"A Gipsy girl is generally betrothed at the age of fourteen to the youth whom her parents deem a suitable match, and who is generally a few years older than herself. Marriage is invariably preceded by betrothment.... With the Busné or Gentiles, the betrothed female is allowed the freest intercourse, going whither she will, and returning at all times and seasons. With respect to the Busné, indeed, the parents are invariably less cautious than with their own race, as they conceive it next to an impossibility that their child should lose her _Lácha_ by any intercourse with _the white blood_; and true it is that experience has proved that their confidence in this respect is not altogether idle. The Gitanas have in general a decided aversion to the white men; some few instances, however, to the contrary are said to have occurred."
The gitanas, Borrow goes on to explain, are never above exciting passion in the Busné which, however, they refuse to satisfy. Their dances for the most part are lascivious and obscene. They often act as procuresses. But let no Busno presume from these facts that he may count on a more intimate acquaintanceship. Richard Ford in "Gatherings from Spain" in his description of the _romalis_ supports Borrow in his theory: "However indecent these dances may be, yet the performers are inviolably chaste, and as far at least as ungipsy guests are concerned, may be compared to iced punch at a rout; young girls go through them before the applauding eyes of their parents and brothers, who resent to the death any attempt on their sisters' virtue."
Mérimée refers to the matter in a letter to the _Inconnue_: "What he (Borrow) relates of the gipsies is perfectly true, and his personal observations are entirely in accord with mine save on a single point. In his capacity of clergyman (_sic_), he may very well have deceived himself where I, in my capacity of Frenchman and layman, was able to make conclusive experiments." In spite of the weight of Mérimée's personal experience it may be noted that the majority of Spanish writers are in accord with Borrow, who was _not_ a clergyman. And, as Professor Northup slyly points out, the man who taught Isopel Berners of Mumpers Dingle to conjugate the verb "to love" in Armenian may not have been so naïve an observer after all.