The Gipsey’s decease is instantly succeeded by the most frantic lamentations: parents, in particular, who have lost their children, appear inconsolable. Little can be said of their burials; only, that on those occasions the cries and bewailings are redoubled, and become very violent. When the leader of a horde dies, things are conducted more quietly. His own people carry him, with great respect, to the grave, where each one appears earnest and attentive; although at the same time employed in a manner to excite laughter.
This is the mode of proceeding when a Gipsey dies a natural death. But it often happens that he loses his life by violent means—not by his own hands for self-murder and infanticide are equally unheard of among them. No Gipsey ever puts a period to his own existence on account of vexation, anxiety, or despair; as, besides his unbounded love of life, care or despair is totally unknown to him.
Even in the greatest distress, the Gipsey is never troubled with low spirits; ever merry and blythe, he dies not till he cannot help it: this often happens on the gallows, attended with scenes ridiculous as the most ludicrous imagination could invent. One man requested, as a particular act of grace, that he might not be hanged with his face towards the high road; saying, “Many of his acquaintance passed that way, and he should be very much ashamed to be seen by them hanging on a gallows.” At another time the relations of a Gipsey who was leading to execution, perceiving, by the discourse and gestures of the criminal, how unwillingly he advanced, not having the least inclination to be hanged, addressed themselves to the magistrates and officers of justice, with the following wise remonstrance: “Gentlemen, pray do not compel a man to a thing for which you see he has no desire nor inclination.” Such scenes happen at almost every Gipsey execution, which are proofs that these people are quite deficient in thought or consideration.
_Political Regulations peculiar to the Gipseys_.
WHEN the Gipseys first arrived in Europe, they had leaders and chiefs, to conduct the various tribes in their migrations. This was necessary, not only to facilitate their progress through different countries and quarters of the globe, but to unite their force if necessary, and thereby enable them to make a more formidable resistance when opposed: and likewise to carry any plan, they might have formed, more readily into execution. We accordingly find, in old books, mention made of knights, counts, dukes, and kings. Krantz and Munster mention counts, and knights, in general terms, among the Gipseys; other people give us the very names of these dignified men: Crusius cites a duke MICHAEL; Muratori a duke ANDREAS; and Aventinus records a king ZINDELO: not to speak of inscriptions on monuments, erected in different places, to the memories of duke PANUEL, count JOHANNIS; and a noble knight PETRUS, in the fifteenth century. But no comment is requisite to shew how improperly these appellations were applied. Though the Gipsey chiefs might be gratified with these titles, and their dependants probably esteemed them people of rank, it was merely a ridiculous imitation of what they had seen and admired among civilised people. Nevertheless, the custom of having leaders and chiefs over them prevails to this time, at least in Hungary and Transylvania; probably it may also still exist in Turkey, and other countries where these people live together in great numbers.