In every other country where the gypsies made their appearance they were oppressed and persecuted—treated as slaves or hunted down like wild beasts. So in Prussia in 1725 an edict was issued ordering that each gypsy found within the confines of the country should be forthwith executed; and in Wallachia, until quite lately, they were regarded as slaves or beasts of burden, and bought and sold like any other marketable animal. Thus a Bucharest newspaper of 1845 advertises for sale two hundred gypsy families, to be disposed of in batches of five families—a handsome deduction being offered to wholesale purchasers. In Moldavia, up to 1825, a master who killed one of his own gypsies was never punished by law, but only if he killed one which was the property of another man—the crime in that case not being considered to be murder, but merely injury to another man’s property.
In Hungary alone these wanderers found themselves neither oppressed nor repulsed, and if the gypsy can be said to feel at home anywhere on the face of the globe it is surely here; and although Hungarians are apt to resent the designation, Tissot was not far wrong when he named their country “Le pays des Tziganes,” for the Tziganes are in Hungary a picturesque feature—a decorative adjunct inseparable alike from the solitude of its plains as from the dissipation of its cities. Like a gleam of dusky gems they serve to set off every picture of Hungarian life, and to play to it a running accompaniment in plaintive minor chords. No one can travel many days in Hungary without becoming familiar with the strains of the gypsy bands. And who has journeyed by night without noting the ruddy light of their myriad camp-fires, which, like so many gigantic glowworms, dot the country in all directions?
At the present time there are in Hungary above one hundred and fifty thousand Tziganes, of which about eighty thousand fall to the share of Transylvania, which therefore in still more special degree may be termed the land of gypsies.
The Transylvanian gypsies used to stand under the nominal authority of a nobleman bearing the title of a Gypsy Count, chosen by the reigning prince; as also in Hungary proper the Palatine had the right of naming four gypsy Woywods. To this Gypsy Count the chieftains of the separate hordes or bands were bound to submit, besides paying to him a yearly tribute of one florin per head of each member of the band; and every seventh year they assembled round him to receive his orders. The minor chieftains were elected by the votes of the separate communities; and to this day every wandering troop has its own self-elected leader, although these have no longer any recognized position in the eyes of the law.
The election usually takes place in the open field, often on the occasion of some public fair; and the successful candidate is thrice raised in the air on the shoulders of the people, presented with gifts, and invested with a silver-headed staff as badge of his dignity. Also, his wife or partner receives similar honors, and the festivities conclude with much heavy drinking.
Strictly speaking, only such Tziganes are supposed to be eligible as are descended from a Woywod family; but in point of fact the gypsies mostly choose whoever happens to be best dressed on the occasion. Being of handsome build, and not over-young, are likewise points in a candidate’s favor; but such superfluous qualities as goodness or wisdom are not taken into account.
This leader—who is sometimes called the Captain, sometimes the Vagda, or else the Gako, or uncle—governs his band, confirms marriages and divorces, dictates punishments, and settles disputes; and as the gypsies are a very quarrelsome race the chief of a large band has got his hands pretty full. He has likewise the power to excommunicate a member of the band, as well as to reinstate him in honor and confidence by letting him drink out of his own tankard.
Certain taxes are paid to the Gako; also, he is entitled to percentages on all booty and theft. In return it is his duty to protect and defend his people to the best of his ability, whenever their irregularities have brought them within reach of the law.
Whether, besides the chieftains of the separate hordes, there yet exists in Hungary a chief judge or monarch of the Tziganes, cannot be positively asserted; but many people aver such to be the case, and designate either Mikolcz or Schemnitz as the seat of his residence. In his hands are said to be deposited large sums of money for secret purposes, and he alone has the right to condemn to death, and with his own hands to put his sentence into execution.
No Tzigane durst ever accept the position of a gendarme or policeman, for fear of being obliged to punish his own folk; and only very rarely is it allowed for one of them to become a game-keeper or wood-ranger.
Only the necessity of obtaining a piece of bread to still his hunger, or of providing himself with a rag to cover his nakedness, occasionally obliges the Tzigane to turn his hand to labor of some kind. Most sorts of work are distasteful to him—more especially all work of a calm, monotonous character. For that reason the idyllic calm of a shepherd’s existence, which the Roumanian so dearly loves, could never satisfy the Tzigane; and equally unpalatable he finds the sweating toils of the agriculturist. He requires some occupation which gives scope to the imagination and amuses the fancy while his hands are employed—conditions he finds united in the trade of a blacksmith, which he oftenest plies on the banks of a stream or river outside the village, where he has been driven by necessity. The snorting bellows seem to him like a companionable monster; the equal cadence of the hammer against the anvil falls in with melodies floating in his brain; the myriads of flying sparks, in which he loves to discern all sorts of fantastic figures, fill him with delight; horses and oxen coming to be shod, and the varied incidents to which these operations give rise, are never-tiring sources of interest and amusement.
Instinctively expert at some sorts of work, the Tzigane will be found to be as curiously awkward and incapable with others. Thus he is always handy at throwing up earthworks, which he seems to do as naturally as a mole or rabbit digs its burrow; but as carpenter or locksmith he is comparatively useless, and though an apt reaper with the sickle he is incapable of using the scythe.
All brickmaking in Hungary and Transylvania is in the hands of the Tziganes, and formerly they were charged with the gold-washing in the Transylvanian rivers, and were in return exempted from military service. They are also flayers, broom-binders, rat-catchers, basket-makers, tinkers, and occasionally tooth-pullers—dentist is too ambitious a denomination.
BASKET-MAKER.
Up to the end of the sixteenth century in Transylvania the part of hangman was always enacted by a gypsy, usually taken on the spot. On one occasion the individual to be hanged happening to be himself a gypsy, there was some difficulty in finding an executioner, and the only one produced was a feeble old man, quite unequal to the job. A table placed under a tree was to serve as scaffold, and with trembling fingers the old man proceeded to attach the rope round the neck of his victim. All his efforts were, however, vain to fix this rope to the branch above, and the doomed man, at last losing patience at the protracted delay, gave a vigorous box on the ear to his would-be hangman, which knocked him off the table. Instantly all the spectators, terrified, took to their heels; whereon the culprit, securely fastening the rope to the branch above, proceeded unaided to hang himself in the most correct fashion.
When obliged to work under supervision, the Tzigane groans and moans piteously, as though he were enduring the most acute tortures; and a single Tzigane locked up in jail will howl so despairingly as to deprive a whole village of sleep.
The Tzigane makes a bad soldier but a good spy; his cowardice has passed into a proverb, which says that “with a wet rag you can put to flight a whole village of gypsies.”
The Tziganes are by no means dainty with regard to food, and have a decided leaning towards carrion, indiscriminately eating of the flesh of all fallen animals, or, as they term it, whatever has been killed by “God,” and consider themselves much aggrieved when forced at the point of the bayonet to abandon the rotting carcass of a sheep or cow, over which they had been holding a harmless revelry.
A hedgehog divested of its spikes is considered a prime delicacy; likewise a fox baked under the ashes, after having been laid in running water for two days to reduce the flavor. Horse-flesh alone they do not touch.
The only animals whose training the gypsy cares to undertake are the horse and bear. For the first he entertains a sort of respectful veneration, while the second he regards as an amusing bajazzo. He teaches a young bear to dance by placing it on a sheet of heated iron, playing the while on his fiddle a strongly accentuated piece of dance music. The bear, lifting up its legs alternately to escape the heat, unconsciously observes the time marked by the music. Later on, the heated iron is suppressed when the animal has learned its lesson, and whenever the Tzigane begins to play on the fiddle the young bear lifts its legs in regular time to the music.
Of the tricks practised upon horses, in order to sell them at fairs, many stories are told of the gypsies. Sometimes, it is said, they will make an incision in the animal’s skin, and blow in air with the bellows in order to make it appear fat; or else they introduce a living eel into its body under the tail, which serves to give an appearance of liveliness to the hind-quarters. For the same reason live toads are forced down a donkey’s throat, which, moving about in the stomach, produce a sort of fever which keeps it lively for several days.
The gypsies are attached to their children, but in a senseless animal fashion, alternately devouring them with caresses and violently ill-treating them. I have seen a father throw large, heavy stones at his ten-year-old daughter for some trifling misdemeanor—stones as large as good-sized turnips, any one of which would have been sufficient to kill her if it had happened to hit; and only her agility in dodging these missiles—which she did, grinning and chuckling as though it were the best joke in the world—saved her from serious injury.
They are a singularly quarrelsome people, and the gypsy camp is the scene of many a pitched battle, in which men, women, children, and dogs indiscriminately take part with turbulent enjoyment. When in a passion all weapons are good that come to the gypsy’s hand, and, faute de mieux, unfortunate infants are sometimes bandied backward and forward as improvisé cannon-balls. A German traveller mentions having been eye-witness to a quarrel between a Tzigane man and woman, the latter having a baby on the breast. Passing from words to blows, and seeing neither stick nor stone within handy reach, the man seized the baby by the feet, and with it belabored the woman so violently that when the by-standers were able to interpose the wretched infant had already given up the ghost.
BEAR DRIVER.
The old-fashioned belief that gypsies are in the habit of stealing children has long since been proved to be utterly without foundation. Why, indeed, should gypsies, already endowed with a numerous progeny, seek to burden themselves with foreign elements which can bring them no sort of profit? That they frequently have beguiled children out of reach in order to strip them of their clothes and ornaments has probably given rise to this mistake; and when, as occasionally, we come across a light-complexioned child in a gypsy camp, it is more natural to suppose its mother to have been the passing fancy of some fair-haired stranger than itself to have been abstracted from wealthy parents.
Tzigane babies are at once inured to the utmost extremes of heat and cold. If they are born in winter they are rubbed with snow; if in summer, anointed with grease and laid in the burning sun. Though trained to resist all weathers, the Tzigane has a marked antipathy for wind, which seems for the time to weaken his physical and mental powers, and deprive him of all life and energy. Cold he patiently endures; but only in summer can he really be said to live and enjoy his life. There is a legend which tells how the gypsies, pining under the heavy frosts and snows with which the earth was visited, appealed to God to have pity on them, and to grant them always twice as many summers as winters. The Almighty, in answer to this request, spoke as follows: “Two summers shall you have to every winter; but as it would disturb the order of nature if both summers came one on the back of the other, I shall always give you two summers with a winter between to divide them.” The gypsies humbly thanked the Almighty for the granted favor, and never again complained of the cold, for, as they say, they have now always two summers to every winter.
Another legend relates how the Tziganes once used to have cornfields of their own, and how, when the green corn had grown high for the first time, the wind caused it to wave and shake like ripples on the water, which seeing, a gypsy boy came running in alarm to his parents, crying, “Father, father! quick, make haste! the corn is running away!” On hearing this the gypsies all hastened forth with knives and sickles to cut down the fugitive corn, which of course never ripened, and discouraged by their first agricultural essay the gypsies never attempted to sow or reap again.
Both Maria Theresa and her son Joseph II. did much to induce the Transylvanian gypsies to renounce their vagrant habits and settle down as respectable citizens, but their efforts did not meet with the success they deserved. The system of Maria Theresa was no less than to recast the whole gypsy nature in a new mould, and by fusion with other races to cause them by degrees to lose their own identity; the very name of gypsy was to be forgotten, and the Empress had ordained that henceforward they were to be known by the appellation of Neubauer (new peasants). With a view to this all marriages between gypsies were forbidden, and the Empress undertook to dot every young gypsy girl who married a person of another race. The Tziganes, however, too often accepted these favors, and took the earliest opportunity of deserting the partners thus forced upon them; while the houses built expressly for their use were frequently used for the pigs or cattle, the gypsies themselves preferring to sleep outside in the open air.
A gypsy girl, who had married a young Slovack peasant some years ago, used to run away and sleep in the woods whenever her husband was absent from home; while in another village, where the Saxon pastor had with difficulty induced a wandering Tzigane family to take up their residence in a vacant peasant house, he found them oddly enough established in their old ragged tent, which had been set up inside the empty dwelling-room. A story is also told of a gypsy man who, having attained a high military rank in the Austrian army, disappeared one day, and was later recognized with a strolling band.
There is, I am told, a certain method in the seemingly aimless roamings of each nomadic gypsy tribe, which always pursues its wanderings in a given circle, keeping to the self-same paths and the identical places of bivouac in plain or forest; so that it can mostly be calculated with tolerable accuracy in precisely how many years such and such a band will come round again to any particular neighborhood.
Nowadays the proportion of resident gypsies in towns and villages is, of course, considerably larger than it used to be, and nearly each Saxon or Hungarian town and village has a faubourg of miserable earth-hovels tacked on to it at one end. It is not uncommon, in these gypsy hovels, to find touches of luxury strangely out of keeping with the rest of the surroundings: pieces of rare old china, embroidered pillow-cases, sometimes even a silver goblet or platter of distinct value—to which things they often cling with a sort of blind superstition, always contriving to reclaim from the pawnbroker whatever of these articles they have been compelled to deposit there in a season of necessity. In the same way it is alleged that many of the wandering gypsy hordes in Hungary and Transylvania have in their possession valuable gold and silver vessels (some of these engraved in ancient Indian characters), which they carry about wherever they go, and bury in the earth wherever they pitch their temporary camp.
In order to count the treasures of one of the resident gypsies, it suffices to watch him when there is a fire in the village; ten to one it will be his fiddle which he first takes care to save, and next his bed and pillows—a soft swelling bed and numerous downy pillows being among the principal luxuries to which he is addicted.
Characteristic of the Tzigane’s utter incomprehension of all social organization and privileges is an anecdote related by a Transylvanian proprietor. “In 1848,” he told me, “when serfdom was abolished in Austria, and the gypsies residing in my village became aware that henceforward they were free, they were at first highly delighted at the news, and spent three days and nights in joyful carousing. On the fourth day, however, when the novelty of being free had worn off, they were at a loss what use to make of their novel dignity, and numbers of them came trooping to me begging to be taken back. They did not care to be free after all, they said, and would rather be serfs again.”
Of their past history the only memory the Tziganes have preserved is that of the disastrous day of Nagy Ida, when a thousand of their people were slain. This was in 1557, when Perenyi, in want of soldiers, had intrusted to a thousand gypsies the fortress of Nagy Ida, which they defended so valiantly that the imperial troops beat a retreat. But, intoxicated with their triumph, the Tziganes called after the retreating enemy, that but for the lack of gunpowder they would have served them still worse. On hearing this the army turned round again, and easily forcing an entrance into the castle cut down the gypsies to the last man.
All Hungarian gypsies keep the anniversary of this day as a day of mourning, and have a particular melody in which they bewail the loss of their heroes. This tune, or nota, they never play before a stranger, and the mere mention of it is sufficient to sadden them.
Only the higher class of Tzigane musicians (of which hereafter) are fond of calling themselves Hungarians, and of wearing the Hungarian national costume. This reminds me of a story I heard of a gypsy player who, brought to justice for a murder he had committed, obstinately persisted in denying his crime.
“Come, be a good fellow,” said the judge at last, fixing on the weak side of the culprit; “show what a good Hungarian you are by speaking the truth. A true Hungarian never tells a lie.”
The poor gypsy was so much flattered at being called a Hungarian that he instantly confessed the murder, and was, of course, hanged as the reward of his veracity.
Though without any regular social organization, the Hungarian gypsies may yet be loosely divided into five classes, which range as follows:
1. The musicians.
2. The gold-washers, who also make bricks and spoons.
3. The smiths.
4. The daily laborers, such as whitewashers, masons, etc.
5. The nomadic tent gypsies.
If, however, we reverse the order of things, and turn the social ladder upside down, these latter may well be ranked as the first, and so they deem themselves to be, for do they not enjoy privileges unknown to most respectable citizens?—free as the birds of the air, paying no taxes, acknowledging no laws, and making the whole world their own!
The word Tzigane is used throughout Hungary and Transylvania as an opprobrious term by the other inhabitants whenever they want to designate anything as false, worthless, dirty, adulterated, etc.
“False as a Tzigane,” “Dirty as a Tzigane,” are common figures of speech. Likewise to describe a quarrelsome couple, “They live like the gypsies.” And if some one is given to useless lamentation, it is said of him, “He moans like a guilty Tzigane.”
Of a liar it is said that “he knows how to plough with the Tzigane,” or that “he understands how to ride the Tzigane horse.”
To call any one’s behavior “gypsified” is to stamp it as dishonest. “He knows the Tzigane trade” is “he knows how to steal.”
A showery April day is called “Tzigane weather;” adulterated honey, “Tzigane honey;” coriander-leaves, “Tzigane parsley;” a poor sort of wild-duck is the “Tzigane duck;” the bromus scalinus is the “Tzigane corn;” but why the little green burrs are called “Tzigane lice” is not very evident, for surely in this case the imitation has decidedly the advantage of the genuine article.
These phrases must not, however, be taken to express hatred, but rather a good-natured sort of contempt and indulgence for the Tzigane as a large, importunate, and troublesome child, who frequently requires to be chastised and pushed back, but whose vagaries cannot be taken seriously, or provoke anger.
The Tziganes are rarely wanting in a certain sense of humor and power of repartee, which often disarms the anger they have justly provoked. In a travelling menagerie the keeper, showing off his animals to a large audience, pointed to the cage where a furious lion was pawing the ground, and pompously announced that he was ready to give a thousand florins to whoever would enter that cage.
“I will,” said a starved-looking gypsy, stepping forward.
“You will!” said the keeper, looking contemptuously at the small, puny figure. “Very well; please yourself, and walk in,” and he made a feint of opening the door. “Step in; why are you not coming?”
“Certainly,” said the Tzigane; “I have not the slightest objection, and am only waiting till you remove that very unpleasant-looking animal which occupies the cage at present.”
Of course the laugh was turned against the showman, who, in his speech, had only spoken of the cage without mentioning the lion.
A peasant, accusing a Tzigane of having stolen his horse, declared that he could produce half a dozen witnesses who had seen him in the act.
“What are half a dozen witnesses?” said the gypsy. “I can produce a whole dozen who have not seen it!”
A starving and shivering Tzigane once, craving hospitality, was told to choose between food and warmth. Would he have something to eat; or did he prefer to warm himself at the hearth? “If you please,” he answered, “I would like best to toast myself a piece of bacon at the fire.”
When asked which was his favorite bird a Tzigane made reply, “The pig, if it had only wings.”
Another gypsy, asked whether, for the remuneration of five florins, he would undertake the office of hangman on a single victim, answered, joyfully, “Oh, that is far too high a price! For five florins I would undertake to hang all the officials into the bargain!”
Some Tzigane proverbs are as follows:
“Better a donkey which lets you ride than a fine horse which throws you off.”
“Those are the fattest fishes which fall back from the line into the water.”
“It is not good to choose women or cloth by candlelight.”
“What is the use of a kiss unless there be two to share it?”
“Who would steal potatoes must not forget the sack.”
“Two hard stones do not grind smooth.”
“Polite words cost little and do much.”
“Who flatters you has either cheated you or hopes to do so.”
“Who waits till another calls him to supper often remains hungry.”
“If you have lost your horse, you had better throw away saddle and bridle as well.”
“The best smith cannot make more than one ring at a time.”
“A pleasant smile smooths away wrinkles.”
“Nothing is so bad but it is good enough for some one.”
“Do we keep the fast-days? Yes, when there is neither bread nor bacon in the cupboard.”
“It is of no use to teach science to children, unless we explain it by means of the broomstick.”
“Let nothing on earth sadden you as long as you still can love.”
“It is easier to inherit than to earn.”
“As long as there are poorer people than yourself in the world, thank God even if you go about with bare feet.”
“When the bridge is gone, then even the narrowest plank becomes precious.”
“Only the deaf and the blind are obliged to believe.”
“Bacon makes bold.”
“After misfortune comes fortune.”
“Who has got luck need only sit at home with his mouth open.”
“Never despair of your luck, for it needs only a moment to bring it.”
There is no such thing as a gypsy church, and a legend current in Transylvania explains the reason of this:
“Once upon a time,” so it runs, “the Tziganes had a right good church, solidly built of brick and stone like other churches. The Wallachs, who had neither stones nor bricks, had at that same time built themselves a church out of cheese and bacon, with sausage rafters and pancake roof.
“This building filled the greedy Tziganes with envy, causing them to lick their lips whenever they passed that way, and at last they proposed an exchange of churches to the Wallachs, who gladly accepted the bargain. But when the winter came the hungry Tziganes began to nibble at the pancake roof of their church; next they attacked the rafters, and there soon remained nothing more of the whole building. That is why since that time there has never been a Tzigane church, and why the gypsies, whenever they go to any place of worship at all, prefer to go to the Roumanian church, because, as they say, they like to remember that it once belonged to them.”
This story has passed into a proverb, used to describe a man without religion, by saying, “He eats his faith, as the gypsies ate their church.”
Their religion is of the vaguest description. They generally agree as to the existence of a God, but it is a God whom they fear without loving. “God cannot be good,” they say, “or else he would not make us die.” The devil they also believe in to a certain extent, but consider him to be a weak, silly fellow, incapable of doing much harm.
A Tzigane, questioned as to whether he believed in the immortality of the soul and the resurrection of the body, scoffed at the idea. “How could I be so foolish as to believe this?” he said, with unconscious philosophy. “We have been quite wretched enough and wicked enough in this world already. Why should we begin again in another?”
Sometimes their confused notions of Christianity take the form of believing in a God, and in his Son the young God; but while many are of opinion that the old God is dead, and that his Son now reigns in his place, others declare the old God to be not really dead, but merely to have abdicated in favor of his Son. Others, again, suppose this latter to be not really the Son of the old God, but only that of a poor carpenter, and are wont to say contemptuously that “the carpenter’s son has usurped the throne.”
The resident Tziganes often nominally adopt the religion of the landed proprietor—principally, it seems, because in former days they thus secured the privilege of being buried at his expense. Whenever they happen to have a quarrel with their landlord, they are fond of abruptly changing their religion, ostentatiously going to some other place of worship in order to mark their displeasure.
Two clergymen, the one Catholic, the other Protestant, visiting a Tzigane confined in prison, were each endeavoring with much eloquence to convert him to their respective religions. The gypsy appeared to be listening to their arguments with great attention, and when both had finished speaking he eagerly inquired, “Which of the two gentlemen can give me a cigar?” One of these being in the advantageous position of gratifying this modest request, the scale was thereby turned in favor of the Church he recommended, and the other clergyman was sent away, doubtless with the bitter reflection that for lack of a pennyworth of tobacco he had failed to secure an immortal soul!
Another gypsy, in prison for having sworn falsely, was visited by a priest, who tried to convince him of the sinfulness of his conduct in swearing to what he had not seen.
“You are loading a heavy sin on your soul,” said the priest.
“Have I got a soul?” asked the Tzigane, innocently.
“Of course you have got a soul; every man has one.”
“Can your reverence swear that I have got a soul?”
“To be sure I can.”
“Yet your reverence cannot see my soul, so why should it be wrong to swear to what one has not seen?”
A gypsy condemned to be hung bethought himself at the last moment of asking to be baptized. He wished to die a Christian, he said, having professed no religion all his life. His plan was successful, for the execution was suspended, and all sympathies enlisted in his favor. When, however, all was ready for the baptism, the gypsy occasioned much surprise by asking to be received into the Calvinistic faith. Why not choose the Catholic religion, which was that of the place, he was asked, since there was no apparent reason to the contrary. “No, no,” returned the cautious Tzigane; “I will keep the Catholic religion for another time.”
Though rarely believing in the immortality of the soul, the Tzigane usually holds with the doctrine of transmigration, and often supposes the spirit of some particular gypsy to have passed into a bat or a bird; further believing that when that animal is killed, the spirit passes back to another new-born gypsy.
However miserable their lives, the Tziganes never commit suicide; only one solitary instance is recorded by some traveller, whose name I forget, of an old gypsy woman, who, to escape her persecutors, begged a shepherd to bury her alive.
When a Tzigane dies, men and women assemble with loud howling, and the corpse, after having been prepared for burial, is carried on horseback to the grave, which is made in some lonely spot, often deep in the forest. A chieftain is buried with much pomp, his people tearing their hair and scratching their faces in sign of mourning.
The abrupt transitions of joy to grief, and vice versâ, so characteristic of the Tzigane nature, are nowhere more apparent than in their rejoicings and their mournings. Thus each funeral ends with dancing and joyful songs, while every wedding terminates in howling and moaning.
The relations between the sexes are mostly free, and unrestrained by any attempt at morality. Unions oftenest take place without any attendant formalities, but in some hordes a sort of barbaric ceremony is kept up. The man, or rather boy—for he is often not more than fourteen or fifteen years of age—selects the girl happening to please him best, without any particular regard for relationship, and leads her before the Gako, where she breaks an earthen-ware jar or dish at the feet of the man to whom she gives herself. Each party collects a portion of the broken pieces and keeps them carefully. If these pieces are lost, either by accident or voluntarily, then both parties are free, and the union thus dissolved can only be renewed by the breaking of another vessel in the same manner.
GYPSY GIRL.
The number of pieces into which the earthen-ware has been shattered is supposed to denote the number of years the couple will live together; and when the girl is anxious to pay a compliment to her bridegroom she stamps upon the fragments, in order to increase their number.
Sometimes, but rarely, the Tzigane is capable of violent and enduring love; and cases where lovers have killed their sweethearts out of jealousy are not unknown.
The Tziganes assimilate more easily with the Roumanians than with any of the neighboring races; and marriages between them, although not frequent, yet sometimes take place.
Some twelve or fifteen years ago, an Austrian officer, garrisoned in a small Transylvanian town, fell violently in love with a beautiful gypsy girl belonging to a wandering tribe. He carried his infatuation so far as to offer to marry her. The beautiful bohemian, however, refused to abandon her roving comrades; and at last the lover, seeing that he could not win her in any other way, and being convinced that he could not possibly exist without her, gave up his military rank, and for her sake became a gypsy himself, wandering about with the band, and sharing all their hardships and privations. How this peculiar union turned out in the end, and whether à la longue the gentleman remained of opinion that the world was well lost for love, is unknown; but several years later the cidevant officer was recognized as a member of a roving band of gypsies somewhere in northern Greece.
A touching instance of a young girl’s devotion was related to me on good authority. Her lover had been confined in the village lockup, presumably for some flagrant offence; and looking out of the small grated window, on a burning summer’s day, he was bewailing his unhappy fate and the parching thirst which devoured him. Presently his dark slender sweetheart, attracted by the sound of his voice, drew near, and standing at the other side of a dried-up moat, she could see her lover at the grated window. She held in her hand a ripe juicy apple; but the only way to reach him lay through the moat. The girl was naked, not having the smallest rag to cover her brown and shining skin, and the moat was full of prickly thistles and tall stinging nettles. She hesitated for a moment, but only for one; then plunging bravely into the sea of fire, she handed up the precious apple through the close grating.
When she regained the opposite bank, the gypsy girl’s skin was all blistered, and bleeding at places; but she did not seem to feel any pain, in the delight with which she watched her captive lover devour the apple.
The ever-recurring excitements and excesses of which these people’s life is made up cannot fail to have a deteriorating effect on mind and body—early undermined constitutions and premature death or dotage being the penalty paid by many for the unbridled and senseless gratification of their passions. This life, however, while it destroys many, sharpens the faculties of those whose stronger natures have enabled them to defy these ravages, bestowing a singular power of penetration in all matters relating to the senses and passions.
More especially is this the case with regard to the women, who, already gifted by nature with keener perceptions, and prematurely ripened in what may be termed a tropical atmosphere of passion, develop an almost supernatural power of clairvoyance, which enables them with incredible celerity to unravel hitherto undisclosed secrets by means only of intuitive deductions.
“The astounding vividness of their impressions” (again to quote Liszt on the subject) “rarely fails to communicate itself like wildfire to the hearers. As by the contagion of a deadly poison, the mere touch of the gypsy fortune-teller is often sufficient to affect them with the sensation of an electric shock or vibration.
“A few apt reflections strewed about in conversation, casual exclamations of apparent simplicity, some primitive rhymes and verses accentuated by passion, so to say hammered into relief like the raised figures on a medal—such are the means which suffice to stir up in an audience whatever elements may be there existing of secret wrath, of latent rebellion, of characters bent but not broken, of affections discouraged but not despairing.
“The gypsy woman, herself well acquainted with all the signs and workings of passion, distinguishes à coup d’œil the cause of the sallow cheek and the fevered eye of such another woman; she can feel instinctively whether the hand from which she is expected to decipher a fate be stretched towards her with the hasty gesture of hope or with the hesitation of fear. Without difficulty she reads in disdainfully curled lips or ominously drawn brows whether the youth before her be chafing under a yoke or planning revenge; whether he craves love or has already lost it. She can further distinguish at a glance the delusive presumption of youth and beauty—the false security of possession which thinks to defy misfortune. She knows the annihilating blows of fate and the vulnerability of the human heart too well not to mistrust the smile of over-conscious happiness, and prophesy misfortune to those who refuse to believe in the instability of the future.
“She cannot be called a hypocrite, for she herself has faith in her own diagnosis; believing that each man carries within him the germ of his own fate, she is convinced that sooner or later her prognostics must be fulfilled. Her only care is therefore to clothe her predictions in a form which, easily captivating the imagination, and thereby impressed on the memory, will spring again to life, along with the image of the prophetess, whenever the latent emotions she has detected, having reached their culminating point, bring about the success or the catastrophe foreseen from the investigation of a hand and a heart.
“After all, why should we wonder that the secrets of the future can be deciphered by one so intimately acquainted with the inmost folds of the human soul, and the workings of different passions confined in the human breast like so many caged lions or torpid slumbering reptiles?
“Passion always accompanied by a powerful sympathetic instinct quickly divines the presence of a kindred passion. Apt to decipher the symptoms inevitably betrayed in voice and gesture, and skilled to read in that mystic book whose characters are so plainly impressed on the leaves of a physiognomy which, betraying where it would fain conceal, becomes the more impressive in proportion as the heart within is agitated by tumultuous throbbings, the gypsy fortune-teller knows full well with whom she has to deal, and can justly estimate what sort of characters are those who seek her counsel.”
It is, I think, Balzac who has said, “Si le passé a laissé des traces, il est à croire que l’avenir possède des racines;” and on the principle that every man is master of his own fate, there is, after all, no reason why these roots, invisible to the rest of the world, should not be perceptible to such as have made of this subject the study of a lifetime. Why should not the seer be able to proclaim the fruits to be reaped from the recognition of germs which already exist?
The enlightened folk who sweepingly condemn the fortune-teller as a liar and cheat are probably no less mistaken than witless rustics, who blindly believe in her as an infallible oracle. Should not precisely the superior enlightenment of which we boast be argument for, rather than against, the fortune-teller? Why, if phrenology and graphology are permitted to take rank as acknowledged sciences, should not the gypsy woman’s power of divination be equally allowed to count as a shrewd deciphering of character, coupled with logical deductions as to the events likely to be evoked by the passions she has recognized, when brought into combination with a given set of circumstances?
Ignorant people, surprised at the detection of secrets which they had believed to be securely locked up in their own breasts, and not understanding the process by which such conclusions were reached, are ready to attribute the fortune-teller’s power of divination to supernatural agency, which opinion is strengthened and confirmed by the romantic conditions of the gypsy’s existence, and the cabalistic glamour with which she contrives to invest herself.
But is not, in truth, this delicate and subtle perception in itself a secret and undeniable power—a sudden inspiration, a positive intuition of what will be from the rapid unveiling of what already is? And here, again, Liszt is probably right in asserting this gift of prophecy, so universally ascribed to the gypsies in all countries, to be a too deeply rooted belief in the minds of the people not to have some rational ground for its existence.
There is no doubt that the gypsy fortune-tellers in Transylvania exercise considerable influence on their Saxon and Roumanian neighbors, and it is a paradoxical fact that the self-same people who regard the Tziganes as undoubted thieves, liars, and cheats in all the common transactions of daily life, do not hesitate to confide in them blindly for charmed medicines and love-potions, and are ready to attribute to them unerring power in deciphering the mysteries of the future.
The Saxon peasant will, it is true, often drive away the fortune-teller with blows and curses from his door, but his wife will as often secretly beckon her in again by the back entrance, in order to be consulted as to the illness of the cows, or beg from her a remedy against the fever.
Wonderful potions and salves, composed of the fat of bears, dogs, snakes, and snails, along with the oil of rain-worms, the bodies of spiders and midges, rubbed into a paste, are concocted by these cunning bohemians, who thus sometimes contrive to make thrice as much money out of the carcass of a dead dog as another can realize from the sale of a healthy pig or calf. There is not a village in Transylvania which cannot boast of one or more such fortune-tellers, and living in the suburbs of each town are many old women who make an easy and comfortable livelihood out of the credulity of their fellow-creatures.
It has also been asserted that both Roumanian and Saxon mothers whose sickly infants are believed to be suffering from the effects of the evil eye, are often in the habit of giving the child to be nursed for a period of nine days to some Tzigane woman supposed to have power to undo the spell.
For my own part, I have seldom had inclination to confide the deciphering of my fate to one of these wandering sibyls, and can therefore only affirm that on the solitary occasion when, half in jest, I chose to interrogate the future, I was favored with a piece of intelligence so startling and improbable as could only be received with a laugh of derision; yet before many days had elapsed this startling and improbable event had actually come to pass, and the gypsy’s prophecy was accomplished in the most unlooked-for manner.
Chance, probably, or coincidence, most people will say; and indeed I do not myself see how it could have been anything but the veriest coincidence. I merely state this fact as it occurred, and without attempting to draw any general conclusions from the isolated instance within my own personal range of observation.
There is a Transylvanian legend telling how a mother once pronounced on her son a curse, the effect of which should continue until he succeeded in giving a voice to a dry piece of wood.
The son left his mother, and went sorrowing into the pine forest, where he cut down a tree, and made a fiddle on which he played; and his mother, hearing the sound, came running by and took the curse from off his head.
This story must surely have been written of a gypsy boy, for of none other could it have been equally appropriate; and if to the gypsy woman is given a certain power over the minds of her fellow-creatures, the male Tzigane—at least in Hungary—is not without his sceptre, and this sceptre is the bow with which he plies his fiddle.
Hungarian music and the Tzigane player are indispensable conditions of each other’s existence. Hungarian music can only be rightly interpreted by the Tzigane musician, who for his part can play none other so well as the Hungarian music, into whose execution he throws all his heart and his soul, all his latent passion and unconscious poetry—the melancholy and dissatisfied yearnings of an outcast, the deep despondency of an exile who has never known a home, and the wild freedom of a savage who never owned a master.
Did the Tziganes bring their music ready-made into Hungary, or did they find it there and merely adopt it? is a question which has occasioned much learned controversy. Liszt inclines to the former opinion, which would mean that no Hungarian music existed previous to the Tziganes’ arrival in the country in the fifteenth century. That this music is essentially of an Asiatic character is, however, no positive proof in favor of this theory, for are not the Hungarians themselves an out-wandered Asiatic race? and what more natural than the supposition that one Asiatic race should be the best interpreter of the music of a kindred people? More likely, however, this music is an unconscious joint production of the two, the Tzigane being the artist who has sounded the depths of the Hungarian nature and given expression to it.
I remember once asking a distinguished Polish lady—Princess C——, herself a notable musician and pupil of the great Chopin—whether she ever played Hungarian music. “No,” she answered, “I cannot play it; there is something in that music which I have not got—something wanting in me.”
What was here wanting I came to understand later, when I became familiar with Hungarian music as rendered by the Tzigane players. It was the training of several generations of gypsy life which was here wanting—a training which alone teaches the secret of deciphering those wild strains which seem borrowed from the voice of the tempest, or stolen from whispering reeds. In order to have played Hungarian music aright she would have required to have slept on mountain-tops during a score of years, to have been bathed over and over again in falling dews, to have shared the food of eagles and squirrels, and have been on equally intimate terms with stags and snakes—conditions which, unfortunately, lie quite out of the reach of delicate Polish ladies!
Music was the only art within the Tzigane’s reach, for despite his vividness of imagination and the continual state of inspiration in which he may be said to live, he could never have been a poet, painter, or sculptor to any eminent degree, because of the fitfulness of his nature, and of his incapacity to clothe his inspirations in a precise image, or reduce them to a given form. Every man has the impulse to manifest his feelings in some way or other, and music was the only way open to the Tzigane, as being the one solitary art which, à la rigueur, can dispense with a scientific training and be taught by instinct alone.
Devoid of printed notes the Tzigane is not forced to divide his attention between a sheet of paper and his instrument, and there is consequently nothing to detract from the utter abandonment with which he absorbs himself in his playing. He seems to be sunk in an inner world of his own; the instrument sobs and moans in his hands, and is pressed tight against his heart as though it had grown and taken root there. This is the true moment of inspiration, to which he rarely gives way, and then only in the privacy of an intimate circle, never before a numerous and unsympathetic audience. Himself spellbound by the power of the tones he evokes, his head gradually sinking lower and lower over the instrument, the body bent forward in an attitude of rapt attention, and his ear seeming to hearken to far-off ghostly strains audible to himself alone, the untaught Tzigane achieves a perfection of expression unattainable by mere professional training.
This power of identification with his music is the real secret of the Tzigane’s influence over his audience. Inspired and carried away by his own strains, he must perforce carry his hearers with him as well; and the Hungarian listener throws himself heart and soul into this species of musical intoxication, which to him is the greatest delight on earth. There is a proverb which says, “The Hungarian only requires a gypsy fiddler and a glass of water in order to make him quite drunk;” and indeed intoxication is the only word fittingly to describe the state of exaltation into which I have seen a Hungarian audience thrown by a gypsy band.
Sometimes, under the combined influence of music and wine, the Tziganes become like creatures possessed; the wild cries and stamps of an equally excited audience only stimulate them to greater exertions. The whole atmosphere seems tossed by billows of passionate harmony; we seem to catch sight of the electric sparks of inspiration flying through the air. It is then that the Tzigane player gives forth everything that is secretly lurking within him—fierce anger, childish wailings, presumptuous exaltation, brooding melancholy, and passionate despair; and at such moments, as a Hungarian writer has said, one could readily believe in his power of drawing down the angels from heaven into hell!
Listen how another Hungarian has here described the effect of their music:
“How it rushes through the veins like electric fire! How it penetrates straight to the soul! In soft, plaintive minor tones the adagio opens with a slow, rhythmical movement: it is a sighing and longing of unsatisfied aspirations; a craving for undiscovered happiness; the lover’s yearning for the object of his affection; the expression of mourning for lost joys, for happy days gone forever: then abruptly changing to a major key the tones get faster and more agitated; and from the whirlpool of harmony the melody gradually detaches itself, alternately drowned in the foam of over-breaking waves, to reappear floating on the surface with undulating motion—collecting as it were fresh power for a renewed burst of fury. But quickly as the storm came it is gone again, and the music relapses into the melancholy yearnings of heretofore.”
These two extremes of fiercest passion and plaintive wailing characterize the nature of the Hungarian, of whom it is said that, “weeping, the Hungarian makes merry.”
Under the influence of Tzigane music a Hungarian is capable of flinging about his money with the most reckless extravagance—fifty, a hundred, a thousand florins and more being often given for the performance of a single melody. Sometimes a gentleman will stick a large bank-note behind his ear, while the Tzigane proceeds to play his favorite tune, drawing nearer and nearer till he is almost touching; pouring the melody straight into the upturned ear of the enraptured auditor; dropping out the notes as though the music were some exquisitely flavored liquid flattering the palate of this superrefined gourmet, who, with half-closed eyes expressive of perfect beatitude, entirely abandons himself to the delirious ecstasy.
Not only do the people at rustic gatherings dance to the strains of these brown bohemians, but in no real Hungarian ball-room would other music be tolerated, and the Austrian military bands, so much prized elsewhere, are here at a discount and little appreciated.
GYPSY MUSICIANS.
Of course the gypsy bands in large towns are not composed of the ragged, unkempt individuals who haunt the village pothouses or the lonely csardas[65] on the puszta. Their constant intercourse with higher circles has given them a certain degree of polish, and they mostly appear in Hungarian costume; but intrinsically they are ever the same as their more vagabond brethren, and their eye never loses the semi-savage glitter reminding one of a half-tamed animal.
The calling of musician has often become hereditary in certain families, who thus feel themselves to be interwoven with the fates of the nobility for whom they play; and vice versa, for the youth of both sexes in Hungary the recollection of every pleasure they have enjoyed, the dawn of first love, and every alternation of hope, triumph, jealousy, or despair, is inextricably interwoven with the image of the Tzigane player. As Mr. Patterson says, “The Tzigane is a sort of retainer of the Magyar, who cannot well live without him—the insolent good-nature of the one just fitting in with the simple-hearted servility of the other; hence the Tzigane is most commonly found in those parts of the country where Hungarians and Roumanians are in the majority. He does not find the neighborhood of the hard-working, money-loving Suabians profitable to him.” Those who are successful musicians gain a sort of abnormal social status far above their fellows. The proverb, “No entertainment without the gypsies,” is acted upon by peasant and prince alike. Those nobles who have squandered their fortunes would, if they took the trouble to analyze the causes of their ruin, find the Tzigane player to form one of the heaviest items. As to the peasant there is a popular rhyme which says that if the Tzigane plays badly he gets his head broken with his own fiddle; but should he succeed in touching the feelings of the excitable peasant, the latter will give him the shirt off his own back.
English people are apt to misunderstand the position of these Tzigane musicians, which is in every way a peculiar one—the intimacy with the upper classes thus brought about by their calling implying, however, no sort of equality. The Tzigane remains the gypsy fiddler, while the Magyar never forgets that he is a nobleman; and the barrier between the two classes is as absolute as that between Jew and gentleman in Poland. Although it is no uncommon sight in the streets of any Hungarian town, towards the small hours of the morning, to see distinguished members of the jeunesse dorée (their spirits, no doubt, slightly raised by wine) going home affectionately linked arm-in arm with these brown fiddlers, yet no Hungarian could fall into the amusing mistake of an English nobleman, who, making a point of lionizing all celebrities within reach, invited to dinner the first violin of a gypsy band starring in London some years ago. The flattering invitation occasioned the most intense surprise to the distinguished artist himself, who, though well used to many forms of enthusiasm called forth by his genius, was certainly not accustomed to be seriously taken in the sense of a civilized human being. It is said, however, that the gypsy’s quickness of perception, doing duty for education on this occasion, enabled him to pass through the formidable ordeal of a London dinner-party without further breaches of our rigid etiquette than are quite permissible on the part of a barbarous grandee.
It is said that the Tziganes often perform the office of postillon d’amour in taking letters backward and forward between young people who have no other means of communication, their peculiar code of honor forbidding them to take any pecuniary remuneration in return. Thus many of them are able to show dainty pieces of handiwork and presents of valuable jewelled studs or amber mouth-pieces, received from their high-born patrons in token of gratitude for delicate services rendered.
The words “Tzigane” and “musician” have become almost synonymous in Hungary, and to say “I shall call in the Tziganes” is equivalent to saying “I shall send for the musicians.”
When the dancers are limp and indolent the Tzigane musician loses interest as well, and plays carelessly and without spirit; but when he sees dancing con amore, and more especially if his playing be praised, then he knows neither hunger nor fatigue. He executes every sort of dance music with spirit, and his power of identifying himself with the dancers renders the gypsy’s playing far superior to that of other professional musicians; but his real triumph is the csardas.
The band-master is fond of secretly selecting a couple from among the dancers, and at these directing his music—aiming it at them, if one may thus express it—following their every movement, and identifying himself with their every gesture. To watch a pair of lovers dancing is the gypsy player’s greatest delight, and for them he exerts himself to the utmost, throwing his whole soul into the music, breathing the softest sighs and the most passionate rhapsodies of which his instrument is capable.
The Tzigane band-master—or, rather, the first violin, for the gypsies require no one to beat time for them—when playing in the ball-room, is wont to change the melody as fancy prompts, merely giving warning to his colleagues by two sharp raps of the bow that a change is impending. The other musicians do not know beforehand what tune is coming, but a note or two suffices to put them on the scent, and they fall in so smoothly that the transition is scarcely detected.
Almost every one of the dancers has his or her favorite air—their nota, as it is here called—and it is meant as a delicate attention when the Tzigane band-master, smiling or winking at a passing dancer, strikes into his air of predilection. The gypsy’s memory in thus retaining (and never confounding) the favorite airs of each separate person in a large society is marvellous; and not only this, but he will likewise remember to a nicety which air was your favorite one three or four years ago, and all the attendant circumstances to which the former melody played accompaniment.
Thus, whirling past in the mazes of your favorite valse, with the girl you adore on your arm, you may catch the dark eye of the Tzigane player fixed expressively upon you, and in the next moment the music has changed; it is a long-forgotten melody they are playing now—a melody once familiar to your ears at a by-gone time, when you had other thoughts, other hopes, another partner on your arm; when wood-violet, not patchouly, was perchance the scent you loved best, and fair ringlets had more charm than raven tresses.
For a moment the present scene has faded from your eyes, and in its place you see a vanished face and hear a voice grown strange to your ears. That valse, once to you the most entrancing music on earth, now sounds like the gibings of some tormenting spirit, and you breathe an involuntary sigh for a time that is no more!
Thus the Tzigane player, unlike the hired musicians in other countries, has an intimate and artistic connection with his dancers. In England or Germany the musician is simply the machine which plays, no more to be regarded than a barrel-organ or a musical-box; in Hungary alone he is something more, his power of directing being here not limited to the feet, but may almost be said to extend to the fancies and feelings of his audience—feelings which it is his delight to share and sway, with actual power to stimulate love or jealousy, and reawaken grief and remorse, at the touch of his magic wand.