ly curious, and, in their extreme
simplicity, affecting. That truly good man, the Rev. James Crabb, in his
touching little book, "The Gipsies' Advocate," gave numbers of instances
of Gipsy conversions to religion and of real piety among them, which
occurred after their minds and feelings had been changed by his labours;
indeed, it would seem as if their lively imaginations and warm hearts
render them extremely susceptible to the sufferings of Jesus. But this
does not in the least affect the extraordinary truth that in their
nomadic and natural condition, the Gipsies, all the world over, present
the spectacle, almost without a parallel, of total indifference to, and
ignorance of, religion, and that I have found true old-fashioned
specimens of it in England.

I would say, in conclusion, that the Rev. James Crabb, whose unaffected
and earnest little book tells its own story, did much good in his own
time and way among the poor Gipsies; and the fact that he is mentioned to
the present day, by them, with respect and love, proves that missionaries
are not useless, nor Gipsies ungrateful--though it is almost the fashion
with too many people to assume both positions as rules without
exceptions.

CHAPTER V. GIPSY LETTERS.

A Gipsy's Letter to his Sister.--Drabbing Horses.--Fortune Telling.--Cock
Shys.--"Hatch 'em pauli, or he'll lel sar the Covvas!"--Two German Gipsy
Letters.

I shall give in this chapter a few curious illustrations of Gipsy life
and character, as shown in a letter, which is illustrated by two
specimens in the German Rommany dialect.

With regard to the first letter, I might prefix to it, as a motto, old
John Willett's remark: "What's a man without an imagination?" Certainly
it would not apply to the Gipsy, who has an imagination so lively as to
be at times almost ungovernable; considering which I was much surprised
that, so far as I know, the whole race has as yet produced only one
writer who has distinguished himself in the department of fiction--albeit
he who did so was a giant therein--I mean John Bunyan.

And here I may well be allowed an unintended digression, as to whether
Bunyan were really a Gipsy. In a previous chapter of this work, I, with
little thought of Bunyan, narrated the fact that an intelligent tinker,
and a full Gipsy, asked me last summer in London, if I thought that the
Rommany were of the Ten Tribes of Israel? When John Bunyan tells us
explicitly that he once asked his