observed, and became quite as notorious as their want of honesty;
they have been styled atheists, heathen idolaters, and Moors. In
the little book of Quinones', we find the subject noticed in the
following manner:-

'They do not understand what kind of thing the church is, and never
enter it but for the purpose of committing sacrilege. They do not
know the prayers; for I examined them myself, males and females,
and they knew them not, or if any, very imperfectly. They never
partake of the Holy Sacraments, and though they marry relations
they procure no dispensations. (35) No one knows whether they are
baptized. One of the five whom I caused to be hung a few days ago
was baptized in the prison, being at the time upwards of thirty
years of age. Don Martin Fajardo says that two Gitanos and a
Gitana, whom he hanged in the village of Torre Perojil, were
baptized at the foot of the gallows, and declared themselves Moors.

'They invariably look out, when they marry, if we can call theirs
marrying, for the woman most dexterous in pilfering and deceiving,
caring nothing whether she is akin to them or married already, (36)
for it is only necessary to keep her company and to call her wife.
Sometimes they purchase them from their husbands, or receive them
as pledges: so says, at least, Doctor Salazar de Mendoza.

'Friar Melchior of Guelama states that he heard asserted of two
Gitanos what was never yet heard of any barbarous nation, namely,
that they exchanged their wives, and that as one was more comely
looking than the other, he who took the handsome woman gave a
certain sum of money to him who took the ugly one. The licentiate
Alonzo Duran has certified to me, that in the year 1623-4, one