Carmen (9 page)

Spain is one of those countries where we find to-day in the greatest numbers those nomads who are scattered over all Europe, and are known by the names of
Bohemians, Gitanos, Gypsies, Zigeuner
, etc. Most of them live, or rather lead a wandering existence, in the provinces of the south and east, in Andalusia, Estremadura, and the kingdom of Murcia; there are many in Catalonia. These latter often cross the frontier into France. They are to be seen at all the fairs in the Midi. Ordinarily the men carry on the trades of horse-dealer, veterinary, and clipper of mules; they combine therewith the industry of mending kettles and copper implements, to say nothing of smuggling and other illicit traffic. The women tell fortunes, beg, and sell all sorts of drugs, innocent or not.

The physical characteristics of the gypsy are easier to distinguish than to describe, and when you have seen a single one, you can readily pick out a person of that race from a thousand others. Features and expression—these above all else separate them from the natives of the countries where
they are found. Their complexion is very dark, always darker than that of the peoples among whom they live. Hence the name
Cale
—black—by which they often refer to themselves. Their eyes, which are perceptibly oblique, well-shaped, and very black, are shaded by long, thick lashes. One can compare their look to nothing save that of a wild beast. Audacity and timidity are depicted therein at once, and in that respect their eyes express accurately enough the character of the race—crafty, insolent, but
naturally afraid of blows
, like Panurge. As a general rule, the men are well-knit, slender, and active; I believe that I have never seen a single one overburdened with flesh. In Germany, the gypsy women are often very pretty; beauty is very rare among the
gitanas
of Spain. When they are very young, they may pass for rather attractive ugly women; but when they have once become mothers, they are repulsive. The uncleanliness of both sexes is beyond belief, and one who has never seen the hair of a gypsy matron would find it hard to form an idea of it, even by imagining it as like the coarsest, greasiest, dustiest horsehair. In some large cities of Andalusia, some of the girls who are a little more attractive than the rest take more care of their persons. They go about dancing for money—dances very like those which are forbidden at our (Parisian) public balls during the Carnival. M. Borrow, an English missionary, the author of two very interesting works on the gypsies of Spain, whom he had undertaken to convert at the expense of the Bible Society, asserts that there is no known instance of a
gitana
having a weakness for a man not of her race. It seems to me that there is much exaggeration in the eulogium which he bestows on their chastity. In the first
place, the great majority of them are in the plight of Ovid’s ugly woman:
Casta quam nemo rogavit
. As for the pretty ones, they are, like Spanish women, exacting in the choice of their lovers. A man must please them and deserve them. M. Borrow cites as a proof of their virtue an instance which does honour to his own virtue, and above all to his innocence. An immoral man of his acquaintance, he says, offered several ounces of gold to a pretty
gitana
, to no purpose. An Andalusian to whom I told this anecdote declared that that same immoral man would have had better luck if he had shown only two or three piastres, and that to offer ounces of gold to a gypsy was as poor a way to persuade her as to promise a million or two to a servant girl at an inn. However that may be, it is certain that the
gitanas
display a most extraordinary devotion to their husbands. There is no peril or privation which they will not defy, in order to assist them in their need. One of the names by which the gypsies call themselves
—romi
or
spouses
—seems to me to bear witness to the respect of the race for the marriage state. In general, we may say that their principal virtue is patriotism, if we may call by that name the fidelity which they observe in their relations with persons of the same origin as themselves, the zeal with which they help one another, and the inviolable secrecy which they maintain in respect to compromising affairs. Indeed, we may remark something similar in all associations that are shrouded in mystery and are outside of the law.

A few months ago, I visited a tribe of gypsies settled in the Vosges. In the cabin of an old woman, the patriarch of the tribe, there was a gypsy unknown to her family, suffering
from a fatal disease. That man had left a hospital, where he was well cared for, to die among his compatriots. For thirteen weeks he had been in bed in the cabin of his hosts, and much better treated than the sons and sons-in-law who lived in the same house. He had a comfortable bed of straw and moss, with reasonably white sheets, whereas the rest of the family, to the number of eleven, slept on boards three feet long. So much for their hospitality. The same woman who was so humane to her guest said in his presence:
“Singo, singo, homte hi mulo.”
“Before long, before long, he must die.” After all, the life of those people is so wretched that the certainty of death has no terrors for them.

A remarkable feature of the gypsy character is their indifference in the matter of religion. Not that they are atheists or skeptics. They have never made profession of atheism. Far from that, they adopt the religion of the country in which they live; but they change when they change countries. The superstitions which among ignorant peoples replace religious sentiments are equally foreign to them. Indeed, how could superstition exist among people who, in most cases, live on the credulity of others! I have observed, however, among Spanish gypsies, a strange horror at the thought of touching a dead body. There are few of them whom money could hire to carry a corpse to the cemetery.

I have said that most gypsy women dabble in fortune-telling. They are very skilful at it. But another thing that is a source of very great profit to them is the sale of charms and love-philtres. Not only do they keep frogs’ feet to fix fickle hearts, or powdered lodestone to force the unfeeling to love;
but at need they make potent conjurations which compel the devil to lend them his aid. Last year a Spanish woman told me the following story: She was passing one day along Rue d’Alcala, sad and distraught, when a gypsy sitting on the sidewalk called after her: “Your lover has been false to you, fair lady.”—It was the truth.—“Do you want me to bring him back?”—You will imagine how joyfully the offer was accepted, and what unbounded confidence was naturally inspired by a person who could thus divine at a glance the inmost secrets of the heart. As it would have been impossible to proceed to magic rites in the most frequented street in Madrid, they made an appointment for the morrow—“Nothing easier than to bring the unfaithful one back to your feet,” said the
gitana
. “Have you a handkerchief, a scarf, or a mantilla that he has given you?”—The lady gave her a silk handkerchief.—“Now sew a piastre into a corner of it, with crimson silk; half a piastre into another; a
piecette
here; a two-real piece here. Then you must sew a gold piece in the centre; a doubloon would be best.”—The doubloon and the rest were duly sewn into the handkerchief.—“Now, give it to me; I will take it to the Campo-Santo when the clock strikes twelve. Come with me, if you want to see some fine deviltry. I promise you that you will see the man you love to-morrow.”—The gypsy started alone for the Campo-Santo, for the lady was too much afraid of the devils to accompany her. I leave you to guess whether the poor love-lorn creature saw her handkerchief or her faithless lover again.

Despite their poverty and the sort of aversion which they inspire, the gypsies enjoy a certain consideration none the less
among unenlightened peoples, and they are very proud of it. They feel a haughty contempt for intelligence, and cordially despise the people who give them hospitality. “The Gentiles are such fools,” said a gypsy of the Vosges to me one day, “that there’s no merit in tricking them. The other day a peasant woman called to me on the street, and I went into her house. Her stove was smoking and she asked me for a spell, to make it burn. I told her to give me first of all a big piece of pork. Then I mumbled a few words in
rommani
. ‘You are a fool,’ I said, ‘you were born a fool, a fool you will die.’—When I was at the door, I said to her in good German: ‘The infallible way to keep your stove from smoking is not to make any fire in it.’—And I ran off at full speed.”

The history of the gypsies is still a problem. To be sure, we know that the first bands of them, very small in numbers, showed themselves in the east of Europe early in the fifteenth century; but no one can say whence they came to Europe, or why; and, which is more extraordinary, we have no idea how they multiplied so prodigiously, in a short time, in several countries at a great distance from one another. The gypsies themselves have preserved no tradition concerning their origin, and, although most of them speak of Egypt as their original fatherland, it is because they have adopted a fable that was spread abroad concerning them many, many years ago.

Most Orientalists who have studied the gypsy language believe that they came originally from India. In fact, it seems that a great number of the roots of the
rommani
tongue and
many of its grammatical forms are found in phrases derived from the Sanskrit. We can understand that, in their long wanderings, the gypsies may have adopted many foreign words. In all the dialects of the
rommani
, we find many Greek words. For example:
cocal
, bone, from
χóχχαλον
(Greek);
petalli
, horseshoe, from
πεταλον
(Greek);
cafi
, nail, from
χαρφι
(Greek), etc. To-day, the gypsies have almost as many different dialects as there are bands of their race living apart from one another. Everywhere they speak the language of the country in which they live more readily than their own, which they seldom use except as a means of speaking freely before strangers. If we compare the dialect of the gypsies of Germany with that of the Spaniards, who have had no communication with the former for centuries, we discover a very great number of words common to the two; but the original tongue has been noticeably modified everywhere, although in different degrees, by the contact with the more cultivated tongues, which these nomads have been constrained to employ. German on the one side, Spanish on the other, have so modified the substance of the
rommani
that it would be impossible for a gypsy of the Black Forest to converse with one of his Andalusian brethren, although they need only exchange a few sentences to realise that each of them is speaking a dialect derived from the same parent tongue. A few words in very frequent use are common, I believe, to all dialects; for instance, in all the vocabularies which I have had an opportunity to see,
pani
means water,
manro
, bread,
mas
, meat, and
lon
, salt.

The names of the numbers are almost the same everywhere. The German dialect seems to me much purer than the Spanish; for it has retained a number of the primitive grammatical forms, while the
gitanos
have adopted those of the Castilian tongue. A few words, however, are exceptions to this rule and attest the former community of the dialects. The preterit tenses in the German dialect are formed by adding
ium
to the imperative, which is always the root of the verb. The verbs in the Spanish
rommani
are all conjugated like Castilian verbs of the first conjugation. From the infinitive
jamar
, to eat, they regularly make
jamé
, I have eaten; from
lillar
, to take,
lillé
, I have taken. But some old gypsies say, on the other hand,
jayon, lillon
. I know no other verbs which have retained this ancient form.

While I am thus parading my slight acquaintance with the
rommani
tongue, I must note a few words of French argot, which our thieves have borrowed from the gypsies. The
Mystères de Paris
has taught good society that
chourin
means knife. The word is pure
rommani; tchouri
is one of the words common to all the dialects. M. Vidocq calls a horse
grès—
that is another
rommani
word
—gras, gre, graste, gris
. Add the word
romanichel
, which in Parisian slang means gypsies. It is a corruption of
rommane tchave
, gypsy youths. But an etymology of which I am proud is that of
frimousse
; expression, face—a word which all schoolboys use, or did use in my day. Observe first that Oudin, in his curious dictionary, wrote in 1640
firlimouse
. Now,
firla, fila
, in
rommani
means face;
mui
has the same meaning, it exactly corresponds to the Latin
os.
The combination
firlamui
was instantly understood by a gypsy purist, and I believe it to be in conformity with the genius of his language. This is quite enough to give the readers of
Carmen
a favourable idea of my studies in
rommani
. I will close with this proverb, which is quite apropos:
En retudi panda nasti abela macha
—“a fly cannot enter a closed mouth.”