Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/342

 320 Ceremo7iial Customs of the British Gipsies.

side with the Chilcotts. Otis mother, Elizabeth Smith, as may be seen from the pedigree attached to my article on Borrow's Gipsies,'* was a half-sister of John Chilcott ; while Neily Buckland, whose matrimonial alliances had been many and various, claimed to have lived at one time, — probably when these balls were taking place, — with a Sabaina Chilcott.

The interest of this connection lies in the fact that it is an apparent survival of the type of family still found amongst foreign Gipsies. Wlislocki^ lays down the rule, as applying to Gipsies of Central Europe, that, w'hen a man marries, he leaves his own clan and joins that of his wife, and to her clan the children count ; and this rule is supported by Brepohl,^ and is partially in vogue among the Eastern European Gipsy coppersmiths lately in England. Both principles are illustrated in the genealogical tree given above. Wester Boswell and Tom and Charlie Lee counted to the Chilcott clan by virtue of marriage into it ; Walter Young and Oscar Boswell by virtue of descent ; and Noah Young and Kenza Boswell by both. Nor were any of the female descendants of John Chilcott unrepresented, since Celia and Bella, the only two daughters not mentioned in the tree given above, had both died childless. It is significant too that Wester's oldest son, Bui, whose mother was a Heme, was not included, for, by the same rule, Bui should be counted to the Heme clan ; according to Wlislocki, if the wife dies, the husband reverts to his original clan, and is at liberty to marry into a third, but the children remain in their mother's family. It is, to say the least of it, remarkable that so close an analogy to foreign Gipsy laws relating to family organization should be traceable in the case of the only large band of English Gipsies in recent times about which much is known ; and, taking the other

5 Voin Wandertiden Zigeune>~volke (Hamburg, 1890), pp. 61-68.
 * ■ Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, N.S., vol. iii., pp. 162-174.
 * Aus dem Winterleben der IVanderzigeuner {Seegef eld, 1910), p. 6.