Page:EB1911 - Volume 12.djvu/51

Rh of the seed of Canaan were as I said the Aegyptians; and, lo, they were scattered all over the earth and served as slaves of slaves” (ed. Bezold, German translation, p. 25). No reference to such a scattering and serfdom of the Egyptians is mentioned anywhere else. This must have been a legend, current in Asia Minor, and hence probably transferred to the swarthy Gipsies.

A new explanation may now be ventured upon as to the name which the Gipsies of Europe give to themselves, which, it must be emphasized, is not known to the Gipsies outside of Europe. Only those who starting from the ancient Byzantine empire have travelled westwards and spread over Europe, America and Australia call themselves by the name of Rom, the woman being Romni and a stranger Gaži. Many etymologies have been suggested for the word Rom. Paspati derived it from the word Droma (Indian), and Miklosich had identified it with Ḍoma or Ḍomba, a “low caste musician,” rather an extraordinary name for a nation to call itself by. Having no home and no country of their own and no political traditions and no literature, they would naturally try to identify themselves with the people in whose midst they lived, and would call themselves by the same name as other inhabitants of the Greek empire, known also as the Empire of New Rom, or of the Romaioi, Romeliots, Romanoi, as the Byzantines used to call themselves before they assumed the prouder name of Hellenes. The Gipsies would therefore call themselves also Rom, a much more natural name, more flattering to their vanity, and geographically and politically more correct than if they called themselves “low caste musicians.” This Greek origin of the name would explain why it is limited to the European Gipsies, and why it is not found among that stock of Gipsies which has migrated from Asia Minor southwards and taken a different route to reach Egypt and North Africa.

Appearance in Europe.—Leaving aside the doubtful passages in the Byzantine writers where the Athinganoi are mentioned, the first appearance of Gipsies in Europe cannot be traced positively further back than the beginning of the 14th century. Some have hitherto believed that a passage in what was erroneously called the Rhymed Version of Genesis of Vienna, but which turns out to be the work of a writer before the year 1122, and found only in the Klagenfurt manuscript (edited by Ditmar, 1862), referred to the Gipsies. It runs as follows: Gen. xiii. 15—“Hagar had a son from whom were born the Chaltsmide. When Hagar had that child, she named it Ismael, from whom the Ismaelites descend who journey through the land, and we call them Chaltsmide, may evil befall them! They sell only things with blemishes, and for whatever they sell they always ask more than its real value. They cheat the people to whom they sell. They have no home, no country, they are satisfied to live in tents, they wander over the country, they deceive the people, they cheat men but rob no one noisily.”

This reference to the Chaltsmide (not goldsmiths, but very likely ironworkers, smiths) has wrongly been applied to the Gipsies. For it is important to note that at least three centuries before historical evidence proves the immigration of the genuine Gipsy, there had been wayfaring smiths, travelling from country to country, and practically paving the way for their successors, the Gipsies, who not only took up their crafts but who probably have also assimilated a good proportion of these vagrants of the west of Europe. The name given to the former, who probably were Oriental or Greek smiths and pedlars, was then transferred to the new-comers. The Komodromoi mentioned by Theophanes (758–818), who speaks under the date 554 of one hailing from Italy, and by other Byzantine writers, are no doubt the same as the Chaltsmide of the German writer of the 12th century translated by Ducange as Chaudroneurs. We are on surer ground in the 14th century. Hopf has proved the existence of Gipsies in Corfu before 1326. Before 1346 the empress Catherine de Valois granted to the governor of Corfu authority to reduce to vassalage certain vagrants who came from the mainland; and in 1386, under the Venetians, they formed the Feudum Acindanorum, which lasted for many centuries. About 1378 the Venetian governor of Nauplia confirmed to the “Acingani” of that colony the privileges granted by his predecessor to their leader John. It is even possible to identify the people described by Friar Simon in his Itinerarium, who, speaking of his stay in Crete in 1322, says: “We saw there a people outside the city who declare themselves to be of the race of Ham and who worship according to the Greek rite. They wander like a cursed people from place to place, not stopping at all or rarely in one place longer than thirty days; they live in tents like the Arabs, a little oblong black tent.” But their name is not mentioned, and although the similarity is great between these “children of Ham” and the Gipsies, the identification has only the value of an hypothesis. By the end of the 15th century they must have been settled for a sufficiently long time in the Balkan Peninsula and the countries north of the Danube, such as Transylvania and Walachia, to have been reduced to the same state of serfdom as they evidently occupied in Corfu in the second half of the 14th century. The voivode Mircea I. of Walachia confirms the grant made by his uncle Vladislav Voivode to the monastery of St Anthony of Voditsa as to forty families of “Atsigane,” for whom no taxes should be paid to the prince. They were considered crown property. The same gift is renewed in the year 1424 by the voivode Dan, who repeats the very same words (i Acigăne, m, čeliudi. da su slobodni ot vstkih rabot i dankov) (Hăjdău, Arhiva, i. 20). At that time there must already have been in Walachia settled Gipsies treated as serfs, and migrating Gipsies plying their trade as smiths, musicians, dancers, soothsayers, horse-dealers, &c., for we find the voivode Alexander of Moldavia granting these Gipsies in the year 1478 “freedom of air and soil to wander about and free fire and iron for their smithy.” But a certain portion, probably the largest, became serfs, who could be sold, exchanged, bartered and inherited. It may be mentioned here that in the 17th century a family when sold fetched forty Hungarian florins, and in the 18th century the price was sometimes as high as 700 Rumanian piastres, about £8, 10s. As late as 1845 an auction of 200 families of Gipsies took place in Bucharest, where they were sold in batches of no less than 5 families and offered at a “ducat” cheaper per head than elsewhere. The Gipsies followed at least four distinct pursuits in Rumania and Transylvania, where they lived in large masses. A goodly proportion of them were tied to the soil; in consequence their position was different from that of the Gipsies who had started westwards and who are nowhere found to have obtained a permanent abode for any length of time, or to have been treated, except for a very short period, with any consideration of humanity.

Their appearance in the West is first noted by chroniclers early in the 15th century. In 1414 they are said to have already arrived in Hesse. This date is contested, but for 1417 the reports are unanimous of their appearance in Germany. Some count their number to have been as high as 1400, which of course is exaggeration. In 1418 they reached Hamburg, 1419 Augsburg, 1428 Switzerland. In 1427 they had already entered France (Provence). A troupe is said to have reached Bologna in 1422, whence they are said to have gone to Rome, on a pilgrimage alleged to have been undertaken for some act of apostasy. After this first immigration a second and larger one seems to have followed in its wake, led by Zumbel. The Gipsies spread over Germany, Italy and France between the years 1438 and 1512. About 1500 they must have reached England. On the 5th of July 1505 James IV. of Scotland gave to “Antonius Gaginae,” count of Little Egypt, letters of recommendation to the king of Denmark; and special privileges were granted by James V. on the 15th of February 1540 to “oure louit johnne Faw Lord and Erle of Litill Egypt,” to whose son and successor he granted authority to hang and punish all Egyptians within the realm (May 26, 1540).

It is interesting to hear what the first writers who witnessed their appearance have to tell us; for ever since the Gipsies have remained the same. Albert Krantzius (Krantz), in his Saxonia (xi. 2), was the first to give a full description, which was afterwards repeated by Munster in his Cosmographia (iii. 5).