IT cannot be expected that the description of the dress of a set of people whose whole economy belongs to the class of beggars, should exhibit any thing but poverty and want. The first of them that came to Europe appeared ragged and miserable—unless we perhaps allow their leaders to have been an exception;—in like manner their descendants have continued for hundreds of years, and still remain. This is particularly remarkable in the countries about the mouth of the Danube, which abound with Gipseys; namely, Transylvania, Hungary, and Turkey in Europe, where they dress even more negligently than in other parts.
The Gipseys consider a covering for the head as perfectly useless: the wind will not easily blow his hat off, who never wears any thing of the kind, excepting when he has a mind to make a figure, and even then a rough cap usually supplies its place. During the winter, if the female Gipseys do not knit socks, which those in Moldavia and Wallachia do, with wooden needles, he winds a couple of rags round his feet, which in summer are laid aside as unnecessary. He is not better furnished with linen, as the women neither spin, sew, nor wash. For want of change, what he once puts on his body, remains till it falls off of itself. His whole dress often consists of only a pair of breeches and a torn shirt.
We are not to suppose, from what is said above, that the Gipseys are indifferent about dress; on the contrary, they love fine clothes to an extravagant degree: the want proceeds from necessity, which is become with them a second nature, forgetting that labour and care are the means to procure clothes, as well as nourishment. Whenever an opportunity offers of acquiring a good coat, either by gift, purchase, or theft, the Gipsey immediately bestirs himself to become master of it: possessed of the prize, he puts it on directly, without considering in the least, whether it suits the rest of his apparel. If his dirty shirt had holes in it as big as a barn door, or his breeches were so out of condition that one might perceive their antiquity at the first glance; were he unprovided with shoes, stockings, or a covering for the head; neither of these defects would prevent his strutting about in a laced coat, feeling himself of still greater consequence in case it happened to be a red one. Martin Kelpius therefore says, that the Gipseys in Transylvania spend all their earnings in alehouses and in clothes. It would excite laughter in the sternest philosopher, to see a Gipsey parading about, with a beaver hat, a silk or red cloth coat, at the same time his breeches torn, and his shoes or boots, if perchance he have either, covered with patches.