Mr Richard Liebich (_Die Zigeuner_, _Leipzig_, 1863), tells us that in his country their most sacred oath is _Ap i mulende_!--by the dead!--and with it may be classed the equally patriarchal imprecation, "By my father's hand!" Since writing the foregoing sentence a very remarkable confirmation of the existence of this oath among English Gipsies, and the sacredness with which it is observed, came under my own observation.

An elderly Gipsy, during the course of a family difficulty, declared to his sister that he would leave the house.

She did not believe he would until he swore by his dead wife--by his "_mullo juvo_." And when he had said this, his sister promptly remarked: "Now you have sworn by her, I know you will do it." He narrated this to me the next day, adding that he was going to put a tent up, about a mile away, and live there.

I asked him if he ever swore by his dead father, to which he said: "Always, until my wife died." This poor man was almost entirely ignorant of what was in the Bible, as I found by questioning him; but I doubt whether I know any Christian on whom a Bible oath would be more binding than was to him his own by the dead.

To me there was something deeply moving in the simple earnestness and strangeness of this adjuration.
The German, like the older English Gipsies, carefully burn the clothes and bed of the deceased, and, indeed, most objects closely connected with them, and what is more extraordinary, evince their respect by carefully avoiding mentioning their names, even when they are borne by other persons or are characteristic of certain things.