Bunyan, John, 1628-1688 -- Relations with Romanies; Romanies
Leaving out the tented or more primitive Gipsies, there is hardly
anything about this people, when their blood has been mixed and their
habits changed, to attract the _eye_ of the world; hence it becomes the
subject of a _mental_ inquiry, so far as its _nature_ is concerned. And
the human faculties being so limited in their powers, even when trained
from early youth, it will be, at the best, a difficult matter to get the
subject of the Gipsies understood; while it appears to be a desperate
effort to get people beyond a certain age, or of a peculiar mind or
training, to make anything of it, or even to listen to the mention of it,
which almost seems to be offensive to them. On this account, if the
subject of the Gipsy race, in all its mixtures of blood and aspects of
meaning, can ever become one of interest, or even known, to the rest of
the human family, it must be taken up, for the most part, by young people
whose minds are open to receive information, as illustrated by what I
wrote in connexion with Scotch university students:—
“At their time of life they are more easily impressed with the truth
of what can be demonstrated, than after having acquired modes of
thought and feeling in regard to it, which have to be modified or got
rid of, after more or less trouble and sometimes pain.”
This subject does not in any way clash with what is generally held in
dispute among men, but touches many traits of their common humanity. Its
investigation illustrates the laws of evidence on whatever subject to
which evidence may be applicable—that all questions should be settled by
facts, and not by suppositions; and that no one has a right to maintain
capriciously that anything is a truth until it is proved to be an
untruth. As regards John Bunyan, it is not in dispute that he was an
English _man_, but whether he was of the _native_ English race, or of the
_Gipsy_ English one, or of both, and holding by the Gipsy connexion.
What is necessary to be done is not merely to correct, but to create, and
permanently establish a knowledge that has now no existence with people
generally, in consequence of the habits of the original Gipsies leading
to their legal and social proscription, and the naturally secretive
nature of the race, which has been intensified by the way in which they
were everywhere treated or regarded.
Apart from this subject in itself, it may be said to be one of those side
questions which it is always advisable for a student to have on hand, as
a mental relief after severe studies, and to liberalize or expand his
mind generally.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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