Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Relations with Romanies; Romanies
_Methodist Quarterly Review_.—“Have we Gipsies among us! Yea, verily, if
Mr. Simson is to be believed, they swarm our country in secret legions.
There is no place on the four quarters of the globe where some of them
have not penetrated. Even in New England a sly Gipsy girl will enter the
factory as employe, will by her allurements win a young Jonathan to marry
her, and in due season, the ’cute gentleman will find himself the father
of a young brood of intense Gipsies. The mother will have opened to her
young progeny the mystery and the romance of its lineage, will have
disclosed its birth-right connection with a secret brotherhood, whose
profounder Freemasonry is based on blood, historically extending itself
into the most dim antiquity, and geographically spreading over most of
the earth. The fascinations of this mystic tie are wonderful. Afraid or
ashamed to reveal the secret to the outside world, the young Gipsy is
inwardly intensely proud of his unique nobility, and is very likely to
despise his alien father, who is of course glad to keep the late
discovered secret from the world. Hence dear reader, you know not but
your next neighbour is a Gipsy.” “The volume before us possesses a rare
interest, both from the unique character of the subject, and from the
absence of nearly any other source of full information. It is the result
of observation from real life.” The language “is spoken with varying
dialects in different countries, but with standard purity in Hungary. It
is the precious inheritance and proud peculiarity of the Gipsy, which he
will never forget and seldom reveal. The varied and skillful manœuvres
of Mr. Simeon to purloin or wheedle out a small vocabulary, with the
various effects of the operation on the minds and actions of the Gipsies,
furnish many an amusing narrative in these pages.” “Persecutions of the
most cruel character have embittered and barbarized them. . . . Even now
. . . they do not realize the kindly feeling of enlightened minds toward
them, and view with fierce suspicion every approach designed to draw from
them the secrets of their history, habits, laws and language.” “The age
of racial caste is passing away. Modern Christianity will refuse to
tolerate the spirit of hostility and oppression based on feature, colour,
or lineage.” The “book is an intended first step for the improvement of
the race that forms its subject, and every magnanimous spirit must wish
that it may prove not the last. We heartily commend the work to our
readers as not only full of fascinating details, but abounding with
points of interest to the benevolent Christian heart.” “The general
spirit of the work is eminently enlightened, liberal, and humane.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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