According to Eilert Sundt, who devoted his life to studying the _Fanten
and Tataren_, or vagabonds and Gipsies of Sweden and Norway, there is a
horrible and ghastly semblance among them of something like a religion,
current in Scandinavia. Once a year, by night, the Gipsies of that
country assemble for the purpose of un-baptizing all of their children
whom they have, during the year, suffered to be baptized for the sake of
gifts, by the Gorgios. On this occasion, amid wild orgies, they worship
a small idol, which is preserved until the next meeting with the greatest
secresy and care by their captain. I must declare that this story seems
very doubtful to me.

I have devoted this chapter to illustrating from different points the
fact that there lives in England a race which has given its impress to a
vast proportion of our vagabond population, and which is more curious and
more radically distinct in all its characteristics, than our writers,
with one or two exceptions, have ever understood. One extraordinary
difference still remains to be pointed out--as it has, in fact, already
been, with great acumen, by Mr George Borrow, in his "Gipsies in Spain,"
and by Dr Alexander Paspati, in his "Etudes sur les Tchinghianes ou
Bohemiens de l'Empire Ottoman" (Constantinople, 1870); also by Mr Bright,
in his "Hungary," and by Mr Simson. It is this, that in every part of
the world it is extremely difficult to get Rommany words, even from
intelligent gipsies, although they may be willing with all their heart to
communicate them. It may seem simple enough to the reader to ask a man
"How do you call 'to carry' in your language?" But can the reader
understand that a man, who is possibly very much shrewder than himself in
reading at a glance many phases of character, and in countless
trickeries, should be literally unable to answer such a question? And
yet I have met with many such. The truth is, that there are people in