CHAPTER V



'LOS Gitanos son muy malos! - the Gypsies are very bad people,'
said the Spaniards of old times. They are cheats; they are
highwaymen; they practise sorcery; and, lest the catalogue of their
offences should be incomplete, a formal charge of cannibalism was
brought against them. Cheats they have always been, and
highwaymen, and if not sorcerers, they have always done their best
to merit that appellation, by arrogating to themselves supernatural
powers; but that they were addicted to cannibalism is a matter not
so easily proved.

Their principal accuser was Don Juan de Quinones, who, in the work
from which we have already had occasion to quote, gives several
anecdotes illustrative of their cannibal propensities. Most of
these anecdotes, however, are so highly absurd, that none but the
very credulous could ever have vouchsafed them the slightest
credit. This author is particularly fond of speaking of a certain
juez, or judge, called Don Martin Fajardo, who seems to have been
an arrant Gypsy-hunter, and was probably a member of the ancient
family of the Fajardos, which still flourishes in Estremadura, and
with individuals of which we are acquainted. So it came to pass
that this personage was, in the year 1629, at Jaraicejo, in
Estremadura, or, as it is written in the little book in question,
Zaraizejo, in the capacity of judge; a zealous one he undoubtedly
was.

A very strange place is this same Jaraicejo, a small ruinous town