Curious gypsy religious rites and supersti tions survive in connection with the marked events in life, as birth, marriage, puberty, sickness and death, all of which seem to have had a very primitive origin. Many of these practices still survive among even small com munities of gypsies who have long been sub jected to modern civilization and Christianity and who have apparently forgotten the faith of their Asiatic ancestors.
Folklore.— Among the gypsy tribes there exists a vast body of folklore rich in variety, imagery and invention. The gypsy mythology and folktales are curiously suggestive of the primitive Indo-European folklore to which they are first cousins. Fairies, tree-spirits, water-demons, good-people, wind-men, witches of the air, giants, fire-spirits, ghosts, super natural people, dwellers within the earth, pig mies, kindly disposed helpers like the brownies constitute the more active dramatic personnel of these tales, which are still told around the gypsy camp fire more or less as they were 2,000 years ago except in so far as they have been modified by the exigencies of the modern life of the tribes. Their stage is as broad as the mind of man. It includes the sky and the great starry region above (for the two are separated in gypsy lore) where the stars still hold do minion as they did in the ancient days before the knowledge of physical and natural sciences had come to disturb the mind of the Indo-Eu ropean and to change his point of view with respect to the universe. It embraces the earth surface, the waters of the rivers, the lakes and the sea lying between the great cloud-land and the dark under regions. Throughout all these regions wander the spirits created by gypsy fancy as freely as the supernatural char acters of an Arabian tale. Supernatural power, magic spells, charms and fetiches form ordinary parts of most gypsy tales which delight in deal ing with the supernatural. The gypsy lives still in the age of animism. To him everything in nature is alive (where he is living under his normal conditions and in true gypsy communi ties). He believes in numerous beings whose goodwill it is to his interest to win. Therefore
his tales often deal with the terrible power of witches; and other evil-disposed spirits that accompany certain animals are also favorites with the gypsy folk. These are outwitted by incantations ncantations and other supernatural powers in which appears the miraculous efficacy of the Christian cross, often transformed into the trident of the Hindu God Shiva, the De stroyer, the third member of the Hindu trinity. Consequently in gypsy tales of this sort, • the cross frequently figures in associations very far from Christian in spirit, for it is pictured as a destroyer as well as a preserver. Sometimes the gypsy hero goes forth to meet his enemies in terrible conflict armed only with the cross; and the destruction he accomplishes by means of its miraculous power recalls, in a more than suggestive manner, the ravages of Shiva the Terrible, the giver and taker of life. In gypsy tales, too, figure dreams, omens, charms, amu lets, curiously yet vividly and realistically as sociated incantations and mysterious occult powers. From the under-world also come tales strongly reminiscent of ancient Greek, Roman, Persian and Germanic myths. Some of the gypsy tales are very similar to those told by the peasants of Russia; and the spirit that per vades the gypsy relation is more that of Russia than that of the Western world which may in dicate that the gypsy is more closely related to the Slav than to the more western Indo-Eu ropean races. See GYPSIES; GYPSY LANGUAGE
Dumbarton, (Gypsy Life in the Mysore Jungle) (London 1902) ; Groome,