Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvementSmith, George
History
Gipsy Life: Being an account of our Gipsies and their children, with suggestions for their improvement
Smith, George
Romanies -- Great Britain
In no part of the globe, owing principally to our isolation, is the old
Gipsy character losing itself among the street-gutter rabble as in our
own; notwithstanding this mixture of blood and races, the diabolical
Indian elements are easily recognisable in their wigwams. Then, again,
their Indian origin can be traced in many of their social habits; among
others, they squat upon the ground differently to the Turk, Arab, and
other nationalities, who are pointed to by some writers as being the
ancestors of the Gipsies. Their tramping over the hills and plains of
India, and exposure to all the changes of the climate, has no doubt
fitted them, physically, for the kind of life they are leading in various
parts of the world. To-day Gipsies are to be found in almost every part
of the civilised countries, between the frozen regions of Siberia and the
burning sands of Africa, squatting about in their tents. The treatment
of the women and children by the men corresponds exactly with the
treatment the women and children are receiving at the hands of the
low-caste Indians. The Arabian women, the Turkish women, and Egyptian
women, may be said to be queens when set up in comparison with the poor
Gipsy woman in this country. In Turkey, Arabia, Egypt, and some other
Eastern nations, the women are kept in the background; but among the
low-caste Indians and Gipsies the women are brought to the front divested
of the modesty of those nations who claim to be the primogenitors of the
Gipsy tribes and races. Among the lower orders of Indians, from whom the
Gipsies are the outcome, most extraordinary types of characters and
countenances are to be seen. Any one visiting the Gipsy wigwams of the
present day will soon discover the relationship.
In early life, as among the Indians, some of the girls are pretty and
interesting, but with exposure, cruelty, immorality, debauchery, idle and
loose habits, the pretty, dark-eyed girl soon becomes the coarse, vulgar
woman, with the last trace of virtue blown to the winds. If any one with
but little keen sense of observation will peep into a Gipsy’s tent when
the man is making pegs and skewers, and contrast him with the low-caste
Indian potter at his wheel and the carpenter at his bench—all squatting
upon the ground—he will not be long in coming to the conclusion that they
are all pretty much of the same family.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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