Note 247 — Chapter V

This work is styled Historia de los Gitános, by J. M—, published at Barcelona in the year 1832; it consists of ninety-three very small and scantily furnished pages. Its chief, we might say its only merit, is the style, which is fluent and easy. The writer is a theorist, and sacrifices truth and probability to the shrine of one idea, and that one of the most absurd that ever entered the head of an individual. He endeavours to persuade his readers that the Gitános are the descendants of the Moors, and the greatest part of his work is a history of those Africans, from the time of their arrival in the Peninsula till their expatriation by Philip the Third. The Gitános he supposes to be various tribes of wandering Moors, who baffled pursuit amidst the fastnesses of the hills; he denies that they are of the same origin as the Gypsies, Bohemians, etc., of other lands, though he does not back his denial by any proofs, and is confessedly ignorant of the Gitáno language, the grand criterion.