George Borrow

“ There is no female eye in Seville can support the glance of hers,—so fierce and penetrating, and yet so artful and sly, is the expression of their dark orbs; her mouth is fine and almost delicate, and there is not a queen on the proudest throne between Madrid and Moscow who might not and would not envy the white and even rows of teeth which adorn it, which seem not of pearl but of the purest elephant’s bone of Multan. She comes not alone ”

“ The habits of the Hungarian Gypsies are abominable; their hovels appear sinks of the vilest poverty and filth, their dress is at best rags, their food frequently the vilest carrion, and occasionally, if report be true, still worse—on which point, when speaking of the Spanish Gitános, we shall have subsequently more to say: thus they live in filth, in rags, in nakedness, and in merriness of heart, for nowhere is there more of song and dance than in an Hungarian Gypsy village. ”

“ One great advantage which the Gypsies possess over all other people is an utter absence of mauvaise honte; their speech is as fluent, and their eyes as unabashed, in the presence of royalty, as before those from whom they have nothing to hope or fear; the result being, that most minds quail before them. There were two Gitánas at Madrid, one Pepita by name, and the other La Chicharona; the first was a spare, shrewd, witch-like female, about fifty, and was the mother-in-law of La Chicharona, who was remarkable for her stoutness. These women subsisted entirely by fortune-telling and swindling. ”

“ Would you have the Gypsy bantling, born in filth and misery, ‘midst mules and borricos, amidst the mud of a choza or the sand of a barranco, grasp with its swarthy hands the crayon and easel, the compass, or the microscope, or the tube which renders more distinct the heavenly orbs, and essay to become a Murillo, or a Feijoo, or a Lorenzo de Hervas, as soon as the legal disabilities are removed which doomed him to be a thievish jockey or a sullen husbandman? ”

“ O who can read the stars like the Egyptians? and who can read the lines of the palm like the Egyptians? The poor woman read in the stars that there was a rich ventura for all of this goodly house, so she followed the bidding of the stars and came to declare it. O blessed lady, (I defile thy dead corse,) your husband is at Granada, fighting with king Ferdinand against the wild Corahai! (May an evil ball smite him and split his head!) Within three months he shall return with twenty captive Moors, round the neck of each a chain of gold. ”

“ A blessing has been conferred on society, and in a manner highly creditable to the spirit of modern times; reform has been accomplished, not by persecution, not by the gibbet and the rack, but by justice and tolerance. The traveller has flung aside his cloak, not compelled by the angry buffeting of the north wind, but because the mild, benignant weather makes such a defence no longer necessary. The law no longer compels the Gitános to stand back to back, on the principal of mutual defence, and to cling to Gitanismo to escape from servitude and thraldom. ”

“ The position which the Gitános hold in society in Spain is the lowest, as might be expected; they are considered at best as thievish chalans, and the women as half sorceresses, and in every respect thieves; there is not a wretch, however vile, the outcast of the prison and the presidio, who calls himself Spaniard, but would feel insulted by being termed Gitáno, and would thank God that he is not; and yet, strange to say, there are numbers, and those of the higher classes, who seek their company, and endeavour to imitate their manners and way of speaking. ”

“ Those who have been accustomed to consider the Gypsy as a wandering outcast, incapable of appreciating the blessings of a settled and civilised life, or—if abandoning vagabond propensities, and becoming stationary—as one who never ascends higher than the condition of a low trafficker, will be surprised to learn, that amongst the Gypsies of Moscow there are not a few who inhabit stately houses, go abroad in elegant equipages, and are behind the higher orders of the Russians neither in appearance nor mental acquirements. ”

“ Avarice has always been the dominant passion in Spanish minds, their rage for money being only to be compared to the wild hunger of wolves for horse-flesh in the time of winter: next to avarice, envy of superior talent and accomplishment is the prevailing passion. These two detestable feelings united, proved the ruin of the Jews in Spain, who were, for a long time, an eyesore, both to the clergy and laity, for their great riches and learning. Much the same causes insured the expulsion of the Moriscos, who were abhorred for their superior industry, which the Spaniards would not imitate ”

“ It is, however, with the Gypsies of Spain, and not with those of England and other countries, that we are now occupied, and we shall merely mention the latter so far as they may serve to elucidate the case of the Gitános, their brethren by blood and language. Spain for many centuries has been the country of error; she has mistaken stern and savage tyranny for rational government; base, low, and grovelling superstition for clear, bright, and soul-ennobling religion; sordid cheating she has considered as the path to riches; vexatious persecution as the path to power ”

“ In the old time, indeed, the Gypsy law was so strong against the debtor, that provided he could not repay his brother husband, he was delivered over to him as his slave for a year and a day, and compelled to serve him as a hewer of wood, a drawer of water, or a beast of burden; but those times are past, the Gypsies are no longer the independent people they were of yore,—dark, mysterious, and dreaded wanderers, living apart in the deserts and heaths with which England at one time abounded. Gypsy law has given place to common law ”

“ A very singular kind of women are the Gitánas, far more remarkable in most points than their husbands, in whose pursuits of low cheating and petty robbery there is little capable of exciting much interest; but if there be one being in the world who, more than another, deserves the title of sorceress (and where do you find a word of greater romance and more thrilling interest?) , it is the Gypsy female in the prime and vigour of her age and ripeness of her understanding—the Gypsy wife, the mother of two or three children. ”

“ If any rancorous idea agitate him in the course of his narrative; if he endeavour to infuse into his auditors sentiments of jealousy, vengeance, or any violent passion, his features become exaggerated, and the vivacity of his glances, and the contraction of his lips, show clearly, and in an imposing manner, the foreign origin of the Gitános, and all the customs of barbarous people. Even his very smile has an expression hard and disagreeable. One might almost say that joy in him is a forced sentiment, and that, like unto the savage man, sadness is the dominant feature of his physiognomy. ”

“ The old people, and those who by fortune, or some other cause, exercise, in appearance, a kind of authority over the rest, are almost always dressed in black or dark-blue velvet. Some of those who affect elegance amongst them keep for holidays a complete dress of sky-blue velvet, with embroidery at the neck, pocket-holes, arm-pits, and in all the seams; in a word, with the exception of the turban, this was the fashion of dress of the ancient Moors of Granada, the only difference being occasioned by time and misery. ”

“ Whatever they did for the Gospel in Spain, was done in the hope that he whom they conceived to be their brother had some purpose in view which was to contribute to the profit of the Calés, or Gypsies, and to terminate in the confusion and plunder of the Busné, or Gentiles. Convinced of this, he is too little of an enthusiast to rear, on such a foundation, any fantastic edifice of hope which would soon tumble to the ground.
The cause of truth can scarcely be forwarded by enthusiasm, which is almost invariably the child of ignorance and error. ”

“ Whatever is visible and common is seldom or never represented by the Persians, even in their books, by the help of Arabic words: the sun and stars, the sea and river, the earth, its trees, its fruits, its flowers, and all that it produces and supports, are seldom named by them by other terms than those which their own language is capable of affording; but in expressing the abstract thoughts of their minds, and they are a people who think much and well, they borrow largely from the language of their religion—the Arabic. ”

“ No females in the world can be more licentious in word and gesture, in dance and in song, than the Gitánas; 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 gem most dear amongst the sect of the Roma was within the reach of a Busno.
Such visitors, however, were always encouraged to a certain point, and by this and various other means the Gitános acquired connections which frequently stood them in good stead in the hour of need. ”

“ The Gitános of Spain, during the last half-century, having, in a great degree, abandoned the wandering habit of life which once constituted one of their most remarkable peculiarities, and residing, at present, more in the cities than in the fields, have come into closer contact with the great body of the Spanish nation than was in former days their practice. From their living thus in towns, their language has not only undergone much corruption, but has become, to a slight degree, known to the dregs of society, amongst whom they reside. ”

“ What has been said of the Gypsies of Europe is, to a considerable extent, applicable to their brethren in the East, or, as they are called, Zingarri; they are either found wandering amongst the deserts or mountains, or settled in towns, supporting themselves by horse-dealing or jugglery, by music and song. In no part of the East are they more numerous than in Turkey, especially in Constantinople, where the females frequently enter the harems of the great, pretending to cure children of ‘the evil eye,’ and to interpret the dreams of the women. ”

“ It is easy enough to conceive the manner in which the Gypsies lived in England for a long time subsequent to their arrival: doubtless in a half-savage state, wandering about from place to place, encamping on the uninhabited spots, of which there were then so many in England, feared and hated by the population, who looked upon them as thieves and foreign sorcerers, occasionally committing acts of brigandage, but depending chiefly for subsistence on the practice of the ‘arts of Egypt,’ in which cunning and dexterity were far more necessary than courage or strength of hand. ”

“ No person can read the present volume without perceiving, at a glance, that the Romas are in most points an anomalous people; in their morality there is much of anomaly, and certainly not less in their cuisine.
‘Los Gitános son muy malos; llevan niños hurtados a Berberia. The Gypsies are very bad people; they steal children and carry them to Barbary, where they sell them to the Moors’—so said the Spaniards in old times. There can be little doubt that even before the fall of the kingdom of Granada, which occurred in the year 1492, the Gitános had intercourse with the Moors of Spain. ”

“ Two classes are free in Hungary to do almost what they please—the nobility and—the Gypsies; the former are above the law—the latter below it: a toll is wrung from the hands of the hard-working labourers, that most meritorious class, in passing over a bridge, for example at Pesth, which is not demanded from a well-dressed person—nor from the Czigány, who have frequently no dress at all—and whose insouciance stands in striking contrast with the trembling submission of the peasants. ”