Volume 3 - Electric Scotland

268 GIPSEYS.
wandered about the Roman provinces; it is bogging',
stealing-, and fortune-telling. If this theory does not
agree with that of Grellman or Muratori, it remains to be
proved that theirs are better. It is supposed that they
first appeared in 1417. It is more likely that they first
then did something- to attract notice, in an age which had
scarcely begun to take notice of any thing". Or else the
people began to come to their senses in those days, and to
pay some more attention to the matters around them.
When all Europe was full of Crusades, Leag-ues, Jacque-
ries, Baronial German robbers, travelling jugglers, tin-
kers, and minstrels, disbanded soldiers, thieves, and ban-
ditti, a few thousand vagabonds, more or less, were not
likely to have attracted much notice. Grellman supposes
that they were Pariahs driven from India by Timur. The
Pariahs are of a character little likely to assume spirit to
emiofrate. Besides, what talents in emiofration have the
Hindoos shown. Alexander, Zinghis, Timur, or Leaden-
hall Street, they have put their heads quietly through the
collar and eaten their rice as they did before. The
Pariahs have no fortune-telling propensities. It would
demand more talent than Grellman has shown in his heavy
discussion, to teach an army of Pariahs their road from
Hindostan to Hungary ; to show them the way. He
brings them up the Persian Gulf, and through Egypt, and
so on to Hungary. Hence it was that they were mistaken
for Egyptians. Nothing so easy as the mistake ; and the
voyage both. A fleet of Pariahs under a Pariah Admiral,
might gravel Sir William Jones; if it did not Grellman.
But there is nothing like a system for converting sea into
land, and making all other things smooth. Marsden, Bry-
ant, Pasquier, De Pauw, Polydore Virgil, Bellonius, and
iEneas Silvius, are all great authorities, unquestionably.
But to what purpose, when they do not agree. Blumen-
lt>ach says that the scull of a Gipsey resembles that of an