Page:The Writings of Prosper Merimee-Volume 1.djvu/183

Rh were few and far between, appeared in Eastern Europe toward the beginning of the fifteenth century. But nobody can tell whence they started, or why they came to Europe, and, what is still more extraordinary, no one knows how they multiplied, within a short time, and in so prodigious a fashion, and in several countries, all very remote from each other. The gipsies themselves have preserved no tradition whatsoever as to their origin, and though most of them do speak of Egypt as their original fatherland, that is only because they have adopted a very ancient fable respecting their race.

Most of the Orientalists who have studied the gipsy language believe that the cradle of the race was in India. It appears, in fact, that many of the roots and grammatical forms of the Romany tongue are to be found in idioms derived from the Sanskrit. As may be imagined, the gipsies, during their long wanderings, have adopted many foreign words. In every Romany dialect a number of Greek words appear, as, for instance cocal (bone), from ; petaíe (horse-shoe), from ; cafi (nail), from καρΦί, etc.

At the present day the gipsies have almost as many dialects as there are separate hordes of their race. Everywhere, they speak the