[dasboot]

"The race appeared in England [1550] , but a persecution, aiming at their extermination, was raised against them; and the gallows, that prominent characteristic of English civilization, groaned under the weight of Gypsy carcasses. But these days passed by, and the miserable remnant crept forth from the secret holes where they had burrowed, increased in numbers, and, each tribe or family taking a particular circuit, fairly divided the land, as for foraging ground, among them. The men are jockeys, evoting their leisure to tinkering; they are always to be found at the prize-fight and racecourse. The women tell fortunes. Both sexes are arrant cheats and thieves. They usually pitch their tents in some green lane, or on the side of a common, near a village, under the shelter of a high bank, trees, or a hedge. The english Gypsies are the handsomest of the race; they speak English with fluency, and, in their gait and demeanor, have the ease and grace of the free sons of the wild.

"In France, the police have nearly rid the country of them. In Italy, they are not allowed to remain two nights in any one place. They are scattered, though not in great numbers, over Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Many of the race are found in Turkey, especialy at Constantinople, where the females frequently enter the harems of women of rank, pretending to cure the children of the "evil-eye", and to interpret dreams. They also appear in the coffee houses as dancing girls, and peddle precious stones, and sometimes poisons. They are common in Moldovia, Walachia, and Servia."

[dasboot]

"The Gypsies of Spain, for many years after their arrival in that country, made no change in the usual vagabond habits of the race, except that they became, from the disordered state of society there, even more unprincipled, reckless, lawless, and mischievous, than elsewhere. They were often in league with the 'contrabandistas', or smugglers.

[follows a story of how the Spanish Gypsies gained a reputation for murdering their marks]

"Among the characteristics common to the Gypsy race in general, beside those of rejecting agriculture, and regular service of every kind, filtiness, jockeying, pilfering,iron-working, tinkering,and fortune-telling, already enumerated,--it may be remarked that they have many Oriental notions, are strongly attached to their own peculiar habits of life and modes of thinking, are destitute of Christian ideas of morality except in regard to female chastity, and live as athiests without worship or a belief in the immortality of the soul. They invariably preserve every custom or fancy which has once been current among them, be it ever so noxious or absurd, while any affection which has once predominated in their minds, retains its dominion for ages. Their marriage festivals are boisterous, bizarre, and often ruinously extravagant. The themes of their rude poetry, which generally consists of single verses, scraps, or catches, are, of course, the various incidents of Gypsy life, cattle stealing, prison adventures,assassination, revenge, etc. Amongst those effusions are sometimes found tender and beautiful thoughts; but they are few and far between, like the occasional flower or shrub adorning the rugged crags and gloomy dens in which most of the race love to harbor."

S.G. Goodrich, 1859

Shout out for DIVERSITY, brothers!