female Gypsies in Moscow are of this
high, talented, and respectable order; amongst them there are a great
number of low, vulgar, and profligate females who sing in taverns, or at
the various gardens in the neighbourhood, and whose husbands and male
connections subsist by horse-jobbing and such kinds of low traffic. The
principal place of resort of this class is Marina Rotche, lying about two
_verses_ from Moscow, and thither I drove, attended by a
_valet-de-place_. Upon my arriving there the Gypsies swarmed out from
their tents and from the little _tracteer_ or tavern, and surrounded me.
Standing on the seat of the _caleche_, I addressed them in a loud voice
in the dialect of the English Gypsies, with which I have some slight
acquaintance. A scream of wonder instantly arose, and welcomes and
greetings were poured forth in torrents of musical Rommany, amongst
which, however, the most pronounced cry was: _ah kak mi toute
karmuma_--'Oh, how we love you,' for at first they supposed me to be one
of their brothers, who, they said, were wandering about in Turkey, China,
and other parts, and that I had come over the great _pawnee_, or water,
to visit them. Their countenances exactly resembled those of their race
in England and Spain, brown, and for the most part beautiful, their eyes
fiery and wildly intelligent, their hair coal-black and somewhat coarse.
I asked them numerous questions, especially as to their religion and
original country. They said that they believed in 'Devil,' which,
singularly enough, in their language signifies God, and that they were
afraid of the evil spirit, or 'Bengel'; that their fathers came from
Rommany land, but where that land lay they knew not. They sang many
songs both in the Russian and Rommany languages; the former were modern
popular pieces which are in vogue on the stage, but the latter were
evidently very ancient, being composed in a metre or cadence to which
there is nothing analogous in Russian prosody, and exhibiting an internal
character which was anything but European or modern. I visited this
place several times during my sojourn at Moscow, and spoke to them upon
their sinful manner of living, upon the advent and suffering of Christ
Jesus, and expressed, upon my taking a final leave of them, a hope that
they would be in a short period furnished with the word of eternal life
in their own language, which they seemed to value and esteem much higher
than the Russian. They invariab