The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II)James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
General
The Gipsy: A Tale (Vols I & II)
James, G. P. R. (George Payne Rainsford)
Romanies -- Fiction
"And do I not find them?" cried the gipsy, warming in defence of his
race; "to be sure I do. Think not that we have none among us as
learned and as thoughtful as yourselves, though in another way. But
you cannot understand us. You think that it is in our habits alone
that we are different; but, remember, that when you speak to a true
gipsy, who follows exactly the path of his fathers, you speak to one
different in race, and creed, and mind, and feeling, and law, and
philosophy, from you and yours. You think us all ignorant, and either
bound as drudges to some low rejected trade, or plundering others,
because we do not comprehend the excellence of laws. But let me tell
you again, that there are men among us deeply read in sciences which
you know not; speaking well a language, for a hundred words of which
your schools have laboured long years in vain. Have we not laws, too,
of our own? laws better observed than your boasted codes? But you
choose to doubt that we have them, because we put you beyond our code,
as you put us beyond yours. When was ever justice shown to a gipsy?
and therefore we look upon you as things to pillage. You speak, too,
of the pleasures of the mind. Do you think my mind finds no exercise
in scenes like these? I walk hand in hand with the seasons through the
world. Winter, your enemy, is my friend and companion. Gladly do I see
him come, with his white mantle, through the bare woods and over the
brown hills. I watch the budding forth of spring, too, and her light
airs and changing skies, as I would the sports of a beloved child. I
hail the majestic summer, as if the God of my own land had come to
visit our race, even here; and in the yellow autumn, too, with the
rich fruit and the fading leaf, I have a comrade full of calmer
thoughts. The sunrise, and the sunset, and the midday, to me, are all
eloquence. The storm, the stream, the clouds, the wind, for me have
each a voice. I talk with the bright stars as they wander through the
deep sky, and I listen to the sun and moon, as they sing along their
lonely pilgrimage. Is not this enough? What need I more than nature?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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