Posted on 09/06/2004 3:51:50 PM PDT by blam
GGG Ping.
This is not news. It has been commonly accepted that Gypsies came from India.
At the risk of perpetuating stereotypes, I thought I'd relate a personal story.
My parents rented one of their houses to Gypsies in Whittier, CA, about 20 years ago. They trashed the place and stuck them with the rent.
My mother told me the same thing. Do you suppose that was wishful thinking?
I wonder why they migrated out of India 1,000 years ago. Could it have anything to do with the spread of Islam?
My father in law rented a place to Gypsies in Houston 40 years ago & when they left they even took the door knobs.
Everybody knows they came from the region of India.
I wonder if they included Scottish and Irish Travelers ~ or Russian animal trainers?
"Gypsies....Tramps and Thieves..........."
When I was a child, my mother told me that Gypsies steal babies.
Why would they steal babies? To make them work in the circus? My husband heard that too.
They always painted his barn and outbuildings for him. They slaughtered designated pigs free of charge, hung the meat in the smokehouse, and didn't steal anything.
In earlier times pieces of his land had served as burial grounds for "slavecatchers" sent up from Kentucky to retrieve runaway slaves. They never returned to Kentucky with or without slaves.
One gathers the Gypsies knew they trod on truly sacred ground when they came to that place.
A brief note ~ there's a theory that the original Gypsy population fled India ahead of Moslem invaders.
We have some Gypsy words in our vernacular--"Punch" means "five"--five fruits for a drink, or five fingers for a fist. "Shiv"--knife.
A cryptic culture, with no music, art, storytelling. No Gypsy restaurants. Any music we think of as Gypsy is largely a romanticized Balkan pastiche, more Hungarian than Romani. To be frank, Gypsies have contributed practically nothing to Western culture except their own image as romantic vagabonds.
The reputation for itinterant thievery and con-artistry is well-deserved, but they have also managed this without a commensurate reputation for violence.
I saw a documentary a while back--may have been on the discovery channel, may have been Nova, I don't remember which. The Gypsies were a warrior caste that went to fight the Persians, and kept going west. Their migration can be traced by the words their language acquired in each region they moved through.
Dreaded red x on the image.
But still an interesting article.
Thanks!
Another skill was in making inexpensive costume jewelry ~ aka "junk jewelry". For several centuries they had a near monopoly in that particular business. When WWII came along, most American Gypsies relocated to Los Angeles to work in the aircraft plans working with aluminum. Their skill with light metals was of immense value at that time. Every now and then you find a young person of Gypsy ancestry searching for "cultural contact" to find out what it was Grandpa and Grandma left behind.
Ain't America a great land ~ it even assimilates Gypsies ~ and a Bill Clinton whose grandmother told fortunes in traveling carnivals can become President.
My sister is a labor and delivery nurse and her hubby is an OB-GYN. They say when a gypsy comes into the hospital to deliver a baby, the staff immediately clears everything possible out of the labor room before the patient is brought in or it will all be gone when the family leaves.
OTOH, when I was young my grandmother had two friends, two other grandmas right around her age, that were neighbors of hers. They were sisters, except one was a child that was born into the family and the other had been adopted. How that happened was that the father allowed a band of gypsies to squat for a few days on his land. When they decided to move on, a little baby girl in the group was ill. So they just left her behind so that they could leave. Imagine that. Just left behind because she was sick. Didn't steal a baby, they just dumped her.
In Hugo's novel,"The Hunchback of Notre Dame" La Esmerelda was often refered to as "The Egyptian". It was a common belief.
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
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