe an English Gipsy, when he tells me, that he knows of an English squire a Gipsy. To have an English squire a Gipsy, might have come about even in this way: Imagine a rollicking or eccentric English squire taking up with, and marrying, say, a pretty mixed Gipsy bar or lady's maid, and the children would be brought up Gipsies, for certainty.
There are two Gipsies, of the name of B----, farmers upon the estate of Lord Lister, near Ma.s.singham, in the county of Norfolk. They are described as good-sized, handsome men, and swarthy, with long black hair, combed over their shoulders. They dress in the old Gipsy stylish fas.h.i.+on, with a green cut-away, or Newmarket, coat, yellow leather breeches, b.u.t.toned to the knee, and top boots, with a Gipsy hat, ruffled breast, and turned-down collar. They occupy the position of any natives in society; attend church, take an interest in parish matters, dine with his lords.h.i.+p's other tenants, and compete for prizes at the agricultural shows. They are proud of being Gipsies. I have also been told that there are Gipsies in the county of Kent, who have hop farms and dairies.
The prejudice against the name of Gipsy was apparently as great in Bunyan's time as in our own; and there was, evidently, as great a timidity, on the part of mixed, fair-haired Gipsies, to own the blood then, as now; and great danger, for then it was hangable to be a Gipsy, by the law of Queen Elizabeth, and ”felony without benefit of clergy,”
for ”any person, being fourteen years, whether natural born subject or stranger, who had been seen in the fellows.h.i.+p of such persons, or disguised like them, and remained with them one month, at once, or at several times.” When the name of Gipsy, and every a.s.sociation connected with it, were so severely proscribed by law, what other name would the tribe go under but that of tinkers--their own proper occupation? Those only would be called Gipsies whose appearance indicated the pure, or nearly pure, Gipsy. Although there was no necessity, under any circ.u.mstances, for Bunyan to say that he was a Gipsy, and still less in the face of the law proscribing, so absolutely, the race, and every one countenancing it, he evidently wished the fact to be understood, or, I should rather say, took it for granted, that part of the public knew of it, when he said: ”For my descent, it was, as is well known to many, of a low and inconsiderable generation; my father's house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families of the land.”
Of whom does Bunyan speak here, if not of the Gipsies? He says, of _all_ the families of the land. And he adds: ”After I had been thus for some considerable time, another thought came into my mind, and that was, whether we, (his family and relatives,) were of the Israelites or no?
For, finding in the Scriptures, that they were once the peculiar people of G.o.d, thought I, if I were one of this race, (how significant is the expression!) my soul must needs be happy. Now, again, I found within me a great longing to be resolved about this question, but could not tell how I should; at last, I asked my father of it, who told me, No, we, (his father included,) were not.”[317] I have heard the same question put by Gipsy lads to their parent, (a very much mixed Gipsy,) and it was answered thus: ”We must have been among the Jews, for some of our ceremonies are like theirs.” The best commentary that can be pa.s.sed on the above extracts from Bunyan's autobiography, will be found in our author's account of his visit to the old Gipsy chief, whose acquaintance he made at St. Boswell's fair, and to which the reader is referred, (pages 309-318.) When did we ever hear of an _ordinary Englishman_ taking so much trouble to ascertain whether he was a _Jew_, or not? No Englishman, it may be safely a.s.serted, ever does that, or has ever done it; and no one in England could have done it, during Bunyan's time, but a Gipsy. Bunyan seems to have been more or less acquainted with the history of the Jews, and how they were scattered over the world, though not publicly known to be in England, from which country they had been for centuries banished. About the time in question, the re-admission of the Jews was much canva.s.sed in ecclesiastical as well as political circles, and ultimately carried, by the exertions of Mana.s.seh Ben Israel, of Amsterdam. Under these circ.u.mstances, it was very natural for Bunyan to ask himself whether he belonged to the Jewish race, since he had evidently never seen a Jew; and that the more especially, as the Scottish Gipsies have even believed themselves to be Ethiopians. Such a question is entertained, by the Gipsies, even at the present day; for they naturally think of the Jews, and wonder whether, after all, their race may not, at some time, have been connected with them. How trifling it is for any one to a.s.sert, that Bunyan--a common native of England--while in a state of spiritual excitement, imagined that he was a Jew, and that he should, at a mature age, have put anything so absurd in his autobiography, and in so grave a manner as he did!
[317] Bunyan adds: ”But, notwithstanding the meanness and inconsiderableness of my parents, it pleased G.o.d to put it into their hearts to put me to school, to learn me both to read and write; the which I also attained, according to the rate of other poor men's children.”
He does not say, ”According to the rate of poor men's children,” but of ”_other_ poor men's children:” a form of expression always used by the Gipsies when speaking of themselves, as distinguished from others.
The language used by Bunyan, in speaking of his family, was in harmony with that of the population at large; but he, doubtless, had the feelings peculiar to all the tribe, with reference to their origin and race.
Southey, in his life of Bunyan, writes: ”Wherefore this (tinkering) should have been so mean and despised a calling, is not, however, apparent, when it was not followed as a vagabond employment, but, as in this case, exercised by one who had a settled habitation, and who, mean as his condition was, was nevertheless able to put his son to school, in an age when very few of the poor were taught to read and write.” The fact is, that Bunyan's father had, apparently, a town beat, which would give him a settled residence, prevent him using a tent, and lead him to conform with the ways of the ordinary inhabitants; but, doubtless, he had his pa.s.s from the chief of the Gipsies for the district. The same may be said of John Bunyan himself.
How little does a late writer in the Dublin University Magazine know of the feelings of a mixed Gipsy, like Bunyan, when he says: ”Did he belong to the Gipsies, we have little doubt that he would have dwelt on it, with a sort of spiritual exultation; and that of his having been called out of Egypt would have been to him one of the proofs of Divine favour.
We cannot imagine him suppressing the fact, or disguising it.” Where is the point in the reviewer's remarks? His remarks have no point. How could the fact of a man being a Gipsy be made the grounds of any kind of spiritual exultation? And how could the fact of the tribe originating in Egypt be a proof of Divine favour towards the individual? What occasion had Bunyan to mention he was a Gipsy? What purpose would it have served?
How would it have advanced his mission as a minister? Considering the prejudice that has always existed against that unfortunate word Gipsy, it would have created a sensation among all parties, if Bunyan had said that he was a Gipsy. ”What!” the people would have asked, ”a _Gipsy_ turned priest? We'll have the devil turning priest next!” Considering the many enemies which the tinker-bishop had to contend with, some of whom even sought his life, he would have given them a pretty occasion of revenging themselves upon him, had he said he was a Gipsy. They would have put the law in force, and stretched his neck for him.[318] The same writer goes on to say: ”In one pa.s.sage at least--and we think there are more in Bunyan's works--the Gipsies are spoken of in such a way as would be most unlikely if Bunyan thought he belonged to that cla.s.s of vagabonds.” I am not aware as to what the reviewer alludes; but, should Bunyan even have denounced the conduct of the Gipsies, in the strongest terms imaginable, would that have been otherwise than what he did with sinners generally? Should a clergyman denounce the ways and morals of every man of his parish, does that make him think less of being a native of the parish himself? Should a man even denounce his children as vagabonds, does that prevent him being their father? This writer ill.u.s.trates what I have said of people generally--that they are almost incapable of forming an opinion on the Gipsy question, unaided by facts, and the bearings of facts, laid before them; so thoroughly is the philosophy of race, as it progresses and develops, unknown to the public mind, and so absolute is the prejudice of caste against the Gipsy race.[319]
[318] Justice Keeling threatened Bunyan with this fate, even for preaching; for said he: ”If you do not submit to go to hear divine service, and leave your preaching, you must be banished the realm: And if, after such a day as shall be appointed you to be gone, you shall be found in this realm, or be found to come over again, without special license from the king, you must stretch by the neck for it. I tell you plainly.”
Sir Matthew Hale tells us that, on one occasion, at the Suffolk a.s.sizes, no less than thirteen Gipsies were executed, under the old Gipsy statutes, a few years before the Restoration.
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