RELIGION ANO FOLK-LORE. Of the religion of the gypsies there is little to be said. On the one hand they are not idolaters, nor on the other have they any well-defined religious ideas. They may go by the name of Christians or Moham medans, according to the religion of the people among whom they live, but at best they attach little vital significance to religious rites and worships. Their religious attitude was proba bly the same on their arrival in Europe; they brought with them their Indian religion, but so slightly grounded that it was easily obscured, and. then wholly lost. A curious proof of this is to be found in the romani word trtishul. The trishila in Sanskrit is the three-pointed spear, Or trident, borne by the Hindu god Shiva. From India the gypsies brought the word, along with a vague memory of the old god; but, arrived in Christian countries, they speedily forgot Shiva, and transferred his symbol, the trident, to the symbol of the Christian religion—the Cross; and all over Europe, in England as in Turkey, the tnishu/ is the Cross of Christ.
It is stated in many books on the gypsies that they have no conception of God, and that there is no word for God in their language. This is wholly false. The name of God is to be found in every gypsy dialect, and is of pure Hindu origin: Devel (Skt. deva, 'god,' Avesta daeva, `an evil genius,' Lat. delis). The English gypsy calls Cod
o b6ro `the great God,' or mi-davl, 'my God.' The gypsy conception of God is partly pantheistic, but largely anthropomorphic. It varies, of course, with the grade of culture of the tribe. In England the gypsy is, to all intents and purposes, a Protestant Christian, with the ological notions of a very vague sort, and rather indifferent in the matter of devoutness; but often, in individual cases, he becomes an ardent evangelist and missionary. At the other ex treme, geographically and racially, the gypsy of Eastern Europe is almost a pagan, so rich is his mythology and folk-lore in supernatural beings, male and female, benign and pernicious, of every grade. It would be impossible in a limited space to give an adequate idea of the complete mythological system, for example. of the Tran sylvanian gypsies as recorded by \Vlislocki. They have developed a thorough cosmogony; and the sky and woods and streams are peopled in their imagination with numberless beings, whose influence must be sought and whose vengeance must be averted with amulets and charmed words. Not an illness, not an animal in nature that does not have its `spirit': and every 'omen,' every coincidence, every dream has its porten tous meaning.