GYPSIES. passed through a long stage of helplessly absurd speculation, have of late years been ventilated by competent investigators, both linguists and historians, and are still but partially solved. So much only seems now established, that India, the cradle of many nations, was also the source from which they sprang. Whether, however, they are the Tshandalas of which the laws of Menou speak, or the kinsmen of the Bazeegars or Nuts of Calcutta; whether they belong to the Tshingani, a band of robbers near the mouth of the Indus, or are the descendants of those Luris-identical, according to Persian and Arabic authorities, with the Zuts or Djatts of Northern India-whom Firdusi mentions as having been called into Persia by Bahram Gur to the number of 10,000, about 420 A. D., that they might act as musicians to the poor-cannot be affirmed with certainty, although there can be no doubt that theirs must have been at all times one of the poorest and most obscure tribes of India. The first considerable body left Asia for Europe before the 12th c., perhaps in consequence of disastrous encounters with the Arabian conquerors; and Tamerlane was unquestionably the cause of still more numerous emigrations in the 14th century. The first notice of them which occurs in European literature is embodied in a free paraphrase, in German, of the Book of Genesis, written by an Austrian monk about 1122. They are there described as 'Ishmaelites* and brasiers, who go peddling through the wide world, having neither house nor home, cheating the people with their tricks, and deceiving mankind, but not openly.' Two hundred years later, we find them settled in Hungary (under Belus II.), at Cyprus, and in Wallachia. In 1417, they travelled in great hordes into Moldavia and many parts of Germany. In 1418, five months after the Council of Constance, they appeared, about 1000 strong, before Zürich, commanded by a Duke Michael of Little Egypt,' accompanied by several dukes and knights, and carrying with them a good supply of money, sportingdogs, and other marks of nobility.' From Switzerland they descended into Italy, and in 1422 they shewed themselves at Bologna and Forli. Another band, numbering, this time, according to the old Swiss historian, Stumpf, 14,000, arrived in the same year at Basel. On the 17th of August 1427, a band of them, coming from Bohemia, made their appearance before Paris, which, however, they were not allowed to enter, but were lodged at La Chapelle Saint Denis. Other hordes succeeded these in the following years, spreading in rapid succession over all parts of Germany, over Spain, England, Russia, Scandinavia, and, indeed, over the remotest parts of Europe. The account which they most frequently gave of themselves was, that they originally came from Little Egypt;' that the king of Hungary had compelled about 4000 of them to be baptized, had slain the remainder, and had condemned the baptized to seven years' wandering. Another version of their story was, that the Saracens had gone to war with them in Egypt, had subdued them, and forced them to renounce Christianity; that, after some years, they had been reconquered by the Christians, and that the pope, Martin V., had laid upon them, as a penance for their renunciation of the true faith, a life of wandering for the space of seven years, during which they were not to sleep in a bed. At the end of this period, they would be sent * Ishmaelites a notion perpetuated in the designation Geschmeilim of the Danish thieves' jargon, and the German Rothwalsch (Dorph, 44 and 45; Grolman, 65) a term which has hitherto puzzled all investigators, Pott himself not excepted (cf. p. 28; Heister, p. 8), but which is nothing but a corruption of the Hebrew Jishmaelim-Ishmaelites. to a fine and fertile land. Yet another account was, that they were commanded by God to roam through the world for that period, in expiation of their want of hospitality towards Joseph and Mary-a notion which has, curiously enough, been partly revived in our own day by Roberts, with this difference only, that he proves them, from the prophecics of Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, to be the descendants of the ancient Egyptians, and their wanderings to be the predicted punishment of the various iniquities of their forefathers. At first, they were well received. The romance with which they surrounded themselves, their pretended state of penitence, above all, the pomp and wealth they displayed, were sufficient to secure the good-will of the countries through which they passed -so much so, that letters of safe-conduct were given them by the Emperor Sigismund, the genuineness of which there is no reason to doubt. Soon, however, the tide began to turn. Their resources gone, they were everywhere treated with contumely, and despised chiefly on account of the degrading arts of chiromancy, magic, and thieving, to which they again resorted for their support, like their earlier brethren, described by the monk. And with the reckless brutality characteristic of the middle ages, edict after edict was hurled against these diviners and wicked heathens.' The governments of Europe vied with each other in banishing, outlawing, and slaying them whenever and wherever found, and in most severely punishing those that dared to shelter them, chiefly because of their traffic with the devil.' These edicts remained in force in many countries down to the 18th c.; and Frederick the Great, in 1748, renewed the law that every Gypsy beyond the age of 18, found in his states, should be hanged forthwith. In England, the most barbarous decrees against them were issued by Henry VIII. in 1531 and Elizabeth in 1563. In Scotland, where, under James V., a certain Johnny Faa had been officially recognised by the crown as Lord and Count of Little Egypt, some of the severest edicts date from 1570, 1603, and 1609; and in 1624, Helen Faa, a descendant of Johnny, together with fifteen other women of the seed-royal, were condemned to be drowned. Towards the latter half of last century, however, more humane measures adopted towards them, with a view to the improvement of their social and moral state. Maria Theresa, in 1768 and 1773, issued ordinances for the education of their children, and their gradual settlement as cultivators of the soil, chiefly in Hungary and Transylvania, where they swarmed in large numbers; special streets were built for them at the ends of the villages, and the name of Uj-Magyar, UjParasztok (New Peasants), was officially bestowed upon them. Joseph II. renewed these edicts in 1782, with certain modifications. Various other methods of gradually amalgamating them with the general population were tried elsewhere (a society was formed for that purpose at Southampton by the Rev. Mr Crabb in 1832), but with comparatively little effect. They have continued-with few exceptions their peculiar nomad life, with all its questionable resources and practices, its joys and its sorrows, unchanged, up to this day; and even gypsy children, brought up far from their tribe, in the midst of Christian families, have, driven by some mysterious and uncontrollable impulse, run away from their civilised homes as soon as a favourable opportunity offered. were their present condition, we must briefly mention Before proceeding to give a general outline of what have been the opinions held about them since the 15th c. by the learned. They have been, then, by turns set down as Egyptians, Nubians, Tartars, GYPSIES. Cilicians, Mesopotamians, Assyrians, Ethiopians, and do not disdain to adorn themselves with Moors, Armenians, Manichæans, Banditti, and Ger- even dubious trinkets and fine garments in a man Jews. More recently, they were, on account of forward state of decay; but they always arrange the name of Zingari or Zingani-probably a corrup- their clothes, however poor, with great taste. Of tion from their own name Sinte (from Ind), by which their other qualities, their manners and customs, they are known in many countries of Europe- we can only say that they were, and still are, brought in connection with the Sigynnai, a people supposed to be cowardly, revengeful, and treacherof Median origin, settled on the Danube, mentioned ous; that they allow themselves to be used as spies, by Herodotus; with the Sigynni of Strabo, in the are the associates of robbers and thieves, and Caucasus; with the Usbecks, and a host of other that their women, chaste themselves, ply all sorts tribes known and unknown. Again, their name has of questionable trades, chiefly selling poisons, and been derived from one Zinganeus, who, in 1517, acting as go-betweens. It is further said that when they had long been known as Zingani, fled their language has no word for God, immortality, with his followers to escape the vengeance of soul-that, in fact, they have no religion whatSelim. The now recognised theory of their Indian ever; that their marriages, contracted very early, origin, proved incontestably by their language, was are not binding; that they were, or are, wont first positively advanced by Rüdiger in 1782; and to eat their parents; and that they are altogether in his track followed, with more or less success- a very criminal race. How much of all these collecting, comparing, or arranging new and old charges is more founded on fact than their interlinguistic materials Grellmann, Alter, Seetzen, course with demons, for which they have been so Pottinger, Hoyland, Puchmayer, Ouseley, Danilo- dastardly slaughtered in former days, we are not wicz, Bischoff, Domeny de Rienzi, Graffunder, able to decide; certain it is, however, that their Borrow, Richardson, Bishop Heber, and many others. ethical code differs most essentially from that of But the facile princeps of all Gypsologists is Pro- other people (Gorgio), whom they despise on account fessor Pott of Halle, whose Zigeunersprache (1844 of their childish credulity and brutal cruelty. They -1845) is the most wonderfully thorough and have proved themselves, on several occasions, bold exhaustive book ever written on this subject of and courageous as lions, but they prefer running gypsies and their language. away to fighting the battles of the foreigners; and it is also agreed on all hands, that they are passionately attached to their relations; that they are fatalists, and have a sort of fetichism or pantheism, though its peculiar form has never been revealed by them to any inquisitive tourist. At the same time, they belong outwardly to the religion of every country which they happen to inhabit, and repeat the process of baptism as often as they can, with a view, as some have it, to the presents of godfathers and godmothers. They believe in a metempsychosis or transmigration of souls, and refrain for that reason from eating certain animals (eels, &c.), although, generally, they are anything but choice in their food. They are dirty, lazy, fond of drinking and smoking. Their talent for music is remarkable in the extreme; their ears scize, and their instruments reproduce, after the first hearing, the most difficult and complicated pieces, even entire symphonies. Many famous artists (Kecskemecz, Bunks, &c.) have issued from their ranks; and their own melodies sounding over the wide Hungarian pushtas, the steppes of Russia, or through the streets of Jassy, are not easily forgotten. Some of them have indeed become the much-valued property of other nations, or are embodied in some of our favourite operas. No less wonderful is the grace and charm of their wild dances. Altogether, the gypsies are one of the most gifted races, the lost geniuses, so to say, of humanity. The real truth about them, their traditions, and religion, will, we fear, be ever kept a secret. The statement of Borrow, who has lived so long among them, that their entire catechism is summed up in the three precepts: Be true to your people-be faithful to your husbands-and never pay any debts except those owing to your own kindred,' must, we fear, be received with the same degree of caution which, we are sorry to say, has to be applied to many other statements about their manners and customs contained in his otherwise useful Gypsies in Spain. The incredibly absurd descriptions of the Jewish marriage-ceremonies, about which we do possess the fullest and most authoritative information, given there as a counterpart to those of the gypsies, shew plainly how easily and abundantly his good-natured credulity must have been worked upon. This their language, then- a daughter of the old Sanscrit-has, besides giving the only real clue to their origin, also shed some rays over the dark period between their first emigration and their appearance in Europe. Originally the distinct mode of speech of a single and special border tribe of Northern India, it has, during the many wanderings of the race, appropriated words from every country through which they passed; while, on the other hand, it lost many of its own words, and still more of its own inherent power and elegance, and much also of its resemblance to its mother and sisters. These adopted foreign words, their respective number, and their more or less corrupted state, point plainly to the gypsies having passed first into Persia, to their having remained there for a considerable time, to their having then wended their way to some Greek country, perhaps Asia Minor (the designations for 7, 8, and 9 being still Greek), and to their descent thence into Hungary, Cyprus, &c. But their language also (Romany Tschib), though split into different dialects, has also remained almost the only tie which binds the widely-scattered nomad members together. Those of their branches who for centuries have had no intercourse with each other, would, although the strange elements in the other's speech would be incomprehensible to them, yet recognise each other at once by certain words and formulas indelibly written in the memory of the whole race. The outward appearance of the gypsies, who have been pronounced by competent writers to be one of the handsomest races of humanity, varies in some degree according to the climate under which they are born and in which they roam. Their chief characteristics, however, remain everywhere the same: tawniness of skin; slightly projecting, but agreeably formed cheek-bones; long hair, of the colour and lustre of coal; large black eyes, exquisitely shaped mouths, ruddy lips, teeth of a dazzling whiteness, slenderness and agility of limb, expressive features, and well-proportioned, often elegant build. Their women are, indeed, exquisitely beautiful when young, but they lose their good-looks at a very early period, partly on account of the squalor of their habits, and partly from their unsettled and precarious life. Like children, they are fond of showy colours in dress, The increase of population, and the growth of GYPSUM-GYR-FALCON. culture all over Europe, are their worst enemies. in the water of springs; it is scarcely more soluble Their forests are cut down, their heaths enclosed, in boiling water or in acids. To this solubility in the houses are pushed right into their commons; water, although so slight, must be ascribed the and the easy and remunerative belief in their secret arts is waning more and more. It is doubtful, indeed, whether they will, as a separate race, survive many more centuries in Europe. Their numbers at this moment are stated so very differently, that we would fain caution the reader against an implicit belief in the following figures, which we extract from the comparatively most reliable authorities in Hungary, 140,000; in Transylvania and the Principalities, 162,000; Spain, 40,000; England and Scotland, 18,000 (their chief families in these countries being the Royal Lees, the Stanleys, Coopers, Hernes, Smiths, Lovells, &c.); Poland, 2000; Russia, 10,000; Germany, France, and Italy, 40,000; Norway, 1500. Altogether, including those in Turkey and in Asia and Africa (their sojourn in Mexico is questionable), they are computed at about five millions (Rienzi). A small portion only of these occupies as a body fixed habitations in Hungary and Transylvania, where they are agriculturists and goldwashers; and in the Principalities, where they live in a kind of serfdom, and are divided into four different classes-Rudari or Aurari (gold-seekers), Ursari (bear-leaders), Lingurari (manufacturers of and dealers in wooden spoons, mouse-traps, &c.); and Latessi (masons, smiths, tinkers, &c.). All the rest lead a roaming life, live in kennels and under tents from one end of the year to the other, gaining their scanty livelihood, like their forefathers, as best they can, fearing and detesting nothing so much as a fixed and continuous occupation, which would take them away from their free mountains, their plains and woods, the sun, the stars, and the winds.' The following is a specimen of their language in the form of a short improvised stanza: GYPSUM, a mineral consisting essentially of sulphate of lime and water, the proportions of its constituents being lime, 32-56; sulphuric acid, 46.51; water, 20-93. It is very widely diffused, occurs in great abundance in many parts of the world, and is found in rocks and strata geologically very different, as in transition rocks, in secondary and in tertiary formations. It often occurs in nests or kidney-shaped masses in clay or marl. It is found above chalk in many places, and large quantities of it are quarried in some parts of England from the red marl immediately above the great bed of rock-salt. It sometimes occurs in beds many feet thick. It is transparent or opaque, white, yellowish-white or gray, or even yellow, red, brown, or black, according to its purity of chemical composition or the quantity and nature of impurities present. It is also compact, fibrous, foliated, or earthy; sometimes crystallised in six-sided prisms or in lenses. Twin crystals are frequent. It is easily broken, scratched, and cut. Before the blowpipe, it becomes opaque, if not already so, and fuses into a white enamel. The water which it contains is driven off by a heat of about 272° F., and it is then easily reduced to powder, in which state it is well known as Plaster of Paris. Unburned G. is tough, and not easily reduced to powder. G. is soluble in cold water, to the extent of about one part in 461, and is a frequent ingredient value of G. as a manure; the further chemical explanation of which, however, still remains to be ascertained, although theories have been proposed. by Sir Humphry Davy and by Liebig, the former supposing the G. to act chiefly by itself, becoming the nutriment of the crops to which it is most beneficially applied; the latter supposing it to act chiefly by fixing the ammonia of the atmosphere and conveying it to their roots. As a manure, G. is more extensively used in some parts of the continent of Europe and of North America than of Britain. In North America, it is reduced to a fine powder by mills, in order to be used as a manure, for much of its value depends on the fineness of trituration. To clover crops, the application of G. is particularly beneficial, and although it does not produce much benefit in its direct application to grain crops, yet in an alternation of wheat and clover, the crop of wheat is larger because of the liberal supply of this mineral manure to the clover. An excess of G., however, is prejudicial, as has been found in some parts of England, where the subsoil containing it in great quantity has been rashly brought up by the plough.-G., deprived of its water by burning, and reduced to powder, forms a paste which almost immediately sets, or becomes firm and solid, when mixed with its own bulk of water; hence the great use of Plaster of Paris for making casts and cornices. But if the G. is burned at too great a heat, it refuses to set, and the powder of the mineral called Anhydrite, which is an anhydrous sulphate of lime, has not the property of setting.-One of the finest varieties of uncrystallised and untransparent G. is Alabaster (q. v.)-Satin Spar is a beautiful fibrous variety of G., exhibiting a tine play of light, and employed for necklaces, inlaid-work, and other ornamental purposes, but having the disadvantage of being easily scratched. GYRATION, CENTRE OF. See CENTRE OF GYRATION. GYR-FALCON, or JER-FALCON (Falco gyrfalco or F. Islandicus), a species of Falcon (q. v.) of large size, the female, which is the largest, GYRINUS GYULA. brown centre, until aged birds are almost pure white. It is rarely seen in Britain, and very rarely in the southern parts of the island, but inhabits all the very cold northern parts of the world. It was formerly in high esteem for falconry, and was procured at great expense from Iceland and Norway. It is sometimes called ICELAND FALCON, and sometimes GREENLAND FALCON. GYRI'NUS, a Linnæan genus of coleopterous insects, now constituting a family, Gyrinida, closely allied to Dytiscidae, or Water Beetles (see DYTISCUs), but differing in having the antennæ very short, the two fore-legs long and stretching forward like Gyrinus natator. arms, the other legs very short and comparatively broad. The eyes are divided by horny processes, so that each of them almost becomes two. The body is oval, as in the Dytiscido. The Gyrinide are very generally characterised by metallic brilliancy of colour. They are mostly small insects. They fly well, swim and dive well, spend the winter in the mud at the bottom of ponds, and in spring and summer may be seen swimming very actively on the surface of the water, ready to dive on the slightest alarm. In diving, they carry down with them a bright bubble of air. They generally swim in little parties, seeming to chase each other in circles, whence their French name, Tourniquets, and 174 their English name, Whirligigs. They feed on smaller aquatic animals, which they seize in their gyrations. They deposit their eggs on the leaves of aquatic plants. Their larvæ are aquatic, having their bodies composed of thirteen deeply divided rings, of which three bear the feet, and the rest bear filaments probably serving as organs of respiration. The most common British species is Gyrinus natator, a smooth shining blackish insect, three lines long. GY'ROMANCY (gyros, a circle, and manteia, prophecy) was a method of divination by means of a circle, and was generally performed in the following manner: the soothsayer described a circle, and marked it all round with letters; then he commenced to walk round the circle, repeating his incantations, and at the places where he stopped the letters were carefully noted, and by the interpretation put upon these letters, the answer of the god was obtained. GYRO'PHORA. See TRIPE DE ROCHE. GYROSCOPE, an instrument invented by M. Foucault to render palpable to the eye the earth's rotation. Its success depends on the principle, that if a mass be set in rotation freely in space, it will, unless disturbed or constrained, preserve absolutely the plane of its rotation, and will, to effect this, even overcome slight obstacles. In the gyroscope, a heavy ring of metal is almost freely suspended by mechanical contrivances, after having communicated to it, before being set in its frame, a very rapid motion; and to maintain itself in the plane of its rotation, while the earth in revolving on its axis turns round the whole mechanism, it causes a graduated slip to move round under a telescope placed in position, and so renders the earth's motion palpable to the eye. GYU'LA, a town of Hungary, in the county of Bekes-Csanad, is situated on the White Körös, which divides it into the German and Hungarian quarters, 30 miles north of the town of Arad. The trade is chiefly in cattle. Pop. 15,350. H THE eighth letter in the English alphabet, belongs to the order of gutturals, and is a mere attenuation of the sound indicated by the Greek and the German (and Scotch) ch. The tendency of guttural sounds to become lighter and lighter, and at last disappear, is strikingly seen in tracing the history of the letter h. The form of the character corresponds to the Phoenician or Hebrew cheth () and the Greek eta (H, probably at one time pronounced heta), which denoted originally the syllable che. The Greeks dropped the guttural part of the sound, and took the character to mark the vowel e, while in the Latin alphabet it was taken to mark the (faint aspirated) guttural. That the sound of h in Latin must have been faint, is proved by the fact, that many words were written indifferently with or without an h; as honustus or onustus; aheneus or aeneus. In the languages derived from the Latin, the force of h has almost disappeared. It is retained in French as a character, but is scarcely heard in pronunciation. The Italian language altogether ignores the character. In Spanish, it has taken the place in many cases of the Latin f, as hijo Lat. filius, a son; humoso = fumosus, smoky. = In the languages of the Gothic stock, h often represents the hard guttural sound of k or c. See letter C. This substitution, and the subsequent disappearing of h, especially before r and 1, have completely disguised the relationship of many words which are yet of the same root: e. g., Eng. raw; Ang.-Sax. hreaw; Lat. cru-or, blood, cru-dus, bloody, raw. The natural tendency in English, as in other tongues, is to attenuate the sound of h, and altogether eliminate it. This tendency is strongest among the illiterate, who are unrestrained by the presence of the written character; and accordingly to drop one's h's' (e. g., am for ham) is a sign of the want of education and of vulgarity. The perversity of putting h where it ought not to be (e. g., heggs for eggs), is not easily accounted for. The Germans use the letter H, in their musical notation, for the same note which we call B, while they call our B flat simply B; possibly from the flat seventh being more nearly related to C, as a fundamental note, than B natural the sharp seventh is, which they designate H. Thus, avenues of trees. Pop. (in 1860) 30,000. H. is the seat of government for the province, and the see of a Catholic bishop. Among its 13 churches, the principal is that known as De Groote or St Bavo's Kerk, which was built in the 15th c., is the largest in Holland, and is specially noted for its lofty tower and its famous organ, constructed by Müller of Amsterdam, which, till recently, was the largest of its kind, having 5000 pipes, 60 stops, and 4 rows of keys. Before the church stands the marble statue of Laurens Coster (q. v.), to whom his countrymen ascribe the invention of printing. Among the buildings worthy of note, we may instance the town-hall, with its fine carvings, formerly the residence of the Counts of Holland; the palace of the states-general; the prison; and the Teyler Institution, which is endowed with ample funds for the poor, and has numerous scientific and antiquarian collections. H. has a good gymnasium, numerous academical, scientific, and benevolent institutions, and is also the head-quarters of the Society of National Education, which has here its school for teachers. Although H. is no longer celebrated, as in former times, for its flourishing trade, it still possesses extensive refineries of salt, tanneries, foundries for type of Greek and Hebrew, and various manufactories of silk, linen, and thread, and carries on an extensive trade in flowers and seeds, sending its tulips, hyacinths, and other bulbs to every part of Europe. H. was a flourishing town as early as the 12th c., when it took an important part in the wars between the Hollanders and West Frisians. At the close of the 15th c., it lost all its privileges, and suffered severely during the revolt of the peasantry; and in the following century, during the war of independence, it sided with the allies, and underwent a seven months' siege in 1572-1573, which is unparalleled in the annals of history for the heroism evinced by the citizens, and for the atrocities which, in violation of their faith, the Spaniards perpetrated after the surrender of the city. HAARLEM LAKE, which is now drained, lay between the towns of Haarlem, Leyden, and Amsterdam, and communicated with the Zuider Zee, by a narrow strait called 'Het Y.' Before its thorough drainage (1839-1852), it embraced the four ponds of Haarlem, Leyden, Spieger, and Helle, which, in consequence of an irruption of the sea in the 16th c., when several villages were destroyed, had merged into one vast sheet of water, and in the course of time encroached so far upon the adjacent land as ultimately to cover an area of more than 60,000 acres. The depth did not exceed 15 feet, more than half of which was composed of mud and clay, from which the Dutch prepared, by baking, compact masses known as 'klinkers,' which were used for purposes of paving. The waters of the lake frequently rose during storms to an alarming height, necessitating an enormous annual outlay in keeping the dams and sluices in repair. In consequence of the damage done to the |