_Myself_.—‘Do you know from what country he came?’
_Antonio_.—‘He told me that he was a Mayoro.’
_Myself_.—‘You mean a Magyar or Hungarian.’
_Antonio_.—‘Just so; and I have repented ever since that I did not follow him.’
_Antonio_.—‘I will tell you: the king has destroyed the law of the Calés, and has put disunion amongst us. There was a time when the house of every Zíncalo, however rich, was open to his brother, though he came to him naked; and it was then the custom to boast of the “erráte.” It is no longer so now: those who are rich keep aloof from the rest, will not speak in Calo, and will have no dealings but with the Busné. Is there not a false brother in this foros, the only rich man among us, the swine, the balichow? he is married to a Busnee and he would fain appear as a Busno! Tell me one thing, has he been to see you? The white blood, I know he has not; he was afraid to see you, for he knew that by Gypsy law he was bound to take you to his house and feast you, whilst you remained, like a prince, like a crallis of the Calés, as I believe you are, even though he sold the last gras from the stall. Who have come to see you, brother? Have they not been such as Paco and his wife, wretches without a house, or, at best, one filled with cold and poverty; so that you have had to stay at a mesuna, at a posada of the Busné; and, moreover, what have the Calés given you since you have been residing here? Nothing, I trow, better than this rubbish, which is all I can offer you, this Meligrána de los Bengues.’
Here he produced a pomegranate from the pocket of his zamarra, and flung it on the table with such force that the fruit burst, and the red grains were scattered on the floor.
The Gitános of Estremadura call themselves in general Chai or Chabos, and say that their original country was Chal or Egypt. I frequently asked them what reason they could assign for calling themselves Egyptians, and whether they could remember the names of any places in their supposed fatherland; but I soon found that, like their brethren in other parts of the world, they were unable to give any rational account of themselves, and preserved no recollection of the places where their forefathers had wandered; their language, however, to a considerable extent, solved the riddle, the bulk of which being Hindui, pointed out India as the birthplace of their race, whilst the number of Persian, Sclavonian, and modern Greek words with which it is checkered, spoke plainly as to the countries through which these singular people had wandered before they arrived in Spain.