Note 19b — MR. LELAND ON THE GIPSIES. [11a]

With the limited space at his disposal for his cyclopædia article, Mr. Leland could not be expected to tell us much in it about the Gipsies. In it he says that “their hair seldom turns gray, even in advanced age, unless there be ‘white’ blood in their veins”; that, “like North American Indians, the Gipsies all walk with their feet straight”; and that “there are nearly 100 English Gipsy family names, most of which are represented in America.” And further:—“At the present day the Romany is the life of the entire vagabond population of the roads in England, it being almost impossible to find a tinker or petty hawker who is not part Gipsy. There are now but a few hundred full-blooded tent Gipsy persons in England (1874), but of . . . house-dwellers, who keep their Gipsy blood a secret, and of half-breeds . . . or of those affiliated by blood, all of whom possess the great secret of the Romany language to a greater or less degree, there are perhaps 20,000.” “The tinkers in England are all Gipsies.”