to which the woodland echoes respond like the voice of a mighty chorus? What more exquisite elegy can there be than the autumn wind stripping the foliage from a blighted forest? What power can equal the frigid majesty of the cruel frost, like an implacable tyrant bidding the sap of trees and flowers to stand still, and rendering silent the voices of singing birds and babbling streams? To those accustomed to quaff of this bottomless tankard, must not all other pleasures by comparison appear empty and unmeaning? "Indifferent to the minute and complicated passions by which educated mankind is swayed, callous to the panting, gasping effects of such microscopic and super-cultured vice as vanity, envy, ambition, avarice, and intrigue, the Tzigane only comprehends the simplest requirements of a primitive nature. Music, dancing, drinking, love, diversified by a childish and humorous delight in petty thieving and cheating, constitute the whole répertoire of his passions, beyond whose limited horizon he is incapable of seeing or comprehending aught." Only the necessity of obtaining a piece of bread to still his hunger, of providing himself with a rag to cover his nakedness, obliges the Tzigane occasionally to turn his hand to labour of some kind. Most sorts of work are distasteful to him by nature, more especially all work of a calm monotonous character. For that reason the idyllic quiet of a shepherd's existence, which the Roumanian so dearly loves, could never satisfy the gipsy, to whom the sweating toils of the agriculturist are equally unpalatable. He requires some Occupation which gives scope to the imagination, and amuses the fancy, as well as keeping his hands employed-conditions he finds united in the trade of a blacksmith, which he oftenest plies on the banks of a stream or river, outside the village where he has been driven by necessity. The snort Instinctively clever at some sorts of work, the Tzigane will be found to be as curiously awkward and incapable with others. Thus the gipsy is always handy in throwing up earthworks, which he seems to do as naturally as a mole or rabbit digs its burrow; but as a carpenter or mason he is absolutely useless, and though an apt reaper with a sickle, he is incapable of wielding the scythe. All brickmaking in Hungary and Transylvania is in the hands of the Tziganes, and formerly they were charged with gold-washing in the Transylvanian rivers, in return for which they were exempted from military service. They are also flayers, brush - makers, ratcatchers, basket makers, tinkers, and occasionally dentists; and in the sixteenth century the executioners in Transylvania were always gipsies. When obliged to work under supervision, the Tzigane groans and moans most pitifully, as though he were enduring the most acute tortures, and a single gipsy locked up in jail will howl so despairingly as to deprive a whole village of sleep. The only animals whose training he cares to undertake are the horse and bear. For the first he entertains a respectful veneration; while the second he regards as an amusing bajazzo whose antics de light him. He teaches a young bear to dance by placing it on a sheet of heated iron, playing the while on his fiddle a strongly accentuated piece of dance music. The bear, lifting up its legs alternately to escape the heat, involuntarily observes the time marked by the violin. Later on the heated iron is suppressed, when the animal has learnt its lesson; and whenever the gipsy begins to play on the fiddle, the young bear lifts its legs in regular time to the music. The gipsies in Transylvania used to be under the nominal control of a nobleman bearing the title of a Gipsy Count, chosen by the reigning prince; as also in Hungary the Palatine had the right of naming four gipsies Woywods. To this Gipsy Count were bound to submit the chieftains of the different hordes or bands, and these were elected by the votes of the separate communities. To this day still, every wandering troop has its own self-elected leader or judge, although these have no longer any recognised position in the eyes of the law. The election usually takes place in the open field, often on the occasion of some public fair or large annual market, and the successful candidate is thrice raised in the air on the shoulders of the people, presented with gifts, and invested with a silver-headed staff as badge of his dignity. Also his wife or partner receives similar honours, and the festivities conclude with heavy drinking. Strictly speaking, only such gipsies are supposed to be eligible as are descended from a Woywod; but in point of fact, the people oftenest choose whoever happens to be best dressed on the occasion, especially if he be of fine stature, and not too young-such super fluous qualities as wisdom or goodness having little to do with the matter This leader, who is sometimes called the Captain, sometimes Gako or uncle, governs his band, confirms marriages or divorces, dictates punishments, and decides disputes; and as the gipsies are a very quarrelsome race, the chief of a large band has got his hands pretty well full. He has likewise the power to excommunicate a member of the band, as well as to reinstate him in honour and confidence by letting him drink out of his own tankard. Certain taxes are paid to the Gako; also he is entitled to certain percentages on booty and theft. In return, it is his duty to defend and protect his people to the best of his ability, whenever their irregularities have brought them within reach of the law. Whether besides these chieftains of the separate hordes or bands, there yet exists in Hungary and Transylvania a chief judge or monarch of the Tziganes, cannot be positively asserted; but many people aver such to be the case, and designate alternately Mikolcz and Schemnitz as seats of his residence. In his hand are said to be deposited large sums of money for secret purposes, and he alone has the right to condemn to death, and with his own hands to put his sentence into execution. No Tzigane durst ever accept the position of a gendarme or policeman, for fear of being obliged to punish his own people; and only very rarely is it allowed for one of them to become a gamekeeper or woodranger. The relations between the sexes are mostly free, and unrestrained by any comprehension of morality. Often the unions amongst gipsies take place without any attendant formalities; but in some hordes a sort of barbaric ceremony is still kept up. The man, or rather boy (for he is often not more than fourteen or fifteen years of age), selects the girl who happens to please him best, without any particular regard for relationship, and leads her before the judge, where she breaks an earthen jar or dish at the feet of the man to whom she gives herself. Each party collects a portion of the broken pieces and keeps them carefully. If these pieces are lost, either by accident or voluntarily, then the marriage is dissolved, both parties free, and the union can only be renewed by the breaking of another vessel in the same manner. The number of pieces into which the earthenware has been shattered is supposed to denote the number of years the couple will live together; and when the girl is anxious to pay a compliment to her bridegroom, she stamps upon the fragments to increase their number. Sometimes, but rarely, the Tzigane is capable of violent and enduring love; and cases where lovers have killed their sweethearts out of jealousy are sometimes heard of. A touching instance of a young girl's devotion was related to me on good authority. Her lover had been confined in the village lockup-house, presumably for some flagrant misdemeanour, and on looking out of the small grated window on a burning summer's day, he was bewailing his unhappy fate and the parching thirst which devoured him. Presently his dark slender sweetheart, attracted by the sound of his wailings, drew near, and, standing at the other side of a dried-up moat, she could see her lover at the grated window. She held in her hand a ripe juicy apple, but the only way to reach him lay through the moat. The girl was naked, not having the smallest rag to cover her brown and shining skin, and the moat was full of prickly thistles and tall stinging nettles. She hesitated for a moment, but only for one, then plunging bravely into the sea of fire, she handed up the precious apple through the closed grating. When she regained the other bank her skin was all blistered, and bleeding at places, but she did not seem to feel any pain in the joy with. which she watched her lover devour the apple. Some twelve or fifteen years ago, an officer garrisoned in a small Transylvanian town, fell violently in love with a beautiful gipsy girl belonging to a wandering tribe. He carried his infatuation so far as to offer to marry her, if she would only consent to abandon her roving comrades; but this the beautiful Bohemian steadily refused to do; so that at last the lover, seeing that he could not win her in any other way, and being convinced that he could not possibly exist without her, gave up his military rank, and for her sake became a gipsy himself, wandering about with the roving band, and sharing all their hardships and privations. How this peculiar union turned out in the end, and whether à la longue the gentleman remained of opinion that the world was well lost for love, is unknown ; but several years afterwards the ci devant officer was recognised as member of a wandering band of gipsies in northern Greece. The Tziganes are attached to their children, but treat them in a senseless animal fashion-alternately devouring them with caresses and violently ill-using them. I have seen father throwing large heavy stones at his ten-yearold daughter, for some trifling conscious philosophy. "We have been quite wretched enough, and wicked enough, in this world already. Why should we begin again in another?" Sometimes their confused notions of Christianity take the shape of believing in a God, and in His Son, the young God; but while many are of opinion that the old God is dead, and that His Son now reigns in his place, others declare that the old God is not really dead, but has merely abdicated in favour of the young God. Others, again, fancy this latter to be not really the Son of the old God, but only that of a poor carpenter; and they often say contemptuously that the carpenter's son has usurped the throne. misdemeanour-stones as large as believe this?" he asked, with ungood-sized turnips, any one of which would have been sufficient to kill her, if it had happened to hit; and only her alacrity in dodging the missiles-which she did chuckling and grinning, as though it were the best joke in the world -saved her from serious injury. When in a passion, all weapons are good that come to the gipsy's hand, and, faute de mieux, unfortunate infants are sometimes bandied backwards and forwards as improvised cannon-balls. A German writer mentions having been eyewitness of a quarrel between a gipsy man and woman, the latter having a baby on her breast. Passing from words to blows, the man, seeing neither stick nor stone within handy reach, seized the baby by the feet, and with it belaboured her so violently, that when the bystanders at last were able to interpose, the wretched infant had already given up the ghost. Babies are at once accustomed to endure the utmost extremes of heat and cold; if they are born in winter, they are rubbed with snow; if in summer, anointed with grease, and laid in the burning sun. Their education is nil, beyond being taught to beg and steal. Though rarely believing in the immortality of the soul, the Tzigane usually holds with the doctrine of transmigration, and often supposes the spirit of some particular gipsy to have passed into a bat or a bird; further believing that when that animal is killed, the spirit passes back to another new-born gipsy. The gipsies resident in villages or hamlets often nominally adopt the religion of the proprietor of the soil, principally, it seems, in order to secure the privilege of being buried at his expense. Whenever they happen to have a quarrel with their landlord, they are fond of abruptly changing their religion, ostentatiously going to some other place of worship, in order to mark their displeasure. The gipsies' religion is of the vaguest description. They generally agree as to the existence of a God, but it is a God whom they fear without loving. "God cannot be good," they argue, "or else He would not make us die." The devil they also believe in, to a certain extent-but only as a Two clergymen, the one Catholic, weak, silly fellow, incapable of the other Protestant, visiting a doing much harm. gipsy confined in prison, were both endeavoring with much eloquence to convert him to their respective Churches. The gipsy appeared to be listening to their arguments with much attention, and when both A gipsy, questioned as to whether he believed in the immortality of the soul, and in the resurrection of the body, scoffed at the idea. "How could I be so foolish as to to Greta's petition, "If I can get away if I can be spared from home." Spared from home! oh ay, she can be spared, Miss Greta, weel spared. She is aye so busy and taken up with thae bairns that a little pleasure will just do her a great deal of good." "Pleasure!" said Joyce, echoing the word. "I will come if the lady wants me; but there is a good deal to do things to prepare. And then-and thenShe paused with a conscious effort, making the most of her hindrances, "I am expecting a friend to-night.' "A friend that will be Andrew Halliday," said the old woman, again interposing anxiously; "you can see him ony day of the week; he's no that far away nor sweared to come. Where are your manners, Joyce? to keep Miss Greta standing, and hum and ha, as if ye werena aye ready to do what will pleasure the lady-aye ready, night or day." "If Joyce is tired, Mrs Matheson," said Greta, "I will not have her troubled. But are you really so tired, Joyce? We cannot do anything without you. And it was all my idea, for there is no party or anything but I thought it would please all of them. Only I could do nothing without you." “Yes, yes, I am coming," cried Joyce, suddenly; "I was only what granny calls cankered and out of heart." "Why should you be out of heart," said the other girl, "when everything went so well and everybody was so pleased? It is perhaps because you will miss Mr Halliday? But then he can come up for you, and it's moonlight, and that will be better than sitting in the house. Don't you think so, Joyce?" "The moonlight is fine coming down the avenue," Joyce said vaguely. And then she asked, "Will the old Colonel-the old gentleman-will he be there?" 66 Oh, did you take a fancy to him, Joyce? So have I. Yes, he will be there-they will all be there. We are to have it in the great drawing-room-and leave to rummage in all the presses in the red room, you know, where the old Lady's dresses are kept, and to take what we like." "That would be fine," said Joyce, "if it was for last century; but if Queen Margaret is what you are wanting, that's far, far back, and the old Lady's dresses will do little good. There will be nothing half so old as Queen Margaret "Oh," cried Greta, her countenance falling, "I never thought of that." "I Joyce hesitated a moment, and the light returned to her eyes. will go up with you to the house now, if granny can spare me, and I will speak to Merritt, and we will think, she and I; and when you come out from your dinner we will have settled something. Oh, never fear but we will find something. It is just what I like,' said Joyce, restored to full energy "to make out what's impossible. That's real pleasure!" she cried with sparkling eyes. "Did ever ony mortal see the like," said Janet to herself as she stood at the door watching the two girls go down the village street. "What's impossible! that's just what she likes, that wonderful bairn. And if onybody was to ask which was the leddy, it's our Joyce and not Miss Greta that ilka ane would say. But, eh me! though I am so fain to get her a bit pleasure, what's to come o' a' that, if she is just to settle doon and marry Andrew Halliday? That's what is impossible, and nae pleasure in it so far as I can see!" |