Leland was sixty-seven years old when he informed a family confidante and colleague that he had stumbled upon "all the principal deities of the Etruscans still existing as spirits or folletti in the Romagna area of Italy--I believe I am the first to find out this." Leland had already published five books on gypsy lore and language, including his discovery and description, with a laboriously compiled vocabulary, of Shelta, hitherto a wholly oral tongue. When the present Etruscan book was finished, Leland regarded it as his greatest work, "ten times more remarkable" than Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune-telling, his unique collection, published a few years before. Even "finding Shelta was a trifle to this," he wrote ecstatically of the Etruscan discoveries.