Scan 226
The American history and encyclopedia of music .., 1908
15 lines. Read by computer on 9 September 2026. No printed page number was found. See the scan on archive.org.
1These people are supposed to be the ancestors of the gypsies, and if this be true, the race is seen to have been made up of musicians from the beginning. When they first appeared in eastern Europe is not known, but in western Europe they first are heard of in 1417, when they obtained from the rulers of several countries permission to wander for fifty years as pilgrims, "declaring that they had been Christians, but having become renegades, the king of Hungary had imposed a penance on them of half a century's exile," a pretty lie fabricated for the purpose of obtaining an entrance into desirable territory.
3The gypsies have been in Poland and other Slavonic countries, however, since the Eleventh Century, and are now to be found scattered over practically all of Europe. They are known as Gitanos in Spain, as Bohemians in France, as Zingari in Italy, as Cinkan in Bohemia, as Zigeuner in Germany, as Czigany in Hungary, as Ciganu in Roumania. They call themselves Romany.
5It is a remarkable fact that they have been able, throughout all their wanderings, to maintain their identity and characteristics. The Jew has his religion but the gypsy has nothing but his language and his instincts to serve him as racial props. Everywhere he is found to be the same carefree, insouciant character, a being who recks nothing for the past and less for the future. His only settled place of abode appears to be in Hungary, Roumania and the Balkan provinces, where he has been freest to follow his nomadic instincts and where the character of the people best chimes with his own. Here he is at his best, and that best is his music, which is his very life.
7A favorite song of the Transylvania gypsies runs:
9I've known no father since my birth,
10I have no friend alive on earth;
11My mother's dead this many a day,
12The girl I loved has gone her way;
13Thou violin, with music free,
14Alone art ever true to me.
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