GYPSIES AND THEIR FRIENDS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume IV, Issue 191, 24 November 1876, Page 7

GYPSIES AND THEIR FRIENDS.

Where did the gypsies really come from ? In what country Avas the cradle of this race of wanderers ? A question which has been answered in a hundred ways; the wildest theories have been advanced, and on the slenderest grounds. They wandered from the province of Zeugitana, in Africa ; they were fugitives from tlie City of Singara, in Mesopotamia, driven out by Julian the Apostate ; they came from Mt. Caitcasus; their name, "Zigeuner," is a corruption of Saracener ; they are the Canaanites whom Joshua dispossessed; they are Egyptians; they are Amorito3. All these theories are based upon their names. Other origins are assigned them from the peculiarities of their customs and language ; they are faquirs ! they are the remains of Attila/s Huns ; they ara the descend mts of Cain; they are German Jews, who, during the dresi-lfiil persecution of the fourteenth century, betook themselves to tho woods and remained there till the troubled times passed over ? they are Tartars, separated from Timur's hosts about the beginning of the fifteenth century ; Circassians, driven away from their homos by this very Titnur with his Tartars; tliey are Bohemians; they are Sudras from India. All these opinions and many more are enumerated at length in Grellmann, and quoted by every body who has written on the subject. As we write these lines, we read that M. Bataillard, who has made the gypsies his study for many years, has in the press a paper in which he attributes altogether a new origin to them. Mr. Charles Leland's opinion is that they are the descendants of a va&t number of Hindus of the primitive tribes of Hindustan, who were expelled or emigrated from that country early in the fourteenth century, and that they were identical with the two castes of the Doms and Nats — the latter being at the present day tiie real gypsies of India. The people have drawn around them a whole literature of inquiry and research. The names of Simson, Borrow, Pott, G-rellmann, Liebicli, Paspati, Smidt, which are readiest to our hand, have been quite recently supplemented by the addition of Mr. Charles Leland and Professor EH. Palmer. Eommany literature is like the Homeric ballads, inasmuch as it is entirely oral — unlike the Iliad, it is extremely limited in extent. Borrow, in his latest work, gives a few songs and pieces in verse, but the Eommany folk are not given to poetry. — ' Temple Bar.'