Quotes4study

There is nothing specifically of an Oriental origin in their religious vocabulary, and the words _Devla_ (God), _Bang_ (devil) or _Trushul_ (Cross), in spite of some remote similarity, must be taken as later adaptations, and not as remnants of an old Sky-worship or Serpent-worship. In general their beliefs, customs, tales, &c. belong to the common stock of general folklore, and many of their symbolical expressions find their exact counterpart in Rumanian and modern Greek, and often read as if they were direct translations from these languages. Although they love their children, it sometimes happens that a Gipsy mother will hold her child by the legs and beat the father with it. In Rumania and Turkey among the settled Gipsies a good number are carriers and bricklayers; and the women take their full share in every kind of work, no matter how hard it may be. The nomadic Gipsies carry on the ancient craft of coppersmiths, or workers in metal; they also make sieves and traps, but in the East they are seldom farriers or horse-dealers. They are far-famed for their music, in which art they are unsurpassed. The Gipsy musicians belong mostly to the class who originally were serfs. They were retained at the courts of the boyars for their special talent in reciting old ballads and love songs and their deftness in playing, notably the guitar and the fiddle. The former was used as an accompaniment to the singing of either love ditties and popular songs or more especially in recital or heroic ballads and epic songs; the latter for dances and other amusements. They were the troubadours and minstrels of eastern Europe; the largest collection of Rumanian popular ballads and songs was gathered by G. Dem. Teodorescu from a Gipsy minstrel, Petre Sholkan; and not a few of the songs of the guslars among the Servians and other Slavonic nations in the Balkans come also from the Gipsies. They have also retained the ancient tunes and airs, from the dreamy "doina" of the Rumanian to the fiery "czardas" of the Hungarian or the stately "hora" of the Bulgarian. Liszt went so far as to ascribe to the Gipsies the origin of the Hungarian national music. This is an exaggeration, as seen by the comparison of the Gipsy music in other parts of south-east Europe; but they undoubtedly have given the most faithful expression to the national temperament. Equally famous is the Gipsy woman for her knowledge of occult practices. She is the real witch; she knows charms to injure the enemy or to help a friend. She can break the charm if made by others. But neither in the one case nor in the other, and in fact as little as in their songs, do they use the Gipsy language. It is either the local language of the natives as in the case of charms, or a slightly Romanized form of Greek, Rumanian or Slavonic. The old Gipsy woman is also known for her skill in palmistry and fortune-telling by means of a special set of cards, the well-known Tarok of the Gipsies. They have also a large stock of fairy tales resembling in each country the local fairy tales, in Greece agreeing with the Greek, and in Rumania with the Rumanian fairy tales. It is doubtful, however, whether they have contributed to the dissemination of these tales throughout Europe, for a large number of Gipsy tales can be shown to have been known in Europe long before the appearance of the Gipsies, and others are so much like those of other nations that the borrowing may be by the Gipsy from the Greek, Slav or Rumanian. It is, however, possible that playing-cards might have been introduced to Europe through the Gipsies. The oldest reference to cards is found in the Chronicle of Nicolaus of Cavellazzo, who says that the cards were first brought into Viterbo in 1379 from the land of the Saracens, probably from Asia Minor or the Balkans. They spread very quickly, but no one has been able as yet to trace definitely the source whence they were first brought. Without entering here into the history of the playing-cards and of the different forms of the faces and of the symbolical meaning of the different designs, one may assume safely that the cards, before they were used for mere pastime or for gambling, may originally have had a mystical meaning and been used as _sortes_ in various combinations. To this very day the oldest form is known by the hitherto unexplained name of Tarock, played in Bologna at the beginning of the 15th century and retained by the French under the form Tarot, connected direct with the Gipsies, "Le Tarot des Bohémiens." It was noted above that the oldest chronicler (Presbyter) who describes the appearance of the Gipsies in 1416 in Germany knows them by their Italian name "Cianos," so evidently he must have known of their existence in Italy previous to any date recorded hitherto anywhere, and it is therefore not impossible that coming from Italy they brought with them also their book of divination. Entry: A

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 12, Slice 1 "Gichtel, Johann" to "Glory"     1910-1911

It is undecided whether the earliest cards were of the kind now common, called _numeral_ cards, or whether they were _tarocchi_ or _tarots_, which are still used in some parts of France, Germany and Italy, but the probability is that the tarots were the earlier. A pack of tarots consists of seventy-eight cards, four suits of numeral cards and twenty-two emblematic cards, called _atutti_ or _atouts_ (=trumps). Each suit consists of fourteen cards, ten of which are the pip cards, and four court (or more properly _coat_ cards), viz. king, queen, chevalier and valet. The _atouts_ are numbered from 1 to 21; the unnumbered card, called the _fou_, has no positive value, but augments that of the other _atouts_ (see _Académie des jeux_, Corbet, Paris, 1814, for an account of the mode of playing tarocchino or tarots). Entry: CARDS

Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 3 "Capefigue" to "Carneades"     1910-1911