AMONG THE GYPSIES

Evening Post, Volume CXV, Issue 111, 13 May 1933, Page 17

AMONG THE GYPSIES

Professor Starkie was better equipped to wander like a beggar through Hungary and Rumania than most of.. his readers are- likely, to, be. He. has Irish blood in him, and direct contacts with. Latin races—is ho not a professor of Spanish and the husband of an Italian wife ?—which sufficiently anaes; thetizes Anglo-Germanic rationality and prudence to enable him to enter, into the spirit of irresponsible adventure among an alien people. He knows tho language—indeed he knows many languages—having made friends, as he tells us, with some Hungarian gypsy prisoners of war in Italy in 1919. And ho plays the fiddle. This—and a quick musical memory which constantly enlarged his stock of tunes—was hisl passport to peoples who would have been quite unimpressed by the high-sounding recommendations of Foreign Secretaries, even if, they had been able to read them. i The fascination of the people, whose repulsive ways he describes, with tranquil candour in "Eaggle-Taggle'? (John Murray), was for him more musical than anything else, though he thoughtfully adds a bibliography of tho gypsy lore, which is a constant, challenge to the curiosity of any one interested in the social sciences. Tho story he tells of knavery, vermin, and smells makes tho stay-at-home wonder more than ever how the cultivated and sensitive person who handles liis graceful pen could have faced the chances and changes of such vagabondage. For ho knew them well enough beforehand, knew them from his own study of Bomany lore and from some previous first-hand-contact with gypsy folk. : But he. felt the irresistible fascination of this mysterious, derelict race, and ho makes the cautious Northerner feel it, so that he, too, from his armchair has tho itch to shed the shackles of comfort, respectability, and a regular timetable.