ethnology Rawlinson could plausibly explain their 'medic' costume and claim to affinity with Medes, by 'a better memory than other European tribes had of their migrations westward and their Aryan origin.' But Macan has suggested that there is here a confusion with the Thracian Maidoí. Strabo agrees with Herodotus about their breeding shaggy ponies for driving in harness (p. 520), also refers to their Persian customs, and places them near Caspian Sea. Since Apollonius Rhodius, iv. 320, puts them on Black Sea shores, near mouth of Danube, and Herodotus stretches their tenancy to the Adriatic, it is clear that this tribe had a very wide extension. Now the Thracians adored their weapons and so did Scyths; but the Cilician regal title may find a parallel in the epithet (
Greek characters), also a divine and royal name derived from a weapon. How far (1) the tribe was Aryan and (2) had connexions with Cilicia it is at present hard to say; nor can we dogmatize on their ancestry of the present-day Gipsies. Moses Gaster is clearly inclined to derive Zigeuner (zingari, tsigan, czigany) from the earlier Atzigan of the Balkan Peninsula, this word being itself derived from the (Greek characters) or medieval heretics of the 'touch-not, taste-not, handle-not' school of extreme Manichean ascesis (so Miklosich, approved by Gaster). Bataillard was the first to propose a connexion with the (Greek characters) (Orig. des Bohém. ou Tsiganes, Paris 1876). Now the Athingans, besides being known as soothsayers and snake-charmers were also smiths, and their race was referred to Samer, a Hebrew goldsmith who made the Golden Calf! For this sin (it was said) his descendants had to live apart from mankind like lepers, and their name signifies this. The nick-name Tsintsari in Macedon and Rumelia is applied to Vlachs, with an obvious echo of Zingari, and they also are smiths and tinkers.[1] Of their skill as smiths there is no doubt. In the Vienna Rhymed Version
- ↑ Which Gaster thinks may be a 'local transformation' in English of the Teutonic Zigeuner.
