Many of the arts which the
Gypsies proudly call their own, and which were perhaps at one
period peculiar to them, have become divulged, and are now
practised by the thievish gentry who infest the various European
states, a result which, we may assert with confidence, was brought
about by the alliance of the Gypsies being eagerly sought on their
first arrival by the thieves, who, at one period, were less skilful
than the former in the ways of deceit and plunder; which kind of
association continued and held good until the thieves had acquired
all they wished to learn, when they left the Gypsies in the fields
and plains, so dear to them from their vagabond and nomad habits,
and returned to the towns and cities. Yet from this temporary
association were produced two results; European fraud became
sharpened by coming into contact with Asiatic craft, whilst
European tongues, by imperceptible degrees, became recruited with
various words (some of them wonderfully expressive), many of which
have long been stumbling-stocks to the philologist, who, whilst
stigmatising them as words of mere vulgar invention, or of unknown
origin, has been far from dreaming that by a little more research
he might have traced them to the Sclavonic, Persian, or Romaic, or
perhaps to the mysterious object of his veneration, the Sanscrit,
the sacred tongue of the palm-covered regions of Ind; words
originally introduced into Europe by objects too miserable to
occupy for a moment his lettered attention - the despised denizens
of the tents of Roma.
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