Foreign News: Housebroken Gypsies

In the 15th Century, fragments of obscure Indian tribes, having wandered across Asia and Europe, turned up in Britain. Englishmen thought the swarthy nomads were Egyptians, shortened the word to gypsies. Gypsies did not mind. To them all gorgios (nongypsies) were boro dinellos (big fools) to be tricked and preyed on by the jinni Romanis (clever gypsies). Except for the contacts inevitable in dukkering (fortunetelling), dooking gri (casting a spell on horses to lower their value and price) or drabbing baulor (poisoning a farmer’s pigs so that the gypsies could buy the carcasses cheaply for food), gypsies wanted no part of the respectable gorgios’ world, ways or wars.

But now Britain’s 45,000 gypsies were going to have to mend their ways—if Professor R. H. Angold of Britain’s Gypsy Lore Society had anything to say about it. Noting that Britain’s postwar plans take no account of gypsies. Professor Angold demanded that henceforth Britain’s gypsies be regarded as useful, not just romantic, citizens.

Glamor Goes. The process had already begun. World War II had deglamorized the gypsies, forced them into an activity they had successfully avoided for centuries—work. Under the National Service Act, gypsy poachers now make camouflage nets, gypsy tinkers repair copper vessels in jam factories, knife grinders shape metals, basket weavers wire eiectrical equipment for aircraft. While gypsy women (heretofore the traditional gypsy breadwinners) earn good money in war plants, their work-scorning menfolk bear arms or log wood pulp in Britain’s forests.

Scarce clothing coupons have curbed the gypsy love for bright finery; ration books and identity cards their wanderings.

In the absence of a Government postwar plan for gypsies, Professor Angold came up with one of his own. Some points: basic three-R education for all gypsies, special open-air gypsy trade schools to teach handicrafts, communal camps for gypsy woodcutters, music classes for orchestras and choirs, the establishment of a gypsy national-theater. Traditional gypsy skills, the Professor urged, should be diverted into workaday jobs.

No doubt the forces of progress were on Professor Angold’s side., Besides, the British gypsies were more assimilated than most other gypsy stocks. But progress and assimilation might have a stiff tussle with a people which still preserved its folk wisdom in a six-line catechism: Miro dado, soskei shan creminor kaired? (My father, why were worms made?) Miro chabo, that puo-baulor might jib by hailing lende. (My son, that moles might live by eating them.) Miro dado, soskei shan puvo—baulor kaired? (My father, why were moles made?) Miro chabo, that tute ta mande might jib by letting lende. (My son, that you and I might live by catching them.) Miro dado, soskei shan tute ta mande kaired? (My father, why were you and I made?) Miro chabo, that creminor might jib by halling mende. (My son, that worms might live by eating us.)