Note 41 — Chapter II
Reading edition
Hoyland.
[42] A quarto work by S. R., published to detect and expose the art of juggling and legerdemain, in 1612.
[43] Hoyland.
[44] English acts of Parliament.
[45] This does not appear to be necessarily the case. These Englishmen may have married Gipsies, become Gipsies by adoption, and so learned the language, as happens at the present day.—Ed.
[46] Hoyland.
[47] The number of the British Gipsies mentioned here is greatly understated. See Disquisition on the Gipsies.—Ed.
[48] In no part of the world is the Gipsy life more in accordance with the general idea that the Gipsy is like Cain—a wanderer on the face of the earth—than in England; for there, the covered cart and the little tent are the houses of the Gipsy; and he seldom remains more than three days in the same place. So conducive is the climate of England to beauty, that nowhere else is the appearance of the race so prepossessing as in that country. Their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both respects standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who, in speech, are slow and uncouth, and, in manner, dogged and brutal.—Borrow.—Ed.
[49] It does not follow, from what our author says about these two children, that they were stolen. I have seen some of the children of English Gipsies as fair as any Saxon. It sometimes happens that the flaxen hair of a Gipsy child will change into raven black before he reaches manhood.—Ed.
[50] It is but just to say that this family of Winters is, or at least was, the worst kind of English Gipsies. Their name is a by-word among the race in England. When they say, “It’s a winter morning,” they wish to express something very bad. It is difficult to get them to admit that the Winters belong to the tribe—Ed.