Note 2 — EDITOR’S PREFACE.
Reading edition
It has been brought down, however, to the present time.
[3] “Men of letters, while eagerly investigating the customs of Otaheite or Kamschatka, and losing their tempers in endless disputes about Gothic and Celtic antiquities, have witnessed, with apathy and contempt, the striking spectacle of a Gipsy camp—pitched, perhaps, amidst the mouldering entrenchments of their favourite Picts and Romans. The rest of the community, familiar from infancy with the general character and appearance of these vagrant hordes, have probably never regarded them with any deeper interest than what springs from the recollected terrors of a nursery tale, or the finer associations of poetical and picturesque description.”—Blackwood’s Magazine.
[4] Tinkler is the name generally applied to the Scottish Gipsies. The wandering, tented class prefer it to the term Gipsy. The settled and better classes detest the word: they would much rather be called Gipsies; but the term Egyptian is the most agreeable to their feelings. Tinkler has a peculiar meaning that can be understood only by a Scotchman. In its radical sense it means Tinker. The verb tink, according to Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary, means to “rivet, including the idea of the noise made in the operation of riveting; a Gipsy word.”
[5] Mr. Borrow labours under a very serious mistake when he asserts that “The unfounded idea, that Gipsies steal children, to bring them up as Gipsies, has been the besetting sin of authors, who have attempted to found works of fiction on the way of life of this most singular people.” The only argument which he advances to refute this belief in regard to Gipsies, which is universal, is the following: “They have plenty of children of their own, whom they can scarcely support; and they would smile at the idea of encumbering themselves with the children of others.” This is rather inconsistent with his own words, when he says, “I have dealt more in facts than in theories, of which I am, in general, no friend.” As a matter of fact, children have been stolen and brought up as Gipsies, and incorporated with the tribe.
[6] The intelligent reader will not differ with me as to the weight to be attached to the Gipsy’s remark on this point.
[7] Since the above was written, I have read Hengstenberg on the Pentateuch, who supposes that the “mixed multitude” were an inferior order of workmen, employed, like the Jews, as slaves, in the building of the pyramids.