The Zincali by George Borrow (1841)

Books about the gypsies have been few and far between, relatively speaking. This, and others of Borrow's authorship, seem to me to have been considered as standard texts, perhaps because they were close enough to only texts, for a long period. It was not until Isabel Fonseca's brilliant Bury Me Standing in 1995 that this book's long reign as a kind of standard text was truly over, though it was a creaking century and a half-old relic by then. Borrow is a strange character. I'm guessing I will get to know him better in slowly reading through his small catalogue, but at the moment he seems quite an egotist, someone in the mould of a hyper-Christian baby Byron. This has its negativities, but it also aids compulsion - his insistence on his conclusions and his strong concern with separating poor scholarship about the gypsies and their customs and language from that which has some merit means that his points carry. This book originated in a period he spent in Spain (the subtitle is An Account of the Gypsies of Spain) where he seemed to travel about a lot with the purpose of converting the Iberian clans of the race to Christianity. He has all sorts of interactions with them, key ones being recounted at specific points where examples are needed for claims being made. Most of these points surround their customs and language, and what the present state of them reveals of the origins of the gypsies. He contrasts the Spanish Gitano language in particular with other expressions of the gypsy dialect in Hungary, Germany, the Balkans and so on. I am imagining that this is where the idea of them being an outcast sect from somewhere in Hindustan was first popularly canvassed. The examples given of their language very much seem to tend toward proof of a Sanskrit origin, with some Persian thrown in some time after, and then imports of all sorts as they moved westward. My memory of Fonseca's book is very thin now on detail, so I can't remember how much further we've come in these discoveries. The other fascinating element is only hinted at here. Was Borrow himself a gypsy? There are tiny thrusts in that direction, indicating that he had had a reasonably long history of contact and felt so familiar that he was at ease in their company and knew how to convince them of his trustworthiness so as to obtain more information. But of course a baby Byron may say that for reasons of bravado - perhaps the reality was a lot less certain, and a little more perilous? Outsider nosiness is particularly unwelcome in gypsy circles. This volume has both a significant sense of outdatedness and a contingent and partial pull of interest; here's to a clearer picture arising from future works.