The following is in Drake's "Eboracum," p. 7, Appendix. "Bar-guest of York. I have been so frightened with stories of this bar-guest, when I was a child, that I cannot help throwing away an etymology upon it. I suppose: it comes from the A.S. buph, a town, and gart, a Ghost, and so signifies a town sprite. N.B. that zart is in the Belgic and Teut. softened into gheest and geyst. Dr. Langwith."

In Dr. Akenside's "Pleasures of Imagination," b. i. we read ::

"Hence by night The village matron, round the blazing hearth, Suspends the infant audience with her tales, Breathing astonishment! of witching rhymes,

And evil spirits of the death-bed call
To him who robb'd the widow, and devour'd
The orphan's portion: of unquiet souls
Ris'n from the grave to ease the heavy guilt
Of deeds in life conceal'd: of shapes that
walk

At dead of night, and clank their chains, and

wave

The torch of hell around the murd'rer's bed.
At every solemn pause the crowd recoil
Gazing each other speechless, and congeal'd
With shivering sighs; till eager for th' event
Around the beldame all erect they hang
Each trembling heart with grateful terrors
quell'd."

THE Gipsies, as it should seem by some striking proofs derived from their language,(1) came originally from Hindostan, where they are supposed to have been of the lowest class of Indians, namely Parias, or, as they are called in Hindostan, Suders. They are thought to have migrated about A. D. 1408 or 1409, when Timur Beg ravaged India for the purpose of spreading the Mahometan religion. On this occasion so many thousands were made slaves and put to death, that an universal panic took place, and a very great number of terrified inhabitants endeavoured to save themselves by flight. As every part towards the north and east was beset by the enemy, it is most probable that the country below Multan, to the mouth of the Indus, was the first asylum and rendezvous of the fugitive Suders. This is called the country of Zinganen. Here they were safe, and remained so till Timur returned from his victories on the Ganges. Then it was that they first entirely quitted the country, and probably with them a considerable number of the natives, which will explain the meaning of their original name. By what track they came to us cannot be ascertained. If they went straight through the southern Persian deserts of Sigistan, Makran, and Kirman, along the Persian Gulf to the mouth of the Euphrates, from thence they might get, by Bassora, into the

great deserts of Arabia, afterwards into Arabia Petræa, and so arrive in Egypt by the Isthmus of Suez. They must certainly have been in Egypt (2) before they reached us, (3) otherwise it is incomprehensible how the report arose that they were Egyptians.(*)

us,

that

Blackstone, in his "Commentaries," (a) has the following account of them: "They are a strange kind of commonwealth among themselves of wandering impostors and jugglers, who first made their appearance in Germany about the beginning of the sixteenth century. Munster, it is true, who is followed and relied upon by Spelman, fixes the time of their first appearance to the year 1417: (5) but as he owns that the first he ever saw were in 1529, it was probably an error of the press for 1517, especially as other historians inform when Sultan Selim conquered Egypt, in 1517, several of the natives refused to submit to the Turkish yoke, and revolted under one Zinganeus, whence the Turks call them Zinganees; but being at length surrounded and banished, they agreed to disperse in small parties all over the world, where their supposed skill in the black art gave them an universal reception in that age of superstition and credulity. In the compass of a very few years they gained such a number of idle prose

(a) Edit. 8vo. Dublin, vol. iv. p. 165.

lytes (6) (who imitated their language and complexion, and betook themselves to the same arts of chiromancy, begging and pilfering) that they became troublesome and even formidable to most of the states of Europe.(7) Hence they were expelled from France in the year 1560 and from Spain 1591:(8) and the government of England took the alarm much earlier, for in 1530 they are described, stat. 22 Hen. VIII. c. x., as an ' outlandish people calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft, nor feat of merchandize, who have come into this realm and gone from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company, and used great, subtle, and crafty means to deceive the people, and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies.' Wherefore they are directed to avoid the realm, and not to return under pain of imprisonment and forfeiture of their goods and chattells; and upon their trials for any felony which they may have committed, they shall not be intitled to a jury de medietate linguæ. And afterwards it was enacted by statutes 1 and 2 Ph. and Mary, c. iv., and 5 Eliz. c. xx., that if any such persons shall be imported into the kingdom, the importers shall forfeit forty pounds. And if the Egyptians themselves remain one month in the kingdom, or if any person, being fourteen years old, whether natural-born subject or stranger, which hath been seen or found in the fellowship of such Egyptians, or which hath disguised him or herself like them, shall remain in the same one month at one or several times, it is felony without benefit of clergy. And Sir Matthew Hale informs us that at one Suffolk assize no less than thirteen persons were executed upon these statutes a few years before the Restoration. But,

to the honour of our national humanity, there are no instances more modern than this of carrying these laws into practice." Thus far Blackstone.

In Scotland they seem to have enjoyed some share of indulgence: for a writ of privy seal, dated 1594, supports JOHN FAW, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt, in the execution of justice on his company and folk, conform to the laws of Egypt, and in punishing certain persons there named, who rebelled against him, left him, robbed him, and refused to return home with him. James's subjects are commanded to assist in apprehending them, and in assisting Faw and his adherents to return home. There is a like writ in his favour from Mary Queen of Scots, 1553; and in 1554 he obtained a pardon for the murder of Nunan Small.) So that it appears he had staid long in Scotland, and perhaps some time in England,(10) and from him this kind of strolling people might receive the name of Faw Gang, which they still retain.(11)

Since the repeal of the act against this class of people, which, if I mistake not, took place in 1788, they are said not to be so numerous as before they still however are to be met with, and still pretend to understand palmistry and telling fortunes, nor do I believe that their notions of meum and tuum are one whit less vague than before.(12)

Perhaps, in the course of time, they will either degenerate into common beggars, or be obliged to take to a trade or business for a livelihood. The great increase of knowledge in all ranks of people has rendered their pretended arts of divination of little benefit to them, at least by no means to procure them subsistence.

(1) See "A Dissertation on the Gipsies, being an Historical Enquiry concerning the manner of Life, Economy, Customs, and Conditions of these People in Europe, and their Origin, written in German by Heinrich Moritz Gottlieb Grellman, translated into English by Matthew Raper, Esq., F.R.S. and

A. S.," 4to. Lond. 1787, dedicated to Sir Joseph Banks, Bart., P.R.Ś.

It seems to be well proved in this learned work that these Gipsies came originally from Hindostan. A very copious catalogue is given of Gipsy and Hindostan words collated, by which appears that every third Gipsy word

is likewise an Hindostan one, or still more, that out of every thirty Gipsy words eleven or twelve are constantly of Hindostan. This agreement will appear uncommonly great, if we recollect that the above words have only been learned from the Gipsies within these very few years, consequently after a separation of near four complete centuries from Hindostan, their supposed native country, among people who talked languages totally different, and in which the Gipsies themselves conversed; for under the constant and so long continued influx of these languages, their own must necessarily have suffered great alteration.

:

In this learned work there is also a comparison of the Gipsies with the above caste of Suders but I lay the greatest stress upon those proofs which are deduced from the similarity of the languages. In the supplement it is added that Mr. Marsden, whose judgment and knowledge in such matters are much to be relied upon, has collected, from the Gipsies here, as many words as he could get, and that by correspondence from Constantinople he has procured a collection of words used by the Cingaris thereabouts: and these, together with the words given by Ludolph in his "Historia Ethiopica," compared with the Hindostan vulgar language, show it to be the same that is spoken by the Gipsies and in Hindostan. See in the seventh volume of the "Archæologia," p. 388, Observations on the Language of the Gipsies, by Mr. Marsden; and ibid. p. 387, Collections on the Gipsy Language, by Jacob Bryant, Esq.

In the above work we read that, in 1418, the Gipsies first arrived in Switzerland near Zurich and other places, to the number, men, women, and children, of fourteen thousand.

The subsequent passage exhibits a proof of a different tendency. "In a late meeting of the Royal Society of Gottingen, Professor Blumenbach laid before the members a second decad of the crania of persons of different nations contrasted with each other, in the same manner as in the first, and ranged according to the order observed by him in his other works. In the first variety was the cranium of a real Gipsy, who died in prison at Clausenburg, communicated by Dr. Patacki of that place. The resemblance between this and that of the Egyptian mummy in the first decad was very strik

ing. Both differed essentially from the sixtyfour crania of other persons belonging to foreign nations, in the possession of the author: a circumstance which, among others, tends to confirm the opinion of Professor Meiners, that the Hindoos, from whom Grellman derives the Gipsies, came themselves originally from Egypt." "British Critic." Foreign Catalogue, vol. ii. p. 226.

See upon the subject of Gipsies the following books: Pasquier," Recherches de la France," p. 392; "Dictionnaire des Origines," v. Bohemiens; De Pauw," Recherches sur les Egyptiens," tom. i.p. 169; "Camerarii Horæ Subsecivæ;" "Gent. Mag." 1783, vol. liii. p. 1009; Ibid. 1787, vol. lvii. p. 897. Anecdotes of the Fife Gipsies will be found in "Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine," vol. ii. pp. 282, 523. On the Gipsies of Hesse Darmstadt, ibid. vol. ii. p. 409. Other notices concerning the Scottish Gipsies in the same work, vol. i. pp. 43, 65, 66, 154, 167.

(2) Harrison, in his Description of England prefixed to "Holinshed's Chronicle," 1587, p. 183, describing the various sorts of cheats practised by the voluntary poor, after enumerating those who maim or disfigure their bodies by sores, or counterfeit the guise of labourers or serving-men, or mariners seeking for ships which they have not lost, to extort charity, adds: "It is not yet full three score years since this trade began; but how it hath prospered since that time it is easie to judge, for they are now supposed of one sex and another to amount unto above ten thousand persons, as I have heard reported. Moreover, in counterfeiting the Egyptian Roges, they have devised a language among themselves which they name Canting, but others pedlers French, a speach compact thirty years since of English and a great number of odd words of their own devising, without all order or reason: and yet such is it as none but themselves are able to understand. The first deviser thereof was hanged by the neck, a just reward no doubt for his deceits, and a common end to all of that profession."

The beggars, it is observable, two or three centuries ago, used to proclaim their want by a wooden dish with a moveable cover, which they clacked, to show that their vessel was empty. This appears from a passage quoted

on another occasion by Dr. Grey. Dr. Grey's assertion may be supported by the following passage in an old comedy called the "Family of Love," 1608:

"Can you think I get my living by a bell and a clack-dish?

By a bell and a clack-dish? How's that?
Why, begging, Sir," &c.

And by a stage direction in the second part of "King Edward IV." 1619: "Enter Mrs. Blague, very poorly,-begging with her basket and a clack-dish." See Reed's edition of Shaksp. 1803, vol. vi. p. 325.

(3) Sir Thomas Browne, in his " Vulgar Errors," p. 286, gives this general account of the Gipsies: "They are a kind of counterfeit Moors, to be found in many parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa. They are commonly supposed to have come from Egypt, from whence they derive themselves. Munster discovered, in the letters and pass which they obtained from Sigismund the Emperor, that they first came out of Lesser Egypt; that having turned apostates from Christianity and relapsed into Pagan rites, some of every family were enjoined this penance, to wander about the world. Aventinus tells us, that they pretend, for this vagabond course, a judgment of God upon their forefathers, who refused to entertain the Virgin Mary and Jesus, when she fled into their country."

(*) Yet Bellonius, who met great droves of Gipsies in Egypt in villages on the banks of the Nile, where they were accounted strangers and wanderers from foreign parts, as with us, affirms that they are no Egyptians. (Observat. lib. ii.)

It seems pretty clear that the first of the Gipsies were Asiatic, brought hither by the crusaders, on their return from the holy wars, but to these it is objected that there is no trace of them to be found in history at that time.

Ralph Volaterranus affirms that they first proceeded, or strolled, from among the Uxi, a people of Persia. Sir Thomas Browne cites Polydore Vergil as accounting them originally Syrians: Philip Bergoinas as deriving them from Chaldea: Æneas Sylvius, as from some part of Tartary: Bellonius, as from Wallachia and Bulgaria and Aventinus as fetching them

from the confines of Hungary. He adds that 'they have been banished by most Christian princes. The great Turk at least tolerates them near the imperial city: he is said to employ them as spies: they were banished as such by the Emperor Charles the Fifth."

(5) Sir Thomas Browne, ut supra, p. 287, "Their first appearance was in Gersays: many since the year 1400. Nor were they observed before in other parts of Europe, as is deducible from Munster, Genebrard, Crantsius, and Ortelius."

(5) Spelman's portrait of the Gipsy fraternity in his time, which seems to have been taken ad vivum, is as follows: 66 EGYPTIANI. Erronum Impostorumque genus nequissimum : in Continente ortum, sed ad Britannias nostras et Europam reliquam pervolans :-nigredine deformes, excocti sole, immundi veste, et usu rerum omnium fœdi.-Fœminæ, cum stratis et parvulis, jumento invehuntur. Literas circumferunt Principum, ut innoxius illis permittatur transitus.-Oriuntur quippe et in nostra et in omni Regione, spurci hujusmodi nebulones, qui sui similes in Gymnasium sceleris adsciscentes; vultum, cultum, moresque supradictos sibi inducunt. Linguam (ut exotici magis videantur) fictitiam blaterant, provinciasque vicatim pervagantes,. auguriis et furtis, imposturis & technarum millibus plebeculam rodunt et illudunt, linguam hanc Germani Rotwelch, quasi rubrum Wallicum, id est Barbarismum; Angli Canting nuncupant."

In "The Art of Jugling and Legerdemaine," by S. R., 4to. 1612, signat. B b, is the following account: "These kinde of people about an hundred yeares agoe, about the twentieth yeare of King Henry the Eight, began to gather an head, at the first heere about the southerne parts, and this (as I am informed, and as I can gather) was their beginning. Certaine Egiptians banished their cuntry (belike not for their good conditions) arrived heere in England, who, being excellent in quaint tricks and devises, not known heere at that time among us, were esteemed and had in great admiration, for what with strangeness of their attire and garments, together with their sleights and legerdemaines, they were spoke of farre and neere, insomuch that many of our English loyterers joyned with them, and in time learned

their crafte and cosening. The speach which they used was the right Egyptian language, with whome our Englishmen conversing with, at last learned their language. These people continuing about the cuntry in this fashion, practising their cosening art of fast and loose and legerdemaine, purchased themselves great credit among the cuntry people, and got much by palmistry and telling of fortunes: insomuch they pitifully cosened the poore contry girles, both of money, silver spones, and the best of their apparrell, or any good thing they could make, onely to heare their fortunes.". "This Giles Hather (for so was his name) together with his whore Kit Calot, in short space had following them a pretty traine, he terming himself the King of the Egiptians, and she the Queene, ryding about the cuntry at their pleasure uncontrolld." He then mentions the statute against them of the 1st and 2nd of Philip and Mary, on which he observes: "But what a number were executed presently upon this statute, you would wonder: yet, notwithstanding, all would not prevaile: but still they wandred, as before, up and downe, and meeting once in a yeere at a place appointed sometimes at the Devils A— in Peake in Darbishire, and otherwhiles at Ketbrooke by Blackheath, or elsewhere, as they agreed still at their meeting." Speaking of his own time, he adds: "These fellows, seeing that no profit comes by wandring, but hazard of their lives, do daily decrease and breake off their wonted society, and betake themselves, many of them, some to be pedlers, some tinkers, some juglers, and some to one kinde of life or other.

(7) Twiss, in his "Travels," gives the following account of them in Spain: "They are very numerous about and in Murcia, Cordova, Cadiz, and Ronda. The race of these vagabonds is found in every part of Europe; the French call them Bohemiens; the Italians Zingari; the Germans, Ziegenners; the Dutch, Heydenen (Pagans); the Portuguese, Siganos; and the Spaniards, Gitanos; in Latin, Cingari. Their language, which is peculiar to themselves, is everywhere so similar, that they undoubtedly are all derived from the same source. They began to appear in Europe in the fifteenth century, and are probably a mixture of Egyptians and Ethiopians. The

VOL. III.

men are all thieves, and the women libertines. They follow no certain trade, and have no fixed religion. They do not enter into the order of society, wherein they are only tolerated. It is supposed there are upwards of 40,000 of them in Spain, great numbers of whom are innkeepers in the villages and small towns, and are everywhere fortune-tellers. In Spain they are not allowed to possess any lands, or even to serve as soldiers. They marry among themselves, stroll in troops about the country, and bury their dead under water. They are contented if they can procure food by showing feats of dexterity, and only pilfer to supply themselves with the trifles they want; so that they never render themselves liable to any severer chastisement than whipping for having stolen chickens, linen, &c. Most of the men have a smattering of physic and surgery, and are skilled in tricks performed by slight of hand. The foregoing account is partly extracted from 'Le Voyageur François,' vol. xvi., but the assertion that they are all so abandoned as that author says is too general."

(8) In a provincial council held at Tarragona in the year 1591 there was the following decree against them: "Curandum etiam est ut publici Magistratus eos coerceant qui se Ægyptiacos vel Bohemianos vocant, quos vix constat esse Christianos, nisi ex eorum relatione; cum tamen sint mendaces, fures, et deceptores, et aliis sceleribus multi eorum assueti."

The Gipsies are universally considered in the same light, i. e. of cheats and pilferers. Witness the definition of them in Dufresne, and the curious etchings of them by Callot. "Ægyptiaci," says Dufresne, "vagi homines, harioli ac fatidici, qui hac & illac errantes ex manus inspectione futura præsagire se fingunt, ut de marsupiis incautorum nummos corrogent." The engraver does not represent them in a more favourable light than the lexicographer, for besides his inimitable delineations of their dissolute manner of living, he has accompanied his plates with verses which are very far from celebrating their honesty.

Pasquier, in his "Recherches de la France," has the following account of them: "On August 17, 1427, came to Paris twelve Penitents (Penanciers) as they called themselves, viz. a duke, an earl, and ten men, all

E