Part 1

Chapter 13,850 wordsPublic domain

Transcribed from the 1882 Maclachlan & Stewart edition by David Price, email [email protected]

[Picture: Pamphlet’s title/front page]

WAS JOHN BUNYAN A GIPSY?

AS DISCUSSED IN LETTERS SENT TO THE LONDON DAILY NEWS,

_AND NOW PARTICULARLY ADDRESSED TO THE_

STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITIES.

BY JAMES SIMSON, _Editor of_ “SIMSON’S HISTORY OF THE GIPSIES,” _and Author of_ “CONTRIBUTIONS TO NATURAL HISTORY AND PAPERS ON OTHER SUBJECTS”; “CHARLES WATERTON”; “THE ENGLISH UNIVERSITIES AND JOHN BUNYAN”; “THE SCOTTISH CHURCHES AND THE GIPSIES”; “REMINISCENCES OF CHILDHOOD AT INVERKEITHING, OR LIFE AT A LAZARETTO”; AND “JOHN BUNYAN AND THE GIPSIES.”

* * * * *

“According to the fair play of the world, Let me have audience.”—SHAKSPEARE.

* * * * *

PREFACE.

THE title-page of this little publication states that it is “particularly addressed to the students of the universities.” It is based on a History of the Gipsies, published in 1865, in a prefatory note to which it was said that this subject,

“When thus comprehensively treated, forms a study for the most advanced and cultivated mind, as well as for the youth whose intellectual and literary character is still to be formed; and furnishes, among other things, a system of science not too abstract in its nature, and having for its subject-matter the strongest of human feelings and sympathies.”

This race entered Great Britain before the year 1506, and sooner or later became legally and socially proscribed. It has been my endeavour for some years back to have the _social_ proscription removed (the _legal_ one having ceased to exist), so that at least the _name_ and _blood_ of this people should be acknowledged by the rest of the world, and each member of the race as such treated according to his personal merits. The great difficulty I have encountered in this matter is the general impression that this race is confined to a few wandering people of swarthy appearance, who live in tents, or are popularly known as Gipsies; and that these “cease to be Gipsies” when they in any way “fall into the ranks,” and dress and live, more or less, like other people. Unfortunately many have so publicly committed themselves to this view of the subject that it is hardly possible to get them to revise their opinion, and admit the leading fact of the question, viz.: that the Gipsies do not “cease to be Gipsies” by any change in their style of life or character, and that the same holds good with their descendants. Taking the race or blood in itself, and especially when mixed with native, it has every reason to call itself, in one sense at least, English, from having been nearly four hundred years in England. The race has been a very hardy and prolific one, and (with the exception of a few families, about which there it no certainty) has got very much mixed with native blood, which so greatly modified the appearance of that part of it that it was enabled to _steal_ into society, and escape the observation of the native race, and their prejudice against everything Gipsy, so far as they understood the subject.

It is a long stretch for a native family to trace its descent to people living in the time of Henry VIII., but a very short one for a semi-barbarous tribe as such, having so singular an origin as a tent, as applicable to all descending from it, however much part of their blood may be of the ordinary race; the origin of which is generally unknown to them. Thus they have no other sense of origin than a Gipsy one, and that “theirs is a Gipsy family,” of an arrival in England like that of yesterday, with words and signs, and a cast of mind peculiar to themselves, leading, by their associations and sympathies of race, to them generally, if not almost invariably, marrying among themselves, and perpetuating the race, as something distinct from the rest of the world, and scattered over its surface, in various stages of civilization and purity of blood.

Leaving out the tented or more primitive Gipsies, there is hardly anything about this people, when their blood has been mixed and their habits changed, to attract the _eye_ of the world; hence it becomes the subject of a _mental_ inquiry, so far as its _nature_ is concerned. And the human faculties being so limited in their powers, even when trained from early youth, it will be, at the best, a difficult matter to get the subject of the Gipsies understood; while it appears to be a desperate effort to get people beyond a certain age, or of a peculiar mind or training, to make anything of it, or even to listen to the mention of it, which almost seems to be offensive to them. On this account, if the subject of the Gipsy race, in all its mixtures of blood and aspects of meaning, can ever become one of interest, or even known, to the rest of the human family, it must be taken up, for the most part, by young people whose minds are open to receive information, as illustrated by what I wrote in connexion with Scotch university students:—

“At their time of life they are more easily impressed with the truth of what can be demonstrated, than after having acquired modes of thought and feeling in regard to it, which have to be modified or got rid of, after more or less trouble and sometimes pain.”

This subject does not in any way clash with what is generally held in dispute among men, but touches many traits of their common humanity. Its investigation illustrates the laws of evidence on whatever subject to which evidence may be applicable—that all questions should be settled by facts, and not by suppositions; and that no one has a right to maintain capriciously that anything is a truth until it is proved to be an untruth. As regards John Bunyan, it is not in dispute that he was an English _man_, but whether he was of the _native_ English race, or of the _Gipsy_ English one, or of both, and holding by the Gipsy connexion. What is necessary to be done is not merely to correct, but to create, and permanently establish a knowledge that has now no existence with people generally, in consequence of the habits of the original Gipsies leading to their legal and social proscription, and the naturally secretive nature of the race, which has been intensified by the way in which they were everywhere treated or regarded.

Apart from this subject in itself, it may be said to be one of those side questions which it is always advisable for a student to have on hand, as a mental relief after severe studies, and to liberalize or expand his mind generally.

The question of John Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race, discussed in the following pages, is merely an incidental part of the subject of the Gipsies. What I have said there about the Rev. John Brown, of Bedford, makes it unnecessary for me to add much here, except to say that, as he has no standing in the discussion of the Gipsy question as applicable to Bunyan, he would not be listened to but for his being minister of Bunyan’s Church, and setting forth theories as to his nationality that meet the preconceived opinions and ardent wishes of others. His discovery of Bunyan’s descent is of great interest; but for it to be of any use, he should have taken it to such as were able to interpret it, instead of proclaiming that he had thereby done away with the idea of Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race, to the apparent welcome of those who will have it so. He had previously “done away with” the same idea by discovering that the name of Bunyan existed in England before the Gipsies arrived in it! As the occupant of Bunyan’s pulpit, it was clearly his sacred duty to carefully scrutinize the information left by Bunyan as to “what he said he was and was not, and his calling and surroundings,” for these exclusively constitute the question at issue, and as carefully study everything bearing on the subject. Had he done so, he would have found that the family of the illustrious dreamer did not enter England from Normandy with William the Conqueror (whatever might have been the blood of William and Thomas Bonyon in 1542), or were native English vagabonds, as some have thought, but Gipsies whose blood was mixed; so that John Bunyan doubtless spoke the language of the race in great purity, and was capable, after a little effort, to have written it. In England to-day there are many such men as Bunyan, barring his piety and genius, following his original calling, that speak the Gipsy language with more or less purity, saying nothing of others in much higher positions in life. Of the former especially I have met and conversed in America with a number, who had no doubt of John Bunyan having been one of their race.

Whatever the future may bring forth, I have no reason to change what I wrote in _Contributions to Natural History_, _etc._, in 1871, in regard to the only bar in the way of receiving Bunyan as a Gipsy being the prejudice of caste against the name:—

“Even in the United States I find intelligent and liberal-minded Scotchmen, twenty years absent from their native country, saying, ‘I would _not like_ it to be said,’ and others, ‘I would _not have_ it said,’ that Bunyan was a Gipsy” (p. 158).

This feeling cannot be changed in a day, however involuntary it frequently is, or however much it may be repudiated in public.

The Gipsy, whatever his position in life, and however much his blood may be mixed, is exceedingly proud of the romance of his descent. The following extracts are taken from the Disquisition on the Gipsies on that subject:—

“He pictures to himself these men [John Faw, Towla Bailyow, and others, in 1540], as so many swarthy, slashing heroes, dressed in scarlet and green, armed with pistols and broad-swords, mounted on blood-horses, with hawks and hounds in their train. True to nature, every Gipsy is delighted with his descent, no matter what other people, in their ignorance of the subject, may think of it, or what their prejudices may be in regard to it” (p. 500).—“If we refer to the treaty between John Faw and James V., in 1540, we will very readily conclude that, three centuries ago, the leaders of the Gipsies were very superior men in their way; cunning, astute, and slippery Oriental barbarians, with the experience of upwards of a century in European society generally; well up to the ways of the world and the general ways of Church and State, and, in a sense, at home with kings, popes, cardinals, nobility, and gentry. That was the character of a superior Gipsy in 1540. In 1840 we find the race represented by as fine a man as ever graced the Church of Scotland” (p. 465).—“Scottish Gipsies are British subjects as much as either Highland or Lowland Scots; their being of foreign origin does not alter the case; and they are entitled to have that justice meted out to them that has been accorded to the ordinary natives. They are not a heaven-born race, but they certainly found their way into the country as if they had dropped into it out of the clouds. As a race, they have that much mystery, originality, and antiquity about them, and that inextinguishable sensation of being a branch of the same tribe everywhere, that ought to cover a multitude of failings connected with their past history. Indeed, what we do know of their earliest history is not nearly so barbarous as that of our own; for we must contemplate our own ancestors at one time as painted and skin-clad barbarians. What we do know for certainty of the earliest history of the Scottish Gipsies is contained more particularly in the Act of 1540; and we would naturally say that, for a people in a barbarous state, such is the dignity and majesty, with all the roguishness displayed in the conduct of the Gipsies of that period, one could hardly have a better, certainly not a more romantic descent; provided the person whose descent it is, is to be found amid the ranks of Scots, with talents, a character, and a position equal to those of others around him. For this reason, it must be said of the race, that whenever it shakes itself clear of objectionable habits, and follows any kind of ordinary industry, the cause of every prejudice against it is gone, or ought to disappear; for then, as I have already said, the Gipsies become ordinary citizens of the Gipsy clan. It then follows, that in passing a fair judgment upon the Gipsy race, we ought to establish a principle of progression, and set our minds upon the best specimens of it, as well as the worst, and not judge of it solely from the poorest, the most ignorant, or the most barbarous part of it” (p. 479).

Satisfied with, even proud of, their descent, the Gipsies hide it from the rest of the world, for reasons that are obvious, however much I have explained them on previous occasions. And thus, as I wrote in _Contributions to Natural History_, _etc._,

“It unfortunately happens that, owing to the peculiarity of their origin, and the prejudice of the rest of the population, the race hide the fact of their being Gipsies from the rest of the world, as they acquire settled habits, or even leave the tent, so that they never get the credit of any good that may spring from them as a people” (158). And this may have been going on from the time of their arrival in England.

With reference to this phenomenon, I wrote thus in the Disquisition on the Gipsies:—

“Now, since John Bunyan has become so famous throughout the world, and so honoured by all sects and parties, what an inimitable instrument Providence has placed in our hands wherewith to raise up the name of Gipsy! Through him we can touch the heart of Christendom!” (p. 530).

It would be a sad thing to have the century close without the Gipsy race being acknowledged by the rest of the world, in some form or other, or that that should be deemed unworthy of our boasted civilization! To get this subject completely before the British public would resemble the recovery of a lost art, or the discovery of a new one. People taking it up there would require to show a high degree of courage, candour, and courtesy, and all the better qualities of their nature.

On the 8th September I wrote thus to the editor of the _Daily News_:—“I intend printing the articles sent you as the bulk of a pamphlet, . . . so that I am in hopes you will have previously printed them in the _Daily News_,” which he does not seem to have done.

NEW YORK, 2d _October_, 1882.

WAS JOHN BUNYAN A GIPSY?

I. {9}

THE first notice of my pamphlet, under the title of _John Bunyan and the Gipsies_, that has come under my observation I found in the _Daily News_ of the 15th August. In the preface to it I said:—“This little publication is intended, in the first place, for the British Press,” as an appeal for a hearing on the subjects discussed in it. The time that elapsed between receiving the pamphlet and writing the notice of it was too short to enable almost any one to do justice to it, for that required time to think over it as having reference to my previous writings, to which the two letters to an English clergyman contained in it were merely an allusion.

The writer is hardly correct when he speaks of the “long debated question of whether the illustrious author of the _Pilgrim’s Progress_ was of Gipsy race.” This question has not been even once “debated” in England, so far as I, living in America, am aware of. I stated it fully in _Notes and Queries_ on the 12th December, 1857, and more fully in the _History of the Gipsies_, published by Sampson, Low & Co. in 1865; again in _Notes and Queries_ on the 27th March, 1875, with reference to the “fairish appearance” of Bunyan, and the existence of his surname (variously spelt) in England before the Gipsies arrived in it; then in _Contributions to Natural History and Papers on Other Subjects_, and _The English Universities and John Bunyan_, and _The Encyclopædia Britannica and the Gipsies_; then in _The Scottish Churches and the Gipsies_; and, finally, in the pamphlet alluded to. So that, instead of having “nothing to say” to the “fairish appearance” and the surname of Bunyan, I fully anticipated these questions, and disposed of them as they were brought forward by people at a venture, who seemed to know nothing of the subject they were treating. Much as I have published on this question, I am not aware that any one has ever attempted to set aside my facts, arguments, and proof that John Bunyan was of the Gipsy race. My “opponents” (so called) _assume_ that he was of the ordinary English race, and _therefore_ was, and must be held to have been, such till it is _proved_ that he was _not_ that, but of the Gipsy race, or something else; a most unreasonable position for any one to take up. So far from people stating the kind of _proof_ they want, they simply pass over everything I have written on the subject, and repeat their untenable, meaningless, and oft-refuted assertions. Thus the Rev. John Brown, of Bunyan Church, Bedford, apparently knowing nothing of the Gipsy subject, and disregarding everything printed on it, and looking neither to the right nor the left, makes out from the surname that the illustrious dreamer’s family was a broken-down branch of the English aristocracy, instead of, as Bunyan himself told us, “the meanest and most despised of _all_ the families in the land,” and “not of the Israelites,” that is, _not Jews_, but tinkers, that is, Gipsies of more or less mixed blood; so that his having been a tinker was in itself amply sufficient to prove Bunyan to have been of the Gipsy race; while it illustrated and confirmed his admission about “his father’s house” having been of the Gipsy tribe.

Having written so frequently, and at such length, on this subject, it would be impossible, at least unreasonable, to repeat in a newspaper article what I have done, and I must refer the reader to the various publications mentioned. I may allude to the scepticism of _Blackwood_, who will not believe that Bunyan was of the Gipsy race because he did not say so plainly, in the face of the legal and social responsibility; {10a} and to that of Mr. Groome, the writer on the Gipsies in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, because he alluded to a Gipsy woman carrying off a child, and because his children did not bear the old-fashioned Gipsy _Christian_ names which were adopted by the race after their arrival in Europe. I disposed of these trifling and meaningless objections in their proper places, and need not reproduce them here. {10b} The strangest thing advanced about Bunyan is the assertion that it is impossible he could have been a Gipsy, because the name existed in England before the race arrived in it. From this it would follow that there can be no Gipsies in England, or anywhere else, because they bear surnames common to the natives of the soil. The circumstances under which they adopted these, and how Gipsies of mixed blood are found of all colours, I have on previous occasions elaborately explained. Hence it can be said that the writer in the _Daily News_ is not strictly correct when, in allusion to the two letters to an English clergyman, contained in the pamphlet, he says that I “have nothing to say to all this;” and that “this is really all the evidence, as well as all the argument, forthcoming on the subject.” This subject has no standing if we do not admit of the existence of a “ferocious prejudice of caste against the name of Gipsy”; and that in regard to the nationality of John Bunyan, “the question at issue is really not one of evidence, but of an unfortunate feeling of caste that bars the way against all investigation and proof.”

Apart from John Bunyan personally, the subject of the race to which he belonged has a very important bearing on the “social emancipation of the Gipsies” in the British Isles. There cannot be less than several hundred thousand of these in various positions in life—many, perhaps most of them, differing in no other way from the “ordinary natives” but that in respect to that part of their blood which is Gipsy, they have sprung, really or representatively, from _the tent_—the hive from which the whole of the Gipsy tribe have swarmed. Notwithstanding that, this fact carries certain mental peculiarities with it, which should be admitted as a preliminary step to a full social equality, should the incognito Gipsy element in society present itself for that purpose.

Since the above was written I have read with great interest the letter from “Thomas Bunyan, chief warder, Tower of London, and born in Roxburghshire,” in the _Daily News_ of the 17th. The origin which he gives of the _name_ is apparently the correct one, viz.: that “the first Bunyan was an Italian mason, who came to Melrose, and was at the building of that famous abbey in the year 1136;” and that “the oldest gravestone in the graveyard around Melrose Abbey has on it the name of Bunyan.” In my Disquisition on the Gipsies, published in 1865, I said:—“The name Bunyan would seem to be of foreign origin” (p. 519). It does not necessarily follow that the blood of the Italian mason flowed in John Bunyan’s veins, except by it having in some way got mixed with and merged in that of the Gipsy race. {11a}

II. {11b}

The following letter, which I addressed to-day to a clergyman of the Church of England, applies so well to the Rev. John Brown of Bunyan Church, Bedford, that it may be considered as the first part of my reply to his letter in the _Daily News_ of the 22d August. The remainder will follow soon.

I have to thank you for your letter of the 22d August containing a newspaper slip. You say that the idea of Bunyan having been of the Gipsy race; “from absolute want of evidence is totally incapable of proof,” and “from beginning to end is no better than a conjecture”; and that as proof to the contrary is “the fact that before the birth of Bunyan his ancestors are known to have resided in Bedfordshire for many generations, some of them having been landed proprietors.” Now read what Bunyan said of himself:—

“For my descent, it was, as is well known to many, of a low and inconsiderable generation, my father’s house being of that rank that is meanest and most despised of all the families in the land.”