Gibeonites

“ And, said a Scottish Gipsy: “It will never be forgotten; as long as the world lasts, the Gipsies will be Gipsies.” What idea can be more preposterous than that of saying, that a change of residence or occupation, or a little more or less of education or wealth, or a change of character or creed, can eradicate such feeling from the heart of a Gipsy; or that these circumstances can, by any human possibility, change his descent, his tribe, or the blood that is in his body? ”

“ In Scotland, the prejudice towards the name of Gipsy might be safely allowed to drop, were it only for this reason: that the race has got so much mixed up with the native blood, and even with good families of the country, as to be, in plain language, a jumble—a pretty kettle of fish, indeed. One’s uncle, in seeking for a wife, might have stumbled over an Egyptian woman, and, either known or unknown to himself, had his children brought up bitter Gipsies; so that one’s cousins may be Gipsies, for anything one knows. A man may have a colony of Gipsies in his own house, and know nothing about it! ”

“ In the first generation their new habits and modes of life would become chronic; in the second generation they would become hereditary; and from this strange phenomenon would spring a race that is unique in the history of the human family. What origin could be more worthy of the Gipsies? What origin more philosophical?
Arriving in India a foreign caste, the Gipsies would naturally cling to their common origin, and speak their common language, which, in course of ages, would be forgotten, except occasional words, which would be used by them as catch-words. ”

“ Near Gibeon I saw some sandstone, singularly mixed up with the limestone. It lay about in large masses, but I saw no continuous rock of it. The ancient Gibeon is now a small-village, inhabited by a few Mohammedan families. It stands on the summit of a round hill, and from the steepness of its sides is capable of being made very strong. There are various old ruins and some arches of great size running into the sides of the hill, forming rooms, in which various labours are now carried on. ”

“ Of the Gibbons, half a dozen species are found scattered over the Asiatic islands, Java, Sumatra, Borneo, and through Malacca, Siam, Arracan, and an uncertain extent of Hindostan on the main land of Asia. The largest attain a few inches above three feet in height, from the crown to the heel, so that they are shorter than the other man-like Apes; while the slenderness of their bodies renders their mass far smaller in proportion even to this diminished height. ”

“ Many severe conflicts they had with our Scottish tribes, before they obtained a footing in the country. But there is a new swarm of Irish Gipsies at present scattered, in bands, over Scotland, all acquainted with the Gipsy language. They are a set of the most wretched creatures on the face of the earth. A horde of them, consisting of several families, encamped, at one time, at Port Edgar, on the banks of the Forth, near South Queensferry. They had three small tents, two horses, and four asses, and trafficked in an inferior sort of earthen-ware. ”

“ I am inclined to believe that the statement of the latter will be nearest the truth; as I am convinced that the greater part of all those persons who traverse England with earthenware, in carts and waggons, are a superior class of Gipsies. Indeed, a Scottish Gipsy informed me, [93] that almost all those people are actually Gipsies. Now Mr. Hoyland takes none of these potters into his account, when he estimates the Gipsy population at only 18,000 souls. Besides, Gipsies have informed me that Ireland contains a great many of the tribe; many of whom are now finding their way into Scotland. ”

“ In that respect, they are the most exclusive people of almost any to be found in the world. We have only to consider what Freemasonry is, and we can form an idea of what Gipsyism is, in one of its aspects. It rests upon the [387] broadest of all bases—flesh and blood, a common and mysterious origin, a common language, a common history, a common persecution, and a common odium, in every part of the world. Remove the prejudice against the Gipsies, make it as respectable to be Gipsies, as the world, with its ignorance of many of the race, deem it desreputable ”

“ Ever since entering Great Britain, about the year 1506, the Gipsies have been drawing into their body the blood of the ordinary inhabitants and conforming to their ways; and so prolific has the race been, that there cannot be less than 250,000 Gipsies of all castes, colours, characters, occupations, degrees of education, culture, and position in life, in the British Isles alone, and possibly double that number. ”

“ In one Kenyah house a fantastic figure of the gibbon is carved on the ends of all the main crossbeams of the house, and the chief said that this has been their custom for many generations. He told us that it is the custom, when these beams are being put up, to kill a pig and divide its flesh among the men who are working, and no woman is allowed to come into the house until this has been done. None of his people will kill a gibbon, though other Kenyahs will kill and probably eat it. ”

“ I am convinced that one-half of the Gipsies in Scotland, at the present day, have blue eyes, instead of black ones. According to the statistical account of the parish of Borthwick, Mid-Lothian, (1839,) the Baillies, Wilsons, and Taits, at Middleton, the descendants of the old Tweed-dale Gipsies, are described as, “in general, of a colour rather cadaverous, or of a darkish pale; their cheek-bones high; their eyes small, and light coloured; their hair of a dingy white or red colour, and wiry; and their skin, drier and of a tougher texture than that of the people of this country.” ”

“ Salomon Müller, an accomplished Dutch naturalist, who lived for many years in the Eastern Archipelago, and to the result of whose personal experience I shall frequently have occasion to refer, states that the Gibbons are true mountaineers, loving the slopes and edges of the hills, though they rarely ascend beyond the limit of the fig-trees. All day long they haunt the tops of the tall trees, and though toward evening, they descend in small troops to the open ground, no sooner do they spy a man than they dart up the hillsides and disappear in the darker valleys. ”

“ We may assume, as a mathematical certainty, that Gipsydom, in a refined form, is in existence in the descendants of these families, particularly in such of them as were connected with this Gipsy family by the female side. [278]
[409] A person who has never considered this subject, or any other cognate to it, may imagine that a Gipsy reproaches himself with his own blood. Pshaw! Where will you find a man, or a tribe of men, under the heavens, that will do that? It is not in human nature to do it. All men venerate their ancestors, whoever they have been. ”

“ We cannot institute any comparison between the introduction of the Gipsies and the Huguenots, the last body of foreigners that entered Great Britain, relative to the destiny of the respective foreign elements. For the Huguenots were not a race, as distinguished from every other creature in the world, but a religious party, taking refuge among a people of cognate blood and language, and congenial religious feelings and faith ”

“ If two such European-like Gipsies marry, some of their children will take after the Gipsy, and be pretty, even very, dark, and others after the white race. In crossing a second time with full white blood, the issue will take still more after the white race. Still, the Gipsy cannot be crossed altogether out; he will come up, but of course in a modified form. Should the white blood be of a dark complexion and hair, and have no tendency, from its ancestry, to turn to fair, in its descent, then the issue between it and the Gipsy will always be dusky. ”

“ When they descend to the ground—which they must often do in order to obtain water—they frequently walk in the upright posture, either with the hands crossed behind the neck, or with the knuckles resting on the ground. Their usual food consists of leaves and fruits. Gibbons may be divided into two groups, the one represented by the siamang, Hylobates (Symphalangus) syndactylus, of Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula, and the other by a number of closely allied species. ”

“ The fact of any one "going over to Rome" is too common an occurrence nowadays to attract notice. But in the eighteenth century it was a rare and startling phenomenon. Gibbon's father, who was "neither a bigot nor a philosopher," was shocked and astonished by his "son's strange departure from the religion of his [18] country." He divulged the secret of young Gibbon's conversion, and "the gates of Magdalen College were for ever shut" against the latter's return. They really needed no shutting at all. By the fact of his conversion to Romanism he had ceased to be a member of the University. ”

“ I heard of one, in a very respectable family, who was constantly boasting of her ancient and high descent; her father being a Baillie, and her mother a Faa—the two principal families in Scotland. Some of those persons who sell gingerbread at fairs, or what the country-people call rowly-powly-men, are also of the Gipsy race. Almost all these individuals hawking earthen-ware through the country, with carts, and a large proportion of those hawking japan and white-iron goods, are Gipsies. ”

“ Some of the Gipsies have, doubtless, been hanged; but, on the other hand, many of the Negroes have been worked to death. There is a great difference, however, between the wild, independent Gipsy race and the Negroes in the New World. I should not suppose that the Gipsy race in Europe and America can be less than 4,000,000. It embraces, for certainty, as in Scotland, men ranging in character and position from a pillar of the Church down to a common tinker. ”

“ Let the name of Gipsy be as much respected, in Scotland, as it is now despised, and the community would stare to see the civilized Gipsies make their appearance; they would come buzzing out, like bees, emerging even from places where a person, not in the secret, never would have dreamt of.
If we consider, in a fair and philosophical manner, the origin of these people, we will find many excuses for the position which their ancestors have occupied. They were a tribe of men wandering upon the face of the earth, over which they have spread, as one wave follows and urges on another. ”

“ This much is certain, that they have the utmost confidence in their incognito, as regards their descent, personal feelings, and exclusively private associations. The word “Gipsy,” to be applied to them by strangers, frightens them, in contemplation, far more than it does the children of the ordinary natives; for they imagine it a dreadful thing to be known to their neighbours as Gipsies. Still, they have never occupied any other position; they have been born in it, and reared in it; it has even been the nature of the race, from the very first, always to “work in the dark.” ”

“ 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 ”

“ A female of the Hainan gibbon (H. hainanus) in confinement changed from uniform sooty-black (without the white frontal band of the black phase of the hulock) to puce-grey; but it is probable that this was only an individual, or at most a sexual, peculiarity. The range of the genus extends from the southern bank of the Bramaputra in Assam to southern China, the Malay Peninsula, Java, Sumatra and Borneo. ”

“ The gibbon, better adapted to biped progression, and having a less heavy jaw, has no skull-crests. Further, with it, the ventricles of Morgagni, that is to say, the little pouches situated behind the vocal cord in the larynx, never develop (except in one species, Hylobates syndactylus) into enormous air-sacs as in the orang-utan. In this respect, the gibbon approaches much nearer to man than the other anthropoids, but it is also more distinguished from him than the others by the excessive length of the arms, or, to be more exact, of the pectoral limbs. ”

“ Borrow seems to have associated 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 assists them to a very limited extent, and no further.”
Might it not be in Spain as in Great Britain? Even in England, those that pass 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. ”

“ The Gibbons (except the Siamang) have no laryngeal sacs. The stomach closely resembles the human organ.
The Gibbons are very delicate, and rarely live long in confinement, even in their own country. They are in general highly intelligent, very gentle, and become most affectionate and engaging animals if kindly treated. They are, however, occasionally irascible and ill-tempered, especially when adult. ”