Gypsy Is "Sot" On Him

1901

Young Man Who Has a Wild Time With a Fair Romany

Janesville, Wis., April 25. — A well-known young man of this city has applied to the police for protection, as he fears he will be kidnapped.

For some days past a gypsy named Zyra has been telling fortunes here, and many people have been to consult her, among them the young man in question. After the gypsy had told his fortune, according to his story, she declared that he was hers and that she could not live without him. She cried that she loved him, and begged him to run away with her. He had a wild time leaving her, as she tried force to keep him. She vowed that members of her band would bring him back to her. She is the queen of a band of gypsies encamped on the outskirts of the city.

—Waterloo Daily Reporter, Waterloo, IA, April 25, 1901, p. 2.

Gypsy Girl Bride Held for Ransom

1920

Father Gives Her Up When Hubby Pays $500

This is Romany Custom, Explains Parent

NEW YORK, N.Y. — The kidnapping of Mrs. Lena Stevens from her home in Cleveland by her father, who held her from her young husband for $500 ransom, has been explained. Instead of finding a villainous parent, Newark detectives learned of a gypsy custom which made the "ransom" legitimate.

George Stevens married Lena Judson, a gypsy, about a year ago. They hit the gypsy trail by automobile, slept outdoors, cooked their meals in the fields and enjoyed a prolonged honeymoon.

Father Starts on Their Trail

Through a mysterious channel Ephraim Judson, the father of the bride, heard that his son-in-law was mistreating his daughter. So he set out to find the couple. When he found them he discovered that the reports were false and had been spread by a rival for the girl's hand.

Judson then demanded $500. He said he had spent this amount of money in ascertaining that his son-in-law was the right kind of husband. Stevens promised to pay, and the couple returned to their Cleveland home.

But the money was not forthcoming, and a week or two ago Mrs. Stevens disappeared. The husband told the police, and they decided it was a case of kidnapping when he showed a letter asking $500 for the return of his wife. Stevens searched and finally found her at her father's home in this city.

Both Wait for $500

Judson explained the circumstances of the "kidnapping," and the son-in-law wired his father in Cleveland to send him $500, so he could get his bride.

The police found the young husband living with the gypsies in a small store in Newark, New Jersey. He explained that his father-in-law, by gypsy custom, was entitled to the $500.

So Stevens is in Newark, hoping his father will send him the $500, while Mrs. Stevens is in New York, hoping her father gets the $500. And husband and wife are hoping to be reunited soon.

The Outcast Gypsy

1910

Now the Modern Ishmael Among Civilized Nations

England and the United States Now Turned Against Them — Efforts to Induce Them to Settle Down Unavailing

Washington. — Everywhere throughout the civilized world the hand of mankind seems to be raised against the gypsies. The last two refuges to which they betook themselves — the United States and England — have set their faces against them. Hereafter in England they are to be treated like common vagrants, without visible means of support, while in the United States the immigration laws serve to debar them as idle and dangerous nomads.

France decided some years ago that the gypsy was a public menace and, in the summary fashion of the republic when it makes up its mind to a thing, expelled him as relentlessly as it has expelled the monks.

Germany, which is a grim manufacturing establishment, after all, simply ordered its thousands of sentinels along its bayoneted border to turn back every gypsy who showed his nose at the line.

Wrathful and perplexed, the Romany moved on to Belgium; but hostile bayonets met them there. Desperate, for they hate water like so many wildcats, they took to the canals of placid Holland. But the phlegmatic Dutchmen, every tradition of their plodding industry outraged at sight of the gay wanderers, drove them out again.

Meanwhile, the Balkans, where the gypsy has ever roamed as free as any other bird of prey, have begun to feel the call of settled prosperity — if Balkan politics will ever give agriculture its chance — that attends the lowing kine and the importation of American reapers and binders. Sheep stealers and horse swindlers are impressing the fiery-souled mountaineers less than they used to, and the bars are being steadily raised against the gypsy, on the ground that he is a common tramp, who contributes nothing to the country and deserves nothing from it.

Transylvania, time out of mind, has been the gypsy's native heath. The hills and caves let him live the life of the early troglodyte, and the industrious among the population afforded him sustenance. But all Romany can't subsist on the loot of Transylvania, and Hungary and Austria received the first overflow.

Maria Theresa a hundred and fifty years ago had a brilliant idea for squelching the dangerous nomads. She provided dowries for all gypsy maidens who would marry her Austrian subjects. It was the most popular move any empress ever made, especially with the gypsy maidens.

They applied for the dowries in beautiful, bridal droves; got them; and ran off with their gypsy husbands and lovers day after day, until Maria Theresa concluded that gypsy maidens were likely to prove unprofitable investments.

Emperor Joseph II thought he had them fixed forever when he gave them houses and lands, seed, grain and farming implements. The seeds were promptly eaten; the houses became horse stables; the implements were sold, and the owners moved on.

There are believed to be 300,000 of them in Austria and Hungary still; 100,000 in Turkey; 150,000 in Russia; 200,000 in Spain and Portugal; 50,000 in Italy; 10,000 in the United States, and several thousand in South America, to whose broad pampas and rich plantations their nomad fancy has been turning for some years past. In all, the whole race of gypsies, as known to the white nations, numbers fewer than a million; and the whole mass of them is forever moving on.

The great traveler and ethnologist, Sir Richard Burton, whose translation of the Arabian Nights has immortalized him, is one of the few genuinely scientific men who have studied the origins of the gypsies in a genuinely scientific manner. He does not condemn them utterly, and is at pains to note that the race has, at times, produced men of real distinction. He quotes the families of the Hungarian Hunyadis, the Russian Tolstoys, the Scotch Melvilles, the Cassilis and the Contis in Franca under Louis XIV, and the famous gypsy chief, Thomas Pulgar, who, in 1496, gave Bishop Sigismund the help he needed to beat back the Turkish invader from Europe.

Passing of the Gypsy

1896

Romany Ryes Gradually Disappearing From the Haunts of Man.

The gradual disappearance and extinction of that picturesque vagabond, the genuine, simon pure gypsy, has caused much comment, but the reason for the dying out of the old race is somewhat difficult to find. There are probably more roving, wandering vagabonds in the world today than ever before, but a real Romany is seldom found even in England, where he formerly flourished. In this country real gypsies were never numerous and are today less so than ever before. They are occasionally met with, but the bands are either very small, or are composed of horse trading scamps and fortune telling "fakirs," who have not a drop of the Romany blood in their veins.

In the old days the gypsy impressed himself and his personality on the literature and the art of the countries in which he roamed. It was a poor novel that did not introduce a gypsy fortune teller, and a poor play that did not have at least one child stolen by gypsies, while the artists fairly reveled in studies and sketches of gypsy maidens. But the gypsies of today do not indulge in any child stealing proclivities, although they occasionally make a "bluff" at telling fortunes. As for the children, they usually have enough of their own not to bother their heads and risk their liberty by stealing those of other people.

A band of gypsies which appeared in the province of Quebec the other day actually tried to sell their own children, arguing that times were so poor that they were no longer able to provide for the little ones. So it can readily be seen that the day of the gypsy is past. If he ever had any usefulness, he has long ago outlived it. — Troy Times.