Note 13 — INTRODUCTION.
Reading edition
The following is the article alluded to: “The following enquiries are addressed to the author of the Gipsies in Fife, being suggested by the research and industry which he has displayed in collecting memorials of that vagrant race. They relate to a class of persons who, distinguished for honest industry in a laborious and dangerous calling, have only this in common with the Egyptian tribes, that they are not originally native of the country which they inhabit, and are supposed still to exhibit traces of a foreign origin. . . . . I mean the colony of fishermen in the village of Buckhaven, in Fife . . . . .
“I make no apology to your respectable correspondent for engaging him in so troublesome a research. The local antiquary, of all others, ought, in the zeal of his calling, to feel the force of what Spencer wrote and Burke quoted: ‘Love esteems no office mean.’—‘Entire affection scorneth nicer hands.’ The curious collector who seeks for ancient reliques among the ruins of ancient Rome, often pays for permission to trench or dig over some particular piece of ground, in hopes to discover some remnant of antiquity. Sometimes he gets only his labour, and the ridicule of having wasted it, to pay for his pains; sometimes he finds but old bricks and shattered pot-sherds; but sometimes also his toil is rewarded by a valuable medal, cameo, bronze, or statue. And upon the same principle it is, by investigating and comparing popular customs, often trivial and foolish in themselves, that we often arrive at the means of establishing curious and material facts in history.”
This extract is given for the benefit of the latter part of it, which applies admirably to the present subject; yet falls as much short of it as the interest in the history of an Egyptian mummy falls short of that of a living and universally scattered race, that appears a riddle to our comprehension.
[14] I sent him a specimen of forty-six words. [Many words used in Scotland, in every day life, are evidently derived from the Gipsy, owing, doubtless, to the singularity of the people who have used them, or the happy peculiarity of circumstances under which they have been uttered; the original cause of such passing current in a language, no less than that degree of personal authority which sometimes occasions them to be adopted. Randy, a disreputable word for a bold, scolding, and not over nicely worded woman, is evidently derived from the Gipsy raunie, the chief of a tribe of viragos; so that the exceptions spoken of are as likely to have been derived from the Gipsy as vice versa.—Ed.]
[15] The name by which Mr. Blackwood was known in the celebrated Chaldee manuscript, published in his magazine.
[16] Previous to this, Mr. Blackwood wrote me as follows: “I received your packet some days ago, and immediately gave it to the editor. He desires me to say that your No. 5, though very curious, would not answer, from the nature of the details, to be printed in the magazine. In a regular history of the Gipsies, they would, of course, find a place.” This was what suggested the idea of the present work.
[17] Grellmann. I am not aware that he ever compared the words I sent him with those in this publication, as he wrote he would do, in the previous letter quoted.
[18] Throughout the whole of his works there does not appear, I believe, a single word of the proper Scottish Gipsy; although slang and cant expressions are to be found in considerable numbers. [Some of these are of Gipsy extraction.—Ed.]
[19] There cannot be less then 100,000 Gipsies in Scotland. See Disquisition on the Gipsies.—Ed.
[20] The following is a description of the Jews, throughout the world, as given by them, in their letters to Voltaire: “A Jew in London bears as little resemblance to a Jew at Constantinople, as this last resembles a Chinese Mandarin! A Portuguese Jew, of Bordeaux, and a German Jew, of Metz, appear two beings of a different nature! It is, therefore, impossible to speak of the manners of the Jews in general, without entering into a very long detail, and into particular distinctions. The Jew is a chamelion, that assumes all the colours of the different climates he inhabits, of the different people he frequents, and of the different governments under which he lives.”
These words are much more applicable to the Gipsy tribe, in consequence of their drawing into their body the blood of other people.—Ed.
[21] This, I need hardly say, is a description of what may be called a wild Gipsy.—Ed.
[22] There are, comparatively speaking, few Gipsies in Scotland that have not some education, in common with the ordinary natives of the soil; but the same cannot be said of England.—Ed.
[23] Allowance must be made for the enthusiasm of the novelist.
[24] Abbotsford, 1st Dec., 1831.