Simon Ramirez, captain of a band of Gitanos, repudiated Teresa
because she was old, and married one called Melchora, who was young
and handsome, and that on the day when the repudiation took place
and the bridal was celebrated he was journeying along the road, and
perceived a company feasting and revelling beneath some trees in a
plain within the jurisdiction of the village of Deleitosa, and that
on demanding the cause he was told that it was on account of Simon
Ramirez marrying one Gitana and casting off another; and that the
repudiated woman told him, with an agony of tears, that he
abandoned her because she was old, and married another because she
was young. Certainly Gitanos and Gitanas confessed before Don
Martin Fajardo that they did not really marry, but that in their
banquets and festivals they selected the woman whom they liked, and
that it was lawful for them to have as many as three mistresses,
and on that account they begat so many children. They never keep
fasts nor any ecclesiastical command. They always eat meat, Friday
and Lent not excepted; the morning when I seized those whom I
afterwards executed, which was in Lent, they had three lambs which
they intended to eat for their dinner that day. - Quinones, page
13.

Although what is stated in the above extracts, respecting the
marriages of the Gitanos and their licentious manner of living, is,
for the most part, incorrect, there is no reason to conclude the
same with respect to their want of religion in the olden time, and
their slight regard for the forms and observances of the church, as
their behaviour at the present day serves to confirm what is said
on those points. From the whole, we may form a tolerably correct
idea of the opinions of the time respecting the Gitanos in matters
of morality and religion. A very natural question now seems to