as a medley of races. Africa, Asia, Europe, and even America, have in turn been considered their mother country A theorist hazards the conjecture that the Titans and giants of antiquity, having emigrated to the Western Continent along with the shepherd kings of Egypt, built the ruined cities of Central America, erected the mysterious works found upon our continent, and finally returned to the Old World as gipsies. One author supposes the gipsies to be descendants of Cain, condemned to roam over the earth like the wandering Jew; another contends that they are the children of the Canaanites expelled thence by Joshua. Zanguebar, Thrace, Asia Minor, the Caucasus, Mesopotamia, and many other countries, have in turn been assigned the gipsies as a birth-place. They have been conjectured to be an ancient nomadic people mentioned by Herodotus, Scythians, descendants of the ancient Dacians, Helots, and Saracens. The Chaldeans studied the stars, therefore the gipsies were Chaldeans. Faquirs and Dervishes are wandering vagabonds, therefore the gipsies were Faquirs and Dervishes. The Satyrs and Bacchantes danced and drank to intoxication, therefore the gipsies were Satyrs and Bacchantes. VOL. XIII.-23 seen in the hovels of the very poor is to be regarded in some degree as a compensation for their poverty. A wise Providence may thus equalize the amount of happiness to be enjoyed by the high and the low, it being granted to the former in material blessings and surroundings, to the latter in the treasures of parental and filial love. Should this view be correct the gipsies are twice blessed, being prolific beyond comparison. Neither will any one accuse them of investing their capital of human happiness in the perishable goods of this world, in anything, indeed, beyond the charms of their nomadic life and the social pleasures of the family and the tribe, which are heightened by the complete isolation of the gipsies from the rest of mankind. The gipsy lives for himself and his race. It is related of the gipsy bands of Claude Thibert, which formerly wandered through France, that when one of their women was about to be confined, she stopped for that purpose in the nearest village. The infant was dressed, baptized, and left in the care of a nurse, three or four month's expense being provided for, and the remainder promised. The mother then rejoined her band, not to be seen again, perhaps, for years. The child, however, was watched by the gipsies, and when arrived at an age to be serviceable to them was sure to be demanded back or stolen. In Hungary and Transylvania the gipsy women bring forth in a tent, in the forest, or wherever they may happen to be when seized with the pains of labor. As they are well formed, and affected by none of the enervating influences of civilized life, the process of parturition is both easy and natural. For want of a proper vessel a hole is dug in the ground and filled with cold water, in which the new-born child is washed. This done, it is wrapped in the old rags which maternal foresight has taken care to provide. In the course of a week the mother is able to resume the active duties of life. The gipsies of India habituate their children from the earliest infancy to the hard existence for which nature seems to have intended them. The day after her confinement the mother is obliged to scour the forest in search of provisions. Before setting out she suckles the new-born infant, digs a little trench in the ground for a cradle, wherein she deposits the little one naked upon the bare earth, and then goes with her husband and the rest of the family in quest of food to supply the wants of the day. This is not quickly obtained, and it is evening before they return. From three days' age the child is accustomed to solid nutriment. In order to inure it early to the rigor of the seasons, it is washed every day in dew collected from the plants. Until the infant is able to accompany the mother it remains exposed in this manner from morning to night, perhaps, in the recesses of the forests, to the rain, the sun, and all the inclemency of the weather, stretched out uncovered in the little tomb which is its only cradle.* A peculiar, almost an individual interest, attaches itself to wandering nations. With our love of the family fireside, the spot that gave us birth, and the immoveable comforts of civilization, we cannot appreciate their wayward, nomadic life. How many of our pleasures are unknown to the dwellers in tents! How many of their enjoyments are equally unknown to us! The feeling of personal independence is more strongly developed in them; that sentiment which with us embraces home, country, and the world, being in their fluctuating society confined to the family and the tribe. I remember a story which the peasants of Lower Hungary often relate at their winter evening firesides. A young nobleman happened to meet in a band of gipsies a girl of fifteen years, for whom he at once conceived a romantic attachment. The parents, with little of the affection for their daughter characteristic of their people, or flattered by the splendid opportunity, parted with the fair child of Roma in consideration of an old horse and a few sheep. But what was at first a caprice of the imagination, perhaps an instinct of passion, became a more serious matter. The lover sought to become the husband, and the beautiful mistress consented to be the bride. How fabulous the good fortune she had experienced in the course of a few weeks! How great the transition from the smoky tent of her father to the castle of her husband, where she was cherished with tenderest care! Yet the beautiful gipsy was not happy. She sought in vain to repress the deep melancholy manifesting itself in her languid Abbe Dubois. expression. When the devoted husband anxiously asked her why she no longer sang as on the day when he first saw her, and why her eyes had so lost their brilliancy, and her lips their freshness, she looked away toward the fields and forests and smiled, but the smile was as sad as it could be. In her great castle, in the midst of her gardens and flowers, her mind was agitated by the remembrance of other scenes and other times. She sighed for the gipsy court, for the lowly hearth around which the children of Roma gather in the evening after their adventurous wanderings, for the songs and recitals that make joyous their humble meal, for the vicissitudes of to-day and the untried chances of to-morrow. When her husband went to the chase, or was occupied with his affairs, the unhappy wife sat long hours in silence by the window, her eyes wandering toward the dusty paths she had trodden so gaily with naked feet, and the villages whence she had brought with pride the fruit of her gipsy arts. Now and then she thought she could hear one of those wild and weird songs which had been the lullaby of her infancy, the sound of the bow gliding sweetly over the cords of the scheltra, or the melodious breathings of the noia; then her bosom swelled, her eyes sparkled. She would open the window with a cry of joy, and fall back in her seat, silent and depressed. What had charmed her ear was not the music of her people; it was only the cry of a bird, or the murmur of the wind through the gently-moving treetops. One day, when seated thus alone and lost in melancholy reveries, she suddenly arose and ran to the balcony. This time her senses had not deceived her; she recognized distinctly the tones and accents that she could never forget. A band of gipsies was passing by at no great distance from the castle. An old woman who resembled her mother was seated on a cart, and another cart followed, loaded with sacks and baskets; a child led along a patient donkey by the bridle; men of the tawny figure and burning eye, peculiar to the race of Roma, escorted the picturesque convoy. One of the latter, gayer and younger than his companions, held in his hand the joyous schetra, touched its strings, and sang as he went one of the popular romances of his nation: Free is the eagle in the air, Maiden, wilt thou live in my dwelling? The untamed horse leaves not the green prairie for a glittering harness, The eagle leaves not the rocks of the mountain for a gilded cage, The child of Roma leaves not the liberty of the fields for garments of zibeline and necklaces of golden ducats. Maiden, wilt thou go with me? My pearls are my white teeth, Yuchza! yuchza! Free is the eagle in the air, With the first words of this weird song the gipsy experienced a kind of electrical emotion, and burst into tears. At the wild, sonorous cry which terminated the last refrain she darted forth from the castle, and ran to join the wandering troop. When her husband returned he sought in vain for her in the castle and alleys of the park; no one had seen her depart; no one knew what had become of her. The instinct of the heart revealed to him the resolution she had taken. He set out in pursuit of the gipsies, whom a peasant had seen pass by. At last, after three days of anxious suspense, he arrived in the evening, worn out with fatigue, at the border of a lawn where the gipsies had encamped. By the light of a fire which a child now and then stirred, he observed a man and woman seated, apart from the others, side by side. Gliding carefully through the underbrush so as not to be observed, he approached within a few steps of the solitary couple. It was his own wife, whom the wandering 348 RUINED FORTRESS IN UPPER HUNGARY. violinist held folded in his arms, and who, | of Godol; night came on, and the wind while receiving the kisses of her tawny lover, related to him how sad and lonely she had been in the splendid castle. The husband returned silent and brokenhearted to his desolate home. From that time no one of his servants has seen him smile; no female has been suffered to enter his lonely apartments; and when a band of gipsies happen to pass by he locks himself up in his chamber, and remains there until they are far away. In addition to singular tastes and epicurean tendencies, the charge of cannibalism has often been brought against the gipsies. It was formerly said of them that they had a particular relish for the delicate tissues of youths and maidens, from the ages of twelve to eighteen; and that there were those among them who did not hesitate to eat their own fathers and mothers. During the last century gipsies were, in numerous instances, hung, beheaded, and quartered for this offense. I should notice, however, that the same charge had previously been brought against the Jews, between whose history and that of the gipsies there are many traits of resemblance. Quiñones states that "he learned (he does not say from whom, but probably from Trajardo) that there was a shepherd of the city of Guadix, in Spain, who once lost his way in the wild sierra blew cold; he wandered about until he The persecution of the zigeuner of Hungary, during the last century, was not unlike that of the witches of New England. Executions took place at Frauenmark, Kamzer, and Esaburg in the year 1782, and many were imprisoned. An old record states: "Her majesty, Maria Theresa, not thinking it possible that the people in confinement could have been guilty of such enormous crimes, sent a commissioner thither from the court, to examine minutely into the affair. On his return it was confirmed that they were really man-eaters, and that there are actually among them some who have killed and eaten their own fathers." Notwithstanding these relations, and the startling accounts to the same effect given by Griseleni, the gipsies were probably never cannibals, except in cases of necessity. The persons executed in Hungary were arrested on suspicion of theft. It was inferred, from the proceedings, that they had been guilty of murder. When questioned in this respect, they confessed the act, from an idea of heroism, as was afterward determined, They promised even to show the bodies; but on arriving on the ground not a trace of them could be found, which fact clearly proved, in the minds of the judges, that the gipsy culprits had eaten them, and they were executed forthwith for cannibalism. I have already alluded to the Bedouin affection of the gipsies for life in the open air, but they prefer to have their tents or cabins near some large town; for, according to one of their maxims, " money is in the city, not in the country." On the approach of cold weather the gipsies withdraw to their nomadic winterquarters, or, like hibernating animals, retire to their holes in the earth. In Hungary they usually make an excavation in some sunny hillside, and complete their wretched abode by laying a few sticks across the top, or setting up a few boards, so as to meet above, which are covered with earth or straw, leaving merely a hole in the roof, through which the smoke can escape. In the Danubian principalities the houses of the tsigans, or gipsies, are subterranean, as are also the kolibes of the Wallachian peasants. The gipsies who have adopted stationary life live in more comfortable dwellings. The idea of separate apartments rarely enters the minds of those wandering architects, who, for the most part, build only for a single season. But when such is the case, it is merely the partitioning off, in a rude manner, of part of the chamber for the antiquated jade whose business it is to carry from place to place the personal effects and household gods of the family. Their articles of fur |