Gypsy Folk Tales, by Francis Hindes Groome, , at sacred-
texts.com From the preceding it may be safely deduced that, with
our present knowledge, or rather lack of knowledge, we can
seldom, if ever, fix the precise date when the Gypsies first set
foot in any country. Till 1849 it was almost universally
accepted that 1417, the year of their appearance at the Hanse
cities of the Baltic, was also the date of their first arrival
in Europe. But since then Bataillard, Hopf, and Miklosich have
collected a number of passages which prove incontestably that
long before then there must have been Gypsies in south-eastern
Europe. Symon Simeonis, a Minorite friar, who made pilgrimage
from [paragraph continues] Ireland to the Holy Land, tells in
his Itinerarium (Camb. 1778, p, 17), how in 1322 near Candia in
Crete: 'There also we saw a race outside the city, following the
Greeks' rite, and asserting themselves to be of the family of
Chaym [Ham]. They rarely or never stop in one place beyond
thirty days, but always wandering a