Such are Gypsies.
THE ZINCALI PART III
CHAPTER I
THERE is no nation in the world, however exalted or however
degraded, but is in possession of some peculiar poetry. If the
Chinese, the Hindoos, the Greeks, and the Persians, those splendid
and renowned races, have their moral lays, their mythological
epics, their tragedies, and their immortal love songs, so also have
the wild and barbarous tribes of Soudan, and the wandering
Esquimaux, their ditties, which, however insignificant in
comparison with the compositions of the former nations, still are
entitled in every essential point to the name of poetry; if poetry
mean metrical compositions intended to soothe and recreate the mind
fatigued by the cares, distresses, and anxieties to which mortality
is subject.
The Gypsies too have their poetry. Of that of the Russian Zigani
we have already said something. It has always been our opinion,
and we believe that in this we are by no means singular, that in
nothing can the character of a people be read with greater
certainty and exactness than in its songs. How truly do the
warlike ballads of the Northmen and the Danes, their DRAPAS and
KOEMPE-VISER, depict the character of the Goth; and how equally do
the songs of the Arabians, replete with homage to the one high,
uncreated, and eternal God, 'the fountain of blessing,' 'the only
conqueror,' lay bare to us the mind of the Moslem of the desert,
whose grand characteristic is religious veneration, and
uncompromising zeal for the glory of the Creator.
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