The Gipsies Advocate | Page 4

tschur, that is, Thou a great thief. She immediately replied;
No--I am not a thief--I live by fortune telling.
It can be no matter of surprise that this language, as spoken among this
people, is generally corrupted, when we consider, that, for many
centuries, they have known nothing of elementary science, and have
been strangers to books and letters. Perhaps the secrecy necessary to
effect many of their designs, has been the greatest means of preserving

its scanty remains among them. But an attempt to prove that they are
not of Hindoo origin, because they do not speak the Hindostanee with
perfect correctness, would be as absurd as to declare, that, our Gipsies
are not natives of England, because they speak very incorrect English.
The few words that follow, and which occurred in some conversations
the Author had with the most intelligent of the Gipsies he has met,
prove how incorrectly they speak our language; and yet it would be
worse than folly to attempt to prove that they are not natives of
England.
Expencival for expensive.
Cide for decide.
Device for advice.
Dixen for dictionary. {18}
Ealfully for equally.
Indistructed for instructed.
Gemmem for gentleman.
Dauntment for daunted.
Spiteliness for spitefulness.
Hawcus Paccus for Habeas Corpus.
Increach for increase.
Commist for submit.
Brand, in his observations on POPULAR ANTIQUITIES, is of opinion
that the first Gipsies fled from Asia, when the cruel Timur Beg ravaged
India, with a view to proselyte the heathen to the Mohammedan
religion; at which time about 500,000 human beings were butchered by
him. Some suppose, that, soon after this time, many who escaped the

sword of this human fury, came into Europe through Egypt; and on this
account were called, in English, GIPSIES.
Although there is not the least reason whatever to suppose the Gipsies
to have had an Egyptian origin, and although, as we have asserted in a
former page, they are strangers in that land of wonders to the present
day; yet it appears possible to me, that Egypt may have had something
to do with their present appellation. And allowing that the supposition
is well founded, which ascribes to them a passage through Egypt into
European nations, it is very likely they found their way to that place
under the following circumstances.
In the years 1408 and 1409, Timur Beg ravaged India, to make, as has
already been observed, proselytes to the Mohammedan delusion, when
he put hundreds of thousands of its inhabitants to the sword. It is very
rational to suppose, that numbers of those who had the happiness not to
be overtaken by an army so dreadful, on account of the cruelties it
perpetrated, should save their lives by flying from their native land, to
become wandering strangers in another. Now if we assert that the
Gipsies were of the Suder cast of Asiatic Indians, and that they found
their way from Hindostan into other and remote countries when Timur
Beg spread around him terrors so dreadful, it is natural to ask, why did
not some of the other casts of India accompany them? This objection
has no weight at all when we consider the hatred and contempt poured
upon the Suder by all the other casts of India. The Bramins,
Tschechteries, and Beis, were as safe, though menaced with destruction
by Timur Beg, as they would have been along with the Suder tribes,
seeking a retreat from their enemy in lands where he would not be
likely to follow them. Besides, the other casts, from time immemorial,
have looked on their country as especially given them of God; and they
would as soon have suffered death, as leave it. The Suders had not
these prepossessions for their native soil. They were a degraded
people--a people looked on as the lowest of the human race; and, with
an army seeking their destruction, they had every motive to leave, and
none to stay in Hindostan.
It cannot be determined by what track the forefathers of the Gipsies

found their way from Hindostan to the countries of Europe. But it may
be presumed that they passed over the southern Persian deserts of
Sigiston, Makran and Kirman, along the Persian Gulph to the mouth of
the Euphrates, thence to Bassora into the deserts of Arabia, and thence
into Egypt by the Isthmus of Suez.
It is a fact not unworthy a place in these remarks on the origin of this
people, that they do not like to be called Gipsies, unless by those
persons whom they have reason to consider their real friends. This
probably arises from two causes of great distress to them--Gipsies are
suspected and hated as the perpetrators of all crime--and they are
almost universally prosecuted as vagrants. Is it to be wondered at, that
to strangers, they do not like to