A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy LanguageSimson, Walter
History
A History of the Gipsies: with Specimens of the Gipsy Language
Simson, Walter
Romanies; Romanies -- Languages
the dreary wastes of Newfoundland, flying from the approach, and
crossing the imagination of the fishermen like a spectre? Or like the
wild men of the jungle, in some of the oceanic parts of Asia, having no
homes, roaming during the dry season in the forests, and sleeping under
or on the branches of trees, and in the rainy season betaking themselves
to caves or sheltering beneath rocks, making their beds of leaves, and
living on what they can precariously find, such as roots and wild honey;
yet, under the influence of the missionary, many of them now raising
crops, building dwellings, erecting schoolhouses, keeping the Sabbath,
and praising God? But some of the Gipsies with us may be said to do few
of these things. They live among us, yet are not of us; they come in
daily contact with us, yet keep such distance from the community as a
wild fowl, that occasionally finds its way into the farm-yard, does in
shrinking from the close scrutiny of the husbandman. They cling like
bats to ruined houses, caves, and old lime-kilns; and pitch their tents
in dry water-courses, quarry-holes, or other sequestered places, by the
way-side, or on the open moor, and even on dung-heaps for the warmth to
be derived from them during the winter season, and live under the bare
boughs of the forest during the summer;--yet amid all this apparent
misery, through fair means or foul, they fare well, and lead what some
call a happy life; while everything connected with them is most
solicitously wrapt up in inscrutable mystery. These Gipsies exhibit to
the European mind the most inexplicable moral problem on record; in so
far as such phenomena are naturally expected to be found among a people
whom the rays of civilization have never reached; while, in the case of
the Gipsies, the first principles of nature would seem to be set at
defiance.
"And thus 'tis ever; what's within our ken,
Owl-like, we blink at, and direct our search
To fartherest Inde, in quest of novelties;
Whilst here at home, upon our very thresholds,
Ten thousand objects hurtle into view,
Of interest wonderful."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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