Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 10.djvu/630

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GAB—GYZ

G122 tiles,” some point to tl1e fancied cradle of the Gipsy race. Thus G1'p_s_y ol_‘ _U3/psy itself ‘(I124/ylrftltlll in the 16th century), the Spanish Gttano, .lban1-an Jerk, modern Greek 1‘v<[>ro9, Magyar .1 ’/zarao népek (“ 1‘hara1ol1's_peo1,:le ”), _and T_urkish Fc‘r‘rz'iwn1, preserve the behef In Its ]:.gypt1an origm, a belief which finds no confirmation except in the ca.sual resemblance betwee11 Horn and the Egyptian réme, ‘_‘ 111an ” (qf. Bawlinson’s Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 225), and wl11ch was possibly due to the Gipsies’ skill in serpent-cl1arming. . The Scandinavian and Low-Germa11 Tutarc identifies Gipsies with the .Iougolian hordes, the terror of Europe in the 13th century; and their French name Bokémiens was probably due either to a confusion of some such form as Seram. w1tl1 Czech or to the belief that Gipsies originated in Bohemia. To the san1e class belong Walac/u', C'il1'ces, l'.r1'z.', S(n'aceni_. _lgareni, .Vubiani_. &c., cited by Eritschius (1660). Other names again denote the character, hue, or ca.llings of the race, as Arabic Ilarcimi, “ villain; ” Dutch Ileg/dens, “heathens," Persian Ix'cu'dchi, “swartl1y;” and modern Greek Ka.-r§¢'/3’:-:)xo9, by Somavera derived from the Latin captions, by Bataillard connected with ,8e')tog, “a dart,” and so with the Gipsies’ name in Cyprus, Ix'ilz'ndjin'dés, from the Turkish gyliufj, “ a sword.” Their Scotch name Tiul-ler, which occurs i11 a charter of William the Lion (1165-1131-1),is co1111nonly held to be a mere varia11t of tin/cor; but if its initial! correspond to .2 English ten, German ze/an), it comes very near the Italian Z ingaro or Z iugano, which, like the German Z igeuner, Czech Cingtin. or C'i_«/tin, and Magyar Cigdny, is a form of the most widespread of all the Gipsies’ appellations ,Bulgarian Atzigan, modern Greek ’Aro-ly- Kavos or Adcyyavoe. The last was also the t1tle of a ieparatist sect in Aslsia Minor, po czfxlled, it is supppsed, ecause its mem ers 'ept t remse ves rom contact wit 1 1111- believers (a privative, and dcyyofvw, “to touch”). Miklosich, finding in it the source of all the precedintr forms, believes it to l1ave been transferred by the Greeks ti) Gipsies, either because the latter entered the western parts of the Byzantine empire fro1n Phrygia and Lycaonia, or because they were suspected of being adl1erents of the sect or simply as a nickname ()Iikl., vi. pp. 57-66). Bataillard, on the other hand, identifying the heretic ’Ac9L'yyavoL with Gipsy ’A-ro'L'y1<a1/0L, and tl1ese Witl1 the Elfyvvvat of Herodotus (V. 9), derives the name fron1 o-Lyufimy, “a javelin ;” while others among the countless etymologies p1‘oposed are Goeje's from Persian chan_r/, “a kind of harp or cither ° ” Burto11’s from Persian zany, “ Ethiopia ;” and Newbold’s fi‘om Persian zin, “ a saddle.” First Appearance in European IIist0r_2/.— From whatever cause, it is certain that a confusion did exist between the 'Aro-fyxavor and '.c9L'yyavot, which renders it extremely difficult to determine whether the Byzantine historians are speaking of Gipsies or heretics in seven passages collected by Miklosich. It appears from these that ’At9L'yyavo: described as magicians, soothsayers, a11d serpent-char111ers, first emerge in Byzantine history under Nicephorus I. (802—l1), were banished by Michael I. (8l1—13), and were restored to favour by Michael II. (820-29); but Miklosich’s reasons for absolutely identifying them with Gipsies, and positively asserting the latter to have appeared at Byzantium in 810 under Nicephorus, are hard to recognize. Less dubious seems an extract from the Georgian Life of Giorgi Jltharsmindel (llth century), which describes l1ow at Constantinople cer- tam descendants of the race of Simon Magus, Ats-in/can by name, sorcerers and famous rogues, slew wild beasts by their magic arts in the presence of Bagrat IV. Such passages are open to some doubt ; hardly so the following from the I tine;-m'z'mn S3/monis Simeonis (ed. by J. Nasmith, Camb. 1778), where Fitz Simeon, a Franciscan friar of Dublin, describing stay in_Crete in 1322, says :—“ We there saw a people hvmg outside the city (of Candia), who GIPSIES ' worsl1ip according to the Greek rite, a11d declare tliemselves of the race of lla.n1. They rarely or never stop i11 one place more than thirty days, b11t, as though aecursed of heaven, wander from field to field with little, oblong, black, low tents, like those of the Arabs, or from cave to cave." The en1press Catherine de V-alois, again, who died i11 13-16, granted to the suzerains of Corfu authority to reduce to vassal-age certain honu'nes eutgenili coming from the n1ainland, who under the Venetians formed in l3e'G the nucleus of a_7°cn<lu7n .lri)q/r.(n0r1()n that lasted down to the present century. About 1378 the Venetian governor of Nauplion confirmed the .-la-in:/uizi of that Greek colony in privileges granted by his predecessors; a11d i11 1387 llircea I., waiwode of ’all-achia, renewed a grant 111ade by his uncle Ladislaus to the n1onastery of St Anthony at Voditza of forty salaschi (tents) of Ac1'_(/ani. Otl1er docu- ments might be cited, but these are e11ongl1 to show that in the 14th century Gipsies existed in the Balkan peninsula a11d islands of the Levant; that i11 'allachia they were re- duced to a state of bondage (from which they were only freed in 1856) ; and that 11owl1ere were they regarded as new—come1's, so that by these documents it is impossible to fix the date of the first Gipsy immigration. llore than tl1is, a metrical German parapl1rase of Genesis, made by an Austrian monk about 1132, preserved at Vienna, and edited by Hotfmann in his 1"-nndgruben fiir (}'e.sv:/u’:-/rte deutscher ;S'pru.:-he (Breslau, 1837), goes far to prove that Gipsies were known in Austria three centuries before the co111n1only-accepted date of their appearance in that country. A passage relating to Hagar’s descendants (Gen. xvi. 15) runs :~—“So she (Hagar) had this son; they na111ed him Islnnael. It is from him the Isl11naelites descend. They journey far through the world; we call them c/mllsmirle (lit. cold-sn1itl1s). . . . They have no house nor country: everywhere they are found alike; they wander over the country, abusing people by their knaveries. Thus they deceive men,—robbing no one openly.” That l1crc by clmltsmicle, Is/mzaelites, and (lesce-mltmts of Ilugur Gipsies are meant, scarcely admits of doubt, seeing that the sn1ith’s is still the Gipsies’ leading handicraft; that Lusignan i11 1573 speaks of the Gipsies of Cyprus as “Cinquanes, otherwise called Agariensf’ and that in German and Danish Iiotwiilsch or thieves’ slang G'esclmzeili-in and S-muelem (z'.e., Ishmaelites) signify “Gipsies.” The 1<w,uo3p6)uoL also of Byzantine writers were possibly Gipsies, being defined by Ducange as “circulatores atque adeo Fubri cerarii q11i per pagos cursitant: nt hodie passim a.pud nos, quos Ckaculronniers dici1nus." Tl1eophanes (758-818) speaks under the date 5-14 of a Kwpodpépox; from Italy. Later J[0vements.—Late in 1-117 there came to Liine— burg a band of 300 wanderers, "black as Tartars and calling themselves Seccmi.” At their head rode a “ duke "’ and “count,” splendidly dressed, and leading like nobles dogs of chase ; next ca111e a motley crew afoot ; and women and children brought up the rear in waggons. They bore a111ong other letters of safe-conduct one granted by the emperor Sigismund, and professed themselves engaged on a seven years‘ pilgrimage, i111posed by their bishops in expiation of apostacy fro111 the Christian faith. l"1-om Liineburg they passed to Hamburg, Liibeck, 'is1nar, Rostock, Stralsund, and Greifswald, camping by night outside the walls, thieving by day, “ wherefore several were taken and slain” (cf. the contemporary annals of Korner and Rufus, and Krantz’s ;Sa.2:o-mla, 1520). In 1418 they journeyed southwards through Meissen, Leipsic, and Hesse, and, _entering Switzerland, arrived at Zurich o11 August 3lst, visiting also Basel, Bern, and Solothurn, according to Conrad Justi11ger (died 1426), who speaks of them as “1nore than 200 baptized heathens from

Egypt.” They now split up i11to two ba11ds, the first of