(35) No one knows whether they are
baptized. One of the five whom I caused to be hung a few days ago
was baptized in the prison, being at the time upwards of thirty
years of age. Don Martin Fajardo says that two Gitanos and a
Gitana, whom he hanged in the village of Torre Perojil, were
baptized at the foot of the gallows, and declared themselves Moors.
'They invariably look out, when they marry, if we can call theirs
marrying, for the woman most dexterous in pilfering and deceiving,
caring nothing whether she is akin to them or married already, (36)
for it is only necessary to keep her company and to call her wife.
Sometimes they purchase them from their husbands, or receive them
as pledges: so says, at least, Doctor Salazar de Mendoza.
'Friar Melchior of Guelama states that he heard asserted of two
Gitanos what was never yet heard of any barbarous nation, namely,
that they exchanged their wives, and that as one was more comely
looking than the other, he who took the handsome woman gave a
certain sum of money to him who took the ugly one. The licentiate
Alonzo Duran has certified to me, that in the year 1623-4, one
Simon Ramirez, captain of a band of Gitanos, repudiated Teresa
because she was old, and married one called Melchora, who was young
and handsome, and that on the day when the repudiation took place
and the bridal was celebrated he was journeying along the road, and
perceived a company feasting and revelling beneath some trees in a
plain within the jurisdiction of the village of Deleitosa, and that
on demanding the cause he was told that it was on account of Simon
Ramirez marrying one Gitana and casting off another; and that the
repudiated woman told him, with an agony of tears, that he
abandoned her because she was old, and married another because she
was young.
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