The Bamberg herald. [volume] (Bamberg, S.C.) 1891-1972, 1915-05-20
THE WANDERING FOLK.
Gypsie> of Europe Number Nearly
100000 Souls.


temptation" says a bulletin issued
by the National Geographic society at
Washington. according to press
dispatches, this race is the only such
race. but. then. it is one OF the most
peculiar peoples in the worlds his
tory-the gypsies.
Entering :Eto the lie Of all ma
tions under the sun, yet part of no
single one; mingling themselves with
in the highest civilization. yet untet-
tered; pilgrims upon an eternal path.
yet forever true to the ties OF racial
blood and to customs whose origin
and significance have been fully for
gotten, the gypsies is the most mys-
terious of all the strange elements
of folkdom.
Whence they came has never been
settled 10 a certainty. All manner
Of fables have been spun to explain
their origin. Since they first ap-
peared upon the stage OF Europe IN
the Middle Ages, they have been
identified with the Lost Tribes of Is
rael, the mixed multitude that fol-
lowed Moses out of Egypt, the Ca
naanites, the Amorites, the Saracens
and the Egyptians. Some have held
them to be the Children of Cain, and
others have decided that they were
the children of the Wandering Jew
and inheritors of the restless curse
of their father.
The gypsies, themselves, have
never professed to know who they
we're or where they came from, but
they have shown great readiness to
accept the conclusions on this sub
ject of the people among whom they
lived. 1t was not until the growth OF
comparative philology and the chance
investigation Of the gypsies' tongue
in the beginning of the last century,
that scientists concluded the gypsies
to be wandering low-caste tribe
from northern India. Their language
nearly resembles Sanscrit, the foun-
dation tongue of all our western Ian
guages which has held itself purest
in Indian sources,
This language they have wonder
fully preserved in the face of over
mastering cultures and enternal wan
derings. This has not been accom-
plished by literature or by a close
corporation. The gypsies have no
literature. and their language is an
unwritten one, while they, them
selves, are scattered in small bands
over the whole face of the earth,
scattered even more widely than the
Jew. The gypsy calls himself rom,
meaning man, the man of all men.
His wife is 'romni;' his folk life is
'romnipen,' and his language is
.romani.' Everyone not of his race
come under the generic term Of gen
tile
Gypsy folk present the strangest
problems known to philology and eth
biography. An elementary, nomadlc
folk persisting for centuries in the
midst of complex civilization, they
have retained their physical charac-
teristics, their tribal rules and GUS
toms reminiscent of their far-distant
extra-European past, their highly
infected language and their thou
sand years of fever for rowing. They
are absolutely singular and without
close parallel among the peoples OF
earth.
Gypsy religion and gypsy aspira-
ton may be summed up in two lines
from the works of the German poet,
Goethe:
TO give room for wandering is it,
That the world was made so wide
This folk entered Europe by way
of Constantinople in the 18th CEN
turv. and overf1owed into the north
ern Balkans, Hungary. central and
western Europe. England, and. thence
to North and South America. The
English called them Egyptians, after
their supposed origin. whence the
name gypsy They reached Ger
many in about 14l7 and England
about 1900. At first they were treat
ed kindly by the western nations. but
their strangeness., their unconven-
tionality, their light-ingered ways,
their proneness for fortune-telling,
necromancy. black magic, and their
unwillingness for work in all forms,
soon called down upon them bitter
persecution in Germay, England.
France and the Netherlands. In the
Balkans. Russia. Hungary and Po-
land they were we'll treated. and
they are found in these countries IN