Note 206 — Chapter VII · THE GYPSY IN EUROPE

Hence probably the Hungarian Hunyadis are popularly supposed to have Gypsy blood. John’s mother (a.d. 1400) is said to have been a fair Wallach, Elizabeth Marsinai, possibly of Romani blood. The legend of the boy recovering his unknown father’s ring from a plundering jackdaw, his appearance at Buda, and his receiving the gift of Hunyad town and sixty villages, is well known. The Turk’s bell was first heard in invaded Hungary during the reign of Sigismund. John Hunyadi drove them from Servia and Bosnia, and vainly proposed a league of Christian powers. When Corvinus passed away after a reign of forty-two years, the lieges said of him, and still say, “King Matthias is dead, and Justice died with him.”