The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of SpainBorrow, George
History
The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain
Borrow, George
Romanies -- Languages; Romanies -- Spain
‘Friar Melchior of Guelama states that he heard asserted of two
Gitános what was never yet heard of any barbarous nation, namely,
that they exchanged their wives, and that as one was more comely
looking than the other, he who took the handsome woman gave a certain
sum of money to him who took the ugly one. The licentiate Alonzo
Duran has certified to me, that in the year 1623–4, one Simon
Ramirez, captain of a band of Gitános, repudiated Teresa because she
was old, and married one called Melchora, who was young and handsome,
and that on the day when the repudiation took place and the bridal
was celebrated he was journeying along the road, and perceived a
company feasting and revelling beneath some trees in a plain within
the jurisdiction of the village of Deleitosa, and that on demanding
the cause he was told that it was on account of Simon Ramirez
marrying one Gitána and casting off another; and that the repudiated
woman told him, with an agony of tears, that he abandoned her because
she was old, and married another because she was young. Certainly
Gitános and Gitánas confessed before Don Martin Fajardo that they did
not really marry, but that in their banquets and festivals they
selected the woman whom they liked, and that it was lawful for them
to have as many as three mistresses, and on that account they begat
so many children. They never keep fasts nor any ecclesiastical
command. They always eat meat, Friday and Lent not excepted; the
morning when I seized those whom I afterwards executed, which was in
Lent, they had three lambs which they intended to eat for their
dinner that day.—Quiñones, page 13.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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