In 1692 four Estremadura Gipsies caught by the Inquisition were
charged with cannibalism and made to own that they had eaten
a friar, a pilgrim and even a woman of their own tribe, for which
they suffered the penalty of death. And as late as 1782, 45
Hungarian Gipsies were charged with a similar monstrous crime,
and when the supposed victims of a supposed murder could not be
found on the spot indicated by the Gipsies, they owned under
torture and said on the rack, “We ate them.” Of course they
were forthwith beheaded or hanged. The emperor Joseph II.,
who was also the author of one of the first edicts in favour of the
Gipsies, and who abolished serfdom throughout the Empire,
ordered an inquiry into the incident; it was then discovered that
no murder had been committed, except that of the victims of
this monstrous accusation.
The history of the legal status of the Gipsies, of their treatment in various countries and of the penalties and inflictions to which they have been subjected, would form a remarkable chapter in the history of modern civilization. The materials are slowly accumulating, and it is interesting to note as one of the latest instances, that not further back than the year 1907 a “drive” was undertaken in Germany against the Gipsies, which fact may account for the appearance of some German Gipsies in England in that year, and that in 1904 the Prussian Landtag adopted unanimously a proposition to examine anew the question of granting peddling licences to German Gipsies; that on the 17th of February 1906 the Prussian minister issued special instructions to combat the Gipsy nuisance; and that in various parts of Germany and Austria a special register is kept for the tracing of the genealogy of vagrant and sedentary Gipsy families.
Different has been the history of the Gipsies in what originally formed the Turkish empire of Europe, notably in Rumania, i.e. Walachia and Moldavia, and a careful search in the archives of Rumania would offer rich materials for the history of the Gipsies in a country where they enjoyed exceptional treatment almost from the beginning of their settlement. They were divided mainly into two classes, (1) Robi or Serfs, who were settled on the land and deprived of all individual liberty, being the property of the nobles and of churches or monastic establishments, and (2) the Nomadic vagrants. They were subdivided into four classes according to their occupation, such as the Lingurari (woodcarvers; lit. “spoonmakers”), Caldarari (tinkers, coppersmiths and ironworkers), Ursari (lit. “bear drivers”) and Rudari (miners), also called Aurari (gold-washers), who used formerly to wash the gold out of the auriferous river-sands of Walachia. A separate and smaller class consisted of the Gipsy Lăeshi or Vătrashi (settled on a homestead or “having a fireplace” of their own). Each shatra or Gipsy community was placed under the authority of a judge or leader, known in Rumania as jude, in Hungary as aga; these officials were subordinate to the bulubasha or voivod, who was himself under the direct control of the yuzbasha (or governor appointed by the prince from among his nobles). The yuzbasha was responsible for the regular income to be derived from the vagrant Gipsies, who were considered and treated as the prince’s property. These voivodi or yuzbashi who were not Gipsies by origin often treated the Gipsies with great tyranny. In Hungary down to 1648 they belonged to the aristocracy. The last Polish Krolestvo cyganskie or Gipsy king died in 1790. The Robi could be bought and sold, freely exchanged and inherited, and were treated as the negroes in America down to 1856, when their final freedom in Moldavia was proclaimed. In Hungary and in Transylvania the abolition of servitude in 1781–1782 carried with it the freedom of the Gipsies. In the 18th and 19th centuries many attempts were made to settle and to educate the roaming Gipsies; in Austria this was undertaken by the empress Maria Theresa and the emperor Francis II. (1761–1783), in Spain by Charles III. (1788). In Poland (1791) the attempt succeeded. In England (1827) and in Germany (1830) societies were formed for the reclamation of the Gipsies, but nothing was accomplished in either case. In other countries, however, definite progress was made. Since 1866 the Gipsies have become Rumanian citizens, and the latest official statistics no longer distinguish between the Rumanians and the Gipsies, who are becoming thoroughly assimilated, forgetting their language, and being slowly absorbed by the native population. In Bulgaria the Gipsies were declared citizens, enjoying equal political rights in accordance with the treaty of Berlin in 1878, but through an arbitrary interpretation they were deprived of that right, and on the 6th of January 1906 the first Gipsy Congress was held in Sofia, for the purpose of claiming political rights for the Turkish Gipsies or Gopti as they call themselves. Ramadan Alief, the tzari-bashi (i.e. the head of the Gipsies in Sofia), addressed the Gipsies assembled; they decided to protest and subsequently sent a petition to the Sobranye, demanding the recognition of their political rights. A curious reawakening, and an interesting chapter in the history of this peculiar race.
Origin and Language of the Gipsies.—The real key to their origin is, however, the Gipsy language. The scientific study of that language began in the middle of the 19th century with the work of Pott, and was brought to a high state of perfection by Miklosich. From that time on monographs have multiplied and minute researches have been carried on in many parts of the world, all tending to elucidate the true origin of the Gipsy language. It must remain for the time being an open question whether the Gipsies were originally a pure race. Many a strange element has contributed to swell their ranks and to introduce discordant elements into their vocabulary. Ruediger (1782), Grellmann (1783) and Marsden (1783) almost simultaneously and independently of one another came to the same conclusion, that the language of the Gipsies, until then considered a thieves’ jargon, was in reality a language closely allied with some Indian speech. Since then the two principal problems to be solved have been, firstly, to which of the languages of India the original Gipsy speech was most closely allied, and secondly, by which route the people speaking that language had reached Europe and then spread westwards. Despite the rapid increase in our knowledge of Indian languages, no solution has yet been found to the first problem, nor is it likely to be found. For the language of the Gipsies, as shown now by recent studies of the Armenian Gipsies, has undergone such a profound change and involves so many difficulties, that it is impossible to compare the modern Gipsy with any modern Indian dialect owing to the inner developments which the Gipsy language has undergone in the course of centuries. All that is known, moreover, of the Gipsy language, and all that rests on reliable texts, is quite modern, scarcely earlier than the middle of the 19th century. Followed up in the various dialects into which that language has split, it shows such a thorough change from dialect to dialect, that except as regards general outlines and principles of inflexion, nothing would be more misleading than to draw conclusions from apparent similarities between Gipsy, or any Gipsy dialect, and any Indian language; especially as the Gipsies must have been separated from the Indian races for a much longer period than has elapsed since their arrival in Europe and since the formation of their European dialects. It must also be borne in mind that the Indian languages have also undergone profound changes of their own, under influences totally different from those to which the Gipsy language has been subjected. The problem would stand differently if by any chance an ancient vocabulary were discovered representing the oldest form of the common stock from which the European dialects have sprung; for there can be no doubt of the unity of the language of the European Gipsies. The question whether Gipsy stands close to Sanskrit or Prakrit, or shows forms more akin to Hindi dialects, specially those of the North-West frontier, or Dardestan and Kafiristan, to which may be added now the dialects of the Pisāca language (Grierson, 1906), is affected by the fact established by Fink that the dialect of the Armenian Gipsies shows much closer resemblance to Prakrit than the language of the European Gipsies, and that the dialects of Gipsy spoken throughout Syria and Asia Minor differ profoundly in every respect from the European Gipsy, taken as a whole spoken. The only explanation possible is that the European Gipsy represents the first wave of the Westward movement of an Indian tribe or caste which, dislocated
