CHAPTER XI.

_On the Religion of the Gipseys_.

THESE people did not bring any particular religion with them from their native country, by which, as the Jews, they could be distinguished among other persons; but regulate themselves, in religious matters, according to the country where they live. Being very inconstant in their choice of residence, they are likewise so in respect to religion. No Gipsey has an idea of submission to any fixed profession of faith: it is as easy for him to change his religion at every new village, as for another person to shift his coat. They suffer themselves to be baptised in Christian countries; among Mahometans to be circumcised. They are Greeks with Greeks, Catholics with Catholics, and again profess themselves to be Protestants, whenever they happen to reside where protestantism prevails.

From this mutability, we may conceive what ideas they have, and thence deduce their general opinions of religion. As parents suffer their children to grow up without education or instruction, and were reared in the same manner themselves, so neither have any knowledge of God or morality. Few of them will attend to any discourse on religion: they hear what is said with indifference, nay rather with impatience and repugnance; despising all remonstrance, believing nothing, they live without the least solicitude concerning what shall become of them after this life. An instance, quoted by Toppeltin, will fully illustrate this matter: One of the more civilised Gipseys in Transylvania took the resolution of sending his son to school: leave being obtained from the government, the lad was admitted, and was going on very well, under his teachers’ hands. The child died; whereupon the relations applied to the magistrates and clergy for permission to give the young man Christian burial, he being a student at the time of his death. On this occasion the priest asked, whether they believed the deceased would rise again at the last day?—“_Strange idea_!” they answered; “_to believe that a carcase_, _a lifeless corpse_, _should be reanimated_, _and rise again_!—_In our opinion_, _it would be no more likely to happen to him_, _than to the horse we flayed a few days ago_.” Such are the opinions of the greatest part of these people with regard to religion; it naturally follows, that their conduct should be conformable to such ideas and conceptions. Every duty is neglected, no prayer ever passes their lips: as little are they to be found in any assembly of public worship; whence the Wallachian adage—“The Gipsey’s church was built with bacon, and the dogs ate it.” The religious party from which a Gipsey apostatises, as little loses a brother believer, as the one into which he goes acquires one. He is neither Mahometan nor Christian; for the doctrines of Mahomet and of Christ are alike unknown or indifferent to him, producing no other effect than that in Turkey his child is circumcised, and baptised in Christendom. The Turks are so fully convinced of the little sincerity the Gipseys entertain in regard to religion, that although a Jew, by becoming a Mahometan, is freed from the payment of the charadsch, the Gipseys are not, at least in the neighbourhood of Constantinople. They are compelled to pay this polltax even though their ancestors, for centuries back, had been Mahometans; or though they should actually have been a pilgrimage to Mecca: the privilege of wearing a white turban is the only advantage their conversion gives them over unbelieving Jews and Gipseys.

Such is the respect paid by the Gipseys to moral institutions, in every country where they are found. It is true that in this, as well as in other things, there may be exceptions, but they are very rare; by much the greatest part of them are as above described. Wherefore the more ancient, as well as the more modern, writers agree, in positively denying that the Gipseys have any religion; placing them even below the heathens. This sentence cannot be contradicted; since, so far from having a respect for religion, they are adverse to every thing which in the least relates to it.