Public ledger. [volume] (Memphis, Tenn.) 1865-1893, 1872-03-30
The Glpsies Of Europe.


A correspondent of the Buffalo Cou-
rier, writing from Stuttgart, Germany,
gives the following account of that
strangely interesting and mysterious
race--the Gipsies of Europe:
In the quaint and lovely little town
of Constadt, four miles from here, as
sembles next week the septennial parli.
ament of the vagabonds of the world
that nation without countryside peo-
pie of Romany Rye. i drove down
there and had short interview with
their king, Joseph Reinhardt, old,
blind and eighty-fve. l had intended
to have left for Dresden on Monday,
but will COW defer my departure for
week, to witness one of the rarest sights
in Christendom, as surely this meeting
of the Bohemian senate must be. What
can they have to talk about? No legis-
lation against vagrancy surely-no
statute against poaching will be enacted.
tried to ask old Joseph but his famil-
iar--a woman of hard visage and lean of
limb (which she seemed to have no SCI u
Piles about showing), curtly said if | was
one of them would know; and broad
piece of silver was wasted in trying to
start her tongue talking of themselves.
Who are these Gipsies or Egyptians,
is a problem. Like Egypt of old, they
have "place in history" but unlike
her they form no connecting link sufficient
to fill student with enough enthusiasm
to trace their rise. Occult, mysterious,
inscrutable to historians aud statesmen,
infinitely perplexing to magistrate and
policeman, they are the crux Of ethnolo-
gists and the despair of religious mis-
sionaries. We are told that they are
remnant of some lost " Aryan tribe,
some low caste sect from India, but
where do we find their prototype? The
question is not so much whether they
are Indians, as ethnologists say, or
Egyptians, as they claim-true descend
ants of Rameres. They are the real
human fly in amber, and the conundrum
is, how did they get here?
1t is but four centuries ago that a band
of three hundred, the first ever men
toned by historian or chronicler-
ragged, dirty, and larcenous, appeared
on the banks Of the Elbe, bringing to the
people of these Hanse towns strong
letters of recommendation (afterward
found to be forged) from the Emperor
Sigismund. They gave out that they
were doomed to wander up and down on
the face of the earth as punishment
for having apostatized from christianity
to paganism, and the simple-faithed,
credulous, kind-hearted village people
treated them at first with much tender
I'D h,ak fhah hnc falt ~
was abused everything portable was
stolen, patience ceased to be a virtue,
and charity godliness, so the majority
we're hanged, and the remainder literally
pulled up stakes" and left. In Saxony
and Switzerland they Jared worse.
Michael, duke of Egypt, their leader,
with the remnant Of the band, journeyed
into Bavaria and attempted to play
new dodge; that they had been crowded
out Of Asia Minor by the Turks, only to
find that one may go further and fare
worse.
But, for all their prosecutions, they
throve apace, multiplying like sheep,
and the Grand Chosroe hourished from
generation to generation. Kings of
Gallilee and dukes of Egypt delied ex-
tinction, and a new emperor Of TURNS
las the king of them all was called was
always found ready to occupy the throne
of his predecessor broken on the wheel
By the multitude regarded as sorcerers
and wizards, by magistrates as vaga-
bonds and thieves, Malthusian doctrines
we're practieed upon them without
murmur from priest prince or peasant.
Charles V. banished them from the Low
Countries, forbidding them to return
under pain of DEATH In 1916 Bohe-
mian was condemned by the court of
Utrecht to be scourged till the blood
came, to have his nostrils torn with hot
pincers, and to be expelled from the ter
rtory of the province; yet the poor
wretch made his appearance soon after
ward on the frontier, entreating that he
might be hanged-a request that was
forthwith granted. Burning alive was
the punishment meted out to the recall
citrant gypsy women. They were not
locked upon as human beings, and it is
a matter of authentic record that one
of the petty sovereigns in Germany,
when out hunting on one occasion, set
his hounds to run down gypsy whom
he found in wood nursing baby.
As for Spain, the holy inquisition
made the Peninsula for two hundred
years one vast terrestrial inferno for the
Gifanes. The Azucena of fiction was
but type of thousands Of actual mar
tyrs; and group of Gipsies to be burnt,
whipped or branded was a standing dish
at every auto de .fs. Yet Spain never
ceased to swarm with them. From the
time they first entered France, in l422,
calling themselves Saraoens, down to
l7s5, when the laws against them were
repealed, they were hunted remorseless-
ly, and increased in a corresponding |
ratio, but since then have been steadily !
decreasing. The scourge, the gibbet and |
the fagot were powerless; but education,
the scientific development of quackery, |
and the mathematical precision of hum
bug, is siosly but surely starving them.