Their distinguishing mark was the practice of slashing, tatuing and burning-in scars on the face, which they believe to be a purgation or an atonement for sin. Since 'no one can point to a time when the Danubic regions were not infested with Gipsies' (MacRitchie) it is exceedingly likely that the Irish traveller is right.
Are we to Identify the Two?
4. Now the following questions arise in connexion with trade, name and locality. Are the Cygani of Poland, Zigani of Russia, Zigeuner of Germany, Ciganos of Portugal, the survival of a primitive tribe, once spread along the south-east of Europe and Russia, from Adriatic to Caspian and still preserving their peculiar features and idiosyncrasy, though reinforced by other waves of nomad immgrants from the Far East? Are the traditional waggon-roving (ἀμαξόβιοι) Scythians connected with these early horse-dealers and trainers of ponies in harness? Did they acquire and transmit to a long posterity (through more than 2000 years of history) the once magical arts of the smith and craftsman of which Dædalus and the Telchines are instances in Greece? Did their name for spear become domesticated in Cyprus and Cilicia, either from some 'Cimmerian' irruption from Central Europe or routes of merchandise from the Veneti down the Adriatic? Have we here a case of a people resisting all assimilation like the Jews and maintaining the curious aloofness and caste-separatism which as a rule we connect solely with Hindustan?
Gitani Language and the kindred Castes of India.
5. For here we are confronted with a truly baffling problem: though each group of Gitani has separate and special dialects filled with loan-words from their neighbours,
