1. This essay is entirely tentative and inconclusive and claims to be merely a summary of the divers opinions held to-day about the Romani or Gitani nomads. It is intended to elicit some restatement and possibly some conclusion by a more competent authority. No subject could be more congenial to a study of folk-lore; we want to know exactly what moral ideas or customs this wave of nomads introduced into the west, whether the tales or cult of European peasantry owe anything to them, whether they had a peculiar esoteric faith derived from Hindustan or, rather, were not entirely devoid of the religious instinct. Of late much has been done to accumulate undoubted facts of their medieval history, but nothing is clear as to their race, origin or dialects. Their history forms a sort of pendant or sequel to the curious figure of Khidr (which I was kindly permitted to treat in this journal in Sept. 1917). It needs a very slight turn to convert an immortal being of an angelic type, a recurrent prophet, into a solitary wanderer condemned to a death in life as penance for his sins. The curious result of Muslim syncretism Khidrlas is Khidr + Elijah, that is (in Cumont's view) the prototype of Ahasuerus (=Khisr), united to the Hebrew Prophet: Elisha-Khidr (merely a double), patron of boats and way- farers, is held in honour from N. Syria to the confines of Hindustan (Cumont). This hero-worship, reproved by orthodox doctors, finds of course parallels in every primitive people, but recalls the Doms and Panchpiriyas of India. It is perhaps worth while to mention that in Story XV. of Caster's Rumanian Fables, Elie (or Elijah) helps to recover the sun, moon and stars after the devils had stolen them: there is clearly a confusion with the sun-god Helios. Again, S. Sara's shrine (as will be seen a gipsy resort in Bouches-du-Rhône) is really a scene of Mitra-worship: are there other signs of this cultus among gipsies? and can scholars accept the identification Mitra=Maitreya, or the coming Buddha? But the chief problem concerns not the penance
