Charles Godfrey Leland

Gypsy Sorcery And Fortune Telling Charles Godfrey Leland

As their peculiar perfume is the chief association with spices, so sorcery is allied in every memory to gypsies. And as it has not escaped many poets that there is something more strangely sweet and mysterious in the scent of cloves than in that of flowers, so the attribute of inherited magic power adds to the romance of these picturesque wanderers. Both the spices and the Romany come from the far East-the fatherland of divination and enchantment. The latter have been traced with tolerable accuracy, if we admit their affinity with the Indian Dom and Domar, back to the threshold of history, or well-nigh into prehistoric times, and in all ages they, or their women, have been engaged, as if by elvish instinct, in selling enchantments, peddling prophecies and palmistry, and dealing with the devil generally in a small retail way.