modern Egyptians.) “The women had their under lips coloured dark blue, like female Bedouins, and a few eaten-in points around the mouth of like colour.  They, and the boys also, wore earrings.  They made sieves of horse-hair or of leather, iron nails, and similar small ironware, or mended kettles.  They appear to be very poor, and the men go almost naked, unless the cold compels them to put on warmer clothing.  The little boys ran about naked.  Although both Christians and Mahometans declared that they buried their dead in remote hill corners, or burned them, they denied it, and declared they were good Mahometans, and as such buried their dead in Mahometan cemeteries.” (This corresponds to their custom in Great Britain in the past generation, and the earnestness which they display at present to secure regular burial like Christians.) “But as their instruction is even more neglected than that of the Bedouins, their religious information is so limited that one may say of them, they have either no religion at all, or the simplest of all.  As to wine, they are less strict than most Mahometans.  They assured me that in Egypt there were many Nury.”

The same writer obtained from one of these Syrian-Egyptian Gipsies a not inconsiderable vocabulary of their language, and says:  “I find many Arabic, Turkish, and some Greek words in it; it appears to me, however, that they have borrowed from a fourth language, which was perhaps their mother-tongue, but which I cannot name, wanting dictionaries.”  The words which he gives appear to me to consist of Egyptian-Arabic, with its usual admixture from other sources, simply made into a gibberish, and sometimes with one word substituted for another to hide the meaning—­the whole probably obtained through a dragoman, as is seen, for instance, when he gives the word nisnaszeha, a fox, and states that it is of unknown origin.  The truth is, nisnas means a monkey, and, like most of Seetzen’s “Nuri” words, is inflected with an a final, as if one should say “monkeyo.”  I have no doubt the Nauar may talk such a jargon; but I should not be astonished, either, if the Shekh who for a small pecuniary consideration eagerly aided Seetzen to note it down, had “sold” him with what certainly would appear to any Egyptian to be the real babble of the nursery.  There are a very few Rommany words in this vocabulary, but then it should be remembered that there are some Arabic words in Rommany.

The street-cry of the Gipsy women in Cairo is [ARABIC TEXT which cannot be reproduced] “Neduqq wanetahir!” “We tattoo and circumcise!” a phrase which sufficiently indicates their calling.  In the “Deutscher Dragoman” of Dr Philip Wolff, Leipzig, 1867, I find the following under the word Zigeuner:—­

“Gipsy—­in Egypt, Gagri” (pronounced more nearly ’Rh’agri), “plural Gagar; in Syria, Newari, plural Nawar.  When they go about with monkeys, they are called Kurudati, from kird, ape.  The Gipsies of Upper Egypt call themselves Saaideh—­i.e., people from Said, or Upper Egypt (vide Kremer, i. 138-148).  According to Von Gobineau, they are called in Syria Kurbati, [ARABIC TEXT which cannot be reproduced] (vide ‘Zeitschrift der D. M. G.,’ xi. 690).”