80 MOON-MEN. MUCH has been written of late years knowingly and unknowingly about the Gypsies; but, strange to say, Dekker's satirical account of them seems to have escaped observation, though the pamphlet from which the following extract is taken is far from being uncommon. Making every reasonable allowance for the exaggerations of a professed satirist,-and Dekker like Iago was "nothing if not cynical"- there seems to be no ground for doubting that his picture of the vices and follies of his age was in the main true. As such it is presented to the reader, with the omission only, or softening down, of a few phrases here and there, which were manifestly too coarse for the present taste. "A Moon-Man signifies in English a madman because the moon hath greatest domination, above any other planet, over the bodies of frantic persons. But these Moon-Men, whose images are now to be carved, are neither absolutely mad nor yet perfectly in their wits. Their name they borrow from the moon, because the moon is never in one shape two nights together but wanders up and down Heaven like an antic, so these change able stuff companions never tarry one day in a place but are the only base runagates upon earth. And as in the moon there is a man, that never stirs without a bush of thorns at his back, so these Moon-Men lie under bushes, and are indeed no better than hedge-creepers. They are a people more scattered than Jews, and more hated, beggarly in apparel, barbarous in condition, and beastly in behaviour, and bloody if they meet advantage. A man, that sees them, would swear they had all the yellow jaundice; or that they were tawny Moors' bastards, for no red-oaker man carries a face of a more filthy complexion; yet are they not born so, neither hath the sun burnt them so, but they are painted so; yet they are not good painters neither, for they do not make faces, but mar faces. By a bye-name they are called Gypsies; they call themselves Egyptians; others in mockery call them Moon-Men. If they be Egyptian, sure I am they never descended from any of the tribes of those people that came out of the land of Egypt; Ptolemy, King of the Egyptians, I warrant, never called them his subjects, no nor Pharaoh before him. Look, what difference there is between a civil citizen of Dublin and a wild kerne, so much difference there is between one of these counterfeit Egyptians and a true English beggar. An English rogue is just of the same livery. They are commonly an army about fourscore strong, and they never march with all their bags and baggages together, but like boot-halers* they forage up and down countries, four, five, or six in a company. As the Switzer has his wench and his cock when he goes to the wars, so these vagabonds have their women, with a number of little * A "Boot-haler" is a robber, or plunderer, and is so explained both by Cotgrave and in the Lexicon Tetraglotton. "BUTINEUR" says Cotgrave, a boot-haler, pillager "—and in the Tetraglotton we have "BOOT-HALER, Butineur, Predatore. 66 children at their heeles, which young brood of beggars are sometimes carryed-like so many greene geese alive to a market in paires of paniers, or in dossers like fresh fish from Rye that comes on horse-back-if they be but infants, but if they can straddle once, then as well she-rogues as he-rogues are horst, seven or eight upon one jade, strongly pineoned and strangely tied together. "One shire alone, and no more, is sure still at one time to have these Egyptian vermin"-vermin is not exactly Dekker's word—"swarming within it, for like flocks of wild geese they will evermore flye one after another; let them be scattered worse than the quarters of a traytor are after he's hanged, drawne, and quartered, yet they have a trick, like water cut with a sword, to come together instantly and easily againe; and this is their policie, which way soever the foremost ranks lead, they stick up small boughs in several places to every village where they passe, which serve as ensigns to wait on the rest. "Their apparell is odd and fantastick, though it be never so full of rents. The men wear scarves of calico, or any other loose stuff, hanging [about] their bodies, like Morice dancers, with bells and other toys, to entice the country people to flock about them to wonder at their fooleries, or rather rank knaveries. The women as ridiculously attire themselves, and wear rags and patched filthy mantles uppermost when the undergarments are handsome and in fashion. "The battles these outlaws make are many and very bloody. Whosoever falls into their hands never escapes alive, and so cruel they are in these murthers that nothing can satisfy them but the very heart-blood of those whom they kill. And who are they, think you, that thus go to the pot?-alas! innocent lambs, sheep, calves, pigs, &c. Poultry-ware are more churlishly handled by them than poor prisoners are by keepers in the Counter in the Poultry. A goose coming amongst them learns to be wise, that he will never be goose any more. The bloody tragedies of all these are only acted by the women, who carrying long knives, or skeanes, under their manThe stage is some large tles, do thus play their parts. heath or furze-bush common far from any houses, upon which, casting themselves into a ring, they enclose the murdered till the massacre be finished. If any passenger come by, and wondering to see such a conjuring circle kept by hell-hounds, and demand what spirits. they raise there, one of the murderers steps to him, poisons him with sweet words, and shifts him off with this lie that one of the women are fallen in labour; but if any mad Hamlet, hearing this, smells villainy, and rush in by violence to see what the tawny divels are doing, then they excuse the fact, lay the blame upon those that are actors, and perhaps (if they see no remedy) deliver them to an officer to be had to punishment; but by the way a rescue is surely laid; and very valiantly, though very villainously, do they fetch them off and guard them. "The cabins where these land-pirates lodge in the night are the outbarns of farmers and husbandmen, in some poor village or other, who dare not deny them for fear they should ere morning have their thatched houses burning about their ears; and these barns are both their cookrooms, their supping-parlours, and their bed-chambers, for there they dress after a beastly manner whatsoever they purchased * after a thievish fashion. Sometimes they eat venison and have greyhounds that kill it for them, but if they had not, they are hounds themselves and are damnable hunters after flesh. "Upon days of pastime and liberty they spread them* "Purchased," i. e. stole. selves in small companies amongst the villages, and when young maids and bachelors—yea sometimes old doting fools that should be beaten to this world of villainies and forewarn others-do flock about them, they then profess skill in palmistry, and forsooth can tell fortunes, which for the most part are infallibly true, by reason that they work upon rules which are grounded upon certainty; for one of them will tell you that you shall shortly have some evil luck fall upon you, and within half an hour after you shall have your pocket picked, or your purse cut. These are those Egyptian grasshoppers that eat up the fruits of the earth and destroy the poor cornfields. To sweep these swarms out of this kingdom there are no other means but the sharpness of the most infamous and basest kinds of punishment; for if the ugly body of this monster be suffered to grow and fatten itself with mischiefs and disorders, it will have a neck so sinewy and so brawny that the arm of the law will have much ado to strike off the head, sithence every day the members of it encrease, and it gathers new joints and new forces by priggers,† anglers, cheaters,§ yeomen's daughters—that have taken some by-blows, and to avoid shame, fall into their sin-and other servants, both men and maids, that have been pilferers, with all the rest of that damned regiment, marching together in the first army of the Belman, who running away from their own *"Beaten," i. e. used, accustomed to. + Thieves. Pilferers, petty thieves. § Sharpers. || An allusion to another pamphlet of Dekker's, called the "Belman of London," in which, to use his own phraseology, he "brings to light the most notorious villanies that are now practiced in the kingdom." Indeed he seems to have taken a strange pleasure in diving into every gutter and fishing up thence all the filth possible. This may certainly have proceeded from a high moral sense and it is charitable to believe so, yet I can hardly help suspecting that there was at least as much love of the subject as love of morality |