Posted on 09/27/2002 1:29:50 PM PDT by antivenom
Just heard on the top of the hour news...that the little girl turned over to the foster family MAY not be her daughter!
SO where is the little beaten up Toogood girl?
Steven Rosen, said it was “the craziest thing in the world” to suggest that police had the wrong woman and child. “That’s the mother, and that’s the daughter,” Rosen said.
Here's a link to the full story. Identity of girl in beating case is questioned.
See House of Games . A good film about con artists.
Yep.
"Our account of the Spanish peninsula would be incomplete without a notice of that remarkable race, the Gypsies, who have long existed in this country, isolated from the rest of the community. they are also found in several other countries of Europe; but the accounts of those in Spain, where they are said to number some forty or fofty thousand individuals, are the most complete."
"For a period of more than four hundred years, this singular group of people have been strolling, with little change, over Europe, like foreigners and strangers. Their "hand against every man, and every man's hand against them", they are the Ishmaelites of civilization. Africa makes them no blacker, nor Europe whiter; they neither learn to be lazy in Spain, nor diligent in Germany; they neither reverence Christ in Christiandom, nor Mahomet in Turkey. The year in which they first made their appearance in Europe is nowhere recorded; but it is clear they did not originate in that quarter of the globe."
"Everywhere , the Gypsy race live the vagabond life."
"They generally reside in tents, which they pitch in bye-places; and, when the resources of that neighborhood are exhausted,--that is, when every henroost they can reach is robbed and every movable thing they can lay their hands on is pilfered; when the men have jockeyed all who will deal with them in horses, and prescribed for all men and animals who will be doctored by them; and when the fortunes of all the silly people of the vicinity have been told by the women,--the vagrant troop suddenly decampfrom their filthy lair, greatly to the relief of the inhabitants of the vicinity. Though probably one of the most beautiful races by nature,--as might be inferred from the beauty of their infants even now,--yet habitual exposure to the burning rays of the sun, the biting of the frost, and the peltin of the rain and snow, destroys their buaety at an early age, and the ugliness at an advanced period of life is no less remarkable than the lovliness of their infancy."
more.....
" In 1417, they are mentioned near the North Sea, and the next year in Switzerland; in 1422 in Italy, and, a few years after, in France and Spain. They did not travel in a single body, but in seperate hordes, each having its leader, sometimes called a 'Count' , as, in England, their chief is still called 'King of the Beggars'. Others gave themselves out for dukes and kings of Lesser Egypt. People believed then to be Egyptians and pilgrims, who were constrained to wander on some religious account.. The Gypsies told fabulous stories to spread this belief, and these were recieved with such credulity, that they were allowed everywhere free passage.. Even in Spain, the Inquisition overlooked these practical pagans, being, probably, intent at hawking at richer, and therefor more profitable game. In Hungary, too, they were no less free, though in the midst of slaves. The early golden age of the Gypsies, alluded to above, lasted half a century, when their impostures were exposed, and they were discovered to be inveterate vagabonds and robbers by profession. From this period, they began to suffer persecution."
I think we agree. These people are bad medicine for us "folk in housen".
. . . . .
"I know what you thought, Squire," the tinkerman said with dignity. "You thought you would find things there from the house we left. Squire, there is no dog I can't steal from its master, and there is no colt I can't steal from its mother's side, and sell under the eye of the owner," he went on in his soft, melancholy voice, "and herself, this woman, could take the watch from your vest and the money from your pocket while you are talking with her. There is science in all that. But we do not pilfer houses, Squire. We are robbers, we tinker people, not thieves." And he, and she, and the brown donkey waited patiently.
"Why are you leaving Glenmalure?"
"Because, Squire, life near a house, or with walls around us, is not life at all. Water from pipes is not good, nor butcher's meat; no, nor baker's bread. That is the way they live in houses. A badger in a barrel is the same as a man in a house. In a house there is no fairs to attend, to buy and sell horses to the ignorant people, nor the trick of three cards to play on the drunken farmers of the fair, or races to see. And going around, herself, this woman, might find a man she likes better than me, and I might find a woman I like better than this woman. So it is not fair to us to be in one place."
"Also," said the woman in a hoarse, not unmusical voice, "of all houses that is not a good house."
"There is this, too, Squire. There is a man looking around that house, seeking, we think, the man who is in that house. And tinker people will fight against tinker people or against house people, but will not meddle with fights between house people and house people. If anything happened to the man of that house, it would go ill with us of the roads."
"Also," the woman persevered, "that is a bad house."
"What do you mean?" Dermot asked sharply. "Ghosts?"
She laughed.
"Ghosts are for children," she answered. "There is worse than ghosts. There is ill-luck, that is against man and beast and tree."
"Is that all, Squire?" the man asked.
"Yes. What is your name?"
"The name that is on me is Gilla Na Glas -- in the English, the Lad of Deceits. And the name that is on this woman she is under bond never to tell, so that she is known as Ban Gan Ainm -- in the English, the Woman without a Name."
The little brown donkey moved on, the cart creaked, the woman's soft bare feet padded quietly as a dog's upon the dust. Dermot put his hand in his pocket, took out a gold coin.
"To soften the road," he offered.
"We thank you, no, Squire," Gilla Na Glas answered. "We have no need. If we had need," he said, "we would have taken it when you were looking into the cart."
Donn Byrne - Hangman's House
It's a good book if you like Irish local color - and the tinkers and the gypsies circulate through his books pretty regularly. That's a good safe distance at which to view them, IMHO.
"In France, the police have nearly rid the country of them. In Italy, they are not allowed to remain two nights in any one place. They are scattered, though not in great numbers, over Germany, Denmark, and Sweden. Many of the race are found in Turkey, especialy at Constantinople, where the females frequently enter the harems of women of rank, pretending to cure the children of the "evil-eye", and to interpret dreams. They also appear in the coffee houses as dancing girls, and peddle precious stones, and sometimes poisons. They are common in Moldovia, Walachia, and Servia."
Not with this inbred bunch.
Remember, it is the Gypsies who gave the world Django Reinhardt. Just for that, I love them. < /deathwish>
Now roll on the hate mail...
[follows a story of how the Spanish Gypsies gained a reputation for murdering their marks]
"Among the characteristics common to the Gypsy race in general, beside those of rejecting agriculture, and regular service of every kind, filtiness, jockeying, pilfering,iron-working, tinkering,and fortune-telling, already enumerated,--it may be remarked that they have many Oriental notions, are strongly attached to their own peculiar habits of life and modes of thinking, are destitute of Christian ideas of morality except in regard to female chastity, and live as athiests without worship or a belief in the immortality of the soul. They invariably preserve every custom or fancy which has once been current among them, be it ever so noxious or absurd, while any affection which has once predominated in their minds, retains its dominion for ages. Their marriage festivals are boisterous, bizarre, and often ruinously extravagant. The themes of their rude poetry, which generally consists of single verses, scraps, or catches, are, of course, the various incidents of Gypsy life, cattle stealing, prison adventures,assassination, revenge, etc. Amongst those effusions are sometimes found tender and beautiful thoughts; but they are few and far between, like the occasional flower or shrub adorning the rugged crags and gloomy dens in which most of the race love to harbor."
S.G. Goodrich, 1859
Shout out for DIVERSITY, brothers!
Finest guitarist I ever heard with two or four fingers!
I've been saying this was a possibility all along.
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