Gypsies, Roma, Romani, Romanichal. Cultural Diaspora. HUMANITIES, HISTORY.

Rom: Survival, role of secrecy, surname adoption

2012-01-13T10:23:00.002-05:00

Provided: cross-index of topics relevant to Roma, particularly in Britain.
.
This focus on Britain stems from an interest in the immigrant roots of our American politicians, and noting the similarity of Mitt Romney the Candidate and Romneys in Cumbria, were they also from the town in Kent, and Romany Roma Romanichal, etc. If there is a connection, how might knowledge of those backgrounds aid the originating groups, in a transparent, common-good way.
.
Tracking the Romney name, was it Romany at one time (surnames were often adopted in the locality for protection), or will anyone ever know as to this family. Our conclusion so far is that no clear connection has shown yet; but the search for surname roots opened other historical, ethnic interests that have overflowed from this site, Gypsies Roma, to others.
.
With an election season in the United States, and a Romney, who is also a Mormon, we looked at who converted to Mormonism from England -- its most fruitful source. And explored possible roots of Romney to Romany, nothing conclusive from what we have seen.
.
Timeline for the name Romney so far, Rumenea, Rominel: sites listed below; and for other concepts relevant to the Roma experience:
.
Celts, others in Britain, 600 BC- 50AD http://www.britainexpress.com/History/Celtic_Britain.htm; re Britons, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peoples_01.shtml

Romans invade Britain 43AD, including at Kent, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/archaeology/1000piece-puzzle-may-unlock-secrets-to-the-roman-conquest-of-britain-6287730.html. Thereafter, Angles and Saxons and Jutes also move over the channel to Britain, during Roman times http://www.btinternet.com/~timeref/saxons1.htm
.
Romans leave Britain 410 AD http://www.historyonthenet.com/Chronology/timelineroman.htm
.
1. 600's -- Romney, town and Marsh, Kent, southern England, tip toward France. This area was called Rumenea, Saxon fold. See http://www.uk-genealogy.org.uk/england/Kent/towns/Romney.html
.
2. 1000-1100 -- Area became known as Romanel, after the Norman conquest, from France into England 1066 (William the Conqueror; Romanel from the name of one such invader). Or is it earlier, before the Saxons even, derived from the Romans at Romanel Marsh, all preceding by centuries and millennia the arrival of gypsy Romanichal, Romany.
.
3. 1500's -- first Roma arrive in Britain, Gypsies from mistaken understanding that they were from Egypt. Origin? perhaps Spain, Ireland where they had entered earlier? There were already nomadic groups in Kent, see http://www.kent.gov.uk/community_and_living/gypsies_and_travellers/history_of_gypsies.aspx. Thereafter, influx and events, http://www.grthm.co.uk/timeline.php
.
4. 1530 -- Act of Parliament requiring all gypsies to leave -- immediately. Many went into the New Forest, Hampshire, http://www.newforestromanygypsytraveller.co.uk/history1.html
.
5. Policies of policing, how the mindset spreads, see concept at http://www.sassafrastree.blogspot.com/#!http://sassafrastree.blogspot.com/2011/03/domestic-gendarmism-gendarmes-over.html
.
6. Role of perpetuating dependency, particularly where a people value their autonomy so highly, http://www.plainmeaning.blogspot.com/#!http://plainmeaning.blogspot.com/2012/01/dependency-is-humiliating.html
.
7. Assuming local names, other secrecy steps needed for survival, identity; this site re Scotland examples, http://gypsyjib.wetpaint.com/page/Scottish+Gypsies. English Romanies also traveled to Scotland. See photos and surnames at that site. Names remaining Gypsy (not names of those originally Gypsy who adopted local names instead), see Romany Routes, Journal of the Romany and Traveller Family History Society, http://website.lineone.net/~rtfhs/journal.html
.
8. 1840's -- Mormon missionaries arrive in Britain, the new religion having been founded in 1830 and met with persecution in America, see business model for processing converts, http://martinlutherstove.blogspot.com/#!/2012/01/mormon-converts-19th-c-owned-by-company.html

1850's -- Romanichals, English gypsies, start coming to America, see http://gypsyjib.wetpaint.com/page/Arrival+of+Gypsies+in+America.

Assimilate or stay distinct?
.
9. Candidates and minority roots: an exploration (we find no clear Romney-Romany connection from sites or records), http://hellofodderhellobuyer.blogspot.com/2011/12/candidates-and-their-own-minority-roots.html#!/2011/12/candidates-and-their-own-minority-roots.html

As with any ancestor-activity, much occurred outside the record books. But as a surname, Romney itself is not seen as a "gypsy" surname but instead references the locale. No way to track who assumed the locale name, as the poll-tax of Henry II in 1377 (predating arrival of Roma) required a surname and many simply took the locale.
.
10. Continuing hold of origins, lessons learned perpetuate, http://sassafrasthicket.blogspot.com/2012/01/steered-by-navels-and-surnames-what-if.html#!/2012/01/steered-by-navels-and-surnames-what-if.html
.
11. Ethnic origins and politics. Romney-Roma-Romany will remain elusive, and there are roots to Saxons and Normans in similar sounding names. Romney as town, Romney as whatever. Was there the survival blending of surnames? No way to know. Still, topic is of interest, see http://www.joyofequivocating.blogspot.com/#!http://joyofequivocating.blogspot.com/2011/10/deny-thy-father-romney-as-roma-other.html

Heritage, perhaps. Candidate Romney: Immigration Policy of Interest

2011-04-18T09:21:00.005-04:00

Update Romney roots 2012. We have found, we think, Romney ancestors in Cumbria, England, Dalton and surrounds, and place of the Appleby Horse Fair and many travelers for centuries. See http://www.hellofodderhellobuyer.blogspot.com/#!/2011/12/candidates-and-their-own-minority-roots.html. Are or were any Roma, Romani.
.
We learn that Roma indeed converted to Christianity along the way, some, among other religions adopted or into which some assimilated, see http://www.radoc.net/radoc.php?doc=art_b_history_romanireligion&lang=en&articles=true; and missionaries to England apparently were the triggers for the Romney ancestor conversion, but cannot verify the nature of the background of any of the claimed ancestors. A name alone does not prove or even suggest ethnicity without more. Would someone over there look up and document the birth registers, where the graves are, and report if there is an early Romany root? early Romneys, back to (is this so?) 1700's.
...............................................................................................

.

Does connection, even a remote one, with a beleaguered immigrant group, lead to increased sensitivity to their issues.
.

Ask Mitt Romney

.
A. Mitt Romney. Roma roots suggested by surname
.
1. Mitt Romney has a surname, "Romney," with traceable Gypsy-Roma-Romani roots for many families (someone could research his). See idea threads at Roots of Romney. See the look into connections between Roma and Mormonism, ongoing, at http://hellofodderhellobuyer.blogspot.com/#!/. If you have information, or relatives that converted and you can document that, let us know. It is a fascinating web.
.
This presents a recurrent issue in American politics.
.
If someone has ancestral ties to a group of immigrants, or non-immigrants, in disfavor here by prejudice based on history, color or ethnicity, what does that person do to get elected. If desires to help are transparent, is that a problem. If background is denied, is that a problem. Mr. Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and a man of vision who enacted universal-type health care insurance coverage there, is a Mormon (always?) and the Mormons are known for their geneological research. Enter the Mitt Romney dates at Mormon Genealogy Dot Com and see where it leads. Will the Mormons include Roma Romani Gypsy roots for one of their shining lights, or is there no Roma connection to this Rom'ne at all. Go vet.

If there is Gypsy-Roma heritage involved, it would make a great PBS documentary of the variety and brilliance in every ethnic group, if access to a ladder with rungs is within reach. The choices for individuals seeking public office, however, are not so clear where racism and anti-immigration is involved.

We presuppose for our purposes here that there is a Roots of Romney. Roma connection to Romney. Implications for immigration attitudes. Do people change religion to avoid stigma?

B. Choices for Mr. Romney and any immigrant-descendant: If he has no Romnie roots, apply anyway as a politician representing government of all the people, by all the people for all the people.

1. Deny thine ancestors and refuse thy name's roots. Please the angry ones. Live a lie.

2. Embrace thine ancestors, and see the unique opportunity that thee has to foster good will and understanding about them. Look how far you, as an individual, came. If you are not a threat because of your origins, need others be.

3. Duck and hope the issue goes away. Count on the hidden spinners to spin castigations to silence those who speak in ways that foster rights of all people.

4. Pretend that the immigration position is solely related to whether the person entered this country legally (that does not mean by invitation implicit in open borders and free employment practices until recently)

Romney and the broad reach of Roma roots becomes more complex in current global and local power struggles, seen in one of America's groups, the Melungeons. away from them in order to be more pleasing to the angry ones.

Does Mitt Romney have the courage and intelligence to Cross the Tea's? Go ahead. Cross the Teas. Cross the T's.

While he is at it, will be dot the i's - in Immigration, that means applying equity to the legalisms, see below.

For an idea of the complexity of our immigrant background, here is an Islamic site tracing the Islamic origins of a particular group we addressed earlier in the context of a mix of darker skinned settlers in the south: the Melungeons.   See Islamic origins of "Melungeon" - possibly.

C. And Mitt Romney CHOSE (drum roll, for the big reveal)

1. In 2007, the legality route, exclude the equity balancers to legalism, that make our legal system great, or used to.

Hard on the undocumented ones. Mitt Romney on immigration in 2007   Let's hear it for national ID cards (and how would that foster participation by Roma, even though legally here); and no amnesty as the code for ignoring the responsibility for leaving the doors wide open, an open invitation implicit, for entry by anyone, and employers hiring and rentings and licenses granted without a lot of scrutiny regardless, and all the other equities involved)

2. In 2008, again the legality route sans equity. Pedigree of Mitt Romney, and Legalism Without Equity on Immigration

He specifically fears jihadists (but [pick the terms] Christian evangelical ethnic cleansing militia doctor-killing groups or however those who fear others' ideas, are excluded). Here we particularly welcome research into the Moorish roots of some Melungeons, see again the Islamic site, re Moorish roots of American Melungeons

3. In 2010 -- where is the equity side, Mr. Romney? Mitt Romney in Immigration. Legalism without Equity Balance. Legality without equity balance distorts our legal framework. Law and equity were blended here, one court able to hear both: but that is under attack, as equity itself is under attack.

Is Mr. Romney toadying right along with the bury-equity movement? See it at ://www.renewamerica.com/columns/fischer/110409/ No equity in this system, folks, see? No equity! Mr. Romney at least should know better. Law and equity each have valid remedies, despite efforts of some to ignore the equitable and hope it will go away, or the efforts to use it are underfunded, see Law and Equity: Both Remain

Law with equity in immigration, Mr. Romney. Not law without equity.

4. In 2011. I searched and got a virus warning, so am signing off to fix it.

Roma persecution. History. Bergen Belsen. Roma, Sinti, Zigeun, Gypsy Groups

2011-01-22T20:30:00.002-05:00

At Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp near Celle, Germany (near Hannover) there are prominent and multiple memorials for Jewish victims of the Holocaust. There also is, however, if you look closely, a specific memorial to all those others murdered in such masses:

Bergen Belsen has no structures remaining, but instead is a huge memorial park with a perimeter pathway, leading around, and around and pathways across until you can't find you way. Then, after following markers on relief maps that say, "You are here," there may be -- finally finally - large markers, an Obelisk, a tall Cross, and buildings nearby signifying the Documentation Center and a religious center.

Here is one we nearly missed, a memorial flush to the ground: the main site for Bergen Belsen is at Germany Road Ways, Bergen Belsen. These markers are worth repeating here: Memorialized are the Jews, the Sinti, the Roma, the Zigeun, the Homosexuelle, the Jehovah's Witnesses. Try to make out the groups:

The Remembrance stones are on most every marker at Bergen Belsen.

Memorial Marker, Sinti, Roma, Zigeun, Homosexuelle, Jehovas, Bergen Belsen Concentration Camp

There was an entire Gypsy Camp, Zigeunerlager, at Bergen Belsen, see photo at http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/Database/CampAreaPhotographs.asp?CampAreaID=23&PhotographsID=652/.

The photograph, aerial, was taken in 1944. There is no trace we could see of the Zigeunerlager now, as all was razed and the Bergen Belsen area is now a nature-type walk, with memorials and huge burial mounds, pits beneath, filled.

See the photos also at the American Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, at http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/en/article.php?ModuleId=10005224/;

See also http://www.bergenbelsen.co.uk/pages/Camp%20Development/ASP/CampAreas/DevelopmentCampAreaPhotographs1945_1949.asp?CampAreaID=23&index=1/ Click on the sequential photos, a series of photos.

There are also testimonies and videos, this from Yale: http://www.library.yale.edu/testimonies/excerpts/annaw.html

Overall, some 5,000,000 non-Jews were killed, says this site, including some 500,000 or about half the Eastern European population of Gypsies were killed, because of their ethnicity, see Holocaust Non-Jewish Victims, http://www.holocaustforgotten.com/romgypsies.htm/ The site also refers to this book, not read by me yet, see The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, by Guenter Lewy 2001.

Too hard to read? Try a close-up:

Bergen-Belsen, Close-up, Memorial to Gypsy Groups, Celle, Germany (near Hanover)

Resources:

Have to get back to read these, but here is a beginning list:

Gypsies, Second World War, at http://books.google.com/books?id=5U_Auv-u0PIC&pg=PA127&lpg=PA127&dq=Bergen+Belsen+gypsy+camp&source=bl&ots=BfSNVlHp2r&sig=6Aw_8g_5_IY0vqk-V67my6Ci-M4&hl=en&ei=64I7Te-VCYiq8AaXnOHECg&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=8&ved=0CEkQ6AEwBw#v=onepage&q=Bergen%20Belsen%20gypsy%20camp&f=false/
A researcher blog, Joedresch's Blog, see it, at http://joedresch.wordpress.com/category/bergen-belsen/

Roma integration. Spain's Successes: Better Integration of Gitano in Housing, Schools, Jobs

2010-12-12T02:10:00.009-05:00

Roma Integration.

Spain.

.
At last: we find an optimistic headline regarding integration of gypsies, or Roma, in housing, employment, schools at least at the lover levels. Title -- "In Spain, Gypsies Find Easier Path to Integration" -- see
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/06/world/europe/06gypsy.html/

Gypsies, known as "Gitano" in Spain, are enjoying higher degrees of education and employability (50%) than elsewhere. Gitano children are in elementary school, the same neighborhood schools as other children and not shunted off to facilities for the mentally handicapped, as we understand has been the case in much of Europe. Mediators at the schools help with relationship issues. The article says that over 50% of those children's parents are homeowners. About 92% are in housing that is considered "standard".

They are moving into areas of work that are not the traditional dealing in cattle or selling goods.

What did Spain do right, beginning some 30 years ago. Spain focused on housing and jobs, not so much on prejudice-correction, or civil rights. Jobs and housing first, let the rest follow, and it has. Direct "attacks" on forcing integration fail in other countries. Go to the basics.

Ongoing problems: huge dropout rate from the schools, once out of the elementary levels. Some 4% of gypsy people live in shacks. There is prejudice -- hard to get a taxi if you are in traditional gypsy dress,
for example.

Government: the constitution, a democratic one, requires police protection for gypsies. Past Gardia Civil abuses have been reduced. The policy is to provide housing among others, not just among fellow gypsies.

Can those policies work elsewhere: it takes funding for administration, and places with substantially larger gypsy populations in even more entrenched poverty may be insurmountable in the short term.

Still, the point is made in Spain: focus on housing and jobs. To aim at prejudice first is not as effective. "Acceder" is the group that facilitates improvements, and has been effective.

Roma arts. Our Culture Blindness. Gypsies in Romantic Lit, and the NYT - Hans Christian Andersen

2010-09-17T20:04:00.001-04:00

Roma in Arts and Culture.
Our Defensive Culture Blindness

Where it Leads the Willing Duped

Hans Christian Andersen, Odense, DK

1. First question. Who cares about minorities without clout. No-one. Fantasy enables us to say, they are fine, they don't need us, they are on their own.

2. Even the New York Times ignores the most important factor in the well-being history of Roma - the forced halts to caravan migrations, movement in the nomadic, seasonal, sense. See http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/17/world/europe/17union.html?_r=1&ref=gypsies/.

To us, it appears that the well-being of the Roma culture to an important degree for many who were, indeed, Travelers, was the movement. Any inconvenience to communities was mitigated because the newcomers, moved. In time. Cultures accommodated each other. Force migratory population into high-rises without income, without traditional occupations, trouble.

3. Origins of cultural blindness to real hardship.

See how the great storyteller, the originator -- not a mere re-teller -- of tales that enabled children to face their nameless fears through fantasy -- himself was deluded. Hans Christian Andersen. Childhood's greatest unspoken fears, address them through lives imagined in others. But not so for reality.

The accounts of Hans Christian Andersen as to Gypsy populations he found in northern Jutland, further the romantic notion that people are fine without a place to stay.

Gypsies in Jutland? Denmark? Gypsies in 19th Century Jutland. Seen but not seen. The 19th Century Jutland and Gypsies. What? Is Mitt Romney a Roma, Romani, Rom'nie by heritage? Does background, if demonstrated, affect attitudes toward the downtrodden. Should it>

"I was approaching Viborg in a heavy downpour when, along a bumpy land, I came across a tinker family; the woman carried an infant on her back and had another child by the hand, the man had knapsacks slung over his shoulders, they wished me good day in a friendly fashion and went on their way, for there was nowhere for them to find shelter. When my man told me who they were I grew quite blissful; this truly poetic people live in our Denmark; they have their own language, own customs, live the life of nomads and wed their own kind with their own ceremonies, without the interference of the clergy."

Fair use quote from Hans Christian Andersen, the Life of a Storyteller, Knopf 2001, by Jackie Wullschlager at page 94.

Persecution. Romani and the Holocaust. Update and Topic Review

2010-08-15T17:56:00.003-04:00

Persecution.
Roma in the Holocaust
Update, and topic review

Records and Courts Fail.
Too Late. Sorry. Now, Go Away.

Gypsies Sue IBM
IBM wins.

Next step: Put online all the pleadings, arguments, evidence.
For educational purposes.

A. Procedural setting

The Roma case is dismissed in 2006, for not having been filed in the "time limit". See Holocaust suit. See Swiss High Court Rejects Gypsy Holocaust Suit Versus IBM, Cites Time Limit, at http://www.smh.com.au/news/Technology/Swiss-high-court-rejects-Gypsy-Holocaust-suit-versus-IBM-cites-time-limit/2006/08/19/1155408031630.html

Read about the lawsuit. Try Gypsies vs. IBM. But there must be a more formal docket name, for IBM facilitating the holocaust by providing the punch cards and other expertise for the holocaust. Go instead to http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.html. I have not read or followed up on it yet.

War compensation has been provided to other target groups, but has been far less to Gypsy groups. Action is moving in that direction, says site. What does Mitt Romney say? Romney Roma Romani Rom'nie? Or is later success enough to disavow earlier ancestral connections in persecution.

See suit filed in Geneva in 2002 by the Gypsy International Recognition and Compensation Action Association (GIRCA) http://www.business-humanrights.org/Categories/Lawlawsuits/Lawsuitsregulatoryaction/LawsuitsSelectedcases/IBMlawsuitHolocaustclaimbyGypsies

It had been progressing. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2004/jun/23/secondworldwar.internationalnews

But who can sue IBM and win anyway? There will always be a way to put equity last, and technicality first where money is involved.
.

B. Review: Did the Roma have a case?
The Gypsy - Roma Experience

1. Gypsies at Lodz, or Litzmannstadt, Ghetto. Poland.

There is now a "ghetto route" that interested persons may walk in the old ghetto at Lodz, with sites marked and events or inhabitants described. The annual commemoration is pending, see see http://www.ghetto.lodz.pl/index.php/. At 83 Wojska Polskiego Street, for example, stop number 34, where Gypsies were processed, and transported to their deaths. Fair use quote from the brochure:

"At this site, German authorities established a camp for Gypsies (Zigeunerlager) in the area boarded by Sulzfelder Str. (Wojska Polskiego), Kondradstr. (Głowackiego), Kriminalstr. (Starosikawską) i Blechgasse (obrońców Westerplatte) Streets. Of the 5000 Roma men, women and children deported from Austria and incrarcerated here between November 5, 1941 and January 12, 1942, over 600 died from diseases or were murdered in the camp; The remaining were gassed in the death camp at Kulmhof am Ner (Chełmno-Upon-Ner) during the week of January 5 to 12, 1942."

Fair use. See http://www.ghetto.lodz.pl/index.php/en/memorial

2. Gypsies at Buchenwald

Roma at Buchenwald. Find this memorial and account at The Nizkor Project, Germany's Romany and Sinti People, Commemoration of Buchenwald, Germany, see ://ftp.nizkor.org/hweb/camps/buchenwald/press/reuters-040395b.html/ There is a new memorial for the group, that prefers the Romany and Sinti designation, and testimonials as to the brutality there.

Find this appalling statement at the Nizkor.org site, that the Camp remained open for business after the War and 10,000 people died in it under the administration of the Soviets: Fair use --

It will also acknowledge another fact hushed up under communism -- that for five years after World War Two, Buchenwald remained in use as an internment camp run by Soviet occupation forces. Around 10,000 inmates, mostly Germans, died. Here is Buchenwald, in Germany. See Germany Road Ways, Buchenwald. Read the buildup to the WWII holocaust at http://www.travellersinleeds.co.uk /_travellers/HistBeforeHitler. Census, registries, forced photographs, fingerprinting, surveillance, restrictions on travel, imposed detention.

Holocaust. Buchenwald Concentration Camp, Germany.

3. No individual victims' names equivalent for Yad Vashem for Roma found to date

Records for individuals such as Jews in the Holocaust have been consolidated, as part of an ongoing effort to collect, coordinate, report. See http://ww/yadvashem.org, and the online victims' names list.

That takes money and influence, as well as perseverance. But perseverance gets nowhere without money and influence, is that so?

Read about the Holocaust, its events and Nazi-Fascist country-city laws leading up to it in Europe, and more low-key everyday persecutions, and the horrendous results, at http://www.holocaust-trc.org/sinti.htm

Estimates of Gypsy deaths alone run from 300,000 to 1,000,000 - these were largely illiterate people, without the birth or other records of other groups like the Jews, so the numbers range, and are derived from other information -- see http://www.cnn.com/2004/LAW/07/08/ramasastry.holocaust.ibm/index.
.
However, there are other sites with collected testimonials and information about groups, and anecdotes , see http://remember.org/witness/wit.vic.gyp1.html/ That site points out the German dilemma -- that Roma were Aryans, but did not fit the German ideal.

Nonetheless, Roma deportation and execution was put under Himmler's control, and he carried on. The remember.org site includes information and anecdotes as to Treblinka, that also received and executed Jews.

A history of Roma history of persecution, and the Holocaust, is rather in narrative form, the group experience; not individual records or testimonials as to those individuals.

Search each concentration camp, roma in ________, gypsies in ____________/

And the history is expressed in creative arts. See Site: The Hungarian Quarterly, Vol. XLII , No. 162, Summer 2001. This is "The Holocaust in Gypsy Folk Poetry," by Karoli Bari. http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no162/064.html.

As in the Buchenwald site, above, designating certain groups as expendable, such as Roma even in concentration camps, is a global human failing. See The Common Good, Who Speaks for It, fodder post.

4. Gypsies in Auschwitz - Birkenau

Roma were designated as enemies of the Third Reich, see http://en.auschwitz.org.pl/h/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=11&Itemid=3/ As such, they could be isolated and exterminated, and were. As were the Jews, Gypsies were identified as racially inferior, thus not eligible for the privileges of others. A special Gypsy family camp at Auschwitz was set up to receive what appears to be most all of the Roma population, excluding the thousands at Lodz who had already been killed there or at Kulmhof, and then dispose of them.

See Auschwitz, in Poland, at Poland Road Ways, Auschwitz, an extermination camp.

See also Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, Places of Petr Ginz.

The German action was extreme, but unique in degree, not concept. Many cultures designate certain groups as dispensable, despicable, unworthy, deserving of what they get - usually a back of the hand, and even genocide. See the fodder concept for people who are attacked, open to targeting, with corresponding belief systems justifying it, the expendables.

In modern times, or among the more affluent, this can include even people with money who are fed bad food, expensive medicines, sold ideas that are not supported by a religious founder. Watch who gets a profit at the expense of the others. Treated as fodder.

Auschwitz Concentration Camp, crematory

These are the ovens, the crematoria with the chimney, at Auschwitz, Poland, that borders Slovakia, see Poland Road Ways, Auschwitz.

There was a special "family" camp at Auschwitz for gypsies, where entire families were imprisoned together. Read the US Holocaust Museum accounts at http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219.

That source says that, of the million gypsies in Europe before the killings, some 220,000 were killed, many were killed by mobile killing units, especially in Russia and Ukraine, without records. See Babi Yar, Kiev, Ukraine, gypsies, Jews, others, at http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/babiyar.html; and at http://www.ess.uwe.ac.uk/genocide/babi_yar.htm

5. Roma in Theresienstadt

Theresienstadt, Terezin, Train transport, loading, unloading area CZ

Here is the station area at Theresienstadt CZ, where the trains brought in the Jews, Gypsies and other targeted persons during WWII. This was an old garrison town in the Czech Republic, turned ghetto and way-station to extermination and labor camps. Tens of thousands also died here.

Were there Gypsies in Terezin.

There were hierarchies even among undesirables, that shunted the bottom people mostly elsewhere, see Places of Petr Ginz; and the Terezin Study Guide, developed to teach students the history and issues. See http://www.american.edu/cas/terezin/upload/Terezin-study-guide.pdf/

It appears that Theresienstadt was originally designated as a destination for "privileged" Jews, those in bureaucratic positions, or otherwise in some position of influence. Is that so? Read the history at the study guide. From Terezin, however, where people also died from the conditions, they were transported to further camps for execution or slave labor.

6. Roma at Jasenovac, Croatia

Hear and see this memorial at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4317038589131761601#Ustaški zločin nad civilima - Jasenovac. Croatian Death Camp. This site is in Croatian, but it takes no translating. Holocaust footage. More graphic than you probably have ever seen. Ever.
.
Numbers vary wildly - no one appears willing to dig up and count, lest the results support the other side, but we have seen 85,000 to 600,000 killed, and it is difficult to find for the different groups killed here, but gypsies are included specifically. See http://www.vosizneias.com/60743/2010/07/25/jasenovac-croatia-peres-croatian-wwii-camp-was-a-show-of-sadism/

Jasenovac's artifacts were sent mostly to the Holocaust Memorial Center in Washington DC.

Transport train, boxcars, Jasenovac Concentration Camp, Croatia

See Jasenovac at Croatia Road Ways.

The transport train on display at Jasenovac is riddled. We cannot tell if the bullet-type holes are vandalism from later, or original.

The museum building at Jasenovac is locked and broken. Not even a rest room. I don't think they want you there. The area's walkway is used as a bike path.

7. Roma at Mauthausen

See Roma, Gypsies at Mauthausen, Austria; and Austria Road Ways, Mauthausen KZ Konzentrationslager.

C. Roma Experience of the Holocaust in Literature

1. "Zoli" by Colum McCann, see http://www.amazon.com/Zoli-Novel-Colum-McCann/dp/1400063728

"Zoli" at 47-48: Slovakian Gypsies were sent mostly to work camps, beaten, tortured, jailed, curfews, spitting, badges, barbed wire. In other countries, the focus was on extermination - but Slovakia was a satellite state. Some reprieve, not much.

After Hitler came to power, read about the events at http://www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistHitlerPower. Laws against intermarriage, transports to Dachau and Buchenwald (see photo), registrations, differential passes, Auschwitz, and continuing throughout WWII, see http://www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistGermanOccupat.

2. Poetry: See FN 1; and a search for holocaust in literature

D. Why the surprise at Roma invisibility?

1. Gypsy illiteracy reduces their visibility.

The literate ones also are remembered because they wrote, or others wrote of them, like Ann Frank in Amsterdam, or Petr Ginz in Prague. See Netherlands Road Ways, Anne Frank and Etty Hillesum, diarists. Gypsies often died unknown.

Some expressions survive. See FN 1.

2. Impact of Holocaust, Gypsies and Roma Populations, News, research

The Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, see site at http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219, provides the history and photos. Still, there may be an agenda there, to present what is sought to be presented.

Need more emphasis on the impact of Nazi policy on this group.

The Holocaust Museum site gives this information about Reynhard Heidrich (a/k/a Heydrich), a high-ranking Nazi officer who was assassinated by Czech resistance in Prague, see Places of Petr Ginz, Occupation. Heidrich had big plans for deporting 30,000 gypsies to the camps, but was persuaded to focus instead on the Jews, reducing the numbers of deportations at that time.

Zoli, in the novel of the same name, speaks of the mass killing of Gypsies at Theresienstadt and Auschwitz, at p. ___. Author: please provide more.

..................................................

FN 1

Fair use quote from a long article, here believed to be an unknown author, a Gypsy poem in experiencing the holocaust. From this Hungarian site, a journal in English http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/no162/064.html, now at http://www.hungarianquarterly.com/index.shtml (but we cannot locate the poem - have emailed to confirm fair use, and do hope acceptable)

"Little bird, o little birdie,
Fly far away, carry the news,
Tell how I'm in constant terror,
tell how I'm in constant terror!
German lager, how hard it is,
German lager, how hard it is,
The prison guards are so evil,
The prison guards are so evil!

"Hey there, Hitler, curses on you.
May God trample upon your face
like people walk upon the streets,
like people walk upon the streets.

"Machine guns are barking away,
Machine guns are barking away,
My pursuers are getting close,
My pursuers are getting close.

"God, give me some of your fortune,
Give a little bit of your own,
Help me get onto trackless tracks,
Help me pass along trackless tracks.

"God, send me a drop of rainfall,
God, send me a drop of rainfall,
Mingle it up well with snowflakes,
Mingle it up well with snowflakes!

"Mingle it up with snowflakes,
Mingle it up with snowflakes,
So the green shoots of grass may grow,
So the green shoots of grass may grow!

"Cover the trail of my footprints,
Cover the trail of my footprints,
So I may find tranquillity,
So I may find tranquillity!

"God, oh God! How you have thrashed me,
God, oh God! How you have thrashed me,
Perhaps nobody more than me,
Perhaps nobody more than me!

"German lager, German lager,
There a gun was always barking,
All my family was wiped out,
All my family was wiped out!

"I've lost all my family,
I've lost all my family,
Oh, what can I do, all alone,
Oh, what can I do, all alone!"

Romani in Film; Topics

2010-05-18T14:25:00.000-04:00

Update:

1. EMIR KUSTURICA:

Try director Emir Kusturica's groundbreaking 1988 film The Time of the Gypsies., This clue from the National Geographic site, ://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/roma__gypsy__music_778/ He was born in Sarajevo, not of gypsy parents, but has found an affinity with them. See 2005 NYT at ://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/magazine/08EMIR.html

Then Black Cat, White Cat - see review of this film and other works in the New York Times, Sunday, September 5, 1999. See videos related, on YouTube, at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBbzcj1t2WY&feature=related/; and at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdRPRvhXSCo&NR=1/. Enjoy the music. Mr. Kusturica characterizes the music as Unca-Unca, or oontsa-oontsa, a 2/4 beat, combining rock 'n roll, reggae and elements from times gone by - "a mess, but a nice mess."

And find, in Images for Black Cat, White Cat, even more fun.

He is the only child of Muslim parents, but apparently they were not practicing Muslims. See article. By 1999, he lived in Normandy with his family.

2. JASMINE DELLAL.

PBS has this: "American Gypsy: Stranger in Everybody's Land," film by Jasmine Dellal, at ://www.pbs.org/pov/pov2000/americangypsy/index.html. The estimate there is about 1,000,000 Gypsies in America. See review at ://www.americangypsy.com/the_film/full_description.html

....................................................
Cross reference to another of our sites - see comment there about Roma in Cesky Krumlov - populations living well together - Roma in Czech city, Cesky Krumlov

We have no ethnic connection to Roma, but a deep interest in why humans need to scapegoat others. We also have no information on dialects, but would like to know more.

Desegregation, Civil Rights, Self-Determination Issues. Roma Leaders, News. Updating Coming.

2010-03-04T20:28:00.002-05:00

Conferences, Refugee Camp Issues, Schools Desegregation Progress;
issues pending; or otherwise to be discussed. *

Alarms. Hopes. Despairs. Cheers. Steps ahead and back. Ongoing research for progress.

1. Conferences. From 2002. Lodz, Poland. Romany National Congress. Site of largest ghetto for Jews and Gypsies in WWII, at the Marysin district.

Populations compressed, deprived. Racial bias. Chairman Rudko Kawczynski. Issue: He warned that the Roma face a "demographic time bomb" -- that the populations are growing so rapidly that a Palestinian problem, of others keeping Romany people in the equivalent of camps, may result. The young people will not be quiescent during that process, and the numbers of Roma may approach 20 million in Europe and Eastern Europe. He sees parallels between anti-Gypsy sentiment and anti-Semitic sentiments, both primarily a European phenomenon. "We will face a Palestinian problem in Europe." See NYT 5/10/2002. How many are there? Western Europe 7-15 million -- nobody knows, see Pohl NYT article below. Add 5-10% more for Eastern Europe.

Disparate groups. Romany Civil Rights Foundation, Hungary. Agnes Daroczi, a leader. Issue: Need for unity. Without unified voice, she suggests, how to pressure nations to improve Romany life. See Lodz conference, NYT 5/10/2002. Example of the diversity: a memorial service was held at Lodz for victims of the Holocause, officiating: "a Romany mullah from Macedonia, an evangelical Romany pastor from Sweden, and the rabbi of Lodz." Needed, says Pohl NYT article #3 below, is a unifying figure: so far the Roma have no equivalent of a Martin Luther King or Malcolm X or Rosa Parks (who sat on the bus, as a black, in the forbidden white area, sparking a decade of protests) to carry on the Roma cause.

Holocaust compensation. Further from Agnes Daroczi: This has been uneven. Romany prisoners in Austrian camps received both reparations and pensions. Those imprisoned in Hungary have received nothing even though the funds have been set aside (is this too broad? examples were given).

Rom exclusion from post-communist era prosperity in western Europe, shunted aside into refugee camps, discriminated against, attacked.

Children segregated, sent out of mainstream to schools for the "learning disabled", perpetuating underclass. School desegregation lawsuits were planned in other news accounts, see Lawsuits, at #2.

Refugee camps. Wars in Bosnia, Macedonia, Kosovo. Squalor. Cut off from traditional homes, sources of income.

Assimilation - pressed by most nations - at the cost of Roma identity. This from Nicolae Gheorghe, a delegate. Is self-determination the best way.

2. Lawsuits.

Service and hiring. Anti-discrimination. Many modeling after USA civil rights issues (as in Brown v. Board of Education). From 2002: The Romani Baht Foundation, founded in Bulgaria in 1995, see ://baht2000.free.bg/en.html/. This organization filed a lawsuit against a Bulgarian coffee shop in Stara Zagorra for refusing to serve a Roma. Dimitrina Petrova. Mikolsc, Hungary, Dateline. This one won. Bulgarian Court, Sofia District. Further actions in the pipeline about hospitals, hiring by nightclub owners, etc. See NYT 5/7/2006, article, Gypsies Gain a Legal Tool in Rights Fight, by Otto Pohl NYT. An appeal was pending, but already changes had been made at state policy levels.

European Court of Human Rights (ECHR). This was founded in 1959, and is located at Strasbourg, France. It upholds the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It is different from Court of Justice of the European Communities, that deals with the European Union, or the judicial arm of the UN, the International Court of Justice at the Hague. This , See ://www.echr.coe.int/ECHR/SiteMap.aspx Spotty record. Case protesting shunting of Roma children to schools for lesser-abled failed, is being resubmitted. See School Segregation below. This from the Otto Pohl article, NYT, below.

Note, in lawsuits, that a decision does not automatically mean change. Civil law may remain in place for a long time.

Desegregation. School segregation. Roma Anti-Discrimination lawsuits. Otto Pohl NYT article notes Strasbourg Court, European Court of Human Rights (see site above at ECHR), "rejected a case about 18 non-handicapped Czech Roma children allowed to enroll only in schools for the handicapped..." Why? Estimates: 75% of Roma children are so shunted to the special schools.
How can that be? Look again at the European Court of Human Rights above. What is going on?

3. Salute to Special Supporters. This from NYT 5/7/2006, article, Gypsies Gain a Legal Tool in Rights Front", article by Otto Pohl. Then we add our own updates.

George Soros - a supporter of Roma groups, among other causes. He is "global financier and philanthropist," see bio at ://www.soros.org/about/bios/a_soros/ Named at Otto Pohl NYT article. See this site, Roma Initiatives, at ://www.soros.org/initiatives/roma/ See the broad range of Soros Foundations at ://www.soros.org/about/foundations/ at the Open Society Institute and Soros Foundations Network, "Building Vibrant and Tolerant Democracies". We need you in the US, also, Mr. Soros. Thank you. Search that site by country to see opportunities, activity there.

Panayote Dimitras - This (in 2002) was the "executive director of the Greek branch of Helsinki Monitor (Finland had sponsored the conference at #1), a human rights group that also operates in the Balkans", had cited cases from Eastern Europe in Greek matters.

Roma Police Association, Budapest. Look again at the American model. This is framed like the National Black Police Association in Illinois, founded in 1972, to foster race-neutral and ethnic-neutral police enforcement practices.

Chance for Children Foundation, Hungary, Andras Ujlaky, President (as of 2006), focusing on desegregation for Roma children

4. Formal representation - Progress

European Union, Brussels. Hungary was elected to the EU in 2004, and elected two Roma to the Parliament there. This from the Otto Pohl NYT article, in #3.

To be continued.
..........................................................
*

For those who have asked, we in our family have no known connection to any Roma ethnic group. But we are all minorities in some way or another. Here, this writer in particular feels a) a kinship, b) selfish gratitude that I have not been targeted as others, but c) concerned that the discrimination, supremacy issues that underlie any Perceived-Weaker target, can - if hidden as it operates against any group - be used against anyone. Targeting one, for purposes of advantage, targets us all. Is that so?

The Gypsy Quarter of Nis, Serbia. Conflicting Cultural Claims

2010-02-08T11:57:00.000-05:00

Issues of Competing Ethnic Groups Seeking Preservation,

Avoiding Assimilation and Cultural Oblivion.

Nis, or Nish, Serbia

Are there signs of cooperation in preservation of culture issues in Nis, Serbia: Jewish v. Gypsy, or "Romany" as they are known there; and if so, did it last. Read about Nis and the cemetery in the New York Times archives, from several years ago, August 22, 2004, Serbian Gypsies and Jews in Dispute Over Cemetery, article by Nicholas Wood.

Nis - or Nish - is the third-largest city in Serbia. There is an endangered cemetery there - what is its present status.

Back in 2004, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and the Kosova Roma Refugee Foundation together were reported to be clearing rubbish from a remaining section of this old graveyard. A Paul Polansky was in charge. The Montenegro army was helping on weekends. And there was soon be at least some linking to a sewer system. But this may be short-lived, with the remaining Romany families relocated, and money up in the air for building new homes. Many displaced Serbian refugees from the 1990's wars also need homes, and the Romany are not popular with others. It may take a decade to approach resolution. Is that too optimistic.

Where is this: Some Eastern European - Balkan areas are so unfamiliar to us that the best way to picture their location is a simple maps search. Plug in Nis, Serbia, then expand outward until you find familiarity: the Adriatic Sea, Sarajevo, Greece, those can be anchors. Nis is an inland town, think of a trip, perhaps from Belgrade, Serbia, to Sofia, Bulgaria.

History of the issue: In Nis, in the 1960's, during an atheistic period in the old Yugoslavia under Communism, Roma began living in areas that once were full of the Jews of Nis. As the Jewish population moved out, the gypsies moved and settled, now generations of them, without formal permissions for building or sewers, apparently condoned and undisturbed. One Jewish congregation sold their synagogue as they left, apparently.

The problem now is, among the usual clashes combined with periods of peace and coexistence, is sorting out claims of prior residents to what was left behind: the cemetery.

There is a cemetery there, an old Jewish cemetery, centuries old, with large "rectangular gravestones" still there with new Gypsy buildings around and on top. The stones are used for daily purposes, much as Abbeys in the British Isles were raided for their solid rock riches with the various purgings between Catholic and Protestant. And the desecration of religious artifacts of the other side.

How language frames issues. What is intentional desecration, and what is necessity for use of resources when a place has been abandoned.

Because the Romany have been using the cemetery for their living area, and living purposes, that has been deemed "desecration" - as though there is specific intent to descrate - an accusation by the Jews who had left it, see ://www.forward.com/articles/6058/ The article from 2004, Historic Cemetery in Serbia Desecrated, describes the living activities as though the gypsies intentionally set out to desecrate. Is that so? Photos had been collected as of 2003, the year before: see ://www.makabijada.com/NisEnglish.htm/ At that site, the town is listed as 'Nish', and scroll down to the narrative history. In 2003, all had seemed lost.

But that was not so. Part was saved, and we are looking now for an update to the 2004 New York Times article. What happened?

What started the new interest

A timeline: In October 2004, the town gave permission for water and sewer pipes, and a Jewish population, in Belgrade, resumed its interest. Would the utilities further damage the graveyard.

Nis has about 300,000 people, and there are only about 800 Gypsies. And fewer Jews - say 36, and those may be Serbian Orthodox who married Jewish women. This dwindling leads many to believe that the cemetery will soon be the only evidence of a thriving Jewish population. Only one Jew returned after WWII. There was a substantial Jewish population before, beginning in about 1695, see ://www.makabijada.com/nishSinagoga.htm/ What when a group leaves. What claims remain. When can a subsequent group rely on the condonation of their settlements in a Gypsy Quarter that had become vacant - perhaps not, but there is a claim to compensation?

The Orthodox Christian Church dominates, see the new Patriarch, who had been Bishop Irenej, at Nis, at ://www.euronews.net/2010/01/23/serbian-orthodox-church-picks-new-patriach/

Here is an email for Jasna Ciric, President of the Jewish Community at Nish, jasnacir at eunet.yu - an address probably changed since there is no more Yugoslavia. We know there is a huge shortfall in charitable resources, see ://ejewishphilanthropy.com/a-nis-350-million-shortfall/as with any other group, but would like an update.

Roma, Gypsies, at Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Austria WWII

2009-10-23T15:02:00.004-04:00

Mauthausen Concentration Camp, near Linz, Austria, originally was populated with criminals deemed detrimental to the commonweal, in 1938. That category then broadened to include ethnic minorities, and "undesirables;" German Sinti were decimated.

We understand there is a Documentation and Cultural Center of German Sinti and Roma in Heidelburg, Germany, see this general overview we just found (we have not been there) at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Documentation_and_Cultural_Centre_of_German_Sinti_and_Roma/ We were at the Nazi Documentation Center in Nuremberg, however, and if this is of the same calibre and thoroughness, it is worth at least a full day's visit.
.
Mauthausen was built by prisoners from Dachau, Germany, see http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/mauthausen.html. A year later, not only criminals but racial, religious, national and political groups seen as undesirable groups were designated as detriments, and imprisoned at Mauthausen. By 1939 there were already 300 gypsies from the Burgenland area there. See "Gypsies in the Holocaust" at ://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/gypsies.html

Memorial, Mother Germany, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

The Mauthausen concept included this main camp, and 49 "permanent sub-camps". In looking at death statistics, other concentration camp complexes or hubs like this only counted the deaths at the main camp. Say 35,000 for the main camp, and 2,000,000 including the larger complex. Maybe "just" 100,000+. Or 200,000. The records were intact upon liberation, but somehow nobody was made to put the figures together, so nobody did. See Death Statistics for Mauthausen at ://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/History/deathstatistics.html/. See the breakdowns by group.
.
Exhibit, Zigeuner (Gypsies) at Mauthausen KC, Mauthausen, Austria. Photographs, text.

Data on the Roma genocide: See the Holocaust Encyclopedia at ://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005219/ There are also photographs there.
.
Wall Plaque Memorial, Roma and Sinti, (Gypsy groups), Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

Guard tower, barbed wire, wall, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

Death by execution (shooting), disease (especially typhus), gas, hanging, malnutrition, exhaustion, at a rate of some 300 deaths per day upon liberation. This was a punishment-labor and death camp where trying to get down the long staircase into the quarry and breaking rocks killed many itself. Many more, the exhibits state, were simply pushed off the cliff above into the quarry - those killed in that way were called "the parachutists."

Many deaths were not recorded toward the end of the war because the Austrian police had taken over and most of the staff escaped. See ://www.scrapbookpages.com/Mauthausen/KZMauthausen/History/deathstatistics.html/ Three thousand more died after the Americans took over, including the handover to the Russians soon after liberation, from similar causes to before - exhaustion, disease, but now there is note of inmates killing each other (no further information on that), and the starving dying of sudden abundance of over-rich food.

A crematory oven, two layers. Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

The Gypsies. Records are sparse, compared to the fates of other populations. How many were executed at gullies, and pushed in, and never arriving at the camp. As a refresher course in the variety among this population, read the Summary for Gypsies, not only listing how they were killed in the camps, but their identifications. See the "Sinti" and "Roma" specified in particular at Mauthausen. See ://summary.jeetu.co.in/s/Gypsies/.

The listing of Gypsy groups is similar to earlier posts here from other sources, but this is more extensive:

"Romanichal , the Gitanoes , the Sinti , the Rudari , the Manush , the Boyash , the Ungaritza , the Luri , the Bashald , the Romungro , and the Xoraxai ."

Add the four Rom tribe-nations:

the "Kalderash , the Machavaya , the Lovari , and the Churari ."

Other names for the Romani:

"Gypsies, Tsigani, Tzigane, Cigano, Zigeuner, and more.

Roma linguistically are in three basic groups: Domari in the Middle East, and East Europe; Lomarven of Centrare divided into three populations: "the Domari of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, the Lomarvren of Central Europe, and the Romani of Western Europe.

Tens of thousands. How many. Mother Germany. Mother Austria. Beyond comprehension. Are we also so seeded.
.

Bucolic view of the killing quarry down there, here at the cliff-top, Mauthausen Concentration Camp, Mauthausen, Austria

Amulets of our Lives. The Tradition of the Thing as Comfort, Guide, Pathway. For Fortune and Fetish.

2009-08-17T16:25:00.004-04:00

A shell in our pocket, a smooth stone kept in the bureau drawer, under the liner; perhaps a coin from a far place. Read the history of amulets, things that we do not part with, and that, eventually seem to attach as though they wanted to remain. A long-forgotten bit, re-seen.
.

Things that go with us.

For gypsies, the ability to "see" through things, by means of things, facilitated by things, to sense truths perhaps in things, or find the way among many paths because a thing indicated this direction or that, all a part of long tradition and culture. How different from us. Any different in substance, or just in smaller aspects of form.

Book of experiences.

Go back to the 19th Century through this book, Gypsy Sorcery and Fortune Telling, by Charles Godfrey Leland, 1891, online at ://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/gsft/gsft17.htm/ That site is to Chapter XIV, entitled "Gypsy Amulets." The author takes us to London, where there is an Indian Gypsy, Nano. who had much to say of the origins of a particular broad-bladed knife the author held dear, and substantiation for what he said - such knives were used for execution, and the author came across others. Follow the accounts of knives in gypsy lore, the sharp tip and its significance, what pointed gifts really bring (quarrels), the charm that results from the sticking of the knife into the table (that signifies piercing someone's heart, not the table).

Amulets.

For luck, perhaps a Maria Theresa silver dollar, 17th to end of 19th centuries, currency, Arabian peninsula and elsewhere. See its history at ://www.asharq-e.com/news.asp?section=3&id=6038/. This Austrian "thaler" was high in silver content, good for jewelry, Maria Theresa had 16 children so it was hoped its holder would become pregnant, and men kept it for the luck of the double-headed eagle on the back. The site references a book on the amulet use of the Maria Theresa thaler. The Saudi Riyal replaced it. Also used in Ethiopia, see ://ethiopundit.blogspot.com/2004/08/salt-to-thalers-to-birr.html/ Thaler. Dollar.

More: Interest in the author's fossil shark's tooth, a shell, and shells of the revered sea snail is especially revered; an Indian arrow-head, but of no value was a mere English sixpence with a hole pierced. The author was in Homberg (Hamburg?) at the time, and the police allowed no gypsies to remain in Homberg, so he lost touch with one group before he could give them his amulet. He gave the shell to another, a young girl who expressed absolute faith in the power of it. He had said it would do her no good unless she had faith, and her response was faith in the thing itself. He passed it on to her.

The Object: From symbolism to embodiment

Our religions, too, ascribe a sanctity to things - we are all of a piece. Just touch the image, kiss the icon, you will be healed. Rub the toe of the Bishop.

Gregory of Nin, Croatia, 10th Century Bishop. Rub the toe. Sanctity there.

When does the symbol cross over, into becoming an amulet where an aspect of deity resides. From page 237:

And it will last, while one fetish endures, that the hierophant will call it a mere "symbol," and the ignorant worshipper, absolutely unable to comprehend him, will worship the symbol as the thing itself—as he is really expected to do.

Examples: The shell

Veneration of the shell: That appears also in our art, "Venus on the Half Shell," do an Images search. Conch shells, the large ones with the sound of the ocean, or, some say, a voice inside, that mysterious sound some traditions, especially the Jewish, call the bath kol, see ://www.bible-history.com/isbe/B/BATH+KOL/. But it recurs. The voice that tells you which way to go. Or is inaudible, when you want to know. But you hear something. The conchomateia oracles use such a shell. Hearing can be deceptive. We can deceive by ear.

In the Lord of the Flies, by William Golding in 1954, a novel (routine in school curricula), a conch shell is the horn to call the group, a symbol of order, of civilization, civilized behavior, see ://www.sparknotes.com/lit/flies/themes.html/

Our interest: the Hindu, if the Roma or Gypsies originated in that area, see ://www.economicexpert.com/a/Conch:shell.htm/. It is there. The conch shell is the announcer, the sea-oriented bugle for military alerts and religious practices.

Recognizing things with power.

Killing victims to get luck, to get luck back perhaps, to ensure a strong foundation. Part of western culture as well as others. Read pages 241 ff- remember, this is entirely online.

Gypsies among Witches.

Witches to gypsies are not horrible, evil servants of the devil (once immutable dogma). Just women with supernatural powers, using them as they wish.

Witch's cage, Levoca, Slovakia (Inquisition period)

Trace the "witch" flying in storms, that may have begun as an image of one riding to clear the air of plague, and when plague persisted, blaming her; to images from the Algonquin Indians of the great bird, a giant eagle, Wuch-ow-sen, stirring up storms and thereby actually healing the air, clearing it. When the eagle was hindered by a magician, the people died. Or to the Hebrew Azrael, Angel of Death. Track western humanity's history of barbarous beliefs.

What we did is far worse than what any gypsy believed, is that so? Who does the harm here, except as perpetuated in the mind of the persecutors.

The gypsy witch in the tower of Homberg: read at page 245-46. The raven, the little black granny, all that remained from the smoke of her burning. Come here, save me as well, cries the girl in the tower.

The witches' tower in Heidelburg was taken down.

Heidelburg, Germany. No witches' tower left.

Then go to Rouen, France:

Tower, Rouen. Joan of Arc, Witch, was held there

Gypsy forms in theater and literature.

Find gypsy roots in theater, and literature. This, from page 248, after a long presentation of Punch and Judy and Faust plays, puppeteers and stage.

This is the true Faust drama of the Middle Ages, with the ante-Shakespearian blending of tragedy and ribald fun. But this same mixture is found to perfection in the early Indian drama—for instance, in "Sakuntala"—and it would be indeed a very curious thing should it be discovered that the gypsies, who were in all ages small actors and showmen of small plays, had brought from the East some rude drama of a sorcerer, who is in the end cheated by his fiend. Such is, in a measure, the plot of the Baital Pachisi or Vikram and the Vampire, which is borrowed from or founded on old traditions, and the gypsies, from their familiarity with magic, and as practical actors, would, in all probability, have a Faust play of some kind, according to the laws of cause and effect. In any case the suggestion may be of value to some investigator.

Bosnia, Slavonia, Hungary, beliefs and those beliefs transported into the minds of rulers and lore. Queens wanting cradles made of seven kinds of wood, or to be made by blind people for luck. Then, of course, the thunderbolt and its meaning. Look in any culture, probably. To the Slavonian gypsies, a connection between the thunderbolt and a prehistoric axe form. Not unique. Cultures sharing. Serbian gypsies - the double nut, making a heart shape - a powerful amulet, encased, like a casket, a shell, with mystical directions - plant it and ..... Jack and the Beanstalk?

Other cabalistic signs. The serpent. Track it not only to gypsies, but to Egyptians - gyptians. Gypsies. Names. Links. Even to Brahma.

O, internet. What surprises await the nimble-fingered clicks. The lightish rub on the touchpad. AAh.. Now I see....

Survey Sites - Roma

2009-06-22T05:58:00.001-04:00

A must read is ://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm. This is a site to help healthcare providers understand Roma customs, in order to provide better care, accommodate relatives and their interest, and other areas that may be different from our approach. We like those sites that are intended to assist practical relationships, rather than those that just seem to take a recreational look at other people, a kind of cultural voyeurism. There is a fine line between that detached curiosity and genuine human interest. We value the human interest, and offer information in that way. We try.

More on the Baylor survey site, Charles Kemp. This one looks exhaustive - http://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm. It is geared to informing those treating the Roma or otherwise dealing with them, to clarify health concepts, social system, beliefs, any background that would assist in understanding. How they stay invisible, by design, taboos, some origins of persecution.

UNESCO - article on preservation of Roma cultural identity. This also has an excellent for ordinary people about the Gypsies: focus on continuity and fidelity, roots in conscience and human and social values, and ongoing identity without rooting itself in a particular geographic spot. See and read carefully at "The Gypsy Destiny," http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1310/is_1984_Oct/ai_3455602.

The Patrin Web Journal, at ://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/index.html. This one - has it all. Any area you want to know, longer than the Baylor site, but each topic so clearly laid out. I could and should put it in every post here.

Cycles of Abuse: Anti-Roma in Belfast

2009-06-21T11:08:00.006-04:00

Current Events

Is there a hard-wiring for sameness, identifying security with being among others just like us. Ireland has had its centuries of pitting religious group against religious group; with that possibly waning, see the targeting move to other groups more easily victimized. See the prejudice in Belfast now against Roma from Romania.

These Roma are not the traditional Irish Travelers with their own "gypsy" roots. These come from Romania, see video at ://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=Romanian+gypsies+Belfast/ and news at ://www.clickromania.co.uk/content/view/609/44/ . Apparently they had been "hounded out" from Romania.

Inadequacy of news coverage:

This issue was not addressed in any account we have read so far. How will the Travelers still in Ireland, and this new European group, relate; or aren't there enough left in the Travelers actually on the road still; to come in contact with a settled group from Romania. What has the immigration pattern been for European Roma to Ireland? Perhaps there will be little cultural recognition? Who can follow? Would the Travelers and Romanian Roma welcome one another, as needed support; or will the Travelers reject them as different, and engage in their own targeting. What has happened elsewhere.

The Gypsy Lore Society notes at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html that the Travelers and other gypsy groups have differing languages, roots, history, before coming to America, and keep their distance. Will that be the case in Ireland.

Roma in Great Britain - a history, as elsewhere, of prejudice. Roma sometimes called "Rom"

Voices of regular people. Go to this line of comments, descriptions of ongoing prejudice, this site in Kent, England. ://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/have_your_say/community/romany_voices_archive21.shtml. Find the one where the whites live on the first floor of the building (is this public housing?), the disabled live on the second floor, and the rom live on the third, and the food passes up, so if there is not enough, the rom go hungry. Scroll down to the 2/19/06 entry by one who identifies as a "romney gypsey."

The idiom in the entries is difficult to read, for this US person, and so many words we do not know - best to pick an entry that moves you and read it aloud as though you were the person writing. Then it becomes human drama again, even at the everyday level - as poignant as the stars.

Do we need a global kind of exorcism. Is this abuse of populations an outgrowth of what we see in relationships among individuals. What kind of interventions can channel the urges to productive results. Impossible?

In the area of domestic relations violence, there is an established concept of the cycle of abuse: this site addresses in a low-key way the three stages: tension building; acting out the abuse; stated remorse; followed by gradual but as time goes on, shorter and shorter periods of tension building, then more abuse, more extreme, more stated remorse, and the victim is pulled between wanting to believe stage 3; unwilling to act in stage 1 when there might be time to address it with help; enduring or dying in stage #2. See basics at The Cycle of Abuse, at ://www.drirene.com/cyclesof.htm/

Is abuse learned. See the dynamic at Domestic Violence at http://www.gmdvp.org/domestic_vio/gen_info/dynam2.htm/ But in domestic abuse, there is the chance, the option, of getting out of the relationship.

What do entire populations do. Domestic violence. Population violence. Outlets for hard-wiring, or learned and unlearnable.

"The Walking People" - resource novel, Irish Travelers; Migration, NY.

2009-05-23T10:20:00.002-04:00

To visit Ireland is to see great poverty in various communities, encampments, but without the formal designation of Travelers to set them apart. How is an outsider to determine the background of the people there - indigenous-Irish-Norse/Irish; or the traditional tinker, Traveler. We did not see real Traveler wagons. Business thrives for the cushy rubber-tire, waterproof clip clops, however.

Tourist "Gypsy" Wagon, Ireland

Tourists can rent these caricature wagons with the slow horse plodding from town to town and back again- my aunt caught pneumonia that way some years ago, we think - but that must get dull. Does the isolationist slow ride do any justice to the lives that were lived in wagons, and in community.

The Irish and Scottish nomadic groups do not refer to themselves as "Gypsies." The groupings are distinct, see overview of the Rom, the Romnichel and Hungarian-Slavic nomadic groups, traditionally thought of as "Gypsies," and then the Irish and Scottish "Travelers." See The Gypsy Lore Society at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html/.

For a glimpse into the lives of the Irish Travelers, read the novel, "The Walking People," by Mary Beth Keane, see review by Jonathan Yardley May 10, 2009, at ://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/05/08/AR2009050801409.html/

The book does not hold interest intensely once the characters leave Ireland; but there find a cultural retrospective, the story of an Irish mid-20th Century tinker boy, a member of the Travelers. The "tinker boy" and two Catholic farm girls cross paths, have ups and downs, and migrate, with families' knowledge, and the girls' mother's approval, all together to New York. They settle in their various ways, and he becomes part of the great digs beneath Manhattan to New Jersey for water tunnels and the like, below the subways. Electricity had not yet come to the west country areas, in the 1950's. Most interesting for us was the Irish part, and the first few years in New York. No spoilers to be given here.

Then hear and see the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem (complete with Irish Aran sweaters that are not Traveler in origin, see ://clanarans.com/ca/catalog/) sing, "The Whistling Gypsy Rover" at ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZ0kAZJy_3o&feature=related/. Here are the lyrics: ://www.thebards.net/music/lyrics/Gypsy_Rover.shtml/. This next version is too polished. Go if you must to://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_egTUhbfD0/.

Ah, the ideal - then the reality. As in looking at any lifestyle, any set of issues, any people.

Melungeons - Parse for American Roma, Gypsy; Other European, Moor, Native American, Black,

2008-11-25T17:35:00.005-05:00

Update: Melungeon Moorish origins 4.18.2011

See this site, Islamic in origin, tracing Islamic peoples to the Melungeons, see Moors -- Islamic Roots of Melungeons Earlier here, we noted "Moors" as among the possible-probable components of the melange of Melungeons, and this site adds detail to the theory. For you to vet.

Components of a Blend: Difficult to Parse

A Roma heritage may sometimes be claimed by others, who examine histories of population, but not necessarily conform to the oral tradition of some of a mixed group. Is that what has happened with a possible/probable connection of a group known as Melungeons; and a Gypsy or Roma branch within that group. Even a deep root. Whether from enslaved Roma brought to the South Carolina shores, or otherwise entering, even as early as with early explorers, as sailors; or other "undocumented immigrants" collected and dropped.

1. Our start. We read "The Secret Life of Bees," by Sue Monk Kidd; and saw the film, and made connections at The Fodder Site, Mixed Origins, Clues to Religions, Cultures.

We saw a thread among various cultures in different scenes from the book and film:

a) see the iconic painting of the Black Madonna in the book and film (if you know the story, this is the picture on the honey jars), and ask how it got to a slave-descended family.

b) see the Black carved female figure in the parlor, like an intermediary, a source of inspiration to women in kinds of bondage and suffering from "slavery days;" and ask who that might be, what blend of African roots and other cultural intersections, reinforcing the principles,

c) see the slave-descendant culture, and slave culture more broadly - how many other groups were enslaved, not just Blacks, and that would have intermingled with other slave groups, including enslaved Gypsy or Roma; and other indentured servants. When freed, who joined up with whom, where did they go.

The American South was and is a complex geneological place. We see traces of other ethnic groups particularly in the dialect of the Old South, Uncle Remus Tales, Translations: Inland Slave Heritage. Find there traces of the Portuguese in the words used, especially "palaver" that is Portuguese; think of all the Portuguese sailors landing in the south.

2. We came across a name for one group of mixed heritage, the Melungeons.

Now mostly in Appalachia, there is a group with a varied background, reflected in the name itself. The Melungeons are named perhaps after the Greek "melan" for Black; or the Portuguese "melungo" for shipmate; or the Italian "melongeno" for eggplant; the Turkish "melun can" for accursed one; old English "melangin" for guile; or the French "melange" for mixture. See "The Malungean Heritage Association" at ://www.melungeon.org/node/4/. Their first documentation stems from southwern Virginia, bordering on Tennessee; also southern Ohio, parts of Kentucky. Groups like them, or vestiges, are also along the Atlantic Seaboard.

3. Some find a Roma or Gypsy connection with the Melungeons.

It is like a missing link, geneologically. How to explain the origins, the broad variation in characteristics, where they came from. This Roma connection is explored by Linda Griggs in "Patrin," a Roma Journal. The article is "The Black Dutch, German Gypsies, or Chicanere, and Their Relation to the Melungeons," by Linda Griggs. See ://www.geocities.com/~patrin/melungeon.htm/

With a landing point at the South Carolina coast for many enslaved Roma, see "The Never-Ending Road American Roma (Gypsies), Travellers and "Others," at ://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/, this makes sense. Start there, many end up in Appalachia.by Henry Burke at two sites --

a. "Origins of the Appalachian-Melungeon Subculture: A More Plausible Explanation for the Origin of Melungeons." See ://www.coax.net/people/lwf/HRB_MEL.HTM/. and

b. "A Possible End to the Mystery of the Melungeons," at ://www.melungeons.com/articles/mysteryBurke.htm/

4. Other accounts of origins, including some Melungeons themselves, and according to the Melungeon Heritage Society site, however, do not include Roma or Gypsy.

They name Portuguese and Spanish sailors, Egyptian, India Indian, Native American, Turks, Moors, Jews, Blacks, other European and Middle East. Read the long list of names given to specific groups - See also "A Brief Overview of the Melungeons" by Wayne Winkler at ://www.melungeon.org/node/4/.

"Dark-skinned, frustratingly European-looking" - and pushed off their purchased land, in an ethnic cleansing effort in Appalachia, see this Google Book, "The Melungeons, the Resurrection of a Proud People: The Untold Story of Ethnic Cleansing in America, " by Robyn Vaughan Kennedy, at ://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=Jqhd3tVSJNkC&dq=melungeon&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=_G_P-73RUk&sig=pFnoL0eaXJIhbixjOvmOa8hfZKU&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=5&ct=result

But to us, outsiders, this Gypsy Roma possible connection adds to the Melungeon Heritage site, not detracts from it. See origins also at Poland Road Ways, Black Madonna in American South.

The Roma culture is rich in talent and survival skills. Otherwise, they would be gone after a thousand years of persecution.

Do see "The Secret Life of Bees," see ://www.imdb.com/title/tt0416212/.

The book is by Sue Monk Kidd. As you look for possible Roma background, not dispositive but interesting, see the talent at the stringed instrument, by the character, June Boatwright. The drive for independence from men, of June and her sister, August Boatwright. The heritage of the women managing the household, and the men coming and going if they liked, with cultural support for that role, and in many Roma-descended people, a gender ritual separation, that may not just be slavery-related. It may not just be because men were sold off - it can be part of a larger heritage, and one that enabled survival of a persecuted people through that thousand years.

American Roma. Shall we open our eyes that we may see.

Gypsifying. America's Gypsy Substitutes - Immigrants without Documents

2008-06-12T18:31:00.014-04:00

Roma: Branchings from a common root?

Who are Gypsies. Are Gypsies an identifiable broad group, similar origins at one time, but now differing, given a long heritage and long-term diaspora.

Or are they also, a symbolic receptacle for humanity's universal Dark Side, the visceral need for a scapegoat. See The Pariah Syndrome, Chapter XV, at ://reocities.com/Paris/5121/pariah-ch15.htm/

Is there a process of Gypsifying people.

Yes. Define oneself by what one is not -- such as Roma (or an undocumeted immigrant)--and demonize the other: the Roma. When the Roma are additionally seen as "countercultural", defying the values of the surrounding culture, then they become threat and retaliation becomes justified. See the Pariah site Ch XV.

Must a culture have a pariah group, an outcast group. Are most cultures dependent on devaluing some group among or near them; not just Gypsies.

Probably. And the cycle rolls on: deny services, perpetuate an illiterate, reduced-job-skills group, deny etc., then criticize the result, and then - have all the reporting about Roma done by non-Roma, without checking viewpoints of the Roma. The media role.

We use the shorthand "Gypsies" here, and not the term Roma, because "Gypsy" is the term that brings on the sneer, the stereotype. What is it "to gypsify," and is it inbred among cultures.

Follow some branchings. In Italy, a period of comparative calm coexistence is now uprooted by violence- again - see ://www.adnkronos.com/AKI/English/Security/?id=1.0.2169214172.

Isolating, denigrating, seem to lead to violence. Is that right?

In America, look at our Gypsies, as well as a group now serving a similar function - undocumented immigrants, see ://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12599386/. See ://www.integrityeducationsystems.com/courses.html.

America has a substantial population of Gypsies, see the film, "American Gypsies," site at ://www.americangypsy.com/the_film/full_description.html. "The Never Ending Road" at ://www.sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/. Substantial numbers migrated here in the 1850's, see ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.htmlhttp://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. They largely remain under the radar because they have learned here and abroad that they are not welcome. Read about outcasts at "The Pariah Syndrome," at ://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/pariah-ch16.htm

With real Gypsies keeping to themselves as much as possible, why is it that this country, the US, has to identify yet another group to which the dark side matter of the nation can be transferred. Does that phrase it wrong. Try again.

Roots of antigroup-isms, Worth examining, even if not pretty

We are attacking the roots of the sneer here.

Is there any nation, any culture, that conducts its business without having to subject units within it to subjugation, caste-status, untouchable. We are more Eastern than we like to think.

Next time you hear people here rail against immigrants without documentation, substitute "gypsy" and see if you see much difference.

What attributes are assumed to be part of the immigrant-gypsy culture. Is that the same as was ascribed to the Irish back in the day, or the Jews, or whoever.

How is that different from the attributes any other nation ascribes to the the least among them, in order to justify their own position on top. With noone below, how can you be on top. See ://reocities.com/Paris/5121/pariah-ch14.htm/ Better yet, just read that entire book - it is online. The Pariah Syndrome. Click on the illustrations.

Enough. Just think. Is the world really a circle, multiple circles forming a globe after all, not a line from point A to point B.

Do some of us think the world is flat, so that linear distinctions and exclusions really are functional and true. Grab an orange and check. In the brain, linear it is not. In the emotion, we hang on to the linear nonetheless.

We have to start somewhere. Is there room on the circle-globe-planet for basic sustenance, shelter, food, healthcare, education, for all of us. In the whole world, not just here. Or are we, as the propagandists say, on a line - the linear hierarchy, the pyramid. If someone else gets ahead, it means I am behind. If I am to get ahead, I must bump you off the line. Not so. Change the paradigm.

Currently - Budapest, Hungary - Roma. Still Mainstream Rejects.

2008-05-14T10:59:00.009-04:00

Vlach Rom

There is a long tradition of the Vlach Roma, a branch of those migrating from Romania, in Hungary, see ://www.everyculture.com/Europe/Vlach-Gypsies-of-Hungary.html/ Are Magyars related to, or the same as, early Roma? For Vlach culture as it exists in Greece and Romania, see Bogomilia: Vlachs, Nomads, Shepherds. See Bogomilia" Vlachs, Nomads, Shepherds, Roma Roots.

From the everyculture site: The "Vlach" is said to derive from the section of Romania, Wallachia, where they had once been enslaved. Others come from Moldavia, where they also were enslaved. And the term, "Gypsy" comes from the Hungarian, Cigany. "Rom" is used for Vlach gypsies. Other groups: "Boyash" gypsies speak Romanian, and "Romungro" gypsies speak Hungarian. The site offers extensive discussion of other aspects of Roma life in Hungary, history, settlements, economy, kinship, family, socio-politics, religious and expressive culture.

Hungary: New York Times 2/6/2008 - There has been a show of Romany art at Bucharest, at the National Gallery. "The exhibition was the latest nod to Europe's most despised, and this country's largest, minority." Article by Michael Kimmelman. A right-wing group, the Hungarian Guard, had been expected to interfere or demonstrate, but this did not happen. A good sign, but not enough to offset their proto-Nazi stridings, under the guise of "safeguarding national culture and traditions."

This sounds like the rationale for US movements afoot against undocumented immigrants - our country's new "gypsy" targets - need to control and reject for the sake of the national culture idea. Not the ethnicity, the reaction against.

The exhibit itself was, apparently, not a "good" one - disorganized, numbing even, says Mr. Kimmelman. But it had been relegated to "attic galleries" and not the glories of the ones on the main floors. When state industries closed, with the coming of democracy-type government in transition, the Roma were among the first to lose jobs. Roma are 6-10% of the population, but unemployment within that group is over 80%.

President of the Roma Parliament (nongovernmental rights group): Jeno Zsigo. Notes official indifference as resulting in loss of programs for children.

Journalist and Radio producer: Gyorgy Kerenyi. Began first Roma-run radio station, "Radio C'. Notes that the Western Europeans fear large migrations of Roma from Eastern Europe to the west.

Rankism: The self-declared somebodies against the nobodies. A global pandemic since The Beginning? See Look at this face and try not to be warmed: Aging in place Is a place to live, even if that is on the road; meaningful work, and social contact too much for a person to ask. Forced settlement. Government policy. The Pottery Barn Rule. You break it, you own it. Problem is, nobody will own up to this one.

Links

2008-04-01T22:39:00.002-04:00

http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

MCNGDEBU3D9N
ZJUJ793GNTP8

http://www.gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/ZJUJ793GNTP8

Romney Gypsies - Other Roots of Romney - Surname of Mitt Romney. A Post Script

2007-12-27T13:31:00.002-05:00

Mitt Romney.

The Surname "Romney"

Track some Roots of the Name

Flags. How to Hoist with Pride

Surnames and roots. Does your surname in any way affect your attitudes. This follows up an earlier post here on Gypsy surnames, where we found "Romney" as a word for a clan (?) of gypsies, or Roma.

What does "Romney" mean. Mr. Romney may be one of these in the ethnic category, with some gypsy or Roma connection to the word, some not.

See the choices: You have your own history with your own surname. Look into the possibility with other people's names.
.
1. Romney as a Breed of Sheep.

Romney is also the name for a breed of sheep. See fleeces on and off the hoof at http://www.romneywool.com/fleeces.html.

Will voters say Baa? Feel fleeced? Or follow follow follow. Need to look up origin of sheep types. A start: the American Romney Breeders at http://www.americanromney.org/.

Romney, then, from the sheep connection, are sturdy and meat-producing. See http://www.americanromney.org/b_breedstd_white.html. The sheep originated in the Romney Marshes of Kent, England - see paragraph on the Romney Marsh at #3 here. Were the people thereafter associated?

2. Romney as colloquial, a clan of Gypsy?
.
Roma.
.
Romney as colloquial. Is it merely that? A search for "romney gypsy" turns up odd references to Romney Gypsies, but nothing concrete. The term is simply used in different contexts, informal mostly.

3. Romney as a bog.

Romney is also a marsh in Kent, England, where there is a tearoom serving scones etc. See http://www.lathebarn.co.uk.

Romney Marsh. The location is on Donkey Street. The Romney breed of sheep came from here - see this long-wool type (new word: flockmaster) at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney_(sheep).

4. Romney as a language, all its own.

Romney is also a word for the "Cant" that was spoken by Gypsies, a languages others could not understand. See "The Genesis of Anglo-Romani" at Scholarship and the Gypsy Struggle. This is the heading for a Google book online with an enormously long URL -http://books.google.com/books?id=CGWFAQ9RZ0oC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=england+romney+gypsy&source=web&ots=CMpN0NAojx&sig=0cfy0vVMYW8KBwElLNu6HZHxC20.

Do a search for England Romney Gypsy and it should come up. See post here at Gypsies, Roma: Cant.

5. Romney as a road to somewhere.

And there is a Romney Road in Greenwich, England. That is where the Greenwich Royal Observatory is. Very long URL, so do a search to see it. Greenwich SE 10. Was this connected at some time with a community of gypsies, or not?

6. Romney as a traditional surname itself for gypsies, and not just a word for the group? Unclear.

The word is similar to the word for Gypsies or Roma, but we have not found it as a surname in itself, chosen or used by a specific family.
.
Romney as a surname in itself is not listed among the gypsy surnames at this site, for example- http://foclark.tripod.com/gypsy/presentsurnames.html.

Click there for the link to the Romany and Traveller Family History Society and other links.

As with other families of other groups coming here, the surname ultimately adopted by a family could be one applied by a bureaucrat or deaf clerk in ignorance at Ellis Island, where the place of origin or occupation or some mis-heard version attached to the forms and the use.
.
Even in our family, people from Sweden who apparently dropped the plebeian name for children that would have been "Andersson" for the sons, and Andersdotter for the daughters -- were following the naming custom where simple farmers (as opposed to the nobility) just identified their offspring as so and so's son, or so and so's daughter.
.
Our gang, at least a branch of it descended from the males with big egos, took the more glamorous name of a place generally nearby -- Osterlund -- East Land. Farmers, folks. From Kajsa Johannsdotter and her Anders to Osterlund

Our gang in another direction added an "e" just to help the post office deliver de letter de sooner de better to the multiple farms, yes, farms, all with people related, in Ottawa. Spell, spell, cast the spell. FN 1

...................................................

FN 1

There is this similarity in roots, Romney and Romani and Roma, Rom'nie.

Perhaps, with that similarity in association alone, Mr. Governor Mitt Romney will catch an interest in roots of names, and take a deeper interest in the wellbeing of the uncountried, the immigrant, see Joy of Equivocating, Immigration, the cast-offs, the travellers with lesser cameratic profiles.

If he does this, he should be forewarned: These are dangerous diggings. If you think you are "somebody," guess who you are not. We find ordinary folk, like most other people, and were not even expecting royalty when we looked back. But would it be fun? Sure. My own birth name stems from (among other untangles) an Old Norse word for "cormorant," or cormorant breeding grounds at rocky shale cliffs, like we found at the Orkney Islands.

The World. A Place to Hoist Many Flags

See Orkney Road Ways, and this new site - ://www.scalf-family.org/HPScalf/Chapter%202.htm. Phalacrocorax pelagicus, the green cormorant. See ://www.vikinganswerlady.com/ONMensNames.shtml. Hardly glamor.

It gets worse. Cormorants throw up a lot. A family of vomitus, are we. See ://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/22/nyregion/22birds.html, so the crocorax in Phalacrocorax must be that. The Croak.

This is hardly a pedestal of ancestry connections. People with horns on, trading in cormorants, vomiting under the aurora borealis. Stereotypes! How do we ever rid ourselves when even our own sense of humor betrays us. Feet of clay. Or in fur boots.

With that in mind, I remain interested in surnames, from all origins, all parts, all occupations, places, deeds. My crowd dispersed (wisely) so I have great respect for those who stayed together.

Current issues: Migrations, Economic Pressures, Global Movements

2007-12-19T19:12:00.002-05:00

Conditions. Further update, on the poor vs. progress. This is 3/3/08: Read "On the Margins: Roma and Public Services in Romania, Bulgaria, and Macedonia, With a Supplement on Housing in the Czech Republic," by Ina Zoon, Open Society Institute press 2001. Covers denials of health care, lack of adequate housing, and recommendations.

Migrations. Here is a teaching, resource site with an excellent historical overview of the migration of Roma-Gypsies, from the East to the British Isles, and to US and other continents. //www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistoryEngland.html. There is a timeline, maps, pictures, a great start for understanding the magnitude of the accomplishment of Gypsies - surviving for millennia, migrating, or going on routes within areas, as they kept on the road.

Like any people, move where it may be better. Look at the conditions documented in the Ina Zoon sourcebook, above.

Like anyone's immigrant grandparents and great-grandparents of whatever background, who came here, or to Canada. How stop the human desire for a life with more health, economic security, a place where families can survive over subsistence / persecution level. A water level concept. Always has been. Immigration happens. And it enriches, if others can let it. Look at the children's pictures at the Travellers In Leeds site.

See this article regarding the Romanian Roma population, set to move wherever it is safer, better. See //www.reuters.com/article/sphereNews/idUSL0932609020070909?sp=true&view=sphere.
The article asks, is the European Union any more prepared, or amenable, to sharing abundance or even sufficiency, with those who have neither, and what is the consequence of not so doing.

Us, US, heed. Immigration is a global issue, self-determination drives are a global issue. A finger in a dike cannot last. Right, right?

Romanian Enslavement - 400 years

2007-12-16T18:08:00.001-05:00

This from "Bury Me Standing" - look up the importing of slaves to Transylvania and other areas, including Sibiu, 1445, and including by Vlad Dracul, see Romania Road Ways, Vlad Tepes sites. He brought in 12,000 "Egyptians" to Wallachia, where he ruled, and as slaves. Pope Sixtus IV awarded Stefan the Great with more, as booty for Stefan's contribution to crusades against the Turks. Page 174.

Long history of Gypsy slavery there. Then, after the Sultans prevailed and occupied the ports at the Black Sea, it was slave labor that strengthened the areas. Romanian rulers gift each other with Gypsy families, including Mircea the Old, and including Kalderash gypsies. P.177. Did it begin with Tatars, who perhaps already held them as slaves? Any "unclaimed" Gypsy person on the road, read un-owned, could be taken. Page 178.

Then read of the memory of all this in the present social structure of Romania. See Romania Road Ways. After World War II, refugees seeking asylum in West Germany - say 4% from the Gypsy areas - were let in, but of those, only .02 percent were actually Gypsies. The rest got deported back. Page 213. The statelessness of Gypsies. Page 217.

Holocaust: Little mention of Gypsies. See 243. Some 10,000 t0 80,000, p.253, - many never recorded, happened out in the woods, at ridges, no birth records, death records. Just vanished, with eye-witnesses sometimes by chance left to tell. Contemporary politics and structure: see 246. How forced inhumane conditions, plus cultural re-prioritizing, led to mutual exasperation - p.280 ff

The Kalderash. Need to find out more - a dominant group. Sibiu, other, see p.291. More politics 295 ff. Transnational nature of problem, p. 302

Black Madonnas. Possible Roma Origin for Some? Or Sara la Kali

2007-12-12T16:37:00.005-05:00

Saint Sarah, Saint Sara, Sara-la-Kali. Or a Black Madonna.

See an overview of the stories of the Black Madonna at ://www.bookrags.com/wiki/Saint_Sarah/ There, find that there is a servant to the three Mary's, Mary Magdelene, Mary Salome, and Mary "Jacobe". The servant, perhaps, is Sara la Kali, Sara the Black, in some traditions.

Gdansk, Poland. Sara la Kali, patron saint of Roma; or a Black Madonna?

At first thought, this painting was, to us, a "Black Madonna," at the Cathedral in Gdansk, Poland. See Europe Road Ways Black Madonnas.

As a madonna, however, this one has no child; has the sunburst symbolism usually seen for saints, and then there is a crescent shape beneath, and other signs surrounding. If you see no picture, click on the box and it should load for you.

Rather than being a Black Madonna, is this Sara the Black, Sara-la-Kali, patron of the Gypsies, the same as Saint Sara, or different. Get an overview at Bogomilia, A Site for the Unsung, Sara the Black. This does appear to be Sara the Black, so far.

Needed: a translation for the symbols surrounding the painting.

Sara the Black, Sara-la-Kali, is at the heart of Gypsy pilgrimages in France, at several places. See //www.geocities.com/~Patrin/stsm01.htm, and post at Europe Road Ways Themes - Roma, Black Madonna. The stories suggest she was with the Maries finding the empty tomb. Perhaps an Egyptian servant to Mary Mother. Someone who saved other saints in France. Who was she. See a good summary of ideas at NationMaster, ://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Saint-Sarah#Tradition/ There the name of Mary Salome appears, as one of the three Marys at the crucifixion, and later ending up on France with Joseph of Arimathea. The site notes at ://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Salome-%28disciple%29 that Mary Salome was considered a "disciple" (how is this different from the "apostle" idea?). And in the now lost Gospel of the Egyptians, she is also a "disciple." See Nationmaster.

Wikipedia //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Saw_Three_Ships.has a variation of a Romany carol, from a Roma family in Brazil, for "I Saw Three Ships," with only Joseph and Mary on board; but other legends have Sara accompanying Mary.

See //en. There is an old version with those on board being 'Our Saviour Christ and His Ladye.' Do a search for I Saw Three Ships verses, and there is a Google book at //books.google.com/books?id=yWEDAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA124&lpg=PA124&dq=%22i+saw+three+ships%22+verses&source=web&ots=QJ7dMkJLtq&sig=D9J6esbp9il5ARtTVfKrfOvH1OA#PPA125,M1.

That "ladye" must mean Mary Magdalene, and that would upset some. That version is also at //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Saw_Three_Ships.

And, as a further update to the Salome common name, is this figure of Sara la Kali a a derivation from the Salome story, the woman healer from the hills in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of James, see Martin Luther's Stove, James' Christmas Prequel, Infancy Gospel of James. Salome: airbrushed out of theology and history. Appears as a name in Mark, at the Crucifixion and witnessing the empty tomb. And in the banned Gospel of James the Just, the Infancy Gospel of Jesus. There, at our presentation of the gospel as a pageant with dialogue, see Salome as the first to be healed by the infant, the first to recognize him, the first to worship. No wonder Rome rejected it, even though it was buttressed to meet dogma requirements in all the virginity ways. With her fiery hand healed by the infant, the Salome of James' attributed account would be highly motivated to stay close and follow. Did she?

Shamans, Daemons and other Guides - "The Golden Compass"; and real Roma, Gypsy Belief Systems

2007-12-11T16:56:00.001-05:00

How and why did we evolve from a benign concept of animal guides, companion souls, or daemons; to the malignant. This benign one, the bear, is from our back yard, snacking on sunflower.

Then see "progress" - by so-called advanced civilized institutions that morphed the helpful guides into malignant beings, leading us astray, or doing evil unto us.

Here, note the nice bear concept turned into the evil "hairy one," from our collection of copies of old German prints, all now out of print. The new characterization as bad, and "the hairy one," stems apparently from a mistranslation from the Hebrew by Wycliffe - see .angelfire.com/empire/serpentis666/Daemon.html.

The bear is also hairy, but that was not bad until later, apparently.

If you see the film, "The Golden Compass," you will find the concept of guide companions to humans fleshed out. And it relates to the concept and location of the soul.

The soul. The soul. Is it inside us or out, open to interference from the outside, or not.

In the film, "The Golden Compass," see //uk.reuters.com/article/entertainmentNews/idUKL115262120071211; the soul goes with the person, but beside or near, with symbiotic responses, reciprocal; the existence of a soul as guide to independent thought, is to be fostered, or suppressed - a theme in the film.

Click here to see another - a fine daemon found at Gibraltar, looking for his human (that to be another movie) and who attached to this one easily - Gypsies, Roma, Gyptians post.

Daemons. Of interest here is the history of daemons, and if they really relate to Roma - since the film also shows Gyptians with daemons. The characters' souls in the film accompany the people in the form of animals that stay close (except for some exceptions) and, in children, can change form. The soul is not internal in the film. The word "Daemon" is used to refer to the soul-animal - it feels the person's pain, as the person feels the pain inflicted on the daemon. Symbiotic.

These can simply be "familiar spirits." See //www.bartleby.com/68/28/1728.html. Do a search for "daemon" at this site, and see the ancient concepts, including Greek and Egyptian - //www.jungcircle.com/muse/plato.htm. It is like a "genius" concept, an envoy and an interpreter. They can be merely intermediaries. See .angelfire.com/empire/serpentis666/Daemon.html.

For contemporary Roma belief, see this Czech Republic website on "Religion Among the Roma" at //romove.radio.cz/en/clanek/18906. Read about the souls surviving death, as in many other religions. Souls are also intermediaries, calling to mind the "daemon" concept of such long standing in the world. Their only "saint" is Sara-la-Kali, see

Questions raised: Are animal guides benign or malignant, or need they be either if they are companion souls, and what is the nature of daemons?

Summary: Many cultures tie wisdom of our fellow sentient beings to our own wellbeing. And the term "daemon" has historical ties with benevolence, guardian angels; at least neutrality, as a go-between, man and the gods,. See the Greek and other cultural references here. So, malevolence and fear came later, with institutional needs for them.

Roma, Gypsies. Shamans and animal symbolism also appear in roma belief, see www.journeyfolki.org.uk/FolkArts/SpiritualityShamanism/tabid/687/Default.asp. There has long been an affinity for working with certain animals, such as the horse and the bear, as trainers and traders, and providers of entertainment, see ://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/occupations.htmm (scroll down to animal training).

CONTEMPORARY AND TRADITIONAL DAEMONS - secular and religious. Several applications.

Computer Daemon: In our computer world, a daemon is a program running in the background. See Unix reference at ://www.freebsd.org/copyright/daemon.html. The site addresses the negative connotations that the term "daemon" or "demon" now have:

The Unix handbook, says the site, says: daemon is the older form of the word, a daemon does not itself tilt toward good or evil, but instead "serves to define the person's character." Other cultures, here the Greek, used the term for a personal guardian angel function - with "eudaemonia" meaning "the state of being helped or protected by a kindly spirit."

So, Unix uses the term to cast itself in that role. Hear! Hear! Well done. If you are not a geek, go to Wikipedia at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computer_software).

The "ae" in daemon is a digraph, linguistically. See //www.bartleby.com/68/44/1844.html. If the letters are connected into one form, they become a ligature. See ://www.bartleby.com/68/52/3652.html. You knew that.

Biblical Demons: Azazel is a name used on several occasions. Read about it at at ://www.deliriumsrealm.com/delirium/articleview.asp?Post=100; www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?letter=A&artid=2203. See also Hello, Fodder, Scapegoats post. The history of "scapegoat" and the mistranslation of "Azazel" are addressed there. So much on a mis-application of a concept.

Greek demons. See ://www.britannica.com/eb/topic-149915/daimon. A Platonic sense of demon is as an intermediary between man and gods. See www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/629.

Judeo-Christian. The demon becomes malignant. See www.wordinfo.info/words/index/info/view_unit/629; and //www.angelfire.com/empire/serpentis666/Daemon.html

Native Americans. Start on the topic by reading about Native American animal spiritual guide concepts the Manataka Indian Council, //www.manataka.org/page291.html.

Gypsies as Cultural Fodder - A Collection of Literary References As They Come

2007-12-11T10:36:00.001-05:00

Some attitudes are conveyed as normal just because they are interjected so casually in other things. We absorb. For example, Gypsies as culturally expendable, of no intrinsic worth, so much "other" as to be easily trod under, without consequence. Fodder. See Hello, Fodder. On Typecasting and Choice: Fodder Role.

1. Novel. "The Archivist's Story," by Travis Holland, Dial Press 2007, at page 157. The place is a dacha, or woodsy vacation house, outside Moscow, about 1939, in the middle of Stalin's purges of authors, novelists, poets - imprisonment, death. The main character is an archivist, Pavel, whose work is to sort through and catalogue works of literary prisoners, those works destined ultimately for the incinerator, and the prisoners also probably to death. We join him with friends on a small holiday. A Moscovite with seniority as to position and privilege arrives, and jokes about a disagreement with his wife on the way: Fair use quote

" 'She thinks I ran a family of Gypsies off the road on purpose. She accuses me of hating Gypsies, which is a lie of course. It's just that I'm not the best driver." Maxim Andrevich slaps the countertop, 'Glasses, if you please, ' he tells Victor (not the main character here). 'Well, where shall we start, gentlemen? Whisky? Vodka?'"

Andaman Sea Gypsies - Burmese or Myanmar, Peaceable, Disappearing Reality, Compare Fictional Gyptians of "Golden Compass" film?

2007-12-10T18:04:00.000-05:00

Gypsies and Water Cultures

Real and Fictional

Update on the Andamans,
The film, "The Golden Compass," see post at Gypsies, Roma, "Gyptians", features a water-nomad Gypsy culture, a tribe on the canals of Great Britain. That apparently is fiction - we find no authority so far for a water-borne Gypsy culture in Eastern or Western Europe.

Such a culture may still exist in Burma, or Myanmar, however. See Phuket Magazine's article on an indigenous sea-nomad people, "Endangered Idyll? Andaman Sea Gypsies Live, Work And Play On The Water, But Is This Ancient Way of Life Now At Risk?" at //www.phuketmagazine.com/html/PM%20Issues/Vol.14.7/Endangered_Idyll.htm.

Andaman.

By way of update (this is February 2010), the Andaman and Nicobar Islands are shown on a map at the BBC's article, Last speaker of ancient language of Bo dies in India, at ://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8498534.stm/.

Apparently, this last speaker of the Bo language of the Andaman Islands was Boa Sr - the Andamans being one of the most "linguistically diverse" areas of the world. The language roots stem from pre-Neolithic times; African roots? The article posits, but has no further information. The Voga site suggests southeast Asia instead. The woman's name is Boa Sr. There is a website called The Vanishing Voices of the Great Andamanese (Voga), see ://www.andamanese.net/. See photos, gallery, read the language phonetically at the site.

With some four main groupings within the Andamanese, and linguistic differences among them, two of the languages had already vanished.

Groups: All but the Sentinelese have contracted outside illnesses from contacts with outsiders

Great Andamanese - maybe 50 remain, many of which are children, on Strait Island. Capital: St. Blair (this Great Andamanese group is Boa Sr's group)

Onge - maybe several hundred

Sentinelese - no contact, resist intervention.

Jarawa - about 250, live in the forests of Middle Andaman

Burma's Sea Gypsies are The Salons (several spellings -Salone, Salong, etc.)

They refer to themselves as the Moken or Mawken.

Here is an extensive site about this group, known as Sea Gypsies, still found from Philippines to Borneo, and from Thailand to Burma (country names not updated in the article), see ://www.projectmaje.org/gypsies.htm/ This is a compendium of articles.

"Freely roaming the ocean in small boats from birth to death, living simply off its riches, a Southeast Asian people seem as mythical as mermaids. ***"

Are they connected at all with Gypsies, Roma?

No, says ://www.projectmaje.org/gypsies.htm/ The term "Sea Gypsies" instead refers to the nomadic lifestyle.

Cultural Skills; Ecological Wisdom.

Their knowledge of the sea and waves, and signs, led those on shore or able to get to it to flee to higher ground and safety before the devastating tsunami in 2005. See the CBS account, updated from the original in 2005, at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558.shtml. Others already at sea saw signs and headed to deeper water and were safe there. Read about the Veddas - they also have deep ecologically sound knowledge, see://vedda.org/1-who.htm.

Beliefs.

They speak of, "the wave that eats people." A Tsunami idea? Then the earth is reborn - like the Noah story? Apparently legends among them warn of seven waves, and the first irregular one brought the legend to life.

Location.

How does this gibe with the Andaman Islands location in the BBC article?

The area is near Kawthaung, at the Mergui Archipelago - or the Surin Islands. People with various names such as Mokken, Selung, Urak Lawoi, Moken, and many other names in the article.

Origin.

They may stem from the forest-dwelling "Veddas" of India, see://vedda.org/index.htm, the home page site for Sri Lanka's Veddas or Wanniyalaeto. There are maybe 2000 left by now, and on some 200-500 boats. There are also coastal Veddas, see ://vedda.org/seligmann-coastal-veddas.htm. More cultures - not only the Moken, but the Veddas - being let go. Shall we wake up here and preserve ourselves?

The Vedda, however, took to the sea for economic reasons, and are distinguished from the Moken, see ://www.projectmaje.org/gypsies.htm/. Regardless of connections to each other, and a no-connection (perhaps?) to the gypsies-roma-romani that migrated from Asia (probably) to eastern Europe, we endanger ourselves when we let any group dwindle and die. Knowledge, lore, perspectives, all needed, is that so?

Language.

Is this the same as the languages noted in the BBC article about Boa Sr?

The language is "Austronesian" with some Thai, Burmese. So much not known. See more info at ://www.trv.net/trv98/culture/gentlepeople.htm. Then see more on the language at www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/03/18/60minutes/main681558_page3.shtml. Absent from the language are equivalents of "want," or "take," "goodbye," "hello," or "worry." No greetings. Correction on the idea of "take" - the site says you give or take but you do not want, all is give and take? Without separate culpability attached to take?

Can we learn from these brethren of ours, or not. See a "yes" at ://vedda.org/glpieris.htm. If we have nothing to learn from the accumulated wisdom of those who do not accumulate property, if the absence of property makes them valueless, let them go. Go ahead.

Then read this site, by R. Chandrasoma, concerned about romanticizing these non-Aryan "primitives" - the Veddas - site found at at ://www.lankalibrary.com/cul/veddha/veddha_12.htm. The claims are that the last pure Veddas disappeared long ago, those left are fake or so diluted in racial stock (some such concept) as to make preservation meaningless.

Next interest: Southern Iraq's Marsh Arabs. Connected?

The Gyptians of "The Golden Compass", 2007 film - Concepts

2007-12-09T19:49:00.000-05:00

Role in film, "The Golden Compass," for Daemons, Animal Guides. This topic may be new to people just beginning to look seriously at gypsy culture. A belief in animal guides of some kind appears in many cultures world-wide. The concept of animal familiars appears to have a role also in Roma belief, see post at Gypsies, Roma, Gyptians - Daemon information post.

However, given the distinctions and taboos about unclean and clean animals, see //www.tribe-roman-morga.com/religion.html, not just any animal would take that role. Need to learn more here. In the film, the animal guides or externalized souls help define the character, set it in clear perspective. If that is part of Romani religion, not clear yet.

In the film, the demon is kindly when the person is kindly, cruel when the person is cruel.

Here, at Gibraltar, is the brother of the daemon of the film character Mrs. Coulter. He is wondering sadly what went wrong with her anyway, that also pulled bis brother down.

Religion. Good site here, for many topics. Go to http://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/beliefs.htm.

Origin. Where did the Gypsies come from. The name "Gyptians" has been used for Gypsies, and suggests an understanding of origins believed in the past. The Gypsies are tcalled that in the film, "The Golden Comass. In the Middle Ages, Gypsies were believed to have come from Egypt, thus the name "Gypsy." See www.mtsu.edu/~baustin/gypsies.htm. Deeper study, however, shows origins in India. For a comprehensive history, see //www.geocities.com/~Patrin/history.htm. The amount of fact presented in the film depiction, however, is debatable as to the water-life.

Film Gyptians are real Gypsies in important respects. In the 2007 movie, "The Golden Compass," there are Gyptians - a group assuming a role similar to that of Gypsies, traveling in clans, some settled, very much apart, in lifestyle and beliefs, from the mainstream that persecutes as heretics any who think freely. See "The Golden Compass" at any of the sites that come up with a search for it.

Water Culture? Not European.
The "Golden Compass film group of "Gyptians" (from the book series, including "Northern Lights,") live on waterways in England or Scotland, and that apparently makes them fictional. I find no authority for that way of life there, as water people, nomads of the canals, wayfarers, even with the full panoply of Hollywood lineage in the film. See //www.hisdarkmaterials.org/srafopedia/index.php/Gyptian. Use this site also to look up individuals, including John Faa, but check out what is fiction and what is fact - what authority over the Gyptians, Gypsies in Scotland in the 16th Century here, did Faa have. Wikipedia so far says not real, see //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gyptians.

Read the British reviews, and news of current political and employment issues regarding real Gypsies at //eupolitics.einnews.com/news/uk-roma-minority.

John Faa - A real 18th Century traditional Gypsy hero in his way, and a character takes on some of his bio in the movie. Hear the ballad at www.contemplator.com/child/johnnyfa.htm. See the post here about Johnny Faa at Gypsies, Roma - Johnny Faa.

The Samoyede or Samoyeds - In the movie, fighting folk of the far north. In real life, Asian nomads whose breed of dog is recognized by the American Kennel Club, see www.akc.org/breeds/samoyed/index.cfm. Read about the Samoyede or Samoyeds and their Dogs at //www.samoyed.org/samoyede_people.html. Here is their ancient migration path across Asia - at //uralica.com/samoyed.htm. More of the culture at www.britannica.com/eb/topic-723912/Taymyr-Samoyed

The taking of Gyptian babies - by the Goblers - those outsiders who took Gyptian children not only from the Gyptians who travel, but from the Gyptians who are "settled" as well, those who do not travel. So - the Gyptians here are divided just as other land Gypsies, into the travelers and the settled.

Stealing children is not a new theme for history or fairy tale, and some have the Gypsies making changelings, another topic another day. For contemporary: See this site for an account of the acceptability of the practice as long as it is for the good of the children, but who decides and on what grounds. To save the children?? //www.dissidentvoice.org/Articles/Trefil.htm. See the Romanian orphanage overflow, at this site, and do a search for "gypsy" and a Gypsy child being smuggled, how many more or is this it? at://iwpr.net/?p=bcr&s=f&o=247598&apc_state=henibcr2000

Do see the film - For a change, see Hollywood's Gypsies as heroes. A theme is promotion of independent analysis, conclusions, thinking? Dust plays a role. The special dust promotes free thinking. Interesting idea - A good dust-up. Dust is already part of our language. Made from dust. Dust to dust. Religious. Dust bunnies. The housekeeping daemon. Or, a way to the animal guide concept here - your dust bunny as your guide. Dust R Us. Stardust and Hoagie Carmichael. What is more mainstream than dust? Fairy dust. Do we want our children's thinking to be free of free? Are we so afraid that if they think and research, they may find out things.

Gypsies - Contemporary performers - A heritage of Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley, Yul Brynner, Michael Caine

2007-12-03T20:35:00.002-05:00

Elvis, from my wallet

Elvis - heartpittypat? Not really. The hair was alien to my group, our loss. Rankism.

This from my old wallet growing up, a memorable hint of a lip-curl from a vending machine at an amusement park in the 50's, offered here as a fair use, a gift from Elvis to me, personally - see the signature? There! see .bitlaw.com/copyright/fair_use.html. Elvis apparently has Gypsy heritage - see him and other Gypsies in our era - in "Famous Gypsies" at ://www.imninalu.net/famousGypsies.htm.

There are lists of Gypsy war heroes, Nobel Peace Prize winners, performers, musicians, scientists, writers, state presidents, sports figures, pioneers, journalists, adventurers, members of parliament, clergy, war heroes, fashion designers, and flamenco; and by country of birth. Go to //www.imninalu.net/fG_countries.htm.

And among them, are listed Charlie Chaplin, Elvis Presley, Michael Caine, and others. Someone else please check all these - I have not gone beyond the site.

Roots are good. Surnames can be clues. One of mine puts us with Old Norse words for cormorant, and those birds throw up a lot. The surname "Romney," as in Mitt Romney, may have gypsy roots as a variation of "Rom'nie" and even the word "Romney itself, see Gypsies, Roma and Surnames" here for a walk in that direction. Roots are good because it may start an interest in furthering the interests of particular groups now of interest personally.

"Bury Me Standing "- Customs, Contemporary social/economic issues - Countries

2007-11-13T12:45:00.000-05:00

The proverb will stay with you: "Bury me standing, I've spent my whole life on my knees,." See "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, Alfred A. Knopf 1995.

For a narrative account of gypsy life, contemporary, from true life, this book is excellent, see review at ://www.shira.net/bookrvws/bury.htm. It is appalling in the cumulative impact of persecution in gypsy life over the centuries. There is no better introduction to the topic of current gypsy life - more below.

Scope. Gypsy groups are in any country where immigrants have moved. The culture(s) stress group unity and self-identification with taboos and norms they do not usually willingly share, and so have survived and declined assimilation. Yet - look at the cost of that survival, in terms of the impoverishment and persecution that others inflict on them. That says more about us than them. Learn a little. Do people travel because they are never allowed to stay anywhere. In some cases, yes. In others, the travel is part of the life. For others, settlement happened centuries ago, and has worked, reasonably. If abundance is what you enjoy, rather than what you have, who has life more abundantly. See what is happening in countries now:

Eastern Europe: Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Poland-
Read the story of the experiences of Isabel Fonseca, in her book, "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and Their Journey," NY Vintage 1996. She lived with various groups, had her own translators, learned much of the language, researched history and records (the enslavement of Gypsies in Romania in particular was recorded in books not yet translated, in some cases).

Romania - a period of newspapers and other focus on the minority Gypsies, but the needs of the majority were so great, the minority again fell away, see p. 143. Government kept issue alive, perhaps as distraction from other issues. Civil rights issues. P. 143. Gypsies as "parasites against the socialist order." Read about the Czacky family, pp. 170 ff. Came back after being run off, status.

Hungary - Paper on "The Political Significance of the First National Gypsy Minority Self-Government, by Martin Kovats, UK at//www.ecmi.de/jemie/download/Focus11-2001Kovats.pdf; the role of Lungo Drom or the "long road" group, founded in 1990 by Florian Farkas, see "Race and Ethnicity, Critical Concepts in Sociology" ed.Harry Gouldbourne, a google book online, search for the Roma parliament.

Spain -"Practical Examples - Employability" at //www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=lungo+drom+Gypsy&btnG=Search

Customs referenced:

1. No euphemism, when someone mentally challenged. Physical disability same as mental. Life is life. Page 36: Candor not considered "brutal." "Among them it was recognized that truth in itself was not painful, only ignorance could bring suffering. Consequently, euphemism was eschewed -- except in (strenuously avoided) reference to bodily functions of any kind." See linguistic license granted to older women, and other use of idiom at p.59.

2. Many have no idea of the larger group of "gypsies" - even other Albanian groups. Little grasp of own history, even though their name in one instance meant "tent-dwellers." The past, unimportant. "As for the present, there was little to be said: there was no work, and they lived on the eggs of their ducks and their chickens, supplemented by the sunflowers and apricots that grew everywhere around." Page 75.

3. Dealings with outsiders restricted, to commerce. Like Jews, they worked for themselves in trade, not as employees of others, or in agriculture for wages. Page 98. The idea of their making a profit was threatening to others in the communist era who "under the communists, expressed their contempt or their despair by doing as little as possible in the jobs that were their birthright." Gypsies and Jews as migrant middlemen. But as to Gypsies, their work came to be valued, but they were also enslaved, like Blacks. Pages 98099.

3. Marriage - read at pages 134 ff, customs for separation, divorce, when permitted, how, and where the newly single or left woman goes.

4. Outsiders' reactions: the sedentary outsiders strongly against the itinerants, itinerant gypsies skilled at the Swindle, then moved on. No Gypsy would do fortune-telling for other Gypsies, only to get cash from outsiders ("gadje"). Hidden pockets in skirts, " 'Designed for stealing,'" Elena said admiringly." Page 137.

5. Governments settling Gypsies by force. See p. 167. Conditions of the new highrises, flats. Resulting deterioration of social life.

Genius of the Itinerant, Un-Propertied. Gypsy Survival - Rome falls, Roma survive

2007-11-13T04:09:00.002-05:00

Cultural genius: a familiar concept. Each civilization has something.

Egypt - Genius in monumental building;
Athens and Greece - Genius in the arts, philosophy, government, sculpture, architecture.
Rome - Genius in uber-organization and overcoming-overempiring those in their way. Anything with that name still does it.

Rome now - crumbling. Here is Ostia Antica now, the old port of Rome. See Italy Road Ways. Lovely to stroll through, but not much left.

This was a center for Mithraism, however, and parts of that survive in differing forms in Christianity and the Gypsies. See

America: Genius in founders of democracy, now in jeopardy.
Gypsies: Perhaps the least changed in culture over a thousand years - is that true? How did they do it? How did they survive when Rome did not, and America may well not? Is that true?

1. Itinerance; isolation; cultural continuity. There may be its own kind of cultural genius in staying on the move. "Not all men are like trees; some must travel and cannot keep still." Gypsy proverb at ://www.passiondiscs.co.uk/articles/the_roma_gypsies. Read long but good history article there by T. Herbert.

And the taboos, customs, do not change. Enforcement of the group over the individual. Isolation and itinerance may also promote some health - customs, not to use others' utensils, care about absorbing into oneself contamination. Customs of washing in running water, drinking from running water, being on the move. Were the Gypsies hit as hard from plague? or cholera and other dangers of density, overpopulation, the pestilence brought by proximity. Read "The Ghost Map," by Stephen Berlin Johnson, //www.stevenberlinjohnson.com/2006/04/the_ghost_map, about sleuthing the causes and transmission of cholera in London 1848. Density, ingestion of others' contamination.

Perhaps travelling was not a help against plague - Gypsies were accused of transmitting it, //www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistoryPre20thC.; and were accused of carrying plague, see timeline for 1496, at //www.florilegium.org/files/CULTURES/Gypsy-tmeline-art.

That moving about itself has been forcibly changed. Many countries by now have stopped by legislation the traveling of Gypsies, largely out of embarrassment at this uncivilized barbaric behavior, or for fear of them, see "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and Their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, Alfred A. Knopf NY 1995. Ms. Fonseca lived with Gypsies in their communities.

2. Foregoing property accumulation. Claiming no real estate, accumulating no wealth other than as carried by wagon. Possessions now are accumulating, with the settling, for some.

3. Self-sufficiency in trade. Carry on a trade, but work for no other man. That is disappearing in areas with the stopping of the caravans and settlement in highrises. The traveling trades are not available.

4. Linguistic uniqueness. Many surnames have had to be changed to meet the ethnic assimilation efforts of the various governments.

5. Consanguinity. Control of who marries whom; marriage laws. Even with the abuses that can occur in relationships in any culture, the taboos and shame appear to be especially strong in controlling the choices and behavior of a woman in he culture. Is it true that a Roma woman would not turn to prostitution. Does that mean she has no escape at all, or is it a protection, and from what. Takes more thinking here.

6. The sum total: re what is behind the attacks on Gypsies through the years? Culturally, it is anathema. Why we can't we leave others alone. Why the drive to impose and reject or re-form others. The threat of difference must be overwhelming. We are becoming like Rome. Organize and force. Force fails, ultimately, but the wagon wheels - on and on, if allowed. Film to see: "Romani Kris - Gypsy Lore." Just saw it on a website.

What an affront to the West - who instead insist, settle down. Get a little land. Hoard. Get a job. Invest! No tolerance for those who chose another path. Genocide. And Gypsies have been and are targeted for it; all the while developing behaviors and maintaining belief systems that promote its own survival still. See ://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/genocide. Look at the timeline of persecution at this site, "Travellers in Leeds: A Permanent Site for Travellers, Gypsies and Roma" - a history of travelling and killing, banishment, imprisonment, and arranged by country - //www.travellersinleeds.co.uk/_travellers/HistoryPre20thC.html

This look at a cultural genius is not to romanticize the life of gypsies. It is hardship, abuses within and without, and on-the-brink living.

Still - Roma - succeeding where Rome did not. The genius is in survival.

In Folktales and Song - and Johnny Faa

2007-11-12T08:54:00.000-05:00

The name of Johnny Faa recurs - see the section here, and add this one: site for him at //www.scottishgypsies.co.uk/famous.html.

The name also appears as Fall, Falla (President Roosevelt's little scotty dog?), Failey and Faw, says the site. It also mentions Baillies. If Mitt Romney also turns out to have Gypsy heritage, will he take an interest in the plight of the downtrodden minorities among us? See Romney, Rom'nie as Gypsy surname. Perhaps. Perhaps there is no connection. Need the geneologists here.

1. Gypsies and Folktales. See Gypsy Stories Old and New at The Journal of Mythic Arts News and Reviews at entry dated January 12, 2007. Site at ://endicottstudio.typepad.com/endicott_redux/myth_folklore_fairy_tales/index.html

2. Gypsies in Song. "The Raggle Taggle Gypsies, O!"

Hear this fine lady who said Nuts to her own lifestyle and what it offered. She ran off with them and is very happy there, thank you, and you can take your goosefeather bed and stuff it. Rough summary. See //www.kinglaoghaire.com/site/lyrics/song_350.html. It has a dark side - read at//www.hisdarkmaterials.org/srafopedia/index.php/Faa%2C_John, about her fate - the hanging of Johnny Faa by her aristocratic husband, and then her own imprisonment overlooking the gallows site. How much of this is fiction? Need to check.

3. Hear the Raggle Taggle Gypsies, O!" These are Scots Gypsies. The photo is a glen in Scotland. Imagine a caravan just down that road. Moving.

GO HERE AND THE MUSIC STARTS ON A CONCERTINA AND YOU CAN SING RIGHT ALONG- WITH THE RAGGLE TAGGLE GYPSIES, O!

Music site and its sub-sites:
//www.contemplator.com/child/wraggle.html. This also provides a history from the 18th Century about the ballad. This is the way to teach history - find a ballad, listen to it, look it up, find the references.

Her is a variation, called "Johnny Faa" * at://www.contemplator.com/child/johnnyfa.html; and another variation called "The Gypsy Laddie" at //www.contemplator.com/child/gypsylad.html

Francis J. Child in the late 1800's catalogued British ballads, Irish, Scots, etc., and you get more music here at http://www.contemplator.com/history/epedia.html#child

4. This site includes a verse not included in the earlier ones: a fair use quote - and perhaps the first no-fault divorce when one rides east and the other rides west, one rides high and one rides low. See it at ://www.celticnots.com/music/raggle.html. It is also here: ://www.iol.ie/~murphypj/christy/Raggle.txt. Now that I am looking, I do see it elsewhere.

"Often you rode east when I rode west
You rode high when I rode low
I'd rather have a kiss of the yellow gypsy's lips
Than all of the cashier's money, O."

5. This site excludes the verse with the kiss, oh my, The Baldwin Project, "A Child's Own Book of Verse" - redacted and sterilized according to the author's fears, at http://www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=skinner&book=verse2&story=raggle.

For adults: When money doesn't do it. Hear the echoing, ancient and very real lure of a midnight mystique attributed to a minority, and when then becomes threatening. Is that a universal? And the magnet of a lifestyle different from one's own - not regimented (in the same way) as the mainstream culture - and what may happen when one rides east and the other is riding west, regardless of money. Another universal?

6. The last verse is excluded here as well - do these exclusions mean, and must there always be, a sexual fear about minorities?? see //www.mainlesson.com/display.php?author=skinner&book=verse2&story=raggle

Listen and view on YouTube - here they are and I just haven't time to go on with this particular exploration - ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsMWvuuiEY8
....................................................
* Johnny Faa - this site says he was a Gypsy in Scotland when the Gypsies were banished in 1624, he disobeyed the order and was hanged. See ://sniff.numachi.com/pages/tiWRAGYPSY;ttWRAGYPSY.html

Contemporary authors, writers, songs, sites - and roots of bury me standing

2007-11-11T20:11:00.000-05:00

Meet people and resources today - in addition to the "Zoli" website itself at ://www.colummccann.com/books/zoli.htm - Colum McCann, author.

1. Blog. An adult woman, NE US, on "Zoli" - a blog at //www.gypsygirlpress.net/gypsynews/labels/Zoli.html

2. Book, "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and Their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, NY Vintage 1996 - from the Gypsy saying, apparently, "Bury me standing, I've been on my knees all my life."

See review at ://www.indiastar.com/wallia2.htm. Says that, as of 1996, 12 million Gypsies worldwide, 8 million in Europe. Fonseca is described as a journalist, American, had been asst. ed. of the "Times Literary Supplement."

3. See this Ratdog CD, a protest song, So - "Bury Me Standing" has legs. Lyrics at the Grateful Dead Lyric & Song Finder at //www3.clearlight.com/~acsa/introjs.htm?/~acsa/songfile/BURYMEST.HTM

4. Tales and Stories. Ilona Lakova, at the Journal of the Mythic Arts, News and Reviews, at Endicott, site at ://endicottstudio.typepad.com/endicott_redux/myth_folklore_fairy_tales/index.html

That site also lists as artists and story sources

"The Roads of the Roma," ed. Ian Hancock, Siobhan Dowd and Rajko Djuric
Louise Doughty
Margriet de Moor
"The Road That Has No End: Tales of the Traveling People" - article in the Endicott Archives

Slovak Law 74- Forced Settlement. The Gypsy "great halt" in the book, "Zoli".

2007-11-11T19:46:00.000-05:00

A search for "the great halt" is not productive, so perhaps the phrase is fictional. The circumstance is not. The caravans came to a stop. Forced. "Zoli" refers to the great halt as following Law 74, passed in 1959. See Law 74 an an overview of the Gypsy community in Slovakia, and continuing bias at all levels against them, and suggestions for remedy, at ://www.slovakia.org/society-roma.htm. In the book, see references p. 121, 125. How it was done: the burning of the wheels of the caravans and wagons, at p. 123, 125, the sparks, the reddening iron hoops, the melting nails, the drunken outsiders watching, cheering. It took just three days. Horses shot or driven, requisitioned.

This forced settlement had a huge impact on some groups, others had already settled, most in their own shantytowns. There is one near Levice. See Slovakia Road Ways - Levice, Roma.

Read about the nomadic Vlach heritage, however, and this law and its effect on them, at "Vlach-Roma (Vlachi) in the Czech Republic and Slovakia at //romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupscz/cz-vlax.en.xml. That site also points out that there is a difference in complexion between the Vlachi origins and the other, India-Pakistan likelihood. Would like to know more about when and where this started.

In "Zoli," her people refused to be resettled, had to be forced. Zoli at 179. Later, some accepted, probably, but see Zoli at 192, where she says so, being ironic, lying to meet the need of an inquisitor

Poet, Bronislawa Wajs, Papusza, Papuscha, inspiration for "Zoli"

2007-11-11T18:44:00.000-05:00

Papusza. Romany for "doll." Born 1910, give or take, died 1987. Read the brief summary of her life at "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, Alfred A. Knopf NY 1995 at 3-16. Title from Gypsy proverb, "Bury me standing, I've spent my whole life on my knees."

Papusza is the inspiration for the book, "Zoli," a novel about person who happened to be a woman, happened to be Gypsy, and happened to live at a time when her very talent set her apart, and enabled her to be exploited - and her people "settled" forcibly, much sooner. Probably. See //romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/pers/papusza.en.xml

Here is one of her songs, translated from the Polish. Branislawa Wajs was born in Poland, see rough overview of her life at ://www.answers.com/topic/bronis-awa-wajs-1, and "Zoli" is from Slovakia. The translator from the Polish is by Polish artist and poet Yala Korwin*- at //www.thehypertexts.com/Bronislawa%20Wajs%20Papusza%20Poet%20Poetry%20Bio%20Picture%20Gypsy%20Poet%20Romani%20Poetry.htm

For a regular person's overview of Bronislawa Wajs' life, see //www.answers.com/topic/bronis-awa-wajs-1
....................................................
* Yala Korwin - I never knew.
See her art at ://home.thirdage.com/Art/y2723k/.
See her photgraph, and her holocaust poetry, bio and more of her art at //www.thehypertexts.com/Yala%20Korwin%20Poetry%20Picture%20and%20Bio.htm.
Her website is at www.yalakorwin.com. Be sure to click on her doodles.

Zoli's cities, areas. Zilina, Poprad, Presov, Martin, Spisska Nova Ves

2007-11-11T17:47:00.001-05:00

Spis Castle, Slovakia

The Book
"Zoli"

Touring with her poetry, and singing.

Zoli at p. 118.

Get an idea of the parallel cultures in Slovakia - The Gypsies, some settled in their own shanty towns at the time, some traveling in caravans. Now see the other culture - the castle, the middle ages, the commercialism, the life that they kept themselves apart from.

Photos from the Zilina area, mountainous, with valleys good for caravans, following rivers. Castles on the ridges.

Here is the huge 13th Century Spis Castle, near the town of Spisska Nova Ves, on a great plain. See ://www.tanap.sk/spiscastle.html. This castle enabled the area to hold off the Tartars, at least for a while. Read about the Tartars, also known as Tatars, from the Russian perspective at the time, at //www.logoi.com/notes/russia/tartar_invasion.

We spent time at Bojnice Castle, not far from the Zilina-Presov area, because it had a ghost festival going on at the time, an annual event complete with a narrative-drama tour of the castle, and a street fair with fabulous food - see Slovakia Road Ways, Bojnice Castle.

Haluski - Cabbage and Noodles

2007-11-11T17:09:00.000-05:00

"Cook haluski with hot, sweet butter." Zoli at 47 and many places (p.37, ex) referring to haluski. Delicious: here is a composite of the many recipes online for Slovakian haluski - Take a head of cabbage and slice it into strips, not like cole slaw, but some two inches long and an inch wide. Chop two or three onions, two large or three medium, roughly. Use a stick and a half of real butter, and a package of noodles, medium size, or make your own.

Salt and pepper.

Some add an egg; some use well-rinsed sauerkraut instead of cabbage, some mince the cabbage, some add potatoes. This one makes little drop-dumplings, forcing a batter through holes of a colander or haluski maker, see://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,1726,155187-240196,00. Here is bacon, eggs/ flour/ and potatoes that you make into a mush for the batter, for the little finger size dumplings, and the sauerkraut

Runic Signs - Finding your way in the woods

2007-11-11T16:16:00.000-05:00

"We followed signs -- a knotted wishbone to turn left, a broken twig for a right fork in the road, a white cloth for a friendly farmhouse where we could water Red (the horse) and fill our canteens." Zoli at 29.

Runic signs. Look them up at ://www.symbols.com/index/wordindex-r.html. They appear in Germanic, Celtic and Slavic cultures. See ://www.zielarze.pl/runes.htm. "The Cambridge Ancient History," book by Alan K. Bowman, Peter Garnsey, and Averil Cameron, is online as an ebook. I did a search for runic signs and the book came up. It says the signs originated about the second century, spread, show connections to various cultures, used probably first as invocations, to increase efficacy of a weapon, for example; but also the kind of wood inscribed was significant - birch for fertility, or the rune for the now-extinct auroch, for strength.

Do an images search for rune signs or runic signs to see them.

While traveling, a band of Gypsies:

"...maintained contact with other convoys of the same clan moving along separate routes. They would leave signs at crossroads - a bunch of twigs tied with a red rag, a branch brokein in a particular way, a notched bone - the signs called shpera* among the Polish Gypsies (and patrin,** or leaf, everywhere else, from Kosovo to Peterborough. Fearing the devil's spawn, villagers steered clear of these markers."

Fair use quote from "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, NY Vintage 1996 at 3.

..................
* Shpera - road sign or marking, see Roma-English glossary at www2.arnes.si/~eusmith/Romany/glossary.

** Patrin - marker, leaf, see "The Patrin Web Journal, Romani Culture and History" at www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=patrin, and the meaning of "patrin" as "leaf," and further linguistic offshoots at www.languagehat.com/archives/001314.php

Small Glossary - "Zoli" terms - Lady of Cachtice, Chapbookce, Other References - Zoli

2007-11-11T16:10:00.001-05:00

Chapbook - a small, self-published booklet or pamphlet, perhaps of poems. See //msms.essortment.com/whatisachap_rlmn. Even you could do one for yourself. Zoli at 94.

Cachtice - Zoli was given a book as a child, "The Lady of Cachtice." Soli 54. We think that here is the Castle Cachtice, Slovakia - its location and outline match those that are affirmatively identified - we passed by at that location, looked up and there was this splendid ruin. Do an images check for Cachtice, see the same tower placement, general shape. This may be in better shape, however, so just might not be it. Many castles on clifftops.

Correction - this site shows another side of the castle, and this does not look like it - see://www.slovakheritage.org/Castles/cachtice.

At least this castle gives you an idea of what things were in the area and interested even a Gypsy child growing up - like anyone else.

This one looks closer, but I think it is Spis Castle, not Cachtice.

Now - if only we had known - Cachtice has a gory history. The Lady is 16th Century's The Bloody Lady of Cachtice, serial killer Elizabeth Bathory, and her portrait is on a mousepad even now being sold on eBay.

She tortured people and invented the Iron Maiden, so they say. Read it at Wikipedia and other sources from a search for her.

Further Cities of "Zoli" - Slovakia: Bratislava, Banska Bistrica, Kosice

2007-11-11T14:01:00.001-05:00

Continuing our interest in "Zoli" - by Colum McCann
the novel roughly based on the 1930's Roma singer, Papusza *

Places in Slovakia mentioned or central to the book.
See section entitled "Slovakia 2003" in particular

Bratislava, Slovakia: Castle view, from the Danube

Overall country: see Slovakia Road Ways.

Bratislava.

Here is Bratislava, the capital of Slovakia. It is near Vienna - at the western section of Slovakia, just down river on the Danube, and tour boats stop here. See map at ://www.gov.mb.ca/trade/country/images/maps/lo-map.jpg. The tour boats' next stop is Budapest, Hungary. There is the castle on the hill. The old town is right there where the cruise ships are, with its warren of old streets and walls. Gypsies were resettled here, and other towns, in large apartment building blocks, canyons of them, outside the picture's range; and the wheels of their caravans burned so they could not move about any more. See Zoli p______ on the "Great Halt."

The Park Kultury here hosts annual jazz events - very successful. See mention of park, beside the Danube, at Zoli p. 94. And the Tatra Hotel, Zoli at 114, is still there. See //www.hotelclub.net/hotel.reservations/Tatra_Hotel_Bratislava.htm. The Carlton Hotel, Zoli at 115, is now a Radisson. See ://www.bratislava.info/hotels/hotel-carlton/

Banska Bistrica, Slovakia: Town Square

The town of Banska Bistrica, Square of the Slovak National Uprising.

Note the Marian or Plague Column in the center, in gratitude for being spared in the epidemics, especially I believe the dreadful one in 1715.

Zoli mentions this town at p.___. Have to get page.

Kosice, Slovakia: car show

Kosice.

Kosice, Slovakia. This is at the far eastern section of Slovakia. This street leads to the square with its large St. Elizabeth Cathedral. The town is at an old trade-route crossroads.

Here is a modern car show, girls, band and all. The Square and street connecting to a lower square are pedestrianized, and this was one of the features that day.

Kosice, Slovakia: St. Elizabeth's Cathedral

While we are here, see the splendid landmark cathedral in the main square. St. Elizabeth's Cathedral. Fourteenth Century, named after Elizabeth, the daughter of Charles of Anjou.

It is the largest Gothic Cathedral in Slovakia.
.............................
* "Zoli" by Colum McCann, Random House 2007; Papusza lived in Slovakia, before and during the time of the Fascists. Some reviews stress the plot of the novel as a love story. To me, that was secondary to the life of the person. Here is a collection of reviews: at http://www.amazon.com/Zoli-Novel-Colum-McCann/dp/0812973984/

Roma in Slovakia: Push-cart

2007-11-05T11:01:00.000-05:00

This family was deferential in movement, going around our car, downcast eyes. They had a heavy push-cart, with children and belongings on it. This is in Slovakia. No other persons were like them there, although there was a shantytown down the road - just no people visible. It is as though noone wastes time on the road. We finally saw one other man, head averted, was walking a ways past.

There were armed guards at the main entrance of this modest mall area, with a supermarket and gas station there.

See details at Slovakia Road Ways, Roma pos.

The caravans are large enough for living and sleeping. We saw some parked, but not on the roads.

Further Western Lit and Gypsies: John Updike

2007-11-03T19:56:00.002-04:00

Gypsies in Literature, Gypsies in Arts

.
With many sites focusing on well-known Gypsies, such as Charlie Chaplin, here at Montreux, Switzerland, welcome to a longer background narrative.

Charlie Chaplin, Gypsy (Roma), Montreux, Switzerland

.
A review of John Updike's book, "Drawn to Gypsies, Six Years in the South of France," appeared in the New Yorker magazine in 4/10/06. Read the review at http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2006/04/10/060410crbo_books1.
.
This is an excellent resource for people who already have a solid grounding in Gypsy culture. That resource was not available to us as we traveled on our own, and researched the culture later. We have no independent experience with the Roma, as John Updike has.

Update: Add to the list of authors focusing on Roma, Jessica Duchen, http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/12/1. She lists her top 10, among which are:

Carmen (opera),
Esmeralda (from Hunchback of Notre Dame), and a new one for me,
Kizzy in a children's book, The Diddakoi, by Rumer Godden, http://www.rumergodden.com/diddakoi.php, story with a bullying theme, see review at http://sarahbbc.wordpress.com/2010/03/18/the-diddakoi-rumer-godden/. In libraries, this can be listed either as adult Fiction or in Juvenile, so look both places. Diddakoi: defined as "Gypsy outside the Romany tribes and of mixed blood", see http://www.diddakoi.com/kay_diddakoi.htm
Mr. Rochester (Jane Eyre) when he takes on a teller's disguise, and others new to me: here so I can look them up at the library:
Emil (Fires in the Dark by Louise Doughty, holocaust topic, CZ),

Vlachs. Vlax. Records vie. Gypsies, or not

2007-11-03T19:35:00.000-04:00

Vying about origins. See ://www.m-w.com/dictionary/vie. "Bury Me Standing" says that the Vlachs were Latin-speaking; and that they saw the value in Gypsies (this section suggests that the Vlachs were not themselves Gypsies - need to find out more) at p. 177. Then again, there is an earlier record of two "Egyptians" including a Vlach who ordered merchandise in the Balkans (Dubrovnik, Croatia?).

This site recognizes the Vlach origins of Gypsies in Slovakia and the Czech Republic, see http://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupscz/cz-vlax.en.xml.
This one examines their history and culture, as they are in Hungary - Hungarian Gypsies. See ://www.everyculture.com/Europe/Vlach-Gypsies-of-Hungary.html

This site does not recognize Vlachs as Gypsy at all. See "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and their Journey," Isabel Fonseca, NY Vintage 1996. It sees them, from records, as indigenous to the area from the times of the Roman Legions, and speaking a vernacular Latin. Fonseca researched records from books not translated before, and not circulated - even now. You have to go to the libraries, ask, wait, hope.

Tracing origins by language. Specific words used in different parts of Europe are followed at this site, pointing out the branches of Romani.

//www.marston.co.uk/RSPP/LUPRSV012P02A00075.pdf, are listed as

1. Northern -
Germany and France - "Sinti"
Scandinavian, Spain, Poland, Northern Russia, Baltic States [association with late middle ages migration, into central, northern, southern, western Europe]

2. Central - Hungary, Burgenland in Austria, Slovak Republic, Czech Republic

3. Balkan

4. Vlax

For the Vlachs, or Vlax, or Vlachi, see an initial overview and photos at Romania Road Ways, Vlachs. See also the Czech Republic and Slovakian Vlachs at http://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupscz/cz-vlax.en.xml.

They are also in Greece, and that is where we photographed one - a shepherd, with his sheep, see Greece Road Ways, Ioannina, Metsovo, Vlachs. And Texas, around the area of Vlassko, see ://www.angelfire.com/tx5/texasczech/Valachs/Who%20are%20the%20Valachs.htm; and ://brunodam.blog.kataweb.it/2006/10/26/xviii-ae-forum-on-aromaniansvlachs/

"Romney" as a Gypsy language, as is "Cant"

2007-11-03T19:29:00.000-04:00

Roots of people are often in the words they use. Look up this book: "Scholarship and the Gypsy Struggle, Commitment in Romani Studies" edited by Thomas Acton; online at this very long URL, or do your own search for gypsies roma romney ://books.google.com/books?id=CGWFAQ9RZ0oC&pg=PA26&lpg=PA26&dq=gysies+roma+romney&source=web&ots=CMpJWIApnx&sig=E2KfOMzLmm12Te8b60EpQXijLx8#PPP1,M1
In one of the sections, The Genesis of Anglo-Romani, by Peter Bakker, is this section:

In 1753, a James Poulter distinguishes the language of the Gypsies, Romney, from Cant. "Gypsies are a people that talk Romney, that is a Cant that nobody understands but themselves."

It also means "thieves' jargon," see entry for 1787 Germany, at ://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/files/13_briefhistory.shtml.

The term "Romney" appears in several contexts so far: as a synonym for "Romani," or "Rom'nie," and here as language identifier. The Romani Linguistics and Romani Language Projects, at ://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/files/13_briefhistory.shtml gives a chronology of the search for language roots.

See supplemental post here, Other roots of "Romney".

Here is a site that discusses many different groups among gypsies, suggesting a broader variance in language because they dispersed, took on different roles, trades: The Gypsy Lore Society, at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. This relates to the several groups of North American gypsies, noting that the Irish travelers and the Scottish travelers do not refer to themselves as gypsies. They had their own traditions, keep their distance. There was a substantial wave of immigration around the 1850's to North America, from many parts of Europe and the British Isles.

For more on the language, there is this book (online but only accessible through JSTOR), "The Cryptolectal Speech of the American Roads: Traveler Cant and American Angloromani" by
Ian Hancock, American Speech, Vol. 61, No. 3 (Autumn, 1986), pp. 206-220
doi:10.2307/454664.

Rom and Romni can mean Husband and Wife, see http://romani.humanities.manchester.ac.uk/files/11_names.shtml.

Defenses of any Underclass: None, From the System. Poverty, Their Fault?

2007-10-31T18:11:00.002-04:00

No Consideration for Extenuating Circumstances.
Poverty as Defense to Crime - Little Recognized

Fault for Retrievals, Takings, Lie with the Individual, Not the System.
Parallels to American black history?

Roma, in Romania, retrieving in a dump

Roma at a dump in Romania. Issues of poverty for many. Take what is needed, retrieve what is owed. There is a line in 'Zoli', something like,

"From what is broken, I will make what is required."

Hunger, ingenuity, survivors; and then the other end of the scale - wealth, fine cars and clothes, Roma upper groups, enjoying the casino at Sibiu, Romania, getting out of the fine, big cars, in charge.

In many cultures, the reason for the theft, an extenuating circumstance, see ://www.answers.com/topic/extenuating-circumstances-1may mitigate a sentence. Where an economic imbalance has become part of a system, however, the system may refuse or be unable to see its role in the extenuation. It is easier to recognize a single set of circumstances as emergency, after which the person recovered balance. Not so with Gypsies, Roma. Is this true, that the fault is seen as theirs.

Compare incarceration of blacks in the United States with incarceration of Roma in Eastern Europe, other areas. Parallels. See The Black Commentator at ://www.blackcommentator.com/82/82_prisons.html/ The treatment is said to reflect implicit national policy, approval of disparate treatment. The Roma are not seen in many areas as legitimate citizens.

Like any other group, people divide into gradations, social stratification, even degradation in the status for some. Getting what is needed from a dump is not necessarily a degradation however; it is also a means to remaking, earning a living. One culture's view may not be another's. Is our dumpster-diving so different, any less needed.

In connection with poverty comes to mind another issue -we read, and lines in "Zoli" (pp____ coming) comment that Gypsies were expelled, caravans forced out of towns, and a reason is the accusations against them as to theft. It is said that they stole. Or cheated people. And there are examples of that happening in the book, especially at the close of the novel.

A start on figuring this out. Go to Studying War, at the section addressing roles people take or are assigned in their overall cultural setting. Then, look at how their interactions lead to conflict. within a group, and with others. See an analysis of conflict sliding into violence, other into national and international settings (forcing migrations out), at ://www.zef.de/441.0.html

Poverty also has been used as a defense to crime. See "Shifting the Blame:How Victimization Became a Criminal Defense," by Saundra D. Westervelt, Rutgers Univ. Press 1999. The issue is neither new nor simple. No conclusions here, just raising concerns here so far. Is criminality and theft too focused on the lower strata, where the crime do minimal "damage," but may be more personal --compared to the humungous economic thefts going on higher up, but where it is less personal. Less in the face. Is that so?

Fostering theft, the taking back, or the taking to get what is needed, or the taking in order to regain some self-respect, whatever reason. Including sheer greed and disregard. What behaviors do develop, and where may some kind of responsibility lie, when a group

is set aside as a virtually permanent underclass,
identifiable by physical characteristics or custom, and
targeted easily by others who refuse them assimilation or even acceptance of difference (if the people did not seek assimilation, as the Gypsies did not seek assimilation) and
are subject to continuing prejudice because the group still can be spotted by physical or cultural difference

Among the groupings* that may be useful to look at in the targeting process, are the relationship between:

a) a society's extractors - each seeking to get what he or chs can for self FN1 - those who victimize others, in the name of the right to self-seek.

b) a society's lifestylers, groups that seek to preserve their financial and social rank in the society - who may well fear others, fear loss, and seek to entrench; and

c) a society's fodder, groups that are defined out of consideration - lose out to others

What does Zoli say and do: Perspective. Look back at Zoli, I am looking for the page____, a Gypsy character notes, as I recall, that a Gypsy may steal a chicken or two out of need; but an outsider would take the whole henhouse and then burn down the place. This is not to romanticize any group. It is to say that fodder defends itself; and also that societies create a need for fodder - a foundation that does not move. Someone is always there. The poor always with us, and shrug, as though we should care.

Elsewhere forms: Allegations of "welfare fraud" The tax games, the exorbitant profits, economic abuse, all the rest - Gypsies - who have developed their own sense of purity against outsiders, in a sense justifying takings, in the same league as takings by higher economic groups and their dodginess. Extractors are in every group, as are all the other groupings. Is that so?

And should it make a difference. Ongoing thoughts. See also "Justifying Justice: Therapeutic Law and the Victimization Defense Strategy," J.L.Nolan and S.D.Westervelt, Sociological Forum Vol. 15, No. 4, Dec. 2000, pp.617-646, at
www.ingentaconnect.com/klu/sofo/2000/00000015/00000004/00229364.

Issue may be more the cycle of abuse. The abused then abuse others. That is recognized in other areas. Look up domestic violence. Apply it here. Also, go to RomNews Network Community@RomNews.com/de. URL at http://www.romnews.com/community/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=41.

Buy a T-shirt there, a dignified black one with white letters, "Gypsy Power."
..................................................................................
FN 1 A society's extractors -- those in any economic or social bracket who get what they can whenever they can. Do they see their job as to look out for themselves, regardless, and they feel unfairly dealt with otherwise, as they look around. If it's there for the taking, including crop subsidies that are not financially needed, take it. Maybe.

Roma. History of Persecution. Hate Crimes, Expulsions. Holocaust. Poverty: Survival Responses

2007-10-30T02:36:00.002-04:00

Hate crimes
Holocaust

1. How to get at the scope of the persecutions against Roma. Narratives are fine, but timelines may give a better start. Overall fodder background discussion of those in any culture who are designated as fodder, expendable: The Common Good, Who Speaks for It.

According to this site, //www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/gypsy.html:

France - expelled Roma from Paris 1539

Spain - punitive laws 1492, after the Roma had lived free under Muslim rule

England - forced out Roma in 1563, under threat of death (travel to Ireland, Wales, Scotland, then back?)

Hungary, Romania - enslaved many in 14th Century to work the large estates

Also says 500,000 killed in WWII Nazi camps (figures vary from 300,000 to a million - no birth or death records, figures not consistent in including the non-camp slaughter)

2. Timeline in history. See ://www.geocities.com/~Patrin/timeline.htm

3. The why of persecution and hate crimes - a start.

See a start at ://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm, a site with information to help healthcare providers address needs of eastern European Roma -a cultural history, taboos, health issues and practices. That article gives some clues, from very specific legends, myths.

Genesis 9:25 quoted there as applying to the Gypsies - (how could that be? Genesis and Roma??) "Cursed be Canaan; a servant of servants He shall be to his brethren." The West can always find something in its scripture to justify anything. Is that so? Not in the Baylor article, but an observation.

There is a legend in Balkans that Roma made the nails for the Crucifixion and/or stole the fourth nail, that would have hastened the process if it had been pounded in; so the Crucifixion was made more painful by the theft.

Rankism. See Common Dreams at ://www.commondreams.org/views05/0510-33.htm/ Rankism supplanting racism. The somebodies vs. the nobodies.

Rankism. Feeds a simple need for an undercaste. Why do cultures need an undercaste. Is it economic, the fear that, if any abundance is allowed them, above survival, it reduces what is available to others; or is it psychological, that if this person is down, at least I am up.

Poverty creates a permanent underclass that then defends itself as best it can, by whatever measures needed. See one analysis, shaky but in process, of groups and their interacting at Studying War. There is pressure to suppress, from governments, to leaders, to people acting to protect their lifestyles and positions on some ladder hierarchy; other behaviors develop in response. Gypsies have often been kept at bottom, at least since the 16th Century, some better conditions before then. Force theft to get the basics, then punish the theft, while withholding the acceptance and tolerance that would enable a a group to do otherwise? Is that it?

4. How did Jews and Gypsies survive at all, given the centuries of hate.

Look at this old text, from 1898, "The Jew, The Gypsy and El Islam," by Sir Richard F. Burton (it says he translated the 1001 Nights, etc,) that details understandings he researched at the time, for these particular groups. It is at ://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/The%20Jew,%20the%20Gypsy%20and%20El%20Islam%20JR.pdf

Scroll down to page 160 ff, give or take. Note the cultural prejudices and derogatory attitude of this colonial era, and then the similarities between target groups, the Jews and the Gypsies.

Both been outcast, had their own customs, and in past times, an overall appearance that was overall different from the "aryan" and other European physical groups, each had its own language, own names.

Survival at all - how could they survive. But the site (again, this is 1898) notes that the wealth that the Jewish groups accumulated in developing financial and commercial skills, and settling down; brought on a corresponding backlash of persecutions and confiscation.

Look then at the poverty of the Gypsy. It actually gave some protection. They survived by language ties and consanguinity, not accumulating wealth and settling down. Full circle. Both were hated groups, opposite cultural responses toward their common enemy, one to become well-to-do, the other in poverty and transience, and continuing persecutions with each surviving in its way.

5. History of events.

At the "The Jew, the Gypsy and el Islam" site, also read of the migrations, reactions, Papal bulls against them, laws, etc. Go to page 200 or so. People have really worked at putting the story together, some things were right, some off base, but worth reading old sources.

Read about Gypsies in Spain, other parts of Europe, Africa, and contrast the state of Islam and Jewish traditions in the same volume.

Read "The Pariah Syndrome, A History of Gypsy Slavery and Persecution" by Ian Hancock, at http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/pariah-contents.htm. Find a detailed table of contents on background, practices in different locales.

Romney - Rom'nie --Surname from English Gypsies? Romnichel. Romani.

2007-10-29T02:14:00.001-04:00

Family trees. Romany surnames, see http://www.20000-names.com/gypsy_names.htm.

The Romnichels are a distinct group of Gypsies, with origins in England. Derivations include Rom'nie. Sounds similar to Romany, the term in older literature for Gypsies, or Romani. Or Romney.

They sound alike for good reason. Romana, Romney. Gypsy surnames dating from 1567, see, fair use from the PDF site,

"ROMANA/ROMNEY 1567-1623 (int) Shrophshire, Suffolk) (See Robert Dawson ARITF)", from JJ Gypsy Index PDF.

See also Romney Marsh Gypsies, at http://gogowhippet.com/wordpress/marsh/tag/gypsy/

We have an interest in geneology as it may or may not be evidenced in last names, for recreational thought, and here focus on the last name, Romney. The Gypsy Lore Society addresses the Romnichels or Rom'nie, at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. .

Actual Romneys may well have their own family tradition of origins, but the name Romney - Rom'nie standing alone suggests English Gypsy roots: dealing in draft horses, horses for transporation, horse traders, basket makers and that term included making rustic furniture, and fortune telling.

See this Gypsy Lore Society site for description of this group and many others, along with the trades that the groups specialized in: Scroll down to Romnichel. The information is from a further book's introduction, "Gypsies and Travelers in North America: An Annotated Bibliography," by William G. Lockwood and Sheila Salo, that book linked at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/books.htm.

Update - here is a young man in Kent, England, who identifies as a "romney gypsey" in a message board entry dated 1/29/06 at ://www.bbc.co.uk/kent/have_your_say/community/romany_voices_archive21.shtml.

Compare the Rom. The Rom were Gypsies not from England, but from Serbia, Russia, and Austria-Hungary says the same Gypsy Lore Society site. Coppersmiths, including "repair and refinement of equipment used in bakeries, laundries, confectionaries...." They also told fortunes. The Kalderash are a Rom subgroup.

The "Black Dutch" group of Gypsies has largely been absorbed into the Romnichels. Same Gypsy Lore Society site, scroll down to "Black Dutch." This group was from Germany, but the term is also used for other non-Gypsy groups apparently. Again, horse traders, basket makers, and many provide to the Mennonite and Amish communities. See Pennsylvania Dutch. Hard to get reliable info on "Black Dutch," says site.

So: the papers already have found an ancestral link between Vice President Cheyney and Senator Barack Obama, ://www.bostonherald.com/news/national/politics/view.bg?articleid=1040896, and this adds a possible Mitt Romney to the ancestral Rom'nies.
............................................................................
In a name. See ://website.lineone.net/~rtfhs/gypsy.html
Other Romani first names: Dangerfield, Cinderella, Britannia, Sabina 9those Sabine women?)
And surnames: Lee (Gypsy Rose Lee?), Ayres, etc. and the site notes that all with those names are not Gypsies, just that Gypsies with those names traveled in England. At Geneology Forum you can join the fray in searching for answers with probably no way of checking what you get. Still, recreational.

Transportation - Horsecart, Caravan, Wagon, Auto

2007-10-28T16:59:00.002-04:00

Not necessarily easy to tell which persons are from Gypsy heritage, and which are impoverished non-Gypsy.

Roma, Poland: Horsecart. How to tell Roma from the poorest of peasants. Our understanding is that Polish peasants are better off, and do not need the horsecart. Is that so?

Horsecarts do not necessarily mean Roma - and we saw few horsecarts on the roads, compared to Romania where they were the rule, nearly none here even on back roads. alone means economic resources, probably. An outsider does not know what to look for.

Horsecarts are mentioned in Zoli, p 75, and as her transportation from time to time, and this is one, in Poland, near Zakopane, by the High Tatra mountains that border with Slovakia. Horsecarts are small.

The wagons are large, flat or with open slanted sides. The wagon picture is from Romania. I do not know if the man is Gypsy or not.

Roma, Romania: Horsecart. Or a Romanian peasant, not Roma? Not clear.

Zoli - book refers to a "Big Halt" law that stopped the nomadic travel some years ago, forcing settlements. Zoli at ____.

See this fine photograph of a caravan in 1911 - at ://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/tradition.htm

Romani origins; myths, linguistic connections

2007-10-28T16:14:00.000-04:00

There seems to have been a flurry of scholarship-research-speculations in the early 1800's about Gypsy origins - see for example all the countries and issues addressed in the 1848 "Zincali" by George Borrow, online at ://www.fullbooks.com/The-Zincali--An-Account-of-the-Gypsies-of1.html

Skim that, then move to the modern analyses - some at:

Hungary - Oral tradition in Hungary seems to have two ideas - a separation from the surrounding cultures, and a completely independent creation apart from them - see Center for Studies in Oral Tradition at ://oraltradition.org/bibliography/show/804.

Myths of the Czech Gypsies - see //findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_hb3342/is_200104/ai_n8057947

National Geographic places them in Rajahstan, India, in the 11th Century; then then to Egypt (the Gypsy name) and then Turkey, to Europe through Armenia, then Balkan area, and Greece. Was the Turkish killing of Armenians in the early 20th century focused on Gypsy Armenians, or not? Looking it up.

This site says they did not go to Egypt, and the Gypsies name was in error. See //www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/gypsy.html

See the groups post here for tracing migrations of separate groups.

1898: For a roots-type book on how thinking evolved in the west about the origins of Gypsies, here is an online book, "The Jew, the Gypsy and El Islam," by Sir Richard F. Burton (it says he translated the 1001 Nights, etc,). This source, old as it is, details understandings he researched at the time, for these particular groups.

Go to ://www.jrbooksonline.com/PDFs/The%20Jew,%20the%20Gypsy%20and%20El%20Islam%20JR.pdf
Scroll down to page 134 ff. Note the cultural prejudices and derogatoriness of this colonial era, but also the detail and (I think) keen interest in following linguistic and other clues. Also read the lengthy claims-counterclaims between the researchers.

Romani law and culture; religion - sites, sources

2007-10-28T16:12:00.001-04:00

See the Gypsy Lore Society at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/. Click on "information on Gypsy and Traveler Cultures, then start on your own.

1. The reputation for theft, taking advantage. Is that a cultural backlash, or where did it come from.

a. Possible connection, for those with expertise: there may be a connection between the Sea Gypsies of Sri Lanka and the others that migrated north and west out of India, see "Andaman Sea Gypsies" at Gypsies, Roma, Andaman Sea Gypsies. The language includes only the joint concept of give and take, not "take" in the sense of "steal." Can someone look into that? Great idea. If you need it, you can have it. Period. For those not obsessed with accumulation, that works.

b. Another idea. One source: the myth that Gypsies are "allowed" to steal because it was a Gypsy woman who hid the Baby Jesus from Herod - see (here is a long URL - do the best you can) http://books.google.com/books?id=CByPU90k6rMC&pg=PA362&lpg=PA362&dq=steal+gypsy+babies&source=web&ots=1XdpU1wIoY&sig=lZmvic0XnnQXla9jBPTccWTSg_k.

c. Or, self-defense against the outsiders who persecuted, or something more. See this fair use quote from //romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupscz/cz-vlax.en.xml:

"The relationship between Vlachi and the gadže is rather antagonistic. According to a general law 'to do harm to an enemy is rather heroism than a sin', a theft commited against a gadžo is praised and has become a traditional subsidiary way of providing livelihood. To steal from a is of course considered a violation of Romromano sokáši, (Rom habit, norm, law), and is punishable by the internal court (trial) kris."

d. For us at this site, the bottom line is not watching your pockets, as we have when we travel in Romania, or the Slavic or other countries with Roma at the tourist sites: it is rather a functional admiration that all the internal laws and cultural practices have kept gypsies intact and unassimilated overall, with all their variations in individual groups. They seek to remain that way, and do not approve public displays of their essential business. So, do a search for gypsies roma, just that way, and many fine sites come up. Right now, with no expertise in the area at all, we are uncomfortable summarizing. Take the sites we find and read all about it there.

2. Fortune-telling. Not a Gypsy to Gypsy endeavor. Done only, apparently, to get money from the outsiders. Undertaken reluctantly, because it is low status, not admired among Gypsies. Zoli at 244. At another place, make them answer four times, all of them wrong.

3. Religion: This site notes that the Roma often adopted the religion of the countries where they were, see ://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/gypsy.html. But was that voluntary, or forced as the way best to survive. In the contemporary Czech Republic, the Roma are said to be largely Roman Catholic now - see //romove.radio.cz/en/clanek/18906, with beliefs in souls that survive death, read that site carefully because there is so much there. Their only saint appears to be Sara-la-Kali, or Sara the Black, see Gypsies, Roma, Sara the Black.

Other sites:

1. See ://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/gypsy.html.

2. Book - not read yet - "Gypsy Law: Romani Legal Traditions and Culture" - in paperback, Walter O. Weyrauc. Look it up on Amazon and see many other related books.

3. This site is excellent for how the Roma govern themselves within their communities - customs, rules, taboos. ://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm

Individual Roma poets, composers, musicians

2007-10-28T15:26:00.001-04:00

To begin a cultural look, see YouTube for this dance from Romania at www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxd41_5UsYg&feature=related. . Also, look up neo-gypsy hybrid music, Gogol Bordello and Balkan Beat Box 9/29/07 at ://thephoenix.com/article_ektid48030.aspx.

1. Emil Cina, from site ://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/museletters/blCZmuse106.htm; scroll down to Romani literature. I could not follow the link given to Emil Cina. Concern there is also for non-Gypsy writers writing about Roma is this: the likely stereotyping, romanticizing and mythologizing that went on with the Native Americans - an appropriation. This is an oral tradition, so the publishing is coming from non-Roma

2. Dezider Banga, from site //poetry.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/poet.htm

3. Hans'che Weiss, Sinte group musician, from site ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinti (made a record in Germany about the Holocaust in 1970 in Romani dialect, his people did not want outsiders to know the language, anger, read at the site). The link to Hans'che Weiss does not go anywhere.

4. Individuals and sources at ://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/museletters/blCZmuse106.htm. Scroll down to the Romani Literature section.

5. Bibliography, and book in process about Romanian Romani musicians, at Princeton site, Princeton University's Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, here a website from a professor Margaret Beissinger, at ://slavic.princeton.edu/people/faculty/MargaretBeissinger. She is writing a book on Romanian Gypsy Musicians, culture and families. Site gives large bibliography of articles and sources.

Roma groups in Europe, Migrations: languages, self-identification

2007-10-28T15:23:00.001-04:00

These groups are listed here ://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/museletters/blCZmuse106.htm - scroll down to Romani literature section). Some other groups were added later, when found.

References are to that Museletters site, unless you see this one specifically listed://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html.

..........................................................................................................
North American Gypsies/ Travelers - immigration to the United States probably from 1850 on

Travelers - Irish or Scottish. In Ireland, they are known as Tinkers. See description of The Gypsy Lore Society at //www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. Irish Travelers and Scottish Travelers do not refer to themselves as Gypsies. They had different customs before migrating to US. and apparently keep a social distance

Gypsies - All others. In current works, the term Roma or Romani may be preferred

Black Dutch see Rom'nies. See ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html.

Ludar-"Rumanian Gypsies" see www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html

Hungarian - Slovak musicians - linguistic prehistory similar to Rom/Romnichel, but difficult for each to understand each other now

Romani - plural noun; used at site to mean all the dialects and languages

Roma - singular, but not always, see it as plural in a Rom subgroup language ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html

Rom - see www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. From Serbia, Russia, Austria-Hungary

Romnichel - Groups stress importance of pure, impure, Gypsy-NonGypsy. Linguistic prehistory similar to Hungarian-Slovak musicians. See Gypsies, Roma, Romney surname from Rom'nie or Romnichel?.

Rom'nies. See ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. English Gypsies. See Gypsies, Roma, Romney surname from Rom'nie or Romnichel?.

Sinte - subgroup of Roma, perhaps from Pakistan. Start with Wikipedia, then doublecheck: //en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinti_

They apparently went to Germany and Austria in middle ages, and split into two groups, the Eftagarvja, The Seven Caravans, who went into France and became the Manouches; and the Estraxarja, another group "from Austria, " moving into Croatia, Romania's Transylvania, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, northern Italy, Piedmont. Language - see //www.ethnologue.com/show_language.asp?code=rmo. Sinte is listed as a language of those countries.

See what the language looks like here, in many dialects: this happens to be the Lord's Prayer - I not go looking for it. At ://www.christusrex.org/www1/pater/JPN-rom-sinte.html. The Rosetta Project seeks to archive every single human language. See it and Sinte at ://www.rosettaproject.org/archive/rmo.

Kale
Lovara
Curara
Xoraxane
Sinti (see Sinte above?)
Manus

Kalgeras (is this the Kalderash that is a subgroup of the Rom? See www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html. )
If this is the Kalderash, they include the Vlachs, Vlax, also called Nomad Coppersmiths

Machwaya - another subgroup of the Rom, see www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html.

Sinte in German and Dutch - Zigeuner (this in Wikipedia at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinti_ ) - there was a piano piece called Zigeuner - remember?
Sinte in Italian - Zingari -Wikipedia at ://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinti_

Romani literature, oral tradition: geneologies, history

2007-10-28T15:22:00.001-04:00

Geneology - here is a family with Gypsy roots that has oral traditions from the mid-15th Century --Charlemagne era and Sultan of the Moors - and has otherwise traced itself back with other records to the 1850's, Spain, Switzerland, more - at ://sciway3.net/clark/freemoors/spanishgypsy.htm. The great-grandmother was Barbla Catrina Fazedin.

Romani , the kris (court) and expulsion (like shunning)

2007-10-28T14:43:00.000-04:00

Read at "Zoli," at p.17, the customs surrounding the finding of information and pronouncing judgment. This is an area not to be summarized. It is personal, ethnically kept private, and so be it. Get the book. It is a fine accounting of a responsible system, that has worked for survival of the group. See p. 137, 139, 142

Zoli was expelled. Zoli at 10. When a character asks about her,
"[T]he air stalls, the drinking stops, the cigarettes are held at mouth-level, and a silence descends.

"Boshor looks toward the doorway and says: "No, I don't know that name *** and even if I did, that's not something we would talk about." pp.10-11
......................................................................
Overall, with no expertise here, we are uncomfortable delving into practices and community affairs, and refer you to sites we find instead.

The Gypsy Lore Society at ://www.gypsyloresociety.org/cultureintro.html links the "Black Dutch" a Gypsy group originating in Germany, in various ways including close trading relationships with the Pennsylvania Dutch, Amish, Mennonite communities. Scroll down to that section. Hard to get good info here, the site says, but the practice of shunning has a parallel in both? Need to look it up.

This site, providing cultural and health practices information to (I believe) those who are treating the Roma, also discusses the expulsion: ://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm

The Baylor sits is concise, clear, fascinating, great respect for this culture that has survived despite probably universal persecution.

Romani under Communism; under non-Western cultures; seeing the Tatra cars

2007-10-28T14:41:00.002-04:00

The Big Black Tatras

The High Tatras

Tatra

1. Tatras. The Communist years were good for the Gypsies in eastern Europe, until those in power began also riding around in the big black Tatras - must mean big cars. Tatras were in for the authorities at a time when the Gypsies were moving in their caravans, and horse carts. The image of parallel cultures, and the heavies not leaving the other alone to live as they wish, haunts.

Tatra - It does mean cars - and good heavens, look at this! Do an Images search.

Looks like all the old Nazi photos or film, the 1920's anywhere, and later with any big government. See picture at ://www.tatra.demon.nl/. Click on cars/history on the left menu. The 1930's through 1950's.

The Tatra Company itself goes back to 1850.

2. Tatra Mountains.

The High Tatras- the car has to be named for these. Without a picture of our own of a Tatra car, here are the High Tatra Mountains, seen from the Polish side - Slovakia just over the top there.

From Zoli, "It was better under the Communists," character Boshor speaking) ***"back with the Communists we had jobs, we had houses, we had food,"*** "They didn't knock us 'round...." pp. 9-10.

3. Roma under Muslim rule in Spain. That was also good. It was only after the reconquest 1492, when the Moors were pushed back, that laws were put in place prohibiting Romani from dressing in traditional ways, practicing their customs. See http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/cultural/oldworld/europe/gypsy.html

Romani and horses: Forced settlement

2007-10-28T14:39:00.000-04:00

"We don't even have bridles any more," - character Boshor in Zoli p.2. Go to this site for the close bond between Gypsy and the horse, at "The Gypsy Horse," www.novareinna.com/romani/horse.html

The government effectuated a halt to the traveling, in the book using Zoli's fame and talent as an example for why the Gypsies should be "allowed" to stop the primtivism of moving about, put the in government housing with amenities, living in the forest is bizarre, old-fashioned, see Zoli at 106. So the govt in Slovakia burned the caravan and wagon wheels, and took away the horses, Zoli p.___. Law 74. Zoli 121, 123.

This did not happen in Romania, where so many depend on horses for everyday work and transportation.

This is a scene in Romania, with the owner of the horse just out of view, watching us quietly. We seldom asked anyone to be photographed. Up to them, politely. So many horsecarts, and hard to know who is Gypsy and who is not, among the impoverished. People do not wear distinctive dress necessarily, depending on the occasion. Men working blend in, sometimes with headwear that is different, and some women and young girls may be in long, sweeping skirts, looking out of doorways, half hidden, or at a bus stop with children, but many others are simply poor. Not all, of course.

Placeholders - Work in Process. Roma Modern Music - Fusion. "Buika"

2007-10-28T10:37:00.002-04:00

Arts crossing the hemispheres. Gypsy arts morphing into the world. Spanish lyrics, says Jon Pareles in the New York Times, 10/29/07, about Buika's performance, in the music review "Gypsy Spirit Infuses the Fusion, "but the emotion luminous and unmistakable."

Buika was born on Mallorca, with parents from Equatorial Guinea. Her art blends pop, flamenco, jazz, African music and soul. Her album is "Mi Nina Lola. Going now to listen.

"Spanish singer and songwriter who has conceived her own diaspora: one in which the Gypsies, who catalyzed flamenco, crossed the Atlantic to meet Cuban music and jazz."

...........................................................................................

Romani medicine, remedies, healthcare

2007-10-28T10:34:00.000-04:00

From Zoli p.___ - Wash self and clothing only in running water
From this family's oral tradition about Gypsy participation in healing - going on battlefields to help wounded and using spider web to treat/hold wounds - see site on Geneology

For a survey of Roma history, culture and beliefs, including health practices, see ://www3.baylor.edu/~Charles_Kemp/gypsy_health.htm.

Czechoslovakia in the 1930's - history through a novel's eyes

2007-10-28T10:32:00.002-04:00

Overall country: see Czech Republic Road Ways.

We understand from this comment at our Roma in Film post that the Roma population lives peacefully in Cesky Krumlov, the town featured in the photo heading our blog. Here is the comment: retoque fotografico has left a new comment on your post "Romani in Film":

I was in a town called Cesky Krumlov in souther Czech. The Roma people are completely integrated and live side by side with the Slavs of the Czech republic.

Posted by retoque fotografico to Gypsies, Roma, Romani. Cultural Diaspora. HUMANITIES, HISTORY. at August 6, 2009 2:54 AM

Prague CZ - not bombed during World War II, so much like it looks now, this view from the Charles Bridge, looking to St. Vitus Cathedral on Castle Hill.

Roma traveled throughout countries as a parallel culture with the urban areas, towns and countryside where the outsiders live.

Czechoslovakia prospered between the World Wars, for a time. See ://archiv.radio.cz/history/history10.html Culture and literature and the arts - a social climate that fostered new ideas. Here is the cubist building in Prague known as the House of the Black Madonna.

See ://www.radio.cz/en/article/47925.

Then came economic collapses, unemployment, especially in the Sudetanland where there was a large German population, and the Nazi movement polarized ethnic Czech Germans, seeking to secede, from the other Czechs. They grew in power and sought to join the border lands with Germany. Then came military moves and Western appeasements, and World War II rolled in.

A well-narrated novel can put history in the mind better than statistics. Zoli does that, by having no table of contents, you do not know where you are headed with her, as even she does not, so you patch in as you go. There are just the occasional section headings when you get there.

1. Go here for an overview in doing a coherent history of this area, the struggles of the historians and others, at "Czech and Slovak History: An American Bibliography."

2. Here is a timeline for Czechoslovakia history, keeping in mind that the area has changed name and boundaries in the last 100 years - now is the Czech Republic and The Republic of Slovakia. Go to //www.facts-about.org.uk/history-and-events-timeline-czech-republic.htm. At the next page is a chart with all the major events, click and get the overview.

Zoli's book sections: A guide to when she was where, and during which dates. Note that the story may pass back to an earlier place at a different time, or tell more about that place in a later time.

Slovakia 2003
Czechoslovakia 1930's-1949
England - Czechoslovakia 1930's - 1959
Czechoslovakia - Hungary - Austria 1959-1960
Slovakia 2003
Compeggio Northern Italy 2001
Paris 2003

Roma under Fascism, and as a Nazi Satellite: Hlinka Guards

2007-10-28T10:30:00.002-04:00

Banska Bistrica, Slovakia. Tanks from the Slovak National Uprising. In Zoli - Gypsy fought as Partisans in the hills, and stories of the Nazi reprisals. See Slovakia Road Ways, Banska Bistrica tanks.
.
Hlinka guards: had been a pro-Nazi militia operating near the Tatra mountains area, see ://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/sk%5Ehg.html. See the flags and emblems there.

This is the area near Zilina, south of the high Tatra mountains, showing a ruin of a castle up there. It is rugged country.

There is a photograph of Hlinka guards at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC, see it at ://www.ushmm.org/wlc/media_ph.php?lang=en&ModuleId=10005466&MediaId=1358. Slovakia had been a satellite state, not "occupied" as had been the Czech areas, I understand. Prague was "occupied." Andrej Hlinka, 1864-1938, was a Catholic priest who founded the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party - read about his issues about his being the father of fascism in Slovakia, and the namesake for the Hlinka guards, and views about his currently being elevated to - well, you read it at ://slovakia.humanists.net/a_profiles.htm. Quieter summary at ://www.axishistory.com/index.php?id=182.

The Hlinka guards had forced Zoli's family and extended family (she was away with her grandfather), caravans and horses out onto the ice of a lake, then started fires at the shore so the ice weakened and all were drowned. Zoli 15-17.

Romani Music; Gypsy Harps; Group and Street Musicians

2007-10-28T10:30:00.000-04:00

"I had never seen instruments so tall, beautifully carved and strung with catgut. They stood twice my height....They were varnished and carved with wheels and griffins and birds. The plucked sound carried through the trees. There was nothing so lovely. The women who played the harps had very long fingernails. They painted their nails every night, using whatever colors could be found, boiled up fro animals and red riverstone and some from bird eggs, light blue. The colors were brushed on with tiny brooms made from weedgrass...." Zoli at 29-30. Then came the Hlinka Guard and pulled all the nails off one harpist, leaving her with bloody stumps. What is wrong with us?

Gypsy harp - this site shows a tall 22-stringed instrument as a "gypsy harp" - starts on G below middle C, goes to high G. Listen to how it sounds there.

See Welsh harpist William Huw Bowen, who plays in the style of Welsh gypsy harpists at //www.sweetbirdclassics.org/artists/robin.html. It is called a Welsh triple harp, but its origins are mainland Europe. Triple harps were less popular after pedal harps were introduced. Read the details and the differences in kinds of harps there. See and buy your own here: ://www.ninasmusic.com/page7.

Violin, song, brass bands, guitar and voice, flamenco, as different as the regions. Good overview at National Geographic's site ://worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/roma__gypsy__music_778

The music here in Romania was said to be Gypsy, but we were only tourists. Just exclude the young lady there who was just from a nearby table and I enjoyed how they Daniel, and we got their Gypsy ID CD, but how is a tourist to know. Difference between gypsy-sounding, and a good traditional group playing "gypsy?" Still, loved the sound, went at a frantic pace, this from Sighetu Marmetiei in Romania.

From Zoli - "She traveled with harpists once" p.10.

These street musicians - from Warsaw, Poland.
Same issue - how is a non-local to know Gypsy from just really fun sounding traditional?

None of the musicians shown in the photos in this post did polka, however, and we left the polka groups out of here. Tucked them in down below.

History, origins, music at National Geographic's site - //worldmusic.nationalgeographic.com/worldmusic/view/page.basic/genre/content.genre/roma__gypsy__music_778. The sounds of India echo in the music still

........................
Polka. Differentiate from Gypsy? On the other hand, we know there are Scottish "Travelers," see above, and they did play all kinds of music. Outsiders just don't know, but enjoy anyway.

Sample Poetry, Old song bits, Thoughts of fictional Zoli - Are these quotes from Papusza?

2007-10-28T10:28:00.002-04:00

Interest in Papusza and Zoli - from a blast of poems, words like these: "Zoli," by Colum McCann.

"We sing to sweeten the dead grass" Zoli 10
"From what is broken, what is cracked, I make what is required" Zoli 10
"I will not, o, never call the crooked finger straight" Zoli 10
"My grave is hiding from me" Zoli 105

"Zoli believed there was a life-spring that went down to the center of the earth and that it ran both ways but mostly it rose from the well of her childhood." Zoli at 93

"When I cut brown bread don't look at me angrily, don't look at me angrily because I'm not going to eat it." Zoli at 87.

"They broke my little brown arm, now my father he cries like the rain" Zoli at 31. A song bit.

"I will fill the empty cup, it is not so hollow any more, I will fill it with wine, it will come from the palm of your hand." Zoli at 30

"I want no shadow to fall upon your shadow, your shadow is dark enough for me." Zoli at 31

"The old horse is standing though he is not sleeping, he always has a watching eye, a watching eye." Zoli at 259.

"If you have the money you can think what you like." Zoli at 259.

Read longer works at pp.278-283.

The language, relationships, variety, Romani - information

2007-10-28T10:26:00.000-04:00

Romani, as spoken by the Vlachs, is becoming a language of literature. See //romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/ethn/groupscz/cz-vlax.en.xml

This is an excellent site for the interrelationships between groups of Gypsies, the ambiguities, their trades, commerce, the admiration for the beauty of the Vlach, the reasons for trade as a profession being admired, but physical work for others not so much.

Much in this area of Gypsy culture is unfirm. One site makes a clear statement. Another makes another. As to the Vlachs themselves (Vlax), one site includes them as Gypsy, see the tie to Romanian gypsies of Wallachia and Moldavia to the Hungarian Vlachs at ://www.everyculture.com/Europe/Vlach-Gypsies-of-Hungary.html. The site notes the history of enslavement of gypsies during medieval times.

This other source, "Bury Me Standing, The Gypsies and their Journey," by Isabel Fonseca, however, documents records that show 16,000 were brought in as slaves by the father of Vlad the Impaler in the 1400's, and a further 11,000 were awarded to Stefan the Great (am checking for the precise pages for these, bear with me) by a Pope, bringing the south-of-the-Danube dark-skinned slave group to a high number for the times. If so, the Vlachs are not "gypsy" if they were there with the Roman Legions. The word "gypsy" can mean slave, however. Anyone enslaved could be called Gypsy.

So: If we can clear up what language the Vlachs speak, we may be able to clue whether they are an indigenous nomadic group, speaking a vernacular Latin; or Romani. Romanian does use the western alphabet, with many words recognizable from Latin roots, and the Cyrillic alphabet, or Greek, are not seen.

Romani customs, collated from "Zoli'; words

2007-10-28T10:24:00.001-04:00

Cutting a woman's hair - against the laws, Zoli 16. As a child, she had done so.

Speaking of the dead: not too soon after the death (especially if a violent death?) '"[T]hey would be mule soon, spirit, they did not want to be disturbed." Zoli 18.

"gadzikano" ways - Gadzikano means white majority, seehttp://poetry.about.com/library/weekly/museletters/blCZmuse106., and scroll down to the poetry section. This is as opposed to "romanipe": or gypsiness, or Gypsy society, says the article.

"The last one still alive (of Zoli's grandfather's sons) had taken gadzikano ways, which meant he was dead too." Zoli 19.

Zelfya - Zoli 20 - said to be a hanging cradle, and here is a picture of a Russian one - can't find "zelfya" - at ://www.civilization.ca/tresors/immigration/imb0500e.html. Find a modern one at http://www.hippyshopper.com/2007/01/titan_hanging_c.html

Reviews of "Zoli" - Summaries of the Plot, Comments

2007-10-28T10:18:00.001-04:00

The novel, "Zoli," by Colum McCann, is roughly based on the life of Gypsy poet Branislawa Wajs. She was a member of a traveling group of Gypsies in Poland, who achieved literacy. Her poems and songs then were published, and then used against her and the Gypsies as a whole by government policy-makers, who wanted to stop and force the settlement of nomadic groups. The argument was that "these people" -would benefit from release from the primitivism of the caravans. In fact, those policies in most cases took away the livelihood of the itinerant musicians, basket-makers, metal workers and others across Europe as the Halt trend spread, reducing the groups to dependency in crowded high-rises.

Read any of these for the plot outline, the political contexts including Fascism and Communism in Slovakia, WWII and holocaust Slovakia and Poland, post-Communist era, and the Romani people, the character Zoli, inspired by the real "Papusza," in particular.

1. Seattle Times - //seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2003509350_zoli07.html

2. Montreal Gazette ://www.canada.com/montrealgazette/news/books/story.html?id=48e838be-e37d-4d98-a756-79b3d100508d

Bronislawa Wajs, Papusza, Romani poet - Inspiration for "Zoli"

2007-10-28T10:09:00.000-04:00

Bronislawa Waj, born in 1908, was an unusual person in that she was literate and talented, and known in her communities for her singing and poems. She was "found" and her poetic and song works publicized by outsider poets and others, with her work then being, in her view, taken out of context. Her concern was founded - the publicizing of her work apparently was instrumental in leading to legislation banning the nomadic life, and the settlement of gypsies. And her shunning by that community.

Knowing how edits can change entries, a start with Wikipedia needs a caveat. Still, start here for an understanding of the person of Bronislawa Wajs, and the issues of her time, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bronis%C5%82awa_Wajs.

Her nickname was "Papusza."

Read her life and times at

Growing a New Skin: The Life and Poetry of Papusza," by Gigi Thibodeau at //kmareka.com/free-literature-online/growinganewskin.htm
Papusza (Branislawa Wajs) at ://romani.uni-graz.at/rombase/cgi-bin/art.cgi?src=data/pers/papusza.en.xml

Read her poem, "Tears of Blood," at (how to get you to it, unless you cut and paste on your own?) ://www.thehypertexts.com/Bronislawa%20Wajs%20Papusza%20Poet%20Poetry%20Bio%20Picture%20Gypsy%20Poet%20Romani%20Poetry.htm

Links

2007-10-24T03:34:00.004-04:00

http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/full

http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/full

http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/comments/default?alt=rss

<a href="http://technorati.com/claim/ZJUJ793GNTP8"rel="me">My Technorati proﬁlea>

http://gypsies.roma/blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default

feed:http://gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/rss.xml

2007-01-01T13:48:00.000-05:00

ZJUJ793GNTP8
http://www.gypsiesroma.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/ZJUJ793GNTP8