Before proceeding to the topographical portion of my subject, it may be well to review summarily the historical accounts of the Romá who overspread Europe during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Grellman, a classic upon the subject of “Chinganology,”[147] proved that the last movement to Western Europe set out, not from Bohemia, but from Hungary and the adjacent countries, including (Old) Rumelia and Moldavia. In 1417 some three thousand settled in Moldavia, whilst late in the same year hordes of Tatars, then so called, appeared before the gates of the Hanseatic towns on the Baltic coast, first Luneburg, and then Hamburg, Lübeck, Wismar, Rostock, and Stralsund.[148] Next year they migrated to middle Germany, to Meissen, Leipzig, and Hesse; and presently turned their steps towards Switzerland, entering Zürich on August 1, 1418. There they divided their forces. One detachment crossed the Botzberg, and suddenly appeared as “Saracens” before the Provençal town of Sisteron. The main body, led by “the dukes, the earls, and a bevy of knights,”[149] turned towards Alsace, swarmed through Strasburg, and halted under the walls of Nuremburg.
It is not easy to determine the date of their arrival in Spain, where they may have dwelt in far more ancient times; indeed, during the fifteenth century the Iberian Peninsula was popularly supposed to be their birthplace.[150] On the other hand, many Spaniards believe them to be Germans, and called their tongue “Germania,” Gypsy German.
In 1433 they invaded Bavaria; and thence they spread over Germany, Denmark, and Sweden.
Their first appearance in French Christendom seems to be when a tribe of one hundred and thirty-two souls, under “a duke,” “a count,” and ten “knights,” startled the people of Paris, August 17, 1427. Pasquier, an eye-witness, who records the arrival of these “Christian penitents” at Paris, where they lodged in La Chapelle, outside the city, gives them ugly features, with crisp black hair.[151] If he be correct, the horde either must have sojourned long in Africa, or must have had intercourse with negro and negroid. There is no more constant characteristic of the modern Gypsy, after his eye, than the long, coarse, black Hindu-Tatar hair.
From an old work[152] it would seem that the Gypsies drifted to England about 1500, though this is uncertain. The writer, in his book published in 1612, says: “This kind of people about a hundred years ago began to gather an head about the southern parts. And this I am informed and can gather was their beginning: Certain Egyptians [sic] banished their country (belike not for their good condition) arrived here in England; who for quaint tricks and devices, not known here at that time among us, were esteemed and held in great admiration; insomuch that many of our English loiterers joined with them, and in time learned their crafty cozening. The speech which they used was the right Egyptian [sic] language, with whom our Englishmen conversing at least learned their language.”
We first hear of them in Italy in the early part of the fifteenth century. On July 11, 1422, a horde of fully one hundred, led by a “duke,” encamped before Bologna, passing by Forli, where some of them maintained they came from India. At Bologna these “mild Hindus” represented that they were bound on an expiatory visit to the Pope.
Elsewhere they became “penitents,” who, expelled by the Saracens from their homes in Lower Egypt, had confessed themselves to his Holiness, and had been condemned to seven years’ wandering and dispersion by way of penance. Thus was visited upon their heads the crime of those “perverse pagans” their forefathers, who refused a drink of water to the Virgin and Child flying from the wrath of Herod. This was only fourteen centuries after, and we know that lenta ira deorum est. There was quoted concerning them the forty years’ dispersion of Ezekiel: “And I will make the land of Egypt desolate in the midst of the countries that are desolate, and her cities among the cities that are laid waste shall be desolate forty years: and I will scatter the Egyptians among the nations, and will disperse them through the countries” (xxix. 12). The prophet’s minatory ravings against the old Egyptians, who had been a “staff of reed to the house of Israel,” were also recalled to explain their bondage and vagabondage. Hence some declared that it was sinful to maltreat these pseudo-pilgrims.
The Gypsies travelled to Rome and secured a papal safe-conduct twenty years after their first appearance at Bologna. Hypocritical legend secured them passes and passports from the European powers who were then engaged in the perilous Ottoman Wars. They were more or less supported by the Emperor Sigismund and the bishop of the same name, who, a.d. 1540, at Fünf-Kirchen employed them in casting iron and cannon-balls for the benefit of the Turks; by Ladislas II., King of Hungary, and other potentates. The Gypsies doubtless imitated the Jews in hedging between the two belligerents, and in betraying both of them for their own benefit; and this doubtless was part of the cause of the persecution which the two scattered races endured. Purely religious movements of the kind are rare in history; but they are numerous when religion mixes itself, as it ever has and always will, with politics.
Presently public opinion changed, and the natural reaction set in. Lorenzo Palmireno, a.d. 1540, declared in one of his books “that the Gypsies lie,” and the lives they led were not of penitents, but of “dogs and plunderers.” They were now loaded with all the crimes of the Middle Ages—espionage in the cause of the infidel, incendiarism, professional poisoning and other forms of assassination, cannibalism, sorcery and bewitching, blaspheming God and the saints, and personal intercourse with the foul fiend in the shape of a grey bird.
In 1499, shortly after the institution of the Holy Office, a.d. 1481, and the expulsion of the Jews, a.d. 1492, the “Great Pragmatic,” signed by Ferdinand and Isabella at Medina del Campo under the influence of Jimenez de Cisneros, the archbishop who disgracefully broke faith with the Moors of Grenada, formally attacked the vagrant race.[153] It decreed that the Egyptians and stranger tinkers, caldereros, should settle as serfs for sixty days, and after that time leave the kingdom under severe personal penalties. This decree was renewed under Charles V. by the Cortes of Toledo, in 1523, and of Madrid, in 1528, 1534, and 1560, with the condition that “those found vagabonding for the third time should become the life slaves of their captors.” Under the timorous Philip III., 1619, the Professor of Theology to the Toledo University, Dr. Sancho de Moncada, addressed a discourse to the king justifying the wholesale slaughter of the race, even women and children, by the dictum, “No law pledges us to bring up wolf-cubs.”
Following the lead of the Catholic kings, the Diet of Augsburg, 1500-1548, revoking all previous concessions, banished the Gypsies from the Holy German Empire under similar conditions. This ordinance was also revived in 1530, in 1544, in 1548, in 1551, and in 1577, the last time confirmed by a police regulation at Frankfurt. In 1545 the Superior Tribunal of Utrecht punished a Gypsy who had disobeyed a decree of exile by flogging until blood was drawn, by splitting his nostrils, and by shaving his head before he was driven to the frontier.[154]
In England the liberal and Protestant Henry VIII.[155] sanctioned an Act of Parliament persecuting the Gypsies to extermination; and it was renewed by Philip and Mary, and by Elizabeth.
Francis I. of France followed the example of his neighbours; and under Charles IX. the persecution was renewed by the States-General assembled at Orleans, 1561, who decreed extermination by steel and fire. Another and similar edict appeared in 1612. Charles V., besides his proclamations in Spain and Germany, condemned the Gypsies of the Netherlands to enrolment under pain of death, and this was confirmed by the States-General in 1582. Fanatic Poland in 1578 issued a law forbidding hospitality to Gypsies, and exiling those who received them. Pius V. showed himself equally inhuman, and the Romá were driven from the duchies of Parma and Milan, from the republic of Venice, and the kingdom of Denmark. Sweden distinguished herself by the severest laws of expulsion in 1662, 1723, and 1727.
From these barbarities arose the Gypsies’ saying, “King’s law has destroyed the Gypsy law.” The latter consisted of fidelity to one another; the code contained only three commandments, of which the first two were addressed to women:
“Thou shalt not separate from the Rom (Gypsy law).”
“Thou shalt be faithful to thy Rom.”
“Thou shalt pay thy debts to the Rom.”
These Draconian laws against the Gypsies died out during the development of civilization, and received their death-blow at the hands of the great and glorious French Revolution, 1789.
I propose now to collect a series of notices upon the subject of the Gypsies and the Jats which are not readily procurable by students; many are obtained from books little known to the public, and not a few are gathered by myself. And with a view of introducing some order into the scattered tribes, we will begin from the farthest East, the old home.
[147] Histoire des Bohémiens, French Translation of 1810.
[148] The Edinburgh Review, “Origin and Wanderings of the Gypsies,” July, 1878, adopted the opinion of F. Bataillard that a single scouting-party was in Europe between 1417 and 1427.
[149] [“They appeared in various bands, under chiefs, to whom they acknowledged obedience, and who assumed the titles of dukes and earls” (Weissenburch).]
[150] The opinion is refuted by Francisca de Cordova; yet the Histoire de Los Gitanos, by J. N., published in Barcelona 1832, expressly says that the Gitanos, whom he has specially distinguished from the Gypsies descended from the Arab or Moorish tribes, came from the coast of Africa as conquerors at the beginning of the eighth century.
[151] [Hoyland writes: “When they arrived in Paris, nearly all of them had their ears bored, with one or two silver rings in each, which they said were esteemed ornaments in their own country. The men were black, their hair curled; the women remarkably black, and all their faces scarred” (Historical Survey of the Gypsies).]
[152] A quarto work by S. R., published to detect and expose the “art of juggling” in 1612.
[153] For the special persecutions in Spain and Portugal under Philip III. (1619), Philip IV. (1633), Charles II. (1692), and Philip V. (1726), whose decrees prevailed until 1749, see El Gitanos. [“German writers say that King Ferdinand of Spain, who esteemed it a good work to expatriate useful and profitable subjects—Jew and even Moorish families—could much less be guilty of an impropriety in laying hands on the mischievous progeny of the Gypsies. The edict for their extermination was published in the year 1492. But instead of passing the boundaries, they only slunk into hiding-places, and shortly after appeared in as great numbers as before” (Hoyland).]
[154] [“Even at the present day a Gypsy in many parts of Germany is not allowed to enter a town; nor will the inhabitants permit him to live in the street in which they dwell” (Simson).]
[155] [“An outlandish people, calling themselves Egyptians, using no craft nor feat of merchandise, who have come into this realm, and gone from shire to shire, and place to place, in great company; and used great subtlety and crafty means to deceive the people—bearing them in hand that they, by palmistry, could tell men’s and women’s fortunes; and so have deceived the people for their money; and also have committed many heinous felonies and robberies” (22 Henry VIII., c. 10).]
We find the Jats well and copiously described as early as 1835 by Lieutenant-Colonel W. H. Sleeman.[156] He called them “Jâts,” with a long vowel, and treats them everywhere as low caste, or rather no-caste, Hindus. Their original habitat was upon the Indus about Multán, one of the headquarters of Hindu fable, and thence they spread to the Jumna and the Chumbul Valleys. They were alternately robbers and peaceful peasants until about a.d. 1658, when they plundered the ill-fated Dara Shikoh, son of Shah Jehan, the Moghol. Enriched by this feat, they became the nobles and rajahs of the land; and they expended vast sums in building forts like Bharatpúr, Matras, and Gohud, and on public works like the quadrangular garden at Díg. Incited by a love of conquest and plunder, and united by a feeling of nationality, which may be called patriotism, they would have become, but for the Maráttás and for the English, the dominant race in India. Fate, however, was against them, and those dwelling between the Indus and the Jumna merged into the Nánah-Shákis or Sikhs. As regards the origin of his “Jâts,” Colonel Sleeman reminds us that Sultan Mahmoud carried back with him to Hindustan in a.d. 1011 some two hundred thousand captives, the spoils of his expedition.
The way of the new faith presently converted powerful subjects and industrious peasantry into a fighting caste, and every Jat became a soldier. On the other hand, those lying along the Jumna and the Chumbul, never having been inspired with the martial spirit or united under any conqueror, continued to drive the plough. Thus external influence combined to make the Jats restless, and gradually they turned their steps westward.[157]
Again, Ghenghis Khan, in a.d. 1206, and his descendant Turmachurn, who in a.d. 1303 invaded India and carried off hosts of prisoners, may have given impulse to the current westward. Lastly, about two centuries after, the great Conqueror whom Europe has apparently determined by sectarian nickname, “Tamerlane,” swept over Northern India in a.d. 1398-1400, and his horde must have caused a wide scattering of the weaker tribes.
The Jats, I may here notice, inhabited the Indine Valley, whence emigration westward is easy; the other tribes, like the Nats, fancifully connected with the Gypsies, were by no means so favourably situated for an exodus. Originally the Gypsies must have been outcasts, not Hindu Pariahs, as some have supposed them to be; although they may have borrowed from those Aryans the horse-sacrifice and the burning of the dead—the latter custom has become obsolete in Europe, and now only a few of the deceased person’s clothes are thrown into the fire. They had words for God (Deob) and the Devil (Bad God—Benga), “Já li benga” (Go to the Devil) being a popular curse. They were unalphabetic: so clever a race would certainly not have lost a written character, and they became nominal Christians and Muslims in imitation of those among whom they settled.
The Jats are still half nomads, and perhaps of old they were wholly nomadic. They are breeders of cattle and rude veterinary surgeons. They are fond of music, as are all these races; and their dances are exactly represented by those of the Egyptian Gypsies, a similarity which has yet to be insisted upon. Their iron-smelting, like that of the Mahabaleshwar tribes, is exactly like that of the Romá. Their sword play is that of the Hindu, whereas the Gypsies in Scotland use a direct thrust straight to the front,[158] certainly not learned in India. The village Jats are said to mould the babies’ heads; perhaps the idea arose by the shampooing of the younger children by the mothers. Divination seems to be the growth of the soil, and palmistry palpably derives from India. Snake-charming is also common amongst them. As their history in the Panjab proves, they are disposed to robbing and to violence. Lastly, though the history of the country universally derives them from the Land of the Five Rivers, the modern date of Muslim annals would not be proof against their being a race of remote antiquity.
Believing that the Jats may fairly have sent forth the last wave of Aryan emigration, the Gypsies, a western flood which was probably preceded by many others, I attempted during my last trip through Sindh in the spring of 1856 to enlist fellow-workmen in the task of illustrating their ethnology and philology. Able linguists like Lieutenant-Colonel Dunsterville, Collector of Hydrabad, and others, were willing to assist me. But I was much disappointed by the incuriousness of a certain professor who met me at Milan before my visit to Western India and Sindh. He had never seen my Grammar and Vocabulary, of which he desired the republication; but he accepted with enthusiasm my offer to enlist collaborators in the Valley of the Indus for the purpose of proving or disproving his favourite theory that the Gypsies are Sindhis who have long dwelt in Afghanistan.[159] This professor had of course no personal experience; anything he had written on the subject was derived from theory only. Object lessons are not yet popular in Italy; it is easier to visit the camel of the Jardin des Plantes than the camel of the desert, and we can hardly expect a littérateur to take interest in gathering together raw new facts.
The following interesting extract is borrowed from The Country of Balochistan,[160] by A. W. Hughes (London, 1877):
“In returning to a consideration of the Jat race of Kachh Gandāva, it may be mentioned that wherever they are found—and they may it seems, from what Masson states, be seen not alone in the Panjab and Sindh and in those countries lying between the Satlej and Ganges Rivers, but even at Kābul, Kandahār, and Herat—they preserve their vernacular tongue, the Jatki. Of this language many dialects are believed to exist, and it may well be suggested by Masson that the labour of reviewing would not be found altogether unprofitable. It appears to be a fact that the Jats in some places preserve the calling of itinerant Gypsies, and this more particularly in Afghanistan; and it is not unlikely that some affinity in their language and habits might very possibly be traced between them and the vagabond races of Zingāris which are spread over so large a portion of Europe. The Jats of Eastern Kachhi, the supposed descendants of the ancient Getæ, form the cultivating and camel-breeding classes, and are of industrious and peaceable habits, but are dreadfully harried and plundered by the marauding Balochis of the neighbouring hills. They are, so to speak, the original inhabitants of this district, the Rinds,[161] Balochis, and Brahuis having settled in the country at an apparently recent period. The Jats are numerously subdivided among themselves, some tribes amounting, it is said, to nearly forty in number. Some of these are known under the names of Aba, Haura, Kalhora, Khokar, Machni, Manju, Palal, Pasarar, Tunia, and Waddera. In general they are all Muhammadans of the Suni persuasion.”
As El Islam was established in these countries before our tenth century, and the Hinduism of the Lower Valley of the Indus and of Multán dates from the days of Alexander the Great, the original emigration of Gypsies, who hardly preserve a trace of Hinduism, must either have been outlying pagans or a race of extreme antiquity.
Captain Newbold, after visiting the Gypsies in Sindh, Belochistan, and Multán, found them in the “great plain of Persepolis; in the blossoming Valley of Shiráz in the Butchligar Mountains; on the scorched plains of Dashtistan and Chaldea.” He thinks that they may be traced to, and probably far beyond, the Caspian, and easterly to the deserts of Herman and Mekran. They affect but little the scanty fare and the uninteresting life of the desert. Perfectly distinct from the pastoral “Iliyát,” the Bedawin of nearer Asia, the Turkomans, Kurds, and other nomads who camped far from the abodes of settled men, these tribes wander from town to town and village to village, always pitching tents near the more industrious, on whose credulity they partly subsist, here and elsewhere.
The ostensible trades of the Persian Gypsies are those of the blacksmith and tinker, the tinner of iron, makers of winnowing sieves, cattle doctors, and fortune-tellers; they are also workers in gold, and forge the current coins of Persia and Turkey. Others are Zíngar (saddle-makers); and Newbold adds, evidently without sufficient basis: “Hence the Zinganeh, a Kurdish tribe who are supposed to be of Gypsy origin, the Italian, Spanish, and German word for Gypsy, Zingari, etc.” Finally, they are vendors of charms and philters, conjurers, dancers, mountebanks, and carvers of wooden bowls.
The professors of these arts wander about in separate bands; but they must not be confounded with independent tribes of vagabonds and outcasts of various tribes who lead a roving, thieving Gypsy life, but are not Gypsy. Their Persian neighbours hold them to have a separate origin; but identity of feature and language prove them to be one and the same stock. They divide themselves into two classes, the Kaoli or Ghurabti, the Kurbat of Syria and the Gavbar. Both names are of disputed origin, and even the Persians and the Gypsies are at variance. Kaoli is generally supposed to be a corruption of Kabuli (a man from Kabul). From this old and venerable city, Sir John Malcolm states, the Dakrám-i-Gúr imported into Persia twelve thousand singers and musicians; and the dancing girls of Persia are to this day called Kaoli. Khurbat, of which Kurbat is a corruption, involves, it is said, the idea of wandering. Gavbar is equally obscure; the meaning would be “one who takes pleasure in cattle”; but the Persians call a herdsman “Gan-ban,” never “Gav-bar.” The true Kaoli and Gavbar, who, like their brethren in Sindh, Syria, and Egypt, outwardly profess El Islam, rarely, if ever, intermarry with Persians, Turks, or Arabs. And whilst the latter regard them as distinct in origin from themselves, in fact as Hindus, would their wretched Pariahs, the Gáo-bár, claim the honour of being Sayfids, or descendants of the Apostle?
According to Newbold, the Gypsies of Palestine and South Syria[162] are called Náwer; while in Asia Minor and North Syria they style themselves Kurbat, Rumeh, and Jinganeh (Chinganeh). The signification of Kurbat is doubtful, but is only supposed to mean a wanderer from his own land, a stranger, derived from the Arab root Gharaba, “he went far away.” The two last terms he holds related to the Spanish Romani (?) and Zincali, and the German Zigeuner. They are true to the character of their race; they disdain to be shepherds or tillers of the soil; and they feed like vultures and carrion upon the credulity and superstitions of mankind. Bedawin of the intellectual world, they juggle the simpler sons and daughters of cities by pretended skill in the occult, more especially chiromancy. Some are dancers and minstrels, while others vend charms, philters, and poisons. Like their English brethren, the men are profound adepts in horseflesh, in donkey-dealing, and in game-snaring; but instead of tinkering pots and kettles, they spin cotton and woollen yarns for their clothes and tents, and they make and mend osier-baskets. This and making wooden boxes were the favourite handicrafts of the Gypsies when they first entered Europe.
In winter they camp on the outskirts of large towns, in a sort of half tent, half hut, which is readily removed. During the fine months they go forth into the plains or mountains, where they affect tents or ruins, but never far from the haunts of their prey, mankind. Their migrations, if regular, are not of a great extent; and they never wholly forsake a country unless driven away by absolute persecution.
Shaykh Rasscho, the head of the Aleppine Gypsies, and responsible for their poll tax, informed Newbold that his tribe was divided into thirty houses, of whose names he could only remember twenty-eight. It is not material to give these names, but they are evidently Muslim names of men who probably belonged to “heads of houses.” The old Gypsy declared that Kurbat, Nawar, Rumeli, and Chinganeh were all of the same family, and had lived in Syria and Asia Minor since the creation.
These people in no way differ physically from the European tinkers. They have the same slender, well-knit figures, rather below middle size, tawny skins, rather prominent cheekbones, and straight black hair. The facial angle is rather Hindu and Tatar than Turkoman, and they have the Hindu’s long horse-tail hair. Dark eyes are not invariable; in the mountains of Antioch the colour is sometimes grey or blue, and the same occurs occasionally among the Arabs of Petra and Palmyra, among the Syrians, the Zebeks, and other races of Asia Minor. A great mixture of blood is the cause. The Zebeks of Smyrna have now been deputed to represent the bandit regular troops of Turkey as opposed to the bandit police. The Asiatic Gypsy has also that peculiar indescribable appearance and expression of eye which is so strongly developed in the Romá of Morocco and Moorish Spain, “a feature which, like the brand on the forehead of the first murderer, stamps this marked race over the whole globe, and when once observed is never forgotten. The ‘Evil Eye’ is not the least of the powers with which this people is superstitiously invested; and if there be any truth in the overstrained (?) doctrines of animal magnetism, one could not possibly frame to the imagination an eye so well calculated, so intense a magnetic force.”[163]
These Gypsies have never been seen to pray or perform any religious rite; some of their elders, like the Druzes and other Syrian tribes, circumcise their children, and conform to the exterior observances of El Islam.
Shaykh Rasscho could repeat with sundry mistakes the Arabic Faith Formula, omitting the second half, “Muhammad is the Apostle of Allah.” He said that he and his tribe acknowledged one supreme, everlasting, omnipotent Being, and believed in an existence after death, a state of reward and punishment connected with metempsychosis. He denied the charges made against the Kurbat by Syrians, Muslims, and Christians that they worshipped the stars or the creative principle under a symbol. He also denied that they abhorred the eel and the celebrated black fish of the Antioch Lake, like the Jews, to whom the Mosaic Law—which, by-the-bye, is equally binding upon Muslims—makes it unclean, because it lacks fins and scales.[164] Newbold, however, was assured that the Kurbat, who, like the India Pariahs, are the flayers of animals dying a natural death, devour the carcases of all animals except the man and the hog.
According to the Turks and Syrians, the Kurbat girls are not so chaste as their European sisters; yet they wear till marriage the “lacto diklo,” a certain cloth, in token and in pledge of spotless virginity, which the bridegroom alone is permitted to take off. The women dress like the lower orders in Syria; but they affect more ornaments of silver and brass, ear-and nose-rings, armlets and bracelets, anklets and bangles. They spin, take care of the poultry, ducks, cats, and children, and cook exactly like the English Gypsy women. Especially they tell fortunes, which practice, confined to a certain caste but forbidden to others, seems to be a kind of sacerdotalism.
The Kurbat, like their brethren all the world over, have no written characters or symbols for letters or words. Their Shaykh told Newbold that, although they themselves could not write, two men in the tribe could write. As, however, neither the men nor specimens of their writing were produced, the inference drawn from this, and other similar inquiries, was that “the written characters, or symbols, of their language, or rather jargon, have either been lost, or are known to only a few, who superstitiously keep them secret.”[165] In the bazars of Syria they speak Arabic or Turkish; at home they use their own tongue.
The following scanty list of Kurbat words was obtained viva voce from the Aleppo tribes, and were subsequently checked by comparison with the tribe near Antioch:
[The above list is printed exactly as written by Burton; but it has been found impossible to verify it from other sources.]
In January, 1871, I accompanied the Damascus Pilgrim Caravan some marches; and at Mazáríb in the Haurán, the well-known station near which Ali Beg el Abbasi, the Spaniard, was poisoned, I found three Gypsy tents. The inmates called themselves Nawar, a popular term throughout the country. In the same way as the Romá of Spain affected to be devout Christians “living in a peaceable Catholic manner,” so the head of the little party I discovered insisted upon all his people being born Muslims, evidently disliking the suspicion that they belonged to the “obsolete faith,” Christianity, with which the ignorant faithful confused all later creeds. (These people thus saved themselves from exile when Sultan “Báyezíd” expelled all Gypsies from the Ottoman Empire.) In proof of his assertion he recited a verse of the Koran with peculiar twang. The headquarters of the tribe and the abode of the chief Shaykh were at Ghazzeh, and Muhammad and his “lamentable retinue” had wandered northwards, intending to stay four or five days at Mazáríb—in fact, whilst the caravan was passing. Their peculiar industries were metal-work and making sieves, so they stated; but to these their neighbours added plundering and petty larceny, together with trading in asses and horses. According to my informant, many of his people attend the Haj, doubtless to throw dust into Muslim eyes.
My Syrian companions compared the general look of the dark-skinned, tanned dwellers with the Ashdán, whilst they found a certain resemblance between the Roumís and the women of a certain Arab tribe who camped about near Damascus; but the long, coarse, lank hair, with the duck-tail under curl, the brown white eyes, whose peculiar glance is never to be mistaken, the prominent Tatar-like cheekbones, and the irregular-shaped mouths, suggested Hindu origin and physiognomy. The beard was long and somewhat wavy, possibly the result of inhabiting for generations a hot dry land. Some have gashed faces like the “Bohemians” when they first entered Paris. Their women, adorned with ear-rings and necklaces, bracelets and anklets of brass and tinsel, were Macbethian witches; and both sexes, like the outcasts of India generally, seem to abhor cold water. I tried them with a few words of Sindhi, introduced into Hindustani, when their faces assumed the normal puzzled expression, and their eyes appeared to close and film over. Of magic and divination they would not speak to a stranger; but they readily gave me the following words: Ag, fire (pure Hindi); Ake, eye (Aukh); Chirí, knife (Churi); Goray, horse (Ghora); Kálá, oracle (pure Hindi); Munám, bread (an Arabic corruption?); Pánay, water (Pani); Zari, mouth (?). Conversing with one another they spoke fluently, and introduced few Arabic words.
The Nawar make their appearance with the Eastern Bedawin, Wuld Ali, and others about the beginning of summer, and occupy huts built of cane, sticks, and mud. The roofs are hides weighted with sticks. They work at getting in the harvests, and they are said to work much harder than the average husbandman. Of course they are charged with plundering poultry. They speak bad Arabic, and talk together in their own tongue; wherefore the peasants affect to despise them. In fact, here, as elsewhere, they constitute a strange sort of commonwealth amongst themselves—wanderers, impostors, and jugglers.