Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1890-03-01
Gypsy LIFE IN SPAIN.
FOrtune-Telling Abandoned, RomaDy
People Take up New Trades.
MANY 60 UPON THE STAGE,
While Others Earn Honest Dollars at
Various Useful Occupations.
PROGRESS IN MORALS AND WEALTH
MANY 60 UPON THE STAGE,
PROGRESS IN MORALS AND WEALTH

PROGRESS IN MORALS AND WEALTH
WRITTEN FOR THE DIsPATCH.J
BARCELONA, SPAIN, February 2O.-It is
now over 30 years since the English mis-
sionary George Borrow, in his fruitless
effort to circulate the Protestant Bible
among the Gitani or Gipsies of Spain, got
into all sorts of difficulties with the Spanish
authorities for his, to them, inexplicable and
apparently evil-disposed consorting with
these irrepressible vagrants, and his half
mysterious and always stubborn and defiant
attitude toward existing customs, laws and
beliefs. His confession was a frank one
that no soul among this outlaw race was in
any degree converted or evangelical by his
efforts among them. Indeed, one may go
further, and state the concise fact that in all
his wanderings. both in Spain and England,
he never effected the conversion of Gipsy,
or came upon a Gipsy Christianized by any
other persons efforts. To one possessing
any real knowledge Of this race-the Ro-
many-it need scarcely be urged that his
failure came not so much from what ought
to be failure in any like effort to elevate the
lowly-that is, the presentation of a stony
and unwelcome theologic fact to an empty
and yearning stomach-as from the uni
versal and undeniable fact that all Gipsies
are an Interchangeable race of agnostics.
They cannot depart from that rank of
spiritual vacuity and soddenness without at
once ceasing to be Gipsies.
Except in few general race characteris-
tics, the Gipsies of Spain to-day are no
more the Glpsies of Spain of upwards half
century ago than is the Gipsy money prince,
Smith, of Honiton, England, like his father
who plated osier baskets and sold pewter
spoons among the peasants of Devonshire. or
that splendid specimen of man and Gipsy,
the honestly rich Levi Stanley, OF Ohio, like
his Ignorant progenitors among the donkeys
and rags of Kirk Yetholm, the Scottish
Gipsy Mecca Of the Cheviot hills; or indeed
than YOU are like the long-hajred, jaundiced,
fiint-hearted bigots, your forefathers, may
hap, who hanged the innocent wretches, your
other forefathers, upon Gallows Hill in
Salem.
A PROGRESSIVE PEOPLE.
The fact made clearest and plainest to me
a
sonal study of the Romany race is, that no
one interested in this strange people should
fail to recognize that even the most earnest
writer OF from half century to two centu-
ries ago, wrote from within lesser holizons
of observation than are granted to any earn
est observer of to-day; and that the Gipsies
of those days, like the peasants of those
days, were SO wretched q lot that any de-
scription of them then must necessarily be
untrue Of them now. Change, progress, ev-
olution, are true of all peoples, of all
trades professions, arts, almost of all relig-
ions. That a wonderful evolution has been
in progress among my friends, the Gipsies,
shall most sturdily claim. for 1 know it;
and nowhere on earth has it been more
marked and far-reaching than it has been in
this semi-barbaric land, where almost all
Else would seem to have retrograded or
stood still.
In 1877 my acquaintance had progressed
10 far and tavorably with Gipsies, and their
rust in me as an unvaryingly kindly dis
posed friend, had in many ways grown SO
secure, that at an encampment on the banks
# the Desplaines river, in Illinois, 1 was
and with some curious rites,
admitted to Gipsy brotherhood; that is, I
was made "Gorgio chal," or a non-Gipsy
brother. AT that momentous ceremony l
was placed in possession of three Romany
sords, which, in nearly every one of the
United States, along the hedges of England,
n the lowlands of Scotland, among the glens
IF ireland, in the canons Of Cuba,
through the Rhine valleys and Bavarian
villages, in the streets of Paris or the Leaf
illed lanes of Brittany, and, wherever 1
nave uttered them in Spain, have unre-
'ervedly opened to me the tents, huts, houses,
hearts and innermost thoughts, feelings,
md often the secret aspirations, of the
Romany people. There has been no ex-
,eption, nor single timidity or hesitancy.
MOST GENEROUS FRIENDS.
I have known the bitterest Indifference
rom pretentious Christian men in sorest
want when infinitely greater matters than
ny own success or personality were at stake;
,ut this outcast and despised race never
urned coward-friend face upon me, and
lever once upbraided me, save for not per-
hitting them to become all-suficient sue
orers. And SO when mad been among the |
Madrid Gipsies an hour, vas in possession;
Without the asking, of information where l |
hould find one who, when found, could |
ruly tell me more in another hour of Clip |
les in Spain than can be found within the |
ids of all books ever written upon the |
r Pancho Tomas; and after hasty trip |
trough Saragossa, at whose capital city the
air maid. Agustina, won Immortality of |
anne for her bravery by her dead lovers
lde in defense of her people against the
french, passed along the noble Ebro into
to the Sierra de In LENA where,
q a sunny mountain valley near the quaint
Id hilltown of Granadella, I found the
lost important and interesting Gipsy en-
had ever anywhere beheld.
Strictly speaking, it could not be called
n encampment, for while a number of
atched tents and rude wooden cabins could
e seen, the Gipsy village, with all its un-
outh scenes, occupied the site of an aban-
oned pueblo, in which perhaps 200 ruinous
ructures were still standing. These were
cry ancient. Many were utterly uninhabI-
ible, roofs or portions of the walls having
lllen in; but against the remaining walls
such most comfortable temporary huts
ad been built Some of these were curious
ldeed. Loose stones had been formed into
nd walls running at sharp angle from the
le ground up against the old side walls
ill standing. The roof was composed of
llns, or coarse cloth, running from the
round to the peaks of the temporary walls;
no the entrances to such were invariably
ON within the ruined olden habitation.
theirs were formed by thestones and mortar
ruin falling down on all sides, thus
iugly protecting some single apartment.
A CHIEFS HABITATIoN,
Most curious and suggestive of all, hint
lg to ones fancy common instinct be-
yeen these wanderers from Hindoostan and
Ie earliest house builders among the Celts
Western Europe, were seven huts, exact
lplicates of the beehive cells of B .tany,
ornwall and Ireland, OF such extraordinary
terest to archaologists. These had been
lilt OF the lighter and thinner stones, in
orizontal layers. each one slightly inward