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

One of Mr. Leland’s “confident assertions” is that “the English Gipsy cares not a farthing ‘to know anything about his race as it exists in foreign countries, or whence it came’”; which is not a fact. He seems to have misinterpreted the English Gipsy peculiarity which assimilates in appearance to the native English one, as I have written thus in the History of the Gipsies:—“Though Gipsies everywhere, they differ in some respects in the various countries which they inhabit. For example, an English Gipsy of pugilistic tendencies will, in a vapouring way, engage to thrash a dozen of his Hungarian brethren” (p. 359). And of the more mixed kind of Gipsies, I have said:—“In Great Britain the Gipsies are entitled, in one respect at least, to be called Englishmen, Scotchmen, or Irishmen; for their general ideas as men, as distinguished from their being Gipsies, and their language indicate them at once to be such, nearly as much as the common natives of these countries” (p. 372).—What is described very fully throughout the History, and especially in the note at pp. 342 and 343, about the different colours or castes of the Gipsies, meets Mr. Leland’s remarks about those who left India. Thus:—“What are full-blood Gipsies, to commence with? The idea itself is intangible; for, by adopting, more or less, wherever they have been, others into their body, during their singular history, a pure Gipsy, like the pure Gipsy language, is doubtless nowhere to be found” (p. 342).