few places in which
they succeeded in deceiving men. They proved, indeed, everywhere to be
wicked heathens, magicians, fortune-tellers, and most shameless
thieves. They split themselves into small bands during their distant
travels; their leaders, whom they had honoured with all the feudal
titles, in order to give themselves consideration, disappeared. They
themselves were thoroughly decimated by their wandering lives, and the
persecutions of the local inhabitants.

Their language gives the best explanation of their past. The original
homogeneousness of the gipsy language is distinctly visible amidst the
various changes which it has gone through in many countries. It appears
to be the mode of speech of a single and special Indian race. The gipsy
is apparently not the descendant of a mixed Indian people, or of a
single low caste of Indians, but of a distinct race of people. The men
call themselves everywhere, _rom_; and in contradiction to the western
nations, also _calo_, black: their wives, _romni_, and their language
_romany-tschib_. The names which their race have had in different
countries are numerous and various.

Their language is in its origin and internal structure a genuine
daughter of the distinguished Sanscrit, but it has become for many
centuries like a beggar and thief; it has lost much of its beauty, its
elegance, and its resemblance to its mother and sisters; instead of
which it has appropriated something to itself from every country in
which these people have tarried in their wanderings, and its dress
appears covered with the tatters of all nations, so that it is only
here and there that the genuine gold threads are still visible. The
race have lost a great portion of their own words, more especially
those, that express ideas which they could not preserve in their paltry
miserable life in foreign countries. They have lost the Indian
expression for parrot, elephant, and lion, also for the tiger and
buffalo snake, but sugar--_gulo_, silk--_pahr_, and grapes--_drakh_,
they call by their Indian, and wine--_mohl_, by its Persian name. Nay,
they have also lost the Indian words for many current terms: they no
longer call the sparrow by its Indian name: no fish, and hardly any
plants; but undoubtedly they retain those of many large and small
animals, amongst others _dschu_, the louse. But in all countries, new
representations, images, and ideas offered themselves, and too lazy and
careless to form words of t