GIPSIES

Evening Star, Issue 19326, 12 August 1926, Page 12

GIPSIES

The origin of the gipsies was long shrouded in mystery, and is still the subject of endless and abstruse controversy. That they came from India is, however, generally accepted. In India they inhabited the marshlands of the Indus, and were known as Jatts (writes Joseph Hlner, in the ‘■Gipsy Patteran J. The first record of migration of this tribe appears in the ‘fiiah Name,’ of Pirdusi. who tolls us that during the fifth century of our era the Persian monarch Behrain Gour received from the Maharajah of India the Royal gift of 12,000 musicians of both sexes, ifcnown as Lurie or Jalts. How long they stayed in Persia is uncertain, probably several hundred years, going from there to Armenia, whore they sojourned a longer time. By 1100 they had penetrated the Byzantine Empire, and were spreading northward into Wallachia, -Moldavia, and Hunigary. 'the appearance of gipsies in Europe is <firsb noted by chroniclers in the fifteenth century, when “a peculiar race of wanderin'* wastrel, ragamufhn vagabonds arrived in'" Germany, about 1417. They travelled in hordes, each led by a count on horseback or by a “Lord of Lesser Egypt.” . . Gipsies arrived in England at a somewhat later period, enjoying a marked degree of toleration at nrst. . . - Henry i 111. promulgated a law against them in whic they are described as “ an outlandish people, calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft nor feat of merchandise, who having come into this realm and gone from shire to shire in great company. ...” There are many historical evidences to believe that gipsies have been in America from nearly the first days of its settlement. Many igiprios were banished to the colonial plantations, and many Old World families and tribes came voluntarily in later years seeking move elbow room. The United States? Canada, and South America have to-day probably as large a gipsy population as is to be found in all of Europe. The name “gipsy” originated in the pretence of these wanderers to being Egyptians. They axe also known as “ Zigomiers in Germany, “Origany” in Hungary, “Tsigan” in Rumania, and ‘ Zingati ” in Italy? These different forms of the same root are supposed to be derived very significantly from the Persnan work tehengan, denoting musicians, dancers.