CHAPTER II

APPEARANCE OF THE BOHEMIAN NOMADS

At the beginning of the fifteenth century hordes of unknown swarthy wanderers began to spread through Europe.[235] Sometimes denominated Bohemians, because they claimed to come from Bohemia, sometimes Egyptians, because their leader assumed the title of Duke of Egypt, they exercised the arts of divination, larceny and marauding. They were nomadic tribes, bivouacking in huts of their own construction; their religion was unknown; they gave themselves out to be Christians; but their orthodoxy was more than doubtful. Among themselves, they practised communism and promiscuity, and in their divinations they made use of a strange sequence of signs, allegorical in form, and depending from the virtues of numbers. Whence came they? Of what accursed and vanished world were they the surviving waifs? Were they, as superstitious people believed, the offspring of sorceresses and demons? What expiring and betrayed Saviour had condemned them to roam for ever? Was this the family at large of the Wandering Jew, or the remnants of the ten tribes of Israel, lost sight of in captivity and long enchained by Gog and Magog in unknown regions? Such were the doubting questions at the passage of these mysterious strangers, who seemed to retain only the superstitions and vices of a vanished civilisation. Enemies of toil, they respected neither property nor family; they dragged their women and children after them; they pestered the peace of honest house-dwellers with their pretended divinations. However all this may be, their first encampment in the vicinity of Paris is told by one writer as follows:—

“In the next year, 1427, on the Sunday after the middle of August, being the 17th of the month, there came to the environs of Paris twelve so-called penitentiaries—a duke, earl and ten men, all on horses, saying that they were good Christians, originally of Lower Egypt. They stated further that in former times they were conquered and turned to Christianity, those refusing being put to death, while those who consented to baptism were left as rulers of the country. Some time subsequently the Saracens invaded them, and many who were not firm in the faith made no attempt to withstand or defend their country, as in duty bound, but submitted, became Saracens and abjured our Saviour. The Emperor of Germany, the King of Poland and other rulers having learned that the people renounced their faith so easily, becoming Saracens and idolaters, fell upon them and conquered them again easily. It appeared at first as if they had the intention to leave them in their country, so that they might be led back to Christianity, but, after deliberation in council, the emperor and the rest of the kings ordained that they should never own land in their native country without the consent of the Pope, to obtain which, they must journey to Rome. Thither they proceeded in a great body, the young and the old, involving great suffering for the little ones. They made confession of their sins at Rome, and the Pope, after considering with his advisers, imposed on them, by way of penance, a seven years’ wandering through the world, sleeping in no bed. He ordained further that every bishop and croziered abbot should give them, once and for all, ten livres of the Tours currency as a contribution towards their expenses. He presented them with letters to this effect, gave them his benediction, and for five years they had been wandering through the world.

“Some days afterwards, being the day of the martyrdom of St. John the Baptist, or August 29, the general horde followed and were not permitted to enter within Paris, but were lodged at the Chapelle St. Denis. They numbered about 120 persons, including women and children. They stated that when they left their own country they consisted of one thousand or twelve hundred souls; the others had died on the road, their king and queen among them; the survivors were still expecting to become possessors of worldly goods, for the holy father had promised them good and fertile lands when their penance was finished.

“While they were at the chapel there was never so great a crowd at benediction, for the people flocked to see them from St. Denis, Paris, and the suburbs. Their children, both boys and girls, were the cleverest tricksters. Nearly all had their ears pierced and in each ear were one or two silver rings, which they said were a sign of good birth in their own country; they were exceedingly dark and with woolly hair. The women were the ugliest and blackest ever seen; their faces were covered with sores, their hair was black as the tail of a horse, their clothes consisted of an old _flaussoie_ or _schiavina_ tied over the shoulder by a cord or morsel of cloth, and beneath it a poor shirt. In a word, they were the most wretched creatures who had ever been seen in France, within the memory of the oldest inhabitant. Their poverty notwithstanding, they had sorceresses among them who inspected the hand, telling what had happened to the person consulting them in their past life and what awaited them in the future. They disturbed the peace of households, for they denounced husband to wife and wife to husband. And what was still worse, while talking to people about their magic art, they managed to fill their purses by emptying those of their hearers. One citizen of Paris who gives account of these facts adds that he himself talked to them three or four times without losing a halfpenny; but this is the report of the people everywhere, and the news reached the bishop of Paris, who went thither taking a Minorite friar called the little Jacobin, and he, by the bishop’s command, preached a great sermon and excommunicated all, male and female who had told fortunes and all who had shewn their hands. The horde was ordered away and departed accordingly on September 8, proceeding towards Pontoise.”

It is not known whether they continued their journey North of the capital, but their memory has survived in a corner of the Department du Nord. “As a fact, in a wood near the village of Hamel, five hundred feet from a druidic monument consisting of six stones, there is a fountain which is called the Sorcerer’s Kitchen, and it is there, according to tradition, that the _Cara Maras_ rested and quenched their thirst. Now these were assuredly the _Caras’mar_, namely, the Bohemians, or wandering sorcerers and diviners, to whom ancient Flemish charters granted the right to be fed by the inhabitants.”

They left Paris, but others came in their place, so that France was exploited as much as other countries. There is no record of their landing in England or in Scotland, but before very long the latter kingdom numbered more than one hundred thousand.[236] They were called _seard_ and _caird_, as much as to say artisans, craftsmen, for the Scotch word is derived from the Sanskrit k + r, whence comes the verb to do, the _Ker-aben_ of the gipsies and the Latin _cerdo_ or bungler, which they are not. If there was no trace of them at the same period in northern Spain, where the Christians took refuge against the Moslem domination, it was doubtless because the Arabs in the South were more to their liking; however, under John II the gipsies were clearly distinguished from these latter, though no one knew whence they came. To sum up, it came about that, from the time in question forward, they were generally known over the whole European continent. One of the bands of king Sindel appeared at Ratisbon in 1433, while Sindel himself, accompanied by his reserve, camped in Bavaria in 1439. He seemed to have come from Bohemia, for the Bavarians, unaware that in 1433 the tribe had given themselves out as Egyptians, termed them Bohemians, under which name they reappeared in France and so have been known therein. Willy-nilly, they were tolerated. Some perambulated the mountains, seeking gold in the rivers; some forged shoes for horses and chains for dogs; others—more marauders than pilgrims—crept about, ferreting everywhere, and everywhere thieved and pilfered. A few of them, weary of shifting and fixing their tents continually, came to a stand and hollowed out hovels, square huts of four to six feet, underground, and covered with a roof of green branches, the ridge of which, set across two stakes, in the form of a Y, rose scarcely more than two feet above the soil. It was in this den, of which little more than the name has remained in France, that the whole family was huddled together pell-mell. In such a lodging, with no opening but the door and a hole for the smoke, the father hammered, the children—crouched round the fire—blew the bellows and the mother boiled the pot, which contained only the spoil of poaching. Among old clothes, a bridle and a knapsack hung from long wooden nails, with no other furniture than an anvil, pincers and hammer—there met credulity and love, maid and knight, lady of the manor and page. There they shewed their bare white hands to the penetrating glance of the sibyl; there love was purchased, happiness was sold, and lying found its recompense. Thence came mountebanks and cardsharpers, the star-spangled robe and peaked hat of the magician, the vagrants and their slang, street dancers and daughters of joy. It was the kingdom of idleness and _trupherie_, of Villon manners and free meals. They were people who were continually busy in doing nothing, as a simple story-teller of the middle ages terms it. A scholar who is equally modest and distinguished, M. Vaillant, author of a history of the _Rom-Muni_ or Bohemians, some of whose pages we have cited, gives no more flattering portrait, though he ascribes to the gipsies great importance in the sacerdotal history of the ancient world. He recounts how these strange Protestants of primitive civilisation, travelling through the ages with a malediction on their foreheads and rapine in their hands, excited curiosity at first, then mistrust, finally proscription and hatred on the part of mediæval Christians. It will be readily understood what dangers might attach to this people without a fatherland, parasites or the whole world and citizens of nowhere. They were Bedouins who perambulated empires like deserts; they were nomadic thieves who glided about everywhere and remained nowhere. It came to pass speedily that the people regarded them as sorcerers, even as demons, casters of lots, stealers of children, and there was some ground for all this. Moreover, the nomads began to be accused everywhere of celebrating frightful mysteries in secret; they were held responsible for all unknown murders, for all mysterious abductions, as the Greeks of Damascus accused the Jews of killing one of their fraternity and drinking his blood. It was affirmed that they preferred boys and girls from twelve to fifteen years old. Here was an effectual way to insure that they should be held in horror and avoided by the young; but it was odious all the same, for the child and the common people are only too credulous, while as fear begets hatred, so also it tends to breed persecution. It was this which came to pass; they were not only avoided and fled from, but they were refused fire and water; Europe became like India in their respect and every Christian was a Brahman armed against them. In some countries, if a young girl approached one of them to give alms out of charity, her distracted governess would warn her to beware, for the gipsy was a _katkaon_, an ogre, who would suck her blood when she was asleep in the night. The girl drew back trembling. If a boy passed near enough for his shadow to fall on the wall near which they were seated, and where perhaps a whole gipsy family was eating or basking in the sun, his master would cry: “Keep off, child; these vampires will steal your shadow and your soul will dance at their Sabbath through all eternity.” So did Christian hatred resuscitate the _lemures_ and goblins, the vampires and ogres as a ground of their impeachment. “They were descended from Mambres, whose miracles competed against those of Moses; they were sent by the king of Egypt to spy everywhere on the children of Israel and render their lot intolerable; they were the murderers made use of by Herod to exterminate the first-born of Bethlehem; they were pagans indeed, for others, but they did not understand a single word of Egyptian, their language comprising, on the contrary, a good deal of Hebrew, and they were therefore the refuse of that abject race who slept in the tombs of Judea after devouring the corpses which they contained; they were otherwise those miscreant Jews who were tortured, chased and burned in 1348 for having poisoned our wells and cisterns, and they had returned once again to the work. As a final alternative, whether Jews or Egyptians, Essenians or Chusians, Pharaohnians or Caphtorians, Assyrian Balistari or Philistines of Canaan, they were renegades, and it was testified in Saxony, France and everywhere that they were fit only for burning and hanging.

The proscription which came upon them fell also on that strange book in which they used to consult destiny and to obtain oracles. Its coloured cards bearing incomprehensible figures are undoubtedly the monumental summary of all ancient revelations, the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics, the keys also of Solomon, the primeval scriptures of Enoch and Hermes. The author to whom we refer gives proof here of uncommon sagacity, speaking of the Tarot as a man who as yet does not understand it perfectly but has made it a profound study. What he says is as follows:—

“The form, disposition, arrangement of these tablets, and of the figures which they depict, though considerably modified by time, are so manifestly allegorical, while the allegories correspond so closely to the civil, philosophical and religious doctrine of antiquity, that one is compelled to regard them as a synthesis of the matter of faith among ancient peoples. We have sought to make evident already that the Tarot is a deduction from the sidereal _Book of Enoch_, who is Henochia; that it is modelled on the astral wheel of Athor, who is As-taroth; that, like the Indian Ot-tara, which is the polar bear or Arc-tura in the northern hemisphere, it is the force major (_tarie_), on which rests the solidity of the world and the sidereal firmament of earth. Consequently, like the polar Bear, which is regarded as the chariot of the sun, the chariot of David and of Arthur, it is the Greek fortune, the Chinese destiny, the Egyptian hazard, the lot of the Romanies; and that, in their unceasing revolution about the polar Bear, the stars pour down on earth those auspices and fatalities, that light and shadow, cold and heat, whence flow the good and evil, the love and hatred which make up human happiness.

“If the origin of this book is so lost in the night of time that no one knows where or when it was invented, everything leads us to believe that it is of Indo-Tartaric origin and that, variously modified among ancient nations, according to the phases of their doctrines and the characteristics of their wise men, it was one of their books of occult science, possibly even one of their sibylline books. We have sufficiently indicated the road by which it has reached us; we have seen that it must have been known to the Romans and that it came to them not only from the first days of the empire but of the Republic itself, by the intervention of those numerous strangers of eastern origin, who were initiated into the mysteries of Bacchus and of Isis, and who brought their knowledge to the heirs of Numa.”

Vaillant does not say that the four hieroglyphical signs of the Tarot—being Wands, Cups, Swords and Deniers, or golden circles—are found in Homer, sculptured on the shield of Achilles; but according to him: “the Cups are the arcs or arches of time, the vessels or ships of heaven. The Deniers are the constellations, fixed and movable stars. The Swords are fires, flames, rays; the Wands are shadows, stones, trees, plants. The Ace of Cups is the vase of the universe, the arch of celestial truth, the principle of earth. The Ace of Deniers is the sun, the great eye of the world, the sustenance and element of life. The Ace of Swords is the spear of Mars, whence come wars, misfortunes and victories. The Ace of Wands is the serpent’s eye, the pastoral crook, the cowherd’s goad, the club of Hercules, the emblem of agriculture. The two of Cups is the cow, Io or Isis, and the bull Apis or Mnevis. The three of Cups is Isis, the moon, lady and queen of night. The three of Deniers is Osiris, the sun, lord and king of day. The nine of Deniers is the messenger Mercury, or the angel Gabriel. The nine of Cups is the gestation of good destiny, whence comes happiness.”

Finally, M. Vaillant tells us that there is a Chinese diagram consisting of characters which form great oblong compartments, of equal size and precisely that of the Tarot cards. These compartments are arranged in six perpendicular columns, the first five consisting of fourteen compartments each, making seventy in all; whilst the sixth is only half filled and contains seven compartments. Moreover, this diagram is formed after the same combination of the number seven; each complete column is of twice seven or fourteen compartments, while the half column contains seven compartments. It is so much like the Tarot that the four suits of the latter occupy the four first columns; in the fifth column are the twenty-one trumps, while the seven remaining trumps are in the sixth column, the last representing the six days constituting the week of creation. Now, according to the Chinese, this diagram goes back to the first epoch of their empire, being the drying up of the waters of the deluge by IAO. The conclusion is, therefore, that this is either the original Tarot or a copy thereof; that in any case the Tarot is anterior to Moses, is referable to the beginning of the ages, or the epoch of the formulation of the Zodiac; and that its age is consequently six thousand six hundred years.[237]

“Such is the Romany Tarot from which by transposition the Hebrews have made the word _Torah_, signifying the Law of Jehovah. So far then from being a game, as it is at the present day, it was a book, and a serious book, the book of symbols and of emblems, of analogies or the relations between stars and man; the book of destiny, by the aid of which the sorcerer unveiled the mysteries of fortune. Its figures, their names, their number, and the oracles drawn from these made it naturally regarded by Christians as the instrument of a diabolical art, a work of Magic. It will be hence understood with what severity they proscribed it, the moment it became known to them by that abuse of confidence which the rashness of the _Sagi_ committed on public credulity. In this manner, faith being lost in its message, the Tarot became a game, while its pictures underwent modification according to the taste of nations and the successive spirit of centuries.[238] It is to the work in this trivial form that we owe our modern playing cards, the combinations of which are comparable to those of the Tarot in the same way as the game of draughts is comparable to the game of chess. It follows that the origin of cards is attributed wrongly to the reign of Charles VI, and it may be noted further that the initiates of the Order of the Belt, established before 1332 by Alphons XI, king of Castile, pledged themselves not to play cards. Le Sage tells us that, in the days of Charles V, St. Bernard of Sienna condemned cards to be burnt and that they were then called _triumphales_ after the game of triumph played in honour of the victorious Osiris or Ormuzd, represented by one of the Tarot cards. Furthermore, that king himself proscribed cards in 1369 and the reason that little Jean de Saintré was honoured by his favour was because he did not play. In those days cards were termed _Naipes_ in Spain and _Naibi_ in Italy, the _Naibi_ being she-devils, sibyls and pythonesses.”

M. Vaillant, from whom we have been again quoting, considers therefore that the Tarot has been modified and altered, which is true for the German examples bearing Chinese figures, but not for those of Italy, which have only been altered in details, nor for those of Besançon, in which traces remain of primitive Egyptian hieroglyphics. In the _Doctrine and Ritual of Transcendental Magic_, we have shewn how untoward in their results were the labours of Etteilla or Alliette in respect of the Tarot. This illuminated hairdresser, after working for thirty years, only succeeded in producing a bastard set, the Keys of which are transposed, so that the numbers no longer answer to the signs. In a word, it is a Tarot suited to Etteilla and to the measure of his intelligence, which was not of great extent.

We are scarcely in agreement with M. Vaillant, when he suggests that the gipsies were the lawful proprietors of this key to initiations. They owed it doubtless to the infidelity or imprudence of some Kabalistic Jew. The gipsies originated in India, or their historian has at least shown the likelihood of this theory. Now the extant Tarot is certainly that of the gipsies and has come to us by way of Judea. As a fact, its keys are in correspondence with the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, and some of its figures reproduce even their forms. What then were the gipsies? As a poet has said: They were the debased remnant of an ancient world; they were a sect of Indian Gnostics, whose communism caused them to be proscribed in every land; as they may be said to admit practically, they were profaners of the Great Arcanum, overtaken by a fatal malediction. A horde misled by some enthusiastic fakir, they had become wanderers through the world, protesting against all civilisations in the name of a pretended natural law which dispensed them from almost every duty. Now the law which seeks to prevail in violation of duty is aggression, pillage and rapine; it is the hand of Cain raised against his brother, and society in defending itself seems to be avenging the death of Abel.

In 1840 certain mechanics of the Faubourg St. Antoine, weary, as they put it, of being hoodwinked by journalists and of serving as tools for the ambition of ready speech-makers, resolved to found and to edit a journal of pure radicalism and of logic apart from evasion or circumlocution. They combined therefore and deliberated for the firm establishment of their doctrines; they took as their basis the republican device of liberty, equality and the rest. But liberty seemed to them incompatible with the duty of labour, equality with the law of property, and they therefore decided on communism. One of them, however, pointed out that in communism the sharpest would preside over the division and would get the lion’s share; it was decreed thereupon that no one should have the right to intellectual superiority. But it was further remarked that even physical beauty might constitute an aristocracy, so they decreed that there should be an equality in ugliness. Finally, as those who till the ground are yoked to the ground, it was settled that true communists could not follow agriculture, must have only the world for their fatherland and humanity itself for their family, whence it became them to have recourse to caravans and go round the world eternally. We are not relating a parable, we have known those who were present at the convention in question and we have read the first number of their journal, which was entitled _The Humanitarian_ and was suppressed in 1841. As to this, the press reports of the period may be consulted. Had the journal continued and had the incipient sect recruited proselytes for the Icarian emigration, as the old attorney Cabet was doing at the same period, a new race of Bohemians would have been organised, and vagabondage would have counted one race the more.

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