Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/339

 Ceremonial C^istonis of the B7'itish Gipsies. 3 1 7

Since then they have isolated themselves, and, in conse- quence, have so many peculiarities that they ought perhaps to be regarded as a class by themselves. They alone preserve the grammatical structure of their language to any degree of perfection. Shreds of it survive amongst the other families of this area, who, in addition, retain a fairly full and comparatively uncorrupted vocabulary. The ancestors of most of these Gipsies probably arrived at a later date than those of the tinklers and potters. In the south we find a class which is intermediate between the two already considered. All vestiges of the original structure of the language have disappeared from their dialect, whilst the vocabulary has been decaying for many years. Different families preserve it in very different stages of the process.

AH these Gipsies are little better than local nomads. The tinklers, and those in the south, practically never cross the imaginary boundary lines into the central area. A good many of them are settled in houses for the greater part of the year ; the rest confine their wanderings within very limited districts. In Scotland, according to Simson,^ they parcelled out the country at an early date, assigning each district to one particular family. The head of such a family issued tokens to all its members, which protected them within their own district; but if they wandered outside they were liable to be beaten and robbed by the family on whose preserve they had encroached. A token issued by the head of the Baillie family was, however, sufficient to protect its bearer anywhere. Without any prearranged scheme England has been portioned out in much the same way, though not with the same precision. In the south the district travelled by a particular family seems to be fixed, with this exception, that large numbers congregate in the fruit- and hop-growing districts at picking

^W. Simson, A History of the Gipsies : with specimens of the Gipsy Language (ed. by J. Simson, 1865), pp. 218-9.