[muawiyah]

I bet there's no more shared ancestry between the Irish Travelers and Romanian Gypsies than there is between Lapplanders and Hottentots (among European Gypsies).

The Travelers don't even use Romany words ~ they have a totally different "secret language" which has it's roots in Gaelic.

Now, in America, it's different. Odds are George "W" Bush has an Hispanic nephew for example, and John McCain has a daughter from India.

None of these folks are doing flamenco dancing, but they can if they wish.

[Mamzelle]

The trouble with finding out would be sifting through the lies. Did you know that there are also Gypsy words in some homosexual slang, gathered through the carnies' contacts in travelling theatre?

ER personnel are often in contact with Gypsies. The police arrest someone, who immediately gets "chest pains" and has to be brought to the ER. Then the arrestee can't speak English. One spoke Romanian, in an ER not too far from DC. There was a nurse who spoke Romanian back to her! LOL! Immediately the patient forgot her Romanian and changed to some other gibberish.

If you could get past the lies, the study of these erstwhile Irish "gypsies" could be fascinating history. But, like everything else, they'd even steal that.