Roumanian
gypsies, who are nearly allied to the Turkish, have a wild legend stating
that the sun was a youth who, having fallen in love with his own sister,
was condemned as the sun to wander forever in pursuit of her, after she
was turned into the moon. A similar legend exists in Greenland {341b}
and in the island of Borneo, and it was known to the old Irish. It is in
fact a spontaneous myth, or one of the kind which grow up from causes
common to all races. It would be natural, to any imaginative savage, to
regard the sun and moon as brother and sister. The next step would be to
think of the one as regularly pursuing the other over the heavens, and to
this chase an erotic cause would naturally be assigned. And as the
pursuit is interminable, the pursuer never attaining his aim, it would be
in time regarded as a penance. Hence it comes that in the most distant
and different lands we have the same old story of the brother and the
sister, just as the Wild Hunter pursues his bride.

It was very natural that the gypsies, observing that the sun and moon
were always apparently wandering, should have identified their own
nomadic life with that of these luminaries. That they have a tendency to
assimilate the idea of a wanderer and pilgrim to that of the Romany, or
to _Romanipen_, is shown by the assertion once made to me by an English
gypsy that his people regarded Christ as one of themselves, because he
was always poor, and went wandering about on a donkey, and was persecuted
by the Gorgios. It may be very rationally objected by those to whom the
term "solar myth" is as a red rag, that the story, to prove anything,
must first be proved itself. This will probably not be far to seek.
Everything about it indicates an Indian origin, and if it can be found
among any of the wanderers in India, it may well be accepted as the
possible origin of the greatly disputed word _zingan_. It is quite as
plausible as Dr. Miklosich's very far-fetched derivation from the
Acingani,--[Greek text],--an unclean, heretical Christian sect, who dwelt
in Phrygia and Lycaonia from the seventh till the eleventh century. The
mention of Mekran indicates clearly that the moon story came from India
before the Romany could have obtained any Greek name. And if gypsies
call themselves or are called Jen-gan, or Chenkan, or Zingan, in the
East, especially if they were so called by Persian poets, it is extremely
unlikely that they ever received such a nam