Even in
the town of Oviedo, in the heart of the Asturias, a province never
famous for Gitanos, there is a place called the Gitaneria, though
no Gitano has been known to reside in the town within the memory of
man, nor indeed been seen, save, perhaps, as a chance visitor at a
fair.
The exact period when the Gitanos first formed these colonies
within the towns is not known; the laws, however, which commanded
them to abandon their wandering life under penalty of banishment
and death, and to become stationary in towns, may have induced them
first to take such a step. By the first of these laws, which was
made by Ferdinand and Isabella as far back as the year 1499, they
are commanded to seek out for themselves masters. This injunction
they utterly disregarded. Some of them for fear of the law, or
from the hope of bettering their condition, may have settled down
in the towns, cities, and villages for a time, but to expect that a
people, in whose bosoms was so deeply rooted the love of lawless
independence, would subject themselves to the yoke of servitude,
from any motive whatever, was going too far; as well might it have
been expected, according to the words of the great poet of Persia,
THAT THEY WOULD HAVE WASHED THEIR SKINS WHITE.
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