Rensselaer Union, Volume 8, Number 42, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 6 July 1876 — Gypsied and Their Friends. [ARTICLE]

Gypsied and Their Friends.

* Where did thd gypsies really come from ? In what coimfry Was the cradle of this race of WanddrC/ij A question which has been answered' in ways; the ofUfd advanced, and on Jhe slenderest grounds. They wandered IHoiti itiefofovince of Zetigitana, in Africa; th('y*wbt*<?fuWrtv& , ft'6m the City* of Sin•gifra, tn Mesopotamia,* driven out by Julianthe Apostate: tlifey came from Mount ’Caucasus; their name “Zigeuner” is a ?ort-uption of Sartteenar; they are the Canaanites 'whom Joshua dispossessed; they are Egyptians v they are Ambrites. All these theories are based upon their names. • Other origins are assigned them from the peculiarities of their customs and language; they are faquirs; they are the remains of Attila’s Huns; they are the descendants of Cain ; they are German Jews, who, during the dreadful persecution of the fourteenth century, betook themselves to-tlie-woods and remained the troubled times passed over; they are Tartars, separated from Tjmour’s hosts about the beginning of the fifteenth century; they are Ciroiwaps,, driven away from their veryTiiqour with his Tartars; foejfc Me ftil;emiw; tlipy are and niany more are enumerated at length .quoted by everybody who lias written op the subject. As we write these linesq wq read .that M. Bataillard, who lias made the gypsies his study for many Jias iq the press a paper in whicli he attributes altogether a new origin to them. Mr. Charles Leland’s' opinion is that they are the descendants of a vast number of Hindus pf the primitive tribes of Hindustan, who were expelled or emigrated, from that country early in the fourteenth (Sentttry, and that they were identical with the two castes of the Dorns and Nats —the latter being at the present dhy the real’gypsies of India. The people have drawn around theiri a whole literature Of inquiry and' research. The names of Sittisbn, Bprtow t Pott, Grellman, Liebich, Paspatl, Sinidt, which are readiest to our haiid, have been quite recently siipplhmfehted’ by the addition of Mr.. Chtfrles’ Leland and Prof. E. H. Paliner. ’ Rbtnfiitmy literature is like the Homeric ballads, inasmuch as It is entirely oral —dhliKe'the Ilitatydt is extremely limited in extent. Borrow, in his latest work, gives'si few songs and pieces in verse, but the Romm anyfOik are not given to poetry..— Temple Bar. ta— ■. The Springfield, (Mass.) Repul>lican has a list of twenty four woolen mills In Central and Westera Massachusetts that are lying idle. They claim that they have realized no profits for three years. A Rochester horsq-shoer has for his motto,Not slow but shoer.”