Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17.djvu/175

1866.]

OR more than four hundred years the Gypsies have been one of the riddles of European history. Much deep study and learned research have found plentiful employment in the endeavor to point out the land of their origin; and the views taken have consequently been many and various. It appears to the writer that all the well-known views on this subject are far from the truth; and he desires to assert for the Gypsies an origin quite different, as he believes, from any ever yet suggested: at least, what he believes to be the real origin of this singular race is not even hinted at in the more celebrated treatises. Conscious of the diffidence with which any one should approach a matter which so many learned men have labored over, he advances the plea of the proverb, that they who study the stars will stumble at stones,—a plea, that much learning and genius may fail, where less would not be at fault.

It has been maintained that the Gypsies are Egyptians, and even that they are the followers of Pharaoh, perhaps not yet gotten home from that Red Sea journey. Otherwise that they are the descendants of the vagabond votaries of Isis, who were in Rome just what the Gypsies are in modern Europe. It has been argued that they were Grecian heretics; that they were persecuted Jews; that they were Tartars; that they were Moors; and that they were Hindoos, Grellman accepted (as it suited his theory) the assertion that they entered Germany from Turkey, though he rejected, without examination, the assertion, made on equally good authority, that they entered it from Spain, from Italy, from Denmark, and from Sweden. We find, by comparison of accounts, that they appeared within the space of a few years at every point of a circle of which Germany was the centre, and everywhere they were regarded as foreigners,—even in Egypt.

Later times have concluded that the Gypsies are Hindoos, and it is generally acknowledged that Grellman and Borrow have proved this. The evidences adduced are, that the Gypsy tongue is strikingly like some Hindoo dialects and the parent Sanscrit,—that the races are similar in complexion, shape, disposition, and habits,—distinguished by the same vagrant nature, the same love of idleness, music, dancing, and thievery. In this course of argument, that founded, upon the language is of course the really strong one.

Without denying any of these evidences,—assenting, indeed, to every one of them,—I yet assert that the Gypsies are not of Asiatic origin, and not, as the sturdy Dutchmen call them, the "heathens,"—unless we refer to the original use of that word, and call all heathens that dwell on the heath. I assert that they are Europeans, and one of the results of the religious wars of the fifteenth century. Bohemia is the land of their origin; and when we consider that one of the most enlightened nations of Europe has called them Bohemians for four hundred years, it is remarkable that that name has been so little considered in attempts to penetrate this mystery. John Ziska or Tschischka, the greatest of the Hussite leaders, in the brave struggle of that sect against the Roman Church, is the man who may be looked upon as the father of the race. Though a clumsy attempt to pronounce Tschischka by a foreign tongue might well result in something farther from it than Gypsy, there is, perhaps, nothing in that resemblance. The word gypsy, which is only the English name for this remarkable people, is, no doubt, a consequence of the ancient error that called them Egyptians; but it is odd to see English writers using the resemblance between those words as an argument in favor of that origin, and thus endeavoring to