Posted: 26 September 1999
filename: hancock.txt
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  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                           The Pariah Syndrome:
                An account of Gypsy slavery and persecution
                                   
                              by Ian Hancock


                                                                     
                             Table of Contents

               Acknowledgments
               Foreword
               Introduction
        I      Out of India
        II     Reception in Europe
        III    Conditions of Slavery
        IV    Towards Abolition
        V     The Post-Emancipation Situation
        VI    Treatment Elsewhere in Europe: Transylvania, Hungary
                and Russia
        VII   Treatment Elsewhere in Europe: Spain, Portugal and
                 France
        VIII  Treatment Elsewhere in Europe: Germany
        IX     German Treatment of Gypsies in the Twentieth Century
        X      German and Dutch Transportations to America
        XI     Treatment Elsewhere in Europe: England and Scotland
        XII    British Shipment to the Americas
        XIII   The Contemporary Situation of Gypsies in Europe
        XIV   The Contemporary Situation of Gypsies in North
                  America
        XV    Anti-Gypsyism
        XVI   Afterword
        XVII  Appendix A: Definition of Terms
        XVIII Appendix B: Media Representation of Gypsies
        XIX    List of Works Consulted
                                   
                   --------------------------------------

            Notes about the web version of The Pariah Syndrome:

     The author, Ian F. Hancock, of British Romani and Hungarian 
     Romani descent, represents Roma on the United States 
     Holocaust Memorial Council. He is professor of Romani Studies 
     at the University of Texas at Austin, and has authored nearly 
     300 publications. In 1997, he was awarded the international Rafto 
     Human Rights Prize (Norway), and in 1998 was recipient of the 
     Gamaliel Chair in Peace and Justice (USA). To contact Dr. Hancock, 
     send e-mail to .

     The web version of this book includes new passages by the author
     not found in the original printed version. The original edition
     of this book (1987) uses diacritics for Romanian and Romani
     (Rromanes), and includes texts in the Cyrillic and Greek
     alphabets. When possible, care has been taken to reproduce these
     diacritics, or their phonological equivalents. This has not been
     entirely possible because of HTML limitations. For a faithful
     rendition of all diacritics and texts, it is recommended that the
     printed version of The Pariah Syndrome be consulted.

     Throughout, except in quotes from other works, the spelling
     Rumania(n), rather than the more widely-accepted Romania(n) has
     been preferred in order to distinguish it more readily from
     Romani.

                     ---------------------------------
     Original Copyright (c) 1987 by Karoma Publishers, Inc., Ann Arbor, 
     Michigan. ISBN 0897200799. Reproduced by the Patrin Web Journal 
     with the generous permission of the author, Dr. Ian F. Hancock.

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                              by Ian Hancock                        

     Acknowledgments

     This is a corrected and expanded version of a monograph called
     Land of Pain which I wrote and circulated among a number of
     colleagues in 1982. It is based upon a collection of texts which
     in most cases I have had to translate, or have translated. I
     should very much like to acknowledge the help given me in the
     preparation of this study by those friends and colleagues, who
     include Thomas Acton, Sascha Bley-Vroman, Harry Bryer, Madeleine
     Kabore, Donald Kenrick, Barbara Lalla, Ronald Lee, Joseph Miller,
     David Smith and, in particular, Victor Friedman. My thanks to
     each of them.

                   --------------------------------------

     Foreword
     by Dr. T.A. Acton

     Ian Hancock is a marginal man. Like all Romani intellectuals, he
     has had to live torn between the pariah status of his people and
     the embrace of a dominant culture which can hardly conceive of
     such a monster as an educated Gypsy.

     Some Gypsies in this position accept this, and pass as
     non-Gypsies, keeping at a distance all their Romani relatives,
     and keeping silence at who knows what cost, to them and their own
     children, on all of their family's past. But a sprinkling of such
     people find a personal liberation by joining Romani organizations
     where intellectuals can make a political contribution to winning
     a better place in society for their people. They have to face
     incomprehension by non-Gypsies, and often rejection by
     assimilated relatives, and the constant accusation that they are
     not "true Gypsies." Face to face with the divided reality of
     their identity, they are like the man in Yevtushenko's poem,
     strung out on a high-wire "between the city of yes and the city
     of no."

     There are many ethnic groups among the Gypsies, with a great
     variety of dialect, culture and occupation. In Europe and the
     West, however, two brute historical facts have shaped their
     history from the 15th century on: enslavement (particularly in
     eastern Europe), and attempted genocide (especially in western
     Europe), from which have emerged the commercial nomadism of
     Gypsies in western Europe and the artisan sub-proletariat of
     Gypsies in eastern Europe. Although the variety of Gypsy economy
     is, and always has been, enormous, there are perhaps three core
     fields in which both nomads and slaves were involved: metalwork,
     transport animals and vehicles, and entertainment.

     Ian Hancock's family belongs very much within the entertainment
     tradition; arguably, as a university professor, he is still in
     it. His forebears were among those Hungarian Gypsies from both
     the Romungri and the Lovari ethnic groups who were involved with
     circuses and show business and who came to England in small
     numbers in the nineteenth century and intermarried with English
     Gypsies in the same line of work. Then, as now, the British
     circus and fairground world and its trade association, the
     Showmen's Guild, were dominated by the large, non-Gypsy, circus
     and fairground magnates, who repudiated any idea of association
     with Gypsy ethnicity for their organization, in order to make it
     politically more acceptable. The small Romani showmen, whether
     originating in Britain or overseas, have become in this century a
     distinct population in their own right. As the fairground world
     has contracted, many have settled, especially in west and south
     London. Redevelopment of areas of Battersea and Wandsworth, with
     their settled Romani populations, has in turn more recently led
     some of these families to return to a nomadic life. Some of
     Hancock's relatives have now married non-showmen English Romani
     Travellers. It was this milieu from which Hancock's family
     emigrated to Canada when he was in his early teens, and to which
     he returned as a young man, when I made his acquaintance. He has
     begun to document his own family background in the journal Lacio
     Drom.

     Plucked by the London School of Oriental and African Studies in
     the mid-1960s from life as a spray-painter for Bush Rank and
     sometime road manager for the English band The Outlaws, he has
     since become a distinguished academic with an international
     reputation in the field of Creole linguistics, and some 160
     publications to his name.

     One might think that such an established reputation would make it
     easier for him to intervene in the field of Romani Studies. This
     has not been the case: there exist today non-Gypsy experts on
     Gypsy affairs who, by and large, have the field neatly sewn up
     among themselves. The questions to which these experts address
     themselves - and I write as one such myself - are determined by
     academic and policy schema external to the Gypsies' own
     realities. If they are anthropologists, they are concerned with
     matters like kinship terminology; if they are linguists, with,
     say, the genitive construction, and if they are social workers,
     with school attendance. They are not concerned with acknowledging
     the crimes of society against this people. They usually
     concentrate on the "problems" of the present, and either ignore
     history or present a stylized and inaccurate account of it.
     Despite the wealth of documentation to which Hancock refers, both
     popular and scholarly accounts of Gypsies still tend to maunder
     on about their "mysterious history." The very fact of slavery can
     be almost suppressed. Anthropologists have tended to present the
     Rom as primordially nomadic, building their theories around this,
     ignoring the fact that many of their "subjects" are only four
     generations from slavery.

     Nor have Gypsies in general been able to challenge these
     perceptions. At the time of liberation, the freed slaves had, as
     Hancock shows, the lowest social status of any group, while
     runaway and rebel slaves were considered as criminals. Ex-slaves
     tried to make out as free craftsmen, or like their nomadic kin,
     or else tried to assimilate: to be anything but an ex-slave. It
     took a period of detachment and reassessment before anyone could
     turn round and say "No! These rebel slaves were heroes."

     This was the message of a remarkable novel, Le Prix de la
     Liberté, (1955) by a French Rom, Matéo Maximoff, whose own
     grandfather was born in slavery in Rumania. This novel deals with
     the dying days of Romani slavery when, as Panaitescu (1941) and
     Stahl (1980) have shown, slavery and serfdom were no longer
     economic propositions in a society that was being drawn into the
     capitalist world system. But as the prices in the slave markets
     tumbled, and French-educated Rumanian liberals called for
     emancipation, many slave-owners increased rather than abated
     their cruelties to their declining assets. Maximoff's novel
     follows one small group, which flees from an estate to join the
     rebels in the mountains. He confronts the Kalderash Rom people
     with their own historical shame as ex-slaves, and seeks to
     replace that shame by justified indignation, and by pride in the
     resistance that did occur.  The leading figure in this novel,
     Isvan, is loosely based on Maximoff's own grandfather. Isvan is
     educated by his master and becomes his librarian-cum-secretary,
     and has to face the dilemma between remaining in this comfortable
     and privileged position, or joining the revolt of his people. He
     is, in fact, the prototype of the modern civil rights Gypsy
     activist-and perhaps of anti-colonialist politicians in general.
     He is also a marginal man, a liberal intellectual amongst an
     illiterate tribal people. After being educated with his master's
     children, he has to endure his own family's suspicions, and being
     thought a traitor; yet without his knowledge of his master's
     world, no revolt could hope to succeed.

     Maximoff, the novelist and preacher, used his moral imagination
     to recreate this world for the reader. Hancock, the scholar, has
     used his academic talents to establish, beyond any question, by
     wilfully blind gajé, its documentary reality. The earlier title
     of this study was Land of Pain, and the pain in question was
     partly their own, in coming to terms with this bitter past.

     Both Hancock and Maximoff are latter-day Isvans. The market for
     Le Prix de la Liberté and Land of Pain has been hard for
     publishers to comprehend. Le Prix de la Liberté was hacked to
     pieces by its first editors, and though it has remained in print
     in German, was out of print in French for many years, and Romani
     and English versions have yet to be published. The Pariah
     Syndrome, as Land of Pain appeared in a roughly mimeographed form
     which soon became unavailable, and was thereafter passed from
     hand to hand in ever more roughly Xeroxed copies across Europe.
     Their very unavailability has seemed to increase the demand for
     them from the slowly gathering numbers of literate Gypsies across
     the world. Together with The Destiny of Europe's Gypsies by
     Kenrick and Puxon (1972), which deals with the Nazi genocide
     dealt with in the present work, and due to appear in a
     UNESCO-sponsored Romani-language edition in 1987, these books
     form the foundation of a prose literature which will actually
     serve the needs of the emergent Romani nation. Whether it is the
     past, or the future, of the Romani peoples that one wishes to
     understand, the publication of this edition of The Pariah
     Syndrome could not be more timely.

     Thames Polytechnic
     London,1986

                   --------------------------------------

     Foreword to the Patrin Web Journal edition

     This book was the first in English to deal with the enslavement
     of the Romani people in Romania. When it first appeared in 1987,
     no one expected that massive political and social changes would
     begin to take place in Eastern Europe just two years later.  With
     the death of Ceaucescu in 1989 and the shift to democracy in
     Romania, many more documents concerning those more than five
     terrible centuries have come to light, and our knowledge of the
     nature of Gypsy slavery, and the implications it has for our
     understanding of the world view and character of those descended
     from it -- the Vlax Roma -- are just now beginning to be
     understood.

     Together with the Porrajmos (the Holocaust), the period of
     slavery stands as the single most tragic event in the European
     experience of my people. Together they must form an integral part
     of the textbooks in the schools, for not only must we not forget
     our history, but those who are responsible for these crimes
     against humanity must also not be allowed to forget; for if such
     things fade into oblivion, they can too easily happen again.

     Ian Hancock
     Buda, Texas, 1999

                   --------------------------------------

     Introduction

     The enslavement of Gypsies came to an end something over a
     century ago. It may be fairly estimated that well over half of
     the entire Romani population of Europe at the time of its
     institution in the 14th century were thus subjugated and, during
     the following five hundred years, were the mainstay of the
     economy which oppressed them. While this situation endured in
     eastern Europe, western European nations were transporting people
     to India, Africa and the Americas as an unpaid labor force, for
     no other reason than that they were Gypsies. Despite these facts,
     the Gypsy presence is not acknowledged in a single treatment of
     the Atlantic slave trade - over one hundred were examined in the
     preparation of this work - and not one of the principal sources
     for Balkan history, such as the works of Scherill, Stavrianos or
     Wolff, deals with the subject at all.

     It is understandable, though not particularly admirable, that
     there should be deliberate suppression in modern Rumania of this
     shameful period in their history. I have been told by two
     scholars from that country, one of them an historian, that this
     topic is not dealt with in the Rumanian school system, nor is
     likely to be in the foreseeable future.  Attempts to obtain any
     kind of official statement in this connection from Rumanian
     governmental sources remain consistently unacknowledged. In
     Rumania itself, Beck encountered prejudice against the Tsigani
     (Gypsy) population at all levels, a situation he has described in
     a recently-published paper in which he concludes that
      

          Romanians who are in administrative government and
          political positions of authority, explain the Tsigani
          situation by referring to America. "You know," they
          say, "The Tsigani are like your Negroes": foreign,
          lazy, shiftless, untrustworthy and black (1985:105).

      
     The reluctance to recognise this by agencies outside of eastern
     Europe is less easy to understand, however. For example, the
     Slavic and East European Journal, the East European Quarterly,
     the Slavonic and East European Review and the Slavic Review:
     American Quarterly of Soviet and East European Studies all
     declined to publish an article based upon this study, the latter
     giving the reason that it was not an appropriate submission ...
     [since] the focus is specifically on the Rom." The North American
     Chapter of the Gypsy Lore Society did acknowledge in one of their
     own anthologies, after receiving a copy of the same article, that
     in the course of the Romani diaspora into Europe some groups
     remained in the Balkans, some possibly in servitude" (Salo,
     1982:263).

     The world does not yet appear ready to believe that the
     enslavement of Gypsies ever happened, or that it was significant
     enough to warrant being brought to the attention of the larger
     community. In Romani, there is the saying that kon mangel te
     kerel tumendar roburen chi shocha phenela tumen o chachimos pa
     tumare perintonde, "he who wants to enslave you will never tell
     you the truth about your forefathers." We cannot wait for others
     to document this truth; our forefathers' history must be told by
     ourselves.

     While the enslavement of Gypsies has been abolished for over a
     century, equally inhumane forms of oppression continue to be
     perpetuated into the present day. I have tried to incorporate
     examples of some of these into the picture here too. The
     situation which led eventually to Hitler's attempt to exterminate
     the entire Gypsy people is dealt with, not as something separate
     or unique, but as just one other episode in the roster of
     persecution which has followed Gypsies through history. In many
     ways, little has changed since the end of the Second World War;
     the persecutions continue, but are simply not centralized in the
     same way. Official statements calling for the sterilization,
     deportation and even extermination of Gypsies are still being
     released today in both eastern and western European countries.
     In the United States, history books exclude any references to
     Gypsy American history; the several hundred thousand Romani
     Americans are the only ethnic minority in the country against
     whom laws are still in effect, and who are portrayed negatively
     in school textbooks. The responses from governmental and
     educational sources are that the Gypsies referred to in the laws
     or in children's literature are not real people, and have nothing
     to do with the ethnic  population of the same name. And yet this
     Gypsy has been created out of the Romani population by the gajé,
     and become institutionalized in Euro-American folklore, and it is
     real Gypsies who suffer because of it. I have tried to account
     for this by an assumption that there has been a tacit
     manipulation of the Romani population by the establishment which,
     for its own purposes, sustains the "mythical" identity it has
     created, and resists efforts on the part of those thus defined to
     adjust such an image. Sibley has addressed this most clearly:
      

          It is notable that myth contributes in a significant
          way to the shaping of images of groups that do not fit
          the dominant social model. The possibility that the
          characterization of social groups like ... Gypsies may
          be based on myth is rarely considered, particularly in
          governmental circles, probably because these myths are
          functional-they serve to define the boundaries of the
          dominant system. Accounts of non-conforming behaviour
          assume the form of a romantic myth, or they involve
          amputations of deviancy, which are also largely
          mythical; the romantic image, located at a distance or
          in the past, necessarily puts the minority on the
          outside (1981:195-196).

      
     Only cursory acknowledgement of the five centuries of slavery
     endured by the Balkan Gypsies has yet been made; no detailed
     treatments at all have appeared in English. Potra's 376-page
     collection of documents relating to Gypsy slavery, written
     entirely in Rumanian, is the only substantial study to have
     appeared to date, and the only reviewer to my knowledge who has
     discussed this work in English, Frederick Ackerley, maintained
     that reading it was a "pleasure" and a "delight" because it gave
     him a chance to practice his Rumanian. His review dealt with the
     Romani words the book contained rather than with the awful facts
     of Gypsy history it revealed (1942:69-71).

     Hardly much more is available on the fate of Gypsies in the
     Holocaust, and only one full-length book in English has been
     published on that. While their ex-owners were compensated to the
     sum of 96 francs per slave at the time of abolition (Blaramberg,
     1885:802), nothing was forthcoming from the Rumanian government
     for the freed slaves themselves, no orientation programs set up
     to integrate the newly-liberated into society, no assistance with
     housing or health care. Gypsies were left to fend for themselves
     in a hostile environment, totally unequipped to deal with the
     anti-Gypsy laws in effect everywhere throughout Europe and, when
     they came here, North America.  And in the same way, nothing was
     done to help Gypsies after the war.  None were called to testify
     at the Nuremberg Trials or any of the subsequent war crime
     hearings, and no reparation has ever been forthcoming. No Gypsies
     were invited to participate in the formation of the U.S.
     Holocaust Memorial Council, established by President Carter in
     1979 to honor the memory of all who perished in the Third Reich
     and, despite three years lobbying in Washington on the part of a
     number of American Romani organizations to protest against this,
     the Office of Presidential Appointments voted in 1986 to exclude
     once again any Gypsy representation on the 65-member council.

     A people which have been denied access to the means by which
     other persecuted groups have been able to fight back - schooling,
     settled housing, opportunities for civil and political
     organization - remain at the mercy of the popular press, and
     herein lies one of the biggest problems of all. Journalists
     invariably tend to exploit the fictitious image of Gypsies,
     catering to a public familiar only with the Borrovian stereotype
     they help sustain, and fail to investigate in their reports the
     real problems which Gypsies must deal with on a day-to-day basis.
     When such issues have occasionally been covered, it has been in
     terms not usually sympathetic to the Gypsies' own situation.

     If this is not a cause for concern among the non-Gypsy
     population, if that population is reluctant to be reminded about
     what it has done, and what it continues to do, then the Romani
     voice must be louder. But one way or another, it will be heard.

     Dedzhava zumavas te haljaras anda soste si kachi but
     bisicharimata anda le gadzhende te prindzharen amaro rrevdimos
     thaj amari dukh. Ba fal-ame ke vorta mangen le gadzhe te garaven
     kakala prami; ande kodole dzhes ferdi 'l Rroma achen, kaj si
     narado etniko amerikano potriva kaste si zakonurja. Pashchi
     pandzh shel miji amare phralenge thaj phenjange mudardiline
     ande'l bov le Hitleroske, kana zumadjas tistara te prepedil amaro
     njamo (Hancock, 1980a) and'o Baro Porrajmos, numa akhardilo manaj
     jekh korkoro Rrom ka e Kris Nurembergaki. Arakhle pashchi kodo
     numero lengo slobodo el dzhutestar le rrobimaske, 'kh cirra maj
     katar shel bersh anglal, ande 1864; vushoro shaj gichisaras ke
     maj katar dopash anda o narodo integro ankerdile telal, tela el
     tiraxande le gadzhende balkanutne. Anda kodole pandzh shel bersh
     o berand samas la cexrake kaj sas e zor lenge themenge: kodzhja
     zor kaj pharejadja p'amende.

     Antunch tradine amen le gadzhe sar rroburja thaj chora, k'e
     Afrika, th'e Amerika aj vi k'e Indija, phuv amare rruduchinenge.
     Manaj nishte klishki kaj den kachja shtirja. Mashkar le klishke
     le maj dzhangle pa e istorija evropjani vorka balkanutni, chi
     arakhena tume dazhi jekh korkoro svato. Bilengo apojde musaj te
     mothos e lumja. Kam-prindzhardjuvas; kamashundjuvas!

     Ian Hancock
     International Romani Union
     Buda, Texas, 1986

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                             I.  Out of India
                                   

     The Romani people (Roma, or Gypsies) are of northern Indian
     origin, having moved out of that area probably some time between
     AD 800 and AD 950, migrating westwards into Europe and arriving
     there some time after AD 1100. According to Sampson (1923),
     linguistic evidence suggests that the ancestors of all Gypsy
     populations, whom we may refer to as the Domba, following Kaufman
     (1984), left India at the same time. He believed them to have
     constituted a single race speaking the same language, which
     subsequently diverged into two linguistic branches: the Nawar,
     Kurbat, Karachi and Helebi now found throughout Egypt and the
     Middle East on the one hand, and the Boga in Armenia and eastern
     Turkey, and the Rom or Roma in Europe, on the other:

                                  [Chart]

     On the basis of more recent scholarship, however, there is some
     reason to believe that the three populations usually thought to
     comprise the descendants of the Domba may in fact have each left
     India at different times and under different circumstances
     (Hancock, 1986a); though each exhibits considerable lexical
     adoption from Persian, for example, there are no items shared by
     all three branches, and the same is true for the Armenian items
     in Central and Western Gypsy. If the same people had passed
     through the same areas at the same time, we would expect to find
     that at least some of the same words had been adopted. A further
     argument suggesting that these last may also have left India
     later than Eastern Gypsy, resides in the fact that their language
     retains traces of a third grammatical gender, which had become
     lost in the Central and North-Western Indic dialects by the
     beginning of the Mediaeval period. Presumably the European and
     Armenian branches separated after this loss was completed, since
     there is no evidence of a three-gender system in either, though
     vestiges are to be found in Domari.

     The reasons for this exodus of thousands of miles over a period
     of as many years are not well understood. It is possible that the
     Domba who first left India did so as prisoners of war, or else as
     captive entertainers, and as marginals were carried further and
     further westwards on the crest of a succession of Middle Eastern
     wars. An alternative and more recent hypothesis suggests that the
     original population was a mixed one, consisting of
     Rajasthani-speaking Rajput cavalry together with their
     camp-followers who, coming from various different linguistic
     groups within the Shudra caste, moved westwards into Iran some
     time during the 10th century and were unable to find their way
     back into India again. As an isolated population in foreign
     territory it remained intact, social barriers slowly giving way
     as their commonly-shared Indian backgrounds increasingly became a
     unifying factor. While this might account for the diverse Indic
     content of the Romani lexicon and for the name Rom, and perhaps
     even for the traditional association of Gypsies with horses as a
     means of travel and an item of trade (and, through their racing
     and care, a source of income), concrete evidence to support this
     explanation is lacking. In any case, the boundaries separating
     language and caste in India were less rigid than the traditional
     studies have indicated, and the presence of both Central and
     North-Western features which Turner (1927) believed to be
     evidence of the routes of the first Gypsy migrations, is not a
     characteristic limited solely to Romani.

     There is no real evidence of why the move was made from Iran into
     Armenia. In the late 19th century the Dutch historian De Goeje
     suggested that the ancestors of those Gypsies were the 27,000
     Zott captured by the Byzantines in AD 855 and taken
     north-westwards into Syria; but there is no evidence to show that
     these were the Domba, and the language of their descendants,
     Jakati, is a dialect of Arabic, not Indian. Reasons for the move
     from Armenia into the western Byzantine Empire are perhaps better
     understood, and was the result of yet another invasion: that of
     the Seljuks from the East, who ousted.  Orthodox Christianity and
     instituted Islam. Soulis tells us
      

          ...we must conclude that the appearance of the Gypsies
          in Byzantinelands is undoubtedly connected with the
          Seljuk raids in Armenia where the Gypsies, who
          subsequently appeared in Europe, had stayed for a long
          time, as the great number of Armenian loan-words in
          their vocabulary testifies.  These continuous raids,
          which caused the dislocation of the Armenian people and
          resulted at the end of the eleventh century in the
          creation of Little Armenia in Sicilia, must have been
          responsible also for the westward movement of the
          Gypsies and their invasion of Byzantine Anatolia
          (1961:163).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     The Balkans and the Eastern Mediterranean in 1355 (Holmboe and
     Holmboe, 1970:53)

     Estimates of the dates of arrival of Gypsies in Europe differ
     from scholar to scholar, though Bercovici's claim that "Gypsies
     were already on the banks of the Danube when the Roman legions
     appeared" is surely an example of the kind of overstatement for
     which he is well known. The Rumanian scholar Bogdan Petreceicu
     Haędeu has analysed a number of documents, first referred to by
     Bataillard (1849:50-51) indicating that Gypsies were in the
     Balkans, and had started to be enslaved, some time prior to AD
     1300; the dates and the validity of these have been discussed by
     Soulis (1961:161).

     With Mohammed II's successful defeat of Constantine, emperor of
     what remained of Byzantium in 1453, the Byzantine Empire and the
     Middle Ages came to an end; scholars and artists fleeing to the
     West helped lay the foundations for the European Renaissance.

     In the Byzantine Empire, which lasted for eleven centuries,
     Gypsies constituted an oppressed caste, although perhaps not as
     slaves. This was due in part to their having been regarded as
     Muslims in a Christian empire (and later as Christians, when the
     Ottomans occupied the region). Relationships with non-Gypsies
     appear in fact to have been more cordial during this period than
     they were to become later in Europe. Others were confused with
     members of the heretic sect of Athiganoi, hence the later names
     Cigane, Zigeuner, Tsigane, &c., current in various European
     languages meaning 'Gypsy' (discussed e.g. in Groome,
     1899:xxii-xxiii, and Starr, 1936). Occupying this social
     position, they were forbidden to enter churches, or to intermarry
     with whites, and were permitted to follow certain occupations
     only.

     Conservative Romani dialects remain two thirds or more Indian in
     their basic lexicon and grammar, retaining in fact features which
     have become lost in their neo-Indic cognates. Romani contains a
     high proportion of Byzantine Greek vocabulary also, acquired
     during the period spent in Byzantium, and which above all
     reflects their position as domestics and artisans in that
     society. The fact that Gypsies were artisans was significant, in
     light of what was to follow in Europe.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                         II.  Reception in Europe
                                  

     The documents which Hashdeu translated and analysed (1867, 1877)
     were found among papers in the archives of a monastery in
     Tismana, in a part of Little Wallachia called Oltenia. One of
     these, bearing the date 1387 and signed by Mircea (Mirsha) the
     Great, indicates that Gypsies had been in Wallachia for almost a
     century before that. Another of the documents was in the form of
     a receipt for forty families of Gypsy slaves presented as a gift;
     another was a receipt for some slaves given to the monastery at
     Prizren by the King of Serbia, Emperor Dushan, dated 1348,
     although Miklosich (1875, vol. iii, pp.6-7) questioned whether
     the wording in fact refers to Gypsies, an interpretation first
     given it by Shafarik (n.d., p.56). Miklosich's reservations were
     supported in a later study by Novakovich (1911:383), who makes a
     case for the reference being to cobblers rather than to Gypsies.
     Still another was a bill of sale for three Gypsies, the cost of
     whom was forty horseshoes. The original language of these
     references, two of which are reproduced here, appears to be
     Church Slavic. They were published first in Hashdeu (1867:191),
     and later in Miklosich (loc. cit.) and Serboianu (1930:45-46),
     though in the latter they are reproduced very inaccurately. In
     Miklosich are found
      

          His Majesty confirms the receipt of the gifts made by
          my late uncle, Vladislav, voivod at Saint Anthony of
          Voditsa, namely the village of Zhidovishtitsa, the
          orchards of Bahnino, the grain mills along the
          Bistritsa River, and forty families of Gypsies.

          There are also some Gypsies: the first, the chief
          artisan Raiko, then Bojko, son of Zlatar, Basil, son of
          Sukjas, for whom he is to give forty horseshoes each
          year.

      
     The reasons for the institution of slavery in the Balkans were
     economic as much as anything else; at the beginning of the Middle
     Ages, eastern Europe in particular was profiting from its trade
     with the Orient. When the Muslims moved westwards into the
     Byzantine Empire, then a Greek-speaking, Christian nation, they
     cut off European access to the East, and consequently to the Holy
     Land as well. The maritime  expansion and resulting settlement of
     the Americas were a direct outcome of this: an attempt to find
     alternative trade routes to the Indies.

     Also resulting from the Islamic encroachment were the Crusades, a
     series of holy wars which lasted from 1099 to 1212. There were
     two routes which the Crusaders took from Europe to Jerusalem, one
     across northern Europe through Holland, Germany and Poland,
     thence south along the Danube, and the other through Hungary and
     Wallachia, both of these routes leading to ports on the Black
     Sea.  Because of the constant military traffic through southern
     Europe, and the prosperity that feeding and equipping an army
     brings to a society in time of war, the Balkans flourished, while
     western Europe entered a period of slow decline. Balkan trade
     also prospered, since the flow of soldiers made the trade routes
     safer. Because of the losses of war, there was a gradual
     depletion of manpower throughout south-eastern Europe. The
     peasantry moved up in the social system to become the new middle
     class in Moldavia, Transylvania and Wallachia (Panaitescu, 1941).

     While this was happening, the Tatars were invading Europe in a
     succession of attacks between 1241 and the mid-1400s. Because of
     the decline, and eventual fall, of Byzantium in the middle of the
     15th century,  and because of the Mongol invasions further north
     in Europe, and the Moorish domination in the southwest, a strong
     anti-Islamic sentiment had become very firmly established. This
     was the situation which Gypsies met upon their arrival in Europe.

                                   * * *

     At first, the virtual absence of a working class made welcome the
     skills which Gypsies brought with them from Byzantium and beyond.
     Two of these skills were smelting and the manufacture of firearms
     and shot, probably learnt in Armenia and the Byzantine Empire:
     the words in Armenian for both 'furnace' and 'tin', and the Greek
     words for 'lead', 'copper', 'nails' and 'horseshoes' have become
     a part of Romani vocabulary everywhere throughout Europe. But
     this attitude was not to last. Because of their strange language
     and appearance, and their dark skin, they were believed in
     Christian areas to be Tatars, intruders from the lands now
     occupied by the Muslims. This was especially true in areas remote
     from Islamic contact, where the local population had no
     first-hand idea of what actual Tatars looked like. Even today,
     two of the words for 'Gypsy' in the German language are Tatar and
     Heiden (i.e. 'Heathen', 'non-Christian'). There is indication
     that in Muslim-held areas, Gypsies were regarded as Christians,
     or at least as non-Muslims, and treated accordingly in terms of
     taxation and status. They may well have begun to acquire some
     aspects of  Christianity in Armenia: the Romani word for
     'Easter', for example, is derived from Armenian, although an
     earlier religion, which survives only in fragments today, appears
     to have its roots in Zoroastrianism, which could have been
     acquired in either India or Iran, or Manichaeanism, which existed
     in both Iran and Syria at the time of the exodus through those
     lands (Hancock, 1987).

     Kenrick and Puxon believe that the present-day hatred of Gypsies
     in Europe is a folk-memory of this first encounter, stemming from
     "the conviction that blackness denotes inferiority and evil
     [which] was well rooted in the western mind. The nearly black
     skins of many Gypsies marked them out to be victims of this
     prejudice" (1972:19). European folklore contains a number of
     references to the Gypsies' complexion: a Greek proverb says "Go
     to the Gypsy children and choose the whitest," and in Yiddish,
     "The same sun that whitens the linen darkens the Gypsy," and "No
     washing ever whitens the black Gypsy." One word in Romani which
     Gypsies in some countries use as a name for themselves means
     'black', and is an Indian word of ultimately Dravidian origin:
     Caló, among the Spanish Gypsies, and Kalo in Finland. Caucasian
     non-Gypsies are called Parné or Panorré "whites" in some Romani
     dialects, even by fair-skinned Gypsies. Hoyland repeats the
     Elizabethan belief that this dark skin was acquired: "Gypsies
     would long ago have been divested of their swarthy complexions,
     had they discontinued their filthy mode of living" (1816:39-40).

     The closing-off of the trade routes, and the continuing necessity
     of feeding the soldiers and the rest of the population, began to
     strain the economy severely, and the establishment of a large,
     unpaid labor force to produce food and goods more cheaply was
     slowly becoming a reality. Measures soon began to be taken to
     keep Gypsies in southern Europe by force, so necessary had they
     become to the economy.  Gypsies, in turn, made efforts to get
     away from this situation, and many successfully managed to move
     on into northern and western Europe. In some places, however,
     such as Germany and Poland, they met with such cruelty, since
     they were believed to be Muslims (Hancock, 1980a), that they
     turned back to seek refuge in the mountains and forests of
     southern Europe, as a result finding themselves once again in the
     situation from which they had previously fled. Gypsies, then,
     were quickly incorporated, by legislation and by force, into the
     system which came totally to rely upon them during the five
     centuries which followed.

                                   * * *

     Some writers, such as Jirechek (1919), Potra (1939) and Chelcea
     (1944) have suggested not only that slavery was an inherent
     condition of the Gypsies, originating in their pariah status in
     the Sudra caste in India, but that they were slaves from the very
     time of their arrival in south-eastern Europe, since they were
     brought in as such by the conquering Tatars. This was challenged
     by Soulis (1961:162), who cites documentation indicating the
     presence of Gypsies in the Balkans prior to the arrival in the
     same area of the Turks. This has been upheld more recently by
     Gheorghe (1983), who believes that part of the Romani population
     migrated into Europe through the Caucasus and Crimea, turning
     south into the Balkans. He further believes that Gypsies were
     allowed to move freely and work unmolested for a century or more
     before social and economic factors drew them into a situation of
     enslavement.

     According to Gheorghe, it was the practice of the Rumanians to
     use prisoners taken in war as slaves. Citing Grigoras (1966) as
     his source, he gives an example of this involving Gypsies:
      

          It is recorded ... that the Moldavian prince, Stephan
          the Great, after a victorious was with his Wallachian
          neighbours (1471), transported into Moldavia 17,000
          Tsigani (Gypsies) in order to use their labour force.
          These figures are, maybe, exaggerated; nevertheless,
          they suggest the high economic value attached to
          Gypsies (op. cit., p.16).

      
     He goes on to demonstrate that Gypsies so taken could accordingly
     be given, along with other property, as tribut or taxes by the
     barons to the princes, and that slavery as a national institution
     developed gradually through such means.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                      III.  Conditions Under Slavery
                                   

     Once human beings are made the possessions of others, they become
     stripped of their identity as people and are seen simply as
     objects. The psychology underlying this is, among other things,
     probably guilt; it is easier to live with a situation such as
     slavery if the victims are dehumanized. Article I(37) of the
     Moldavian Civil Code for 1833 admitted, but dismissed, the moral
     wrong of slavery:
      

          Although slavery goes against the natural law of man,
          it has nevertheless been practiced in this principality
          since antiquity ...

      
     Gypsies were seen as "debased creatures, inferior even to the
     animals" by at least one observer, Wickenhauer, whose rationale
     for such a statement was that if they had had any redeeming
     qualities at all, Gypsies would not have been slaves (Potra,
     1935:296).

     The earliest legal documentation referring to Gypsies as slaves
     date back to the reigns of Rudolph IV and Stephan Dushan (Urosh
     IV), 1331-1355, who made one fifth of their number the property
     of the monasteries and landowners (Ozanne, 1878:65, Kinder and
     Hilgemann, 1964:205). They are referred to variously as sclavi,
     scindromi or robie in the documents, Rumanian and Slavic terms
     meaning "slave."

     Throughout the Balkan principalities, Gypsies were distributed in
     the following way: the overall population was divided into house
     slaves (tsigani de casatsi) and field slaves (tsigani de ogor).
     The former were divided further into three categories of Slaves
     of the Crown or State, namely the sclavi domneshti (noblemen),
     sclavi curte (court) and sclavi gospod (householders), and one
     category of Slaves of the Church (sclavi monastiveshti). The
     field slaves were likewise divided into two categories, those of
     the boyars or barons, who were known as the sclavi coevestsi, and
     those of the small landowners, known as the sclavi de mosii.
     There were three principal occupations among the Slaves of the
     Crown:  that of rudari (or aurari) or goldwasher, that of ursari
     or bear-trainer, and that of lingurari or carver of wooden
     spoons. In addition there was a class of laborers known as
     laieshi, individuals who were allowed to move with some freedom
     over the estates, and who did a variety of jobs. In this group
     were also included the lautari or musicians (properly
     'fiddlers'). Slaves of the Church included the vatrashi, who were
     grooms, coachmen, cooks and Petty merchants, and numbers of
     laieshi. The different occupations followed by the laieshi have
     supplied the names of some of the vici, or clans, found among the
     contemporary Vlax (i.e. "Wallachian" or Danubian")* Gypsies:
     kirpachi 'basket-makers', kovachi 'blacksmiths', zlatari
     'goldwashers', churari sieve-makers', chivute 'whitewashers' and
     so on. One characteristic of Balkan slavery was that the slaves
     themselves were required to give tribute to the State or, in the
     case of the laieshi, to their owners, so that a proportion of
     what they were able to find for themselves was then taken from
     them.

     *Care should be taken not to confuse geographical with linguistic
     classifications. Speakers of dialects of the Vlax or Danubian
     branch of Romani have spread to many parts of the world from the
     Balkans, following the abolition of slavery in the mid 19th
     century. As a linguistic category, the Balkan branch includes
     dialects spoken principally in Bulgaris and Greece, which differ
     in substantial ways from the Vlax dialects.

     [Illustration with caption]
     Goldwashers in the Banat

     The job of those involved in goldwashing has been remarked upon
     by a number of travelers through the region, and descriptions may
     be found in several sources (such as Dembsher, 1777, Grellmann,
     1807, Hoyland, 1816, Clarke, 1818, Groome, 1899, and in
     particular, Wilsdorf, 1984). Grellmann's account from the late
     18th century indicates that, unpleasant as their job was, gold
     washers were seen as a privileged group, and distinct from the
     slaves:
      

          Goldwashing, in the rivers, is another occupation, by
          which many thousand Gipseys, of both sexes, procure a
          livelihood, in the Banat, Transylvania, Wallachia and
          Moldavia ... In Wallachia and Moldavia, none of the
          bojars' slaves, thence called bojaresk (bojar Gipseys),
          are suffered to meddle with goldwashing; that being a
          liberty granted only to those who, like other subjects,
          are immediately under the prince, denominated domnesk
          (princely Gipseys): which are also subdivided into
          three classes; the first named Rudar; the second Ursar;
          and the third Lajaschen. The Rudars alone have the
          licence above mentioned; the others are obliged to seek
          a different means of obtaining support. Each person is
          forced to pay a certain tribute to government (op.
          cit., pp. 51-52).

      
     Those engaged to entertain their owners with music have also been
     described by their visitors; one such account, which contains a
     description of the naju or Pan-pipe, appeared in a work published
     in 1777:
      

          Even though the music is just as monotonous and
          miserable as the dance, it is the Gypsies who are
          charged with tickling their [owners'] ears.  The
          violin, the German guitar, and a pipe of eight reeds
          into which they blow while passing it back and forth
          non-stop across the lips, are the local instruments
          (Carra, 1777:176).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Lautaris, ca. 1850

     There were restrictions on the Gypsies' playing music for their
     own enjoyment, however; a set of instructions for dealing with
     one's slaves issued by the Exchequer of the Hapsburg Empire at
     about the same time, ruled that "the Gypsies' new masters were to
     beat them if they worked badly, and [they] were instructed to
     take particular care that they 'wasted no time on music"' (Guy,
     in Koudelka, 1975). Maria Theresa's list of rules ended with the
     direction that "They shall be permitted to amuse themselves with
     music, or other things, only when there is no field work for them
     to do" (Hoyland, 1816:74).

     Slaves belonging to private landowners were not subject to any
     laws higher than those of whoever owned them, and although the
     churches and monasteries were governed by the law of the land, it
     was their slaves who were treated most cruelly of all. The boyars
     were also quite ruthless, although they usually left matters of
     discipline to their overseer (called a ciocoi or a vatave). In
     one lurid account, Bercovici describes how
      

          The boyars had a special penal code for Gypsies;
          beating on the soles of the feet until the flesh hung
          in shreds ... when a runaway was caught, his neck was
          placed in an iron band lined with sharp points so that
          he could neither move his head nor lie down to rest.
          The boyars had no right to kill their slaves, but there
          was nothing said about slowly torturing them to death.
          No law forbade the boyar to take the most beautiful
          girls as his mistresses, or to separate wives from
          husbands, and children from parents (1928:81).

      
     Although, as Bercovici states, the laws of both Moldavia and
     Wallachia granted no right to the slave owners to kill their
     slaves, it is recorded in the diary of a French journalist, one
     Félix Colson, writing about a visit to the Balkans in 1839 that
     despite its common occurrence, not one boyar had ever been
     prosecuted for the murder of a Gypsy. One account tells us that
     "A Gypsy postillion or courier is often shot through the head or
     flogged to death upon any cause or no cause, without the murder
     being noticed, for 'he is only a zigeuner"' (Chamber's Journal,
     1856:274). Colson, whose diary served as the basis of an
     excellent article by Roleine, described a typical visit to the
     home of one of these boyars:
      

          When our traveller arrives, he is led to a couch,
          whereupon six young women appear. Discreetly, and with
          care, they wash his hands, while others serve him with
          refreshments. Their skins are hardly brown; some of
          them are blonde and beautiful. Handsome too are the
          boys who, in groups of three, will light his pipe. No,
          the domestics do not work themselves to death; it's not
          unusual some times to find a hundred or more working in
          the same household ... could this kind of life be
          Heaven on Earth for them?

          Let's rejoin Colson at the dinner table: "Misery is so
          clearly painted on the faces of these slaves that, if
          you happened to glance at one, you'd lose your
          appetite."

          The Gypsy slaves are addressed by Christian names.
          Basil seems to be the most common, but they are also
          given house-names, such as Pharoah, Bronze, Dusky,
          Dopey or Toad, or for the women, Witch, Camel, Dishrag
          or Whore.

          Never does a group revolt. In the evening, the master
          makes his choice among the beautiful girls - maybe he
          will offer some of them to the guest - whence these
          light-skinned, blonde-haired Gypsies. The next morning
          at dawn, the Frenchman is awakened by piercing shrieks:
          it is punishment time. The current penalty is a hundred
          lashes for a broken plate of a badly-curled lock of
          hair ... it is at this time that the abominable falague
          is finally outlawed: this was when the slaves were hung
          up in the air and the soles of their feet were shredded
          with whips made of bull-sinews (Roleine, 1979:111).

      
     The offspring from these unwelcome sexual unions automatically
     became slaves. It was this exploitation, as Colson noted, which
     was largely responsible for the fact that many Gypsies are now
     fair-skinned; Cohn (1973:63) estimates the mean percentage of
     white genetic mixture as 60 percent. The mixing of white and
     Romani blood was not able to take place among the Netoci or
     runaway slaves (discussed at pp. 38-39), who lived as fugitives
     in the forests and mountains away from settled habitation; Ozanne
     comments on the distinct physical types amongst Gypsies in
     Rumania, which he visited in the 19th century:
      

          There are two distinct types of Gypsies in Roumania.
          One set have crisp hair and thick lips, with a very
          dark complexion. The others have a fine profile,
          regular features, good hair and an olive complexion
          (1878:62).

      
     Ozanne wrongly attributed this difference to two separate waves
     of Romani migration into the area: the first, descendants of the
     original Gypsies, and the second, refugees from India as a result
     of the invasions of the 'Tatars' Ghengis Khan and Tamerlane in
     the Middle Ages, though it is clear that the lighter-skinned
     individuals, nearly all house-slaves, could in fact attribute
     their complexions to interbreeding with Europeans. While Romani
     women were thus used by their white owners, Romani men were
     evidently seen as a sexual threat to Rumanian womanhood. Among
     the sclavi domneshti, there was a category called the skopici,
     Gypsy males who had been castrated as boys and whose job it was
     to drive the coaches of the women of the aristocracy without
     their being in fear of molestation.

     [Illustration with caption]
     The forge of a ferari or iron-worker in Wallachia

     Another account from a much earlier period describes the peculiar
     cruelty of Vlad Tepov V, better remembered as Vlad the Impaler,
     who came to the Wallachian throne in 1476. He disposed of some
     scindromes, or Gypsy slaves, presumably for sport, thus:
      

          He invited them to a festival, made them all drunk, and
          threw them into the fire. Another amusement of his was
          the construction of an enormous cauldron, into which he
          thrust his victims. Then, filling it with water, he
          made it boil, and took pleasure in the anguish of the
          sufferers.  When the people whom he impaled writhed in
          agony, he had their hands and feet nailed to the posts.
          Some ... were compelled to eat [a] man roasted (Ozanne,
          1878:189-190).

      
     Seventeenth-century laws relating to Gypsies are found in the
     forty-article Code of Basil the Wolf, Hospodar of Moldavia
     (1634-1654). Examples include
      

          Section 8    If the Gypsy slave of a boyard or any
          other proprietor, his woman or one of their children
          steal once, twice or thrice a chicken, a goose or any
          other trifle, they shall be pardoned; but if they steal
          something more valuable, they shall be punished like
          robbers.

          Section 14   He who may discover a treasure by means of
          sorcery, shall not be allowed to touch it, the whole
          belonging to the hospodar.

          Section 28   A slave who rapes a woman shall be
          condemned to be burnt alive.

          Section 39   [The free man] who, yielding to love,
          meets a girl in the road and embraces her, shall not be
          punished at all.

      
     Those who have written about the treatment of the slaves have
     believed, probably as a salve to their own consciences, that
     Gypsies were actually well-disposed to this barbarity: "Once they
     were made slaves ... it seems that they preferred this state"
     (Lecca, 1908:181).  Paspati wondered whether Gypsies did in fact
     "subject themselves voluntarily to bondage "because of the
     "mild[er) treatment" from their owners (1861:149, emphasis
     added), and Emerit believed that
      

          Despite clubbings which the slave-owners meted out at
          random, the former did not altogether hate this
          tyrannical regime, which once in a while took on a
          paternal quality ... (1930:132).

      
     Paternalism certainly was evident; Lecca tells us that
      

          Gypsy slaves were almost the only artisans ... the
          Gypsy women helped the mistress of the house with her
          work, and they were on such good terms that they were
          even allowed to assist in the beautiful embroidery done
          by the young Rumanian women which is admired throughout
          the world (ibid., 192),

      
     while Colson was able to report that, "always involved in the
     games and childhood life of their masters," Gypsies owned by the
     boyars had "developed a familiar relationship with the children
     of the nobility" (Vaux de Foletier, 1973:26).

     The rustling of legally-owned slaves was not unknown, and was
     probably common practice despite the low cost of the slaves. A
     document dated 1560 tells of the abduction of Gypsies from
     Wallachian estates who were brought into the towns for re-sale by
     their kidnappers, and warning of penalties against this (Furnica,
     1931). In the 16th century, a Gypsy child could be bought for
     about 48 cents, though people were usually sold not individually
     but in lots, called either cete, salash or shatre, the latter
     term also referring to the communities in which Gypsies lived.
     Roleine's novel, Prince of One Summer, deals with 19th century
     Gypsy slavery in the Balkans, also the central theme of The Price
     of Freedom by the Gypsy author Matéo Maximoff:
      

          The slave market was in full swing. The auctioneer,
          with his Turk-like appearance, athletic shoulders and
          sweeping moustache, held a whip in his right hand and
          eyed his prospective customers. Gentlemen! I have the
          honor once more to offer for sale to you the finest
          slaves to be found in any market in the world! ...
          tears flowed in silence, for a Gypsy was not supposed
          to cry for the miserable destiny of the brothers of his
          race ... (1947:7-8).

      
     Other impassioned reflections of life under slavery in the Europe
     of the past century are found in the poems of César Bolliac.

                                   * * *

     Gypsy slaves could not marry without permission. Members of the
     same family were sold separately, and children often taken away.
     In 1757, however, the law involving the disposal of children was
     changed, and they could no longer be sold without their parents -
     a short-lived reprieve in the overall condition of the Gypsy
     slaves: by the middle of the following century, the definition of
     slavery had been revised, and had perhaps become even stricter.

     On January 25th, 1766, Grigore-Alexandru Ghica modified the law
     as it applied to marriages between Gypsies and whites. Both
     partners would henceforth be regarded as free, but the man, and
     any of their children over seven years of age, would have to
     continue to work for their previous owner. Rather than separate a
     husband and wife, the husband would be substituted for by another
     man of equal age and skill. The pronouncement regarding mixed
     marriages, however, only applied to those unions already in
     existence; all further such marriages were to be illegal, and any
     priest discovered performing them was to be excommunicated. This
     did not prevent these relationships from developing, however,
     which required that a further anti-miscegenation proclamation be
     issued in 1776 by Constantin, Prince of Moldavia, against such an

      

          evil and wicked deed, [since ...] in some parts Gypsies
          have married Moldavian women, and also Moldavian men
          have taken in marriage Gypsy girls, which is entirely
          against the Christian faith, for not only have these
          people bound themselves to spend all their life with
          the Gypsies, but especially that their children remain
          forever in unchanged slavery ... such a deed being
          hateful to God, and contrary to human nature ... any
          priest who has had the audacity to perform such
          marriages, which is a great and everlasting wicked act
          ... will be removed from his post [and] severely
          punished (Ghibanescu, 1921:119-120).

      
     Just nine years after that, in 1785, a law was passed yet again
     forbidding such unions between Gypsies and whites, the
     justification this time being that it was causing individuals
     with Rumanian blood to become slaves. It was not considered,
     until the following century, that the same blood could
     alternatively have made the same children free. Eighty-five years
     later, Paspati reported that
      

          the Turks, who are not particularly punctilious in the
          choice of their wives, often marry Gypsy women. Not so
          with the Christians, who have kept themselves aloof
          from family connections with the Gypsies, and will
          rarely have any intercourse with them. No Gypsy is ever
          permitted to enter into any of the sacerdotal offices
          of the Greek church (1861:148).

      
     Unions between Gypsies themselves were arranged by their owners
     on occasion, in order to produce better stock. During his visit
     in the 1830s, Colson was invited to one such wedding, to which
     the man and the woman were brought struggling and in chains, to
     have the marriage blessed by a priest. So shocked by the
     hypocrisy of this was Colson, that he fled "in disgust, as though
     I'd assisted at a human sacrifice" (Roleine, 1979:111).

     Gypsies crossing into Moldavia and Wallachia from other countries
     were captured and automatically made slaves; indeed, this was a
     specific article of the Civil Code until as late as the 19th
     century. On the other hand, many of the semi-nomadic Netoci
     (singular Netoto) referred to above, were able to escape and form
     maroon communities in the Carpathians, where their descendants,
     feared by other Gypsies and by non-Gypsies alike, still live
     today. Again we can report from Paspati, who says
      

          The Netotsi, half savage, half naked, living by theft
          and rapine, feeding in times of want upon cats, dogs
          and mice ... are the most degraded and debased of all
          the Gypsy population (loc. cit.).

      
     Although the European observer saw them as the "most degraded and
     debased" of all Gypsies, the Netoci were the true heroes of an
     enslaved race, escaping subjugation and living under extremely
     adverse conditions in order to maintain their freedom and
     dignity.  Ozanne, probably drawing upon Paspati for his
     description, also refers to the same people as
      

          ... the most savage and wild of all the Gipsy race.
          Half naked, and living only by theft and plunder, they
          feed on the flesh of cats and dogs, sleep on the bare
          ground or in some ruin or barn, and possess absolutely
          no property of any kind. They have a strong resemblance
          to the negro physiognomy and character (1878:65).

      
     Serboianu is rather more graphic:
      

          The Netotsi are terribly cruel, while other Gypsies
          have much more moderate customs. One could therefore
          suppose that the Netotsi were the tribe that led the
          way, while the others were merely slaves, who yielded
          unconditionally to their owners, with whom the power
          resided in the whips and knives they always carried
          about them.

          Of all Gypsies, only the Netotsi continue to wander,
          hated by all other Gypsies, since it is on their
          account, because of their wretched ways, that the whole
          world persecutes Gypsies ... From my own observations,
          together with what came to light at the trial [in May,
          1929], I am convinced that the Netoci were, and today
          still are, cannibals (1930:36-37).

      
     His own observations were made at the scene of fighting following
     the end of the First World War, between Rumanians and Hungarians,
     at Szechalom in 1920. He remarked that some of the severed limbs
     of  those slain in battle, which he had noticed earlier, were
     missing. His conclusion was that they had been removed by some
     Gypsies in the area to be cooked and eaten (ibid.). The idea of
     cannibalism among Gypsies was not new; a number of newspaper
     articles reporting this from the late 1700s are reproduced by
     Grellmann, who devotes several pages to it himself in a chapter
     entitled "On their food and beverage" (1807:15-20). Another, more
     humanely-disposed commentary on the Netoci is found, not
     unexpectedly, in Colson's journal:
      

          These are the descendants of people who managed to slip
          through the barriers and who kept their freedom by
          fleeing into the forest and uncultivated lands. Contact
          with non-Gypsies means capture ... they live,
          therefore, like primitives, by hunting and gathering,
          collecting plants and the like, and by poaching.
          Sometimes they will rob a passing traveler.  Unarmed,
          without carts or tents, pagan, black and naked, they
          are perhaps more disturbing than alarming.

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Portrait of a Wallachian slave

     When Paul Kisseleff revised the slavery laws in the Penal Code of
     1833, he also ruled that the Netoci were to be recaptured and
     distributed between the landowners and the state. This initiated
     a period of guerilla warfare in the Transylvanian Alps which was
     to last until abolition a quarter of a century later, and during
     which both Netoci and white brigands fought side by side against
     the Prince's troops. Although by the first half of the 19th
     century, laws pertaining to slavery became less well-defined,
     according to Gaster "there seems to have been a fixed, or at any
     rate normal, price at which slaves were sold. For, when the
     Bucharest papers in 1845 announced the sale of 200 families of
     Gypsies, they added that they would be sold at a ducat less than
     usual" (1923:68), a ducat being worth 14 gold francs or four and
     a half piastres. A selection of statutes pertaining to Gypsies,
     taken from the Wallachian Penal Code of 1818, includes the
     following:
      

          Section 2     Gypsies are born slaves.

          Section 3      Anyone born of a mother who is a slave,
          is also a slave.

          Section 5      Any owner has the right to sell or give
          away his slaves.

          Section 6      Any Gypsy without an owner is the
          property of the Prince.

      
     Those from the Moldavian Penal Code of 1833 include:
      

          Section II:154    Legal unions cannot take place
          between free persons and slaves.

          Section II:162    Marriage between slaves cannot take
          place without their owner's consent.

          Section II: 174   The price of a slave must be fixed by
          the Tribunal, according to his age, condition and
          profession.

          Section II: 176   If anyone has taken a female slave as
          a concubine...she will become free after his death.  If
          he has had children by her, they will also become free.

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Vlad Tepov V (woodcut)


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                          IV.  Towards Abolition
                                   

     The old state laws instituted by Basil the Wolf in the mid 17th
     century had become forgotten, and efforts at legal administration
     were becoming increasingly disorganized. By the time of the terms
     of office of the hospodars (i.e. lords appointed by the Ottoman
     court) Caragea and Calimachi in the early 1800s, specific
     policies regarding slavery, as well as many other aspects of
     Moldavian and Wallachian law, were only vaguely understood;
     slave-owners meted outjustice as they saw it, with little fear of
     reprisal, and with increasing cruelty. Caragea and Calimachi made
     efforts to incorporate statutes then current in the neighboring
     Austrian Empire into their own jurisdiction, a move which might
     have ultimately been effective except that in 1826, Russia
     invaded the two principalities and a new governor, Paul
     Kisseleff, was appointed, in 1829. He was a dogmatic and stern
     leader, instituting extensive, conservative revisions in 1833 in
     the Civil Code; he too, drew upon that of the Austrian Empire for
     his model.

     Kisseleff was sickened by the concept of slavery on moral
     grounds, and was initially quite determined to see it abolished,
     despite adverse pressure from the boyars. He was also determined
     to stamp out bribery and corruption within his domain. Word of
     his anti-slavery sentiments reached the slaves themselves, some
     of whom, according to Colson (op. cit.) sought an audience with
     him at which they promised him as much gold as a horse could
     carry if he would abolish slavery. Kisseleff, however, reacted
     with anger; He accused the Gypsies not only of trying to bribe
     him, but of stealing some of the gold they had washed from the
     rivers. Because of this, he said, they would have to remain as
     slaves forever. He made it illegal, furthermore, for a Gypsy to
     move out of his district without a pass obtained from his owner.

                                   * * *

          Bucharest, 1834. A square. There's no crowd, just a
          group of people in front of a waggon pulled there by
          buffaloes. The passersby quicken their steps and lower
          their eyes so that they don't have to look at the men
          and women tearing at their rags in anguish.
          Dishevilled, dark-skinned, these are Gypsies. You can't
          escape the entreaties of the mothers whose children are
          being torn from them, nor their sobs and screams of
          fear, nor their curses; you can't escape the cracking
          of the whips breaking down their stubborn resistance to
          the separations inevitably to come.

          Although this scene is commonplace, and has already
          been described a hundred times, it has suddenly shocked
          the inhabitants of Bucharest because of the immensity
          of the sale. The same thing has been going on for
          several days now; so why this huge auction? Because
          Barbu Shtirbei, a Wallachian hospodar, wants to
          renovate his palace and needs money, and is therefore
          selling all of his slaves. For liquidating the stock,
          his banker Oprano will keep 20,000 ducats for himself.
          One male is worth 15 ducats, and a female 12 ducats,
          and children under sixteen half those amounts. This
          will total about 3000 slaves belonging to
          Shtirbei-public opinion is therefore beginning to mount
          (Roleine, 1979:108).

                                   * * *

     [Illustration with caption]
     On September 25th, 1848, the Rumanian revolutionaries publicly
     tear up the statues relating to slavery (Roleine, 1979:112).

     Under influence from the western European nations, these Balkan
     countries were beginning to develop a conscience about slavery,
     especially because they were coming to rely upon the West more
     and more for their economy. The slave auction conducted by the
     hospodar Barbu Shtirbei, described above by Colson, caused such
     widespread indignation that he hurriedly suggested abolition as a
     means of regaining face - but this was at once overridden by the
     boyars. In 1837, however, Shtirbei's successor, Alexandru Ghica,
     freed the slaves on the estates under his jurisdiction, and
     granted them equal status with the white peasants who worked for
     him. He also allowed them the right to practice their customs and
     to speak Romani. Ghica was probably influenced by the writings of
     a number of journalists of his day. Mihail Kogalniceanu in
     particular, writing in the same year, stirred public conscience
     with his firsthand descriptions of what he had seen as a boy
     growing up in Wallachia:
      

          On the streets of the Jassy of my youth, I saw human
          beings wearing chains on their arms and legs, others
          with iron clamps around their foreheads, and still
          others with metal collars about their necks. Cruel
          beatings, and other punishments such as starvation,
          being hung over smoking fires, solitary imprisonment
          and being thrown naked into the snow or the frozen
          rivers, such was the fate of the wretched Gypsy. The
          sacred institution of the family was likewise made a
          mockery: women were wrested from their men, and
          daughters from their parents. Children were torn from
          the breasts of those who brought them into this world,
          separated from their mothers and fathers and from each
          other, and sold to different buyers from the four
          corners of Rumania, like cattle. Neither humanity nor
          religious sentiment, nor even civil law, offered
          protection for these beings. It was a terrible sight,
          and one which cried out to Heaven (1837:16-17).

      
     A similarly moving description, written some twenty years later,
     is found in Vaillant's history of the Romani people:
      

          What are those animals I can make out over there,
          through the haze of the evening? They're coming and
          going, sometimes on all fours, like rats, and sometimes
          on two feet, like monkeys ... certainly they're not
          men; they're animals. My God-they are men! Gypsies!
          There are six of them, and an overseer too, keeping an
          eye on them. Can you see? They're as naked as Adam, and
          their bodies are smeared all over with a thick coating
          of tar. There are shackles on their feet and yokes on
          their necks, and they are removing sand from the
          riverbed. They are wearing cangues, those vile,
          triangular yokes they put on pigs to stop them from
          breaking through the hedges, but whose three long
          spikes prevent the Gypsies from being able to rest
          their heads ...

          Since morning, they had been sweating blood, with
          nothing to drink but river water, and nothing to eat
          but bits of bread baked there in the ashes, with some
          boiled leeks and a little salt. At the risk of its
          being taken away from them by the guard, I gave them
          each a coin, and went on my way ... (1857:409-412).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     A ferari or iron-worker

     In his small book, Kogalniceanu compared slavery in his own
     country with that in the Americas:
      

          The Europeans are organizing philanthropical societies
          for the abolition of slavery in America, yet in the
          bosom of their own continent of Europe, there are
          400,000 Gypsies who are slaves, and 200,000 more
          equally victim to barbarousness (1837:iv).

      
     Protests were heard from further afield, too; the French
     publication Magasin Pittoresque ended an article on Balkan
     slavery by an anonymous writer with the following, which surely
     helped in bringing the attention of western Europe to the
     situation:
      

          In Rumania, Gypsy is always synonymous with "filthy
          animal." These Rumanians, who so often have words of
          humanity and justice on their lips!  To work towards
          easing the degradation of these poor beings, beaten
          down by pain, to render them born again into the great
          family of mankind, to free their souls, would not only
          be a humanitarian act, it would be an act of justice.
          Where these victimized souls are concerned, the sons
          should be considered no less guilty than their fathers.

      
     Ghica's move in 1837 affected only a fraction of the total: just
     5,582 families out of a Romani population of nearly half a
     million. Nevertheless, it began a succession of similar
     decisions; Mihai Sturdza freed his slaves in Moldavia in 1842,
     and two years later, the Moldavian church liberated its slaves,
     followed by the same decision from the Wallachian church in 1847.
     The boyars, however, stubbornly refused to capitulate, despite
     the entreaties of the Church and the public.

     In 1848, a revolution led by a group of radicals returning from
     studying in France replaced Bibescu in the central government in
     Bucharest with a provisional joint leadership, which immediately
     proclaimed that
      

          The Rumanian people reject the inhuman and barbaric
          practice of owning slaves, and announce the immediate
          freedom of all Gypsies who belong to individual owners.

      
     It seemed that Desrrobireja - Emancipation - was at last being
     achieved. But in December that same year, the principalities were
     overrun by Russians and Turks, who reinstituted many of the old
     laws, including those supporting slavery. The boyars, with little
     difficulty, repossessed their slaves, many of whom had remained
     unaware of their short-lived freedom. For those who knew what was
     happening, this turn of events must have been a bitter blow.

     The Russian-Turkish Convention appointed Alexandru Ghica
     (grandson of Grigore-Alexandru Ghica), and Barbu Shtirbei to
     their Council, where they served from 1849 until 1855, in which
     year Grigore Ghica, a cousin of Alexandru, was made Prince of
     Moldavia, and Shtirbei was given control of Wallachia. But
     Grigore was not a strong leader, and while he claimed to deplore
     slavery, he hesitated to take any action. He made a show of
     concern by passing a law forbidding children to be sold
     separately from their parents, but it was nearly seven years
     before he finally capitulated. As a result of repeated urgings
     from his advisor, Edward Grenier, and in particular from his
     eldest daughter, Natalia Balsch, who had already liberated her
     own slaves and who had persuaded eight other households to follow
     her example, however, he finally brought the matter before the
     General Assembly, declaring that
      

          For many years, slavery has been abolished in all the
          civilized states of the Old World; only the
          principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia retain this
          humiliating vestige of a barbaric society. It is a
          social disgrace.

      
     His proposal to abolish slavery met with unanimous approval, and
     on December 23rd, 1855, it became illegal in Moldavia. Shtirbei
     followed his lead, and the Wallachian slaves were freed a few
     weeks later, on February 8th, 1856.

     Complete legal freedom, however -- such as it was -- known as
     Slobuzenja and still cherished in the minds of eastern European
     Rom today, came in 1864. In this year, Prince Ioan Alexandru
     Couza, ruler of the now-united principalities (renamed Rumania in
     1861) restored the liberated Gypsy slaves and the non-Roma serfs
     to the estates. In 1864, following a coup d'état, the government
     of the new Rumanian state, led by Mihail Koglniceanu who
     represented the progressive wing of the emerging middle class,
     passed a law abolishing serfdom and which provided for the
     redistribution of land to the peasants.

     This agrarian reform law created conditions favoring the
     development of capitalism, since it left most of the land still
     in the hands of the boyars, who did everything they could to
     limit its effects. In February, 1866, leaders from among the
     landowners, together with allies from the conservative middle
     class who were opposed to the peasants' growing power, conspired
     to force the abdication of Prince Couza, and replaced him on the
     Rumanian throne by the Prussian King Charles I of the House of
     Hohenzollern (Daicoviciu et al., 1959:120-122).

     While the land reforms were meant in theory to benefit both the
     freed Rumanian serfs and the liberated Gypsy slaves, they had
     little effect on the latter. Despite its new status, Rumania was
     still heavily dependent upon the Ottoman Empire, which had
     instituted feudalism in the first place, and which "cloaked and
     facilitated the economic subservience of the country to the
     capitalists of western Europe" (op. cit., p. 122). Roma in
     particular were kept in conditions hardly different from those
     they had endured as slaves. Writing at this time, Paspati (op.
     cit.) predicted optimistically that


          This people, so long oppressed, enslaved in body and
          mind, will probably, in a short time, as they rise in
          wealth and learning, under the fostering hand of
          freedom attain to some yet higher consideration,

     and Vaillant, in the introduction to his book which he dedicated
     to Alexandru and Grigore Ghica for their noble action, proclaimed
     that those who


          shed tears of compassion for the Negroes of Africa, of
          whom the American Republic makes its slaves, should
          give a kind thought to this short history of the
          Gypsies of India, of whom the European monarchies make
          their Negroes. These men, wanderers from Asia, will
          never again be itinerant; these slaves shall be free
          (1857:7).

     Events in Hitler's Germany eighty years later were to make sad
     mockery of Paspati's and Vaillant''s visions of freedom.  Like
     Paspati, Clark believed that freedom would bring changes for the
     liberated Roma; he believed too that ultimately being assimilated
     out of existence would be the best thing for them. Such changes
     had still not made much impact by the end of the century,
     however, when Clark, who was probably the only American writer of
     the time to acknowledge Gypsy slavery, published his
     observations:


           ... until the accession of Prince Charles, the
          Roumanian Gypsies were more terribly oppressed, sunk to
          a lower depth of poverty, wretchedness and degradation
          than any otha part of their race, in any other region
          of the world. The great majority of the Roumanian
          Gypsies were slaves, held in a rigor of bondage which
          has never been surpassed; slaves with no rights, no
          protection and no hope; mere human cattle of whom their
          cruel, selfish owners would suffer no census to be
          taken. So long and relentless had this servitude been,
          that many of the Gypsy slaves had forgotten their own
          language ... The social condition of the free Gypsies
          of Wallachia and Moldavia was hardly to be preferred to
          that of the Gypsy slaves. They were living, many of
          them, in an utter squalidness of wretchedness and
          poverty, of nakedness and filth ... With the happiest
          of results, however, the Wallachian Gypsies have been
          emancipated, and all taxpayers among them are allowed
          to vote. What hope or promise there is in the future
          for such a race as this is difficult to say ... It may
          be that, rising from their low estate, under the genial
          influence of freedom of good government, Gypsies and
          Wallachs may rise together to the enjoyment of a common
          citizenship in a free and prosperous country. It may be
          that this is the beginning of a movement which will
          gradually extend into other lands, until the great body
          of the Gypsies throughout the civilized world,
          subsiding gradually into a quiet and settled life, will
          at length become merged and lost in the mass of the
          common people. Let us hope at least, that so it may be
          (1898:505-506).

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                    V.  The Post-Emancipation Situation
                                   

     After emancipation, Gypsies left in great numbers (discussed in
     more detail in Hancock, 1983 and 1987b), fearing that the old
     order would be re-established: it had happened once before in
     1848. Families made for the nearest foreign border, and it is the
     time spent following this, in e.g. Serbia, Hungary, Russia and
     the Ukraine, which has led in part to the development of the
     linguistic, and to some extent social, divisions within the Vlax
     branch of Romani. Phonological developments in the different
     varieties of Vlax reflect interference from the regional dialects
     of Rumanian; the shift of original /t/ to /ch/ and /k/, for
     example. Some have as much as a third of their vocabulary adopted
     from that language; these linguistic features suggest that, among
     most of the Gypsies in Rumania, bilingualism was extensive.

     Migrations out of the Balkans went north-west from eastern Europe
     into Scandinavia and beyond, and through Jugoslavia into southern
     and western Europe. The first of these reached Paris in 1868.
     From Europe, considerable numbers continued on to North and South
     America, especially Argentina, and until their entry into the
     country was forbidden in the 1880s, thousands were able to make
     their way to the United States (see Chapter XIV). In spite of
     immigration policy, numbers of Vlax-speaking Rom continued to
     come into the U.S., especially between the two world wars. Others
     have settled more recently in Australia.

     Still others, after emancipation, with no money or possessions,
     and having nowhere to go, offered themselves for re-sale to their
     previous owners. Grauer indicates that until shortly before the
     Second World War at least, this was reflected in the patterns of
     distribution of the Romani population in Rumania:
      

          At the time of their liberation, Gypsies stayed mainly
          in the areas in which they had traditionally been
          located. Today, the densest concentrations are still
          found around the monasteries, which had owned many of
          the slaves (1934:108).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Rumania and surrounding territories at the end of the 19th
     century

     Observers such as Potra have commented on the passivity of the
     slaves, and have wondered why there was so little evidence of
     resistance, given the huge discrepancy in numbers on the estates.
     It was not unusual for there to be three or four hundred Gypsies
     working for a household of less than ten Rumanians, and yet there
     is no known record of any organized uprising. Grellmann (1783:13)
     maintains that there were such revolts, although he provides no
     documentation to support his claim. There is, however, a case on
     record from 1780 of a slave taking revenge on his master for
     having been tortured; the owner was overpowered and brought to
     the slave's hut, where he was tied up and slowly poisoned to
     death over a period of several months. An intensive search by the
     estate staff failed to find the man, suggesting that the Gypsy
     quarters were not usually frequented by members of the household.

     Centuries of powerlessness and abuse are probably the cause of
     this destruction of the spirit; many Gypsies, having been born to
     it, probably saw their enslavement as part of the natural order
     of things. But it is evident from examples such as the above,
     which could not have been an isolated incident, and from the
     success of the fugitive Netoci, that not everyone shared this
     feeling of helpless resignation.

     Eyewitness accounts of the condition of the Balkan Rom during the
     last century were generally not sympathetic. An exception is
     found in the notebook of Samuel Gardner, a Fellow of the Royal
     Geographical Society, who visited south-eastern Europe in 1856,
     one year after liberation:
      

          The children, to the age of 10 or 12, are in a complete
          state of nudity, but the men and women, the latter
          offering frequently the most symmetrical form and
          feminine beauty, have a rude clothing. Their implements
          and carriages, of a peculiar construction, display much
          igenuity. They are in fact very able artisans and
          labourers, industrious and active, but are cruelly and
          barbarously treated. In the houses of their masters
          they are employed in the lowest offices, live in
          cellars, have the lash continually applied to them, and
          are still subjected to the iron collar and a kind of
          spiked iron mask or helmet which they are obliged to
          wear for every petty offence. They are subjected to
          other servile regulations ... they have the worst of
          reputations, as robbers, thieves, murderers even; ...
          for myself, I have never regarded them otherwise than a
          poor, outcast race, injured and ill-treated ... the
          force of prejudice is great, and the fears entertained
          of these poor helots are the strongest condemnation of
          their treatment.

      
     This contrasted clearly with the description given some years
     earlier by Bayle St. John, a British journalist who was obviously
     pandering to the middle-class sensibilities of the readers of
     Charles Dickens' magazine Household Words:
      

          The children go naked up to the age of ten or twelve,
          and whole swarms of girls and boys may sometimes be
          seen rolling about together in the dust or mud in
          summer, in the water or snow in winter, like so many
          black worms. As you pass by, a dozen heads of matted
          hair and a dozen pair of sharp eyes are raised towards
          you, and you are greeted with a mocking shout, which
          alone tells you that these hideous things are your
          fellow creatures. [Gypsies] use no plates or spoons,
          but dip their hardened fingers into the steaming
          kettle, and bring up a ball of porridge or a fragment
          of meat, which they cool by throwing from one palm to
          the other until they can venture to cast it down their
          throats. The women and children eat after the men who,
          as soon as they have wiped their hands in their hair,
          take again to their pipes and, if they can afford it,
          to drinking. They make themselves merry for an hour or
          two, until fatigue comes over them, and then go
          pell-mell to their huts, or stretch out by the embers
          of their fires. Nothing can be more abominably filthy
          than the habits of this degraded tribe ... we are sorry
          to be obliged to add that both men and women are, as a
          rule, exceedingly debauched.

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     A Gypsy habitation in Wallachia

     Even St. John's description of the slaves themselves reflects a
     literary cliché of the period, describing in stereotypical terms
     (like Ozanne, p.21 above), the kind of slave his Victorian
     audience was more likely to have been familiar with:
      

          The men are generally of lofty stature, robust and
          sinewy. Their skin is black or copper-coloured; their
          hair, thick and woolly; their lips are of negro
          heaviness, and their teeth white as pearls; the nose is
          considerably flattened, and the whole countenance is
          illumined, as it were, by lively, rolling eyes.

      
     Bayle St. John published his account anonymously. Another
     description by a writer who chose not to put his name to it,
     appeared in Chamber's Journal in 1856, and contains the same
     mixture of fascination and revulsion:
      

          On a heap of straw in the middle, in the full heat of
          the blazing sun, lay four gipsies asleep. They were all
          four tall, powerful men, with coal-black hair as coarse
          as rope, streaming over faces of African blackness; and
          as they lay relaxed in sleep, their figures seemed
          gigantic. Their dress, so to call it, was a collection
          of the vilest rags ... if an injury was committed on a
          gipsy, he had no redress ...

          Rascals as the zigeuners are, and living in the
          greatest misery and filth-in fact, the dirtier their
          huts, the better they like them - they are still a very
          handsome race, the women especially. These bold, brown,
          beautiful women only make one astonished to think how
          such eyes, teeth and figures can exist in the stifling
          atmosphere of their tents.

      
     A further eyewitness account, by yet another anonymous writer,
     appeared in the French journal Magasin Pittoresque and adds to
     the picture:
      

          Degraded by slavery, brutalized by ignorance and
          beatings, they have no material enjoyment by way of
          compensation. These are cattle, maintained by the boyar
          at the least possible cost; he feeds them with
          mamaliga, a kind of thick porridge made of corn meal.
          Their summer clothing consists of thick canvas which
          they wear until it rots off. Rain serves for their
          ablutions, and the children go completely naked. In
          winter, they drape themselves with rags scavenged from
          cast-offs: old suits, old coverlets, old carpets - all
          of these serve as their clothing. As for accommodation,
          they are not even allowed the luxury of dreaming about
          it. They ensconce themselves everywhere. In the
          morning, the vatave, or master's overseer, carefully
          wrapped in furs and with his whip in hand, assembles
          them together in order to assign them to the day's
          tasks. A distressing sight, this foul-smelling,
          haggard, half naked shivering group, everywhere
          appearing from stables, kitchens and sheds. The
          overseer, always hard and inflexible, beats them as
          much from fancy as from a desire to assert his
          authority.

      
     Simson, in his more moderate discussion of the Balkan Romani
     population, believed that "They seldom beg, and more rarely steal
     ... they are not an idle race; they ought rather to be described
     as a laborious race; and the majority honestly endeavour to earn
     a livelihood" (1865:74), a quotation lifted verbatim (and
     without acknowledgement) from Clarke (1800:592) and repeated in
     Hoyland (1816:261). At the same place, Simson reproduces part of
     a description of the Wallachian Gypsies which appeared in the
     1839 Report of the Scottish Mission of Enquiry to the Jews:
      

          They are almost all slaves, bought and sold at
          pleasure. One was lately sold for 200 piastres, but the
          general price is 500. Perhaps 3 pounds is the average
          price, and the female Gipsies are sold much cheaper.
          The sale is generally carried on by private bargain.
          The men are the best mechanics in the country; so that
          smiths and masons are taken from this class. The women
          are considered the best cooks, and therefore almost
          every wealthy family has a Gipsy cook. Their appearance
          is similar to that of the Gipsies in other countries;
          being all dark, with fine black eyes, and long black
          hair. They have a language peculiar to themselves, and
          though they seem to have no system of religion, yet are
          very superstitious in observing lucky and unlucky days.
          They are all fond of music, both vocal and
          instrumental, and excel in it.

                                   * * *

     There exists a number of poems dealing with slavery and
     emancipation, which were composed in the mid 19th century by such
     writers as Coradini and Bolliac; some of these are found in the
     pages of Colocci (1889), translated into Italian. The originals
     were in French, and dwell on the magnanimity of the liberators as
     much as they do on the liberated - an indication of their
     non-Gypsy origin. English and Romani translations (by the present
     author) of two of these are given here, together with the
     original versions:

	Accourez tous, bien-aimés frčres!       
	Aujourd'hui accourez tous!                          
	Libres tous nous        
	Fait le prince roumain,                    
	Ainsi soit-il!                
                                      
	Dieu, la terre, soleil, la lune             
	L'aurore, la foręt, l'humanité,                
	En chœur célčbrant Tot
	Pour la bonté de la Moldavie                    
                                     
	Tous, les viellards, hommes faites,                        
	Jeunes hommes, agneaux de bercail,                      
	Enfants, ils ont brisé nos fers,                    
	Le prince et bon nombre de Roumains.                 
                                     
	Dieu grand! Et vous astres                      
	Qui nous avez faits ŕ la lumičre,              
	Aimez tous les Roumains,                
	Ils ont brisé notre esclavage.                 
                                   

	Come running, beloved brothers all-                               
	Today, come running all;                                
	For freed we are, by the                               
	Rumanian prince.          
	Let us cry out with full voice,                            
	So let it be!                    
                                     
	God; Earth; Sun; Moon;                           
	Dawn; Forest; Humanity-                     
	In chorus they honor Tot
	For the goodness of Moldavia
                                   
	Everyone!                      
	The old, the grown,         
	young men, babes yet in arms,                        
	and children! They have                              
	broken off our irons
	The Prince, and all          
	his citizens.                    
                                      
	Great God, and all your stars                       
	which give to us the light,                               
	Love all Rumanian people,
	For breaking our bonds 
	of slavery.


	Hajtar, prasten, kuch phralale,
	Te prasten orde akana;
	Ke slobozi kerdiljam
	le thagarestar rumunjako;
	Das baro muj
	Te gadzhja vorta si.

	O Del; o phuv; o kham; o tchon;
	zori, haj vosh, dzhene;
	Ekhetanes sharen el Totas
	le mishtimaske la Moldovjako

	Sarro! Phure, barile,
	le Romorre - ji bakre and'e mal;
	Dazhji cinorre - malade pa' mende
	amare lancurja -
	O princo thaj but rumunicka.

	Bare Devla! Thaj ji'l cherxa
	kaj kerenas amen e  vedjara
	t'al Tume drazhi sa'l vlaxondar
	kaj furshosajle 'maro rrobimos!
	

	2

	Réjouissez-vous tous, nobles enfants de Rome,                 
	Vous tous, qui dans vos seins sentez battre un cœur d'homme;                  
	Plus d'esclaves chez nous! Le grand mot est lancé.                  
	Heureux qui, le premier, chez nous l'a prononcé!              
		"Réjouissez-vous en, Moldaves!                  
		Nos divins autels sont lavés;                 
		Notre Eglise n'a plus d'esclaves."        
	Honneur ŕ qui les a sauvé!                       
	Ils avaient tous un cœur, ils avaient tous une âme,           
	Tous avaient Dieu pour maître,              
	Et pour mčre une femme.                    
	Et tous au joug de fer avaient été rivés!                        
	Honneur!                   
	Honneur ŕ vous qui les avez sauvés!


	Be glad, ye nobles sons of Rom,                  
	In all whose breasts do beat                          
	the hearts of men.          
	No longer slaves!            
	The Good Word has come down.                   
	Happy he must be who first among us said         
		"Rejoice at this, Moldavians!
		Our holy altars now are all washed clean!                            
		Our Church has slaves no more!."           
	Honor to he who freed them!                    
	For each had a heart, and each a soul,                              
	Each had God as his master,                          
	and each was born of woman-                          
	Still, each was clamped into the iron yoke.
	Honor!
	Honor to you who freed them!


	T'aves vojako, Rroma pachvalo,
	And'e kolin kaske si jilo murshano;
	Ma naj rroburja!
	Kol drazhi vorbi amenga avile.
	Vesolo kaj pervo mothodja
		"Pa kadoleste radujsavon Moldovaja;
		Amari svunci altarja vortosajle
		Ma naj la khangeriake kak rrobi."
	Pachiv das les kaj kerdo len mekhle.
	Ke svakoske sas o Del o raj pesko
	Thaj anda manushni kerdo.
	Ma svako xutilajlo ande dzhuto sastruno.
	Pachiv,
	Pachiv das les kaj kerdo mekhle.


     After emancipation, the freed slaves attempted to improve their
     condition, and safeguard against any future domination by
     outsiders by working together toward some kind of political
     unity. A pan-European congress was held in September, 1879, in
     Kisfalu in Hungary, with the intention of establishing civil and
     political rights for Gypsies throughout Europe. Little came of
     this. The affair was mocked in the press, who found the concepts
     of intellectualism and 'Gypsiness' incompatible - an attitude
     still very prevalent today. Lecca blamed the lack of achievement
     on the Gypsies themselves, believing that "laziness is one of the
     greatest obstacles to the[ir] development" (1908:183).

     In 1913, a statue of Kogalniceanu was erected at Piatri Neamts,
     and was reported in the western press in the Near East magazine
     for June 12th that year, as follows:
      

          A touching episode occurred in connection with the
          unveiling of the statue of Mihail Kogalniceanu at
          Piatra Neamtz. Mihail Kogaliniceanu was a well-known
          reformer, and one of his principal acts had been to
          secure liberty for the many thousands of Roumanian
          gipsies, who had hitherto been in a condition
          approximating to servitude. Two days after the
          unveiling ceremony, a vast concourse of gipsies arrived
          at Piatra Neamtz and proceeded to the monument. Before
          the statue they placed a wreath of oak leaves and wild
          flowers, and then, to the wierd accompaniment of a
          gipsy band, the whole party joined in a national dance
          round the statue of their liberator.

      
     In 1933, another conference, widely attended and publicized, was
     held by the General Association of the Gypsies of Rumania in
     Bucharest. It sought, among other things, to erect a monument to
     Grigore Ghica, and to make the date of emancipation a national
     holiday, and to establish a library, a hospital and a university
     for Rom (Haley, 1934). Although he made brief reference to this
     in his widely-influential book Zigeuner, which appeared three
     years later, Martin Block (1936:210) minimized its significance,
     stating (op. cit., 8) that "Gypsies offer no contribution to
     civilization, have no history, and do themselves in no way help
     to elucidate the problem of their survival." Distorted
     scholarship of this type, written during the time of the Nazi
     regime, helped justify Hitler's later program of genocide against
     the Romani people.

     [Illustration with caption]
     Poster advertising a slave auction in Wallachia in 1852*. It
     reads"For sale: a prime lot of Gypsy slaves, for sale by auction
     at the Monastery of St. Elias, May 8th, 1852. Consisting of
     eighteen men, ten boys, seven women and three girls, in fine
     condition."

     *A photostat of this poster was kindly sent to me by Mr. Nicolae
     Oprescu of Bucharest.  The poster appears to have provided the
     model for a similar illustration in Colocci (1889:89).

     The general attitude in Rumania has not improved, as Beck has
     shown. Two American visitors to that country some years ago
     reported that poisoning Gypsies has been one means of dealing
     with them:
      

          Later that day, we came to a Gypsy camp by a stream. A
          small, dark-skinned boy - barefoot and dirty - ran to
          beg for money. Bill tried a few words of Rumanian he
          had learned, but the child would not come close.  Bill
          then offered him a piece of chocolate, whereupon the
          boy suddenly screamed "Moarte! Moarte! - Death! Death!"
          and scurried away. Many times in the past, we were
          told, the unwanted Gypsies were given poisoned food.
          One of the first lessons drummed into a Gypsy child is
          never to accept food from strangers (Durrancell and
          Knight, 1979:820).

      
     It is the almost total lack of concern for anything except the
     traditional, from governmental and academic bodies, which has,
     more than any other factor, hindered the advancement of the
     Romani people. The wonder is rather that, since emancipation,
     Gypsies have continued to fight vicious discrimination in every
     country they have been in, and from every government. Yet with
     practically no help whatsoever from any outside agency, they have
     gained admittance to the United Nations Organization and the
     Council of Europe. Since 1971, there have been three
     international congresses, and the World Romani Union which
     sponsors these, now has bureaux in 27 countries.  In March, 1982,
     twenty years after its founding, another Romani organization, the
     Comité International Rom held a ceremony commemorating the 125th
     anniversary of abolition, and has made this a recurrent event.

     Kogalniceanu predicted that the abolition of slavery would herald
     the demise of Romani, since "in becoming civilized, they will
     experience new concepts, and not retain so defective a language"
     (1837:36). Since the end of the Second World War, however, and in
     particular since the Romani people obtained permanent
     consultative status in the UN in 1979, through Romani language
     journals and newsletters and its increasing use at the
     international congresses, the language has come to serve more and
     more as the principal binding factor of Jekhipe - Oneness.

     [Illustration with caption]
     A satra or Gypsy village in Wallachia, 1862 ("Un village des
     Tsiganes chrétiens", Lancelot, 1868:307)

     "In these strange houses, which are more like gutters, one serves
     for each family, the roofs are made of branches daubed with mud,
     upon which grass grows. At least ten people, on average, live
     here. There are no furnishings, just a kettle, a pan, a
     water-jug, one spoon and one knife, and a few sheepskins and
     tattered blankets: it is a home under a hole in the roof.
     Lacking any wood, cow-dung is used as fuel.  Torches do for
     light. Rain comes through the roof, and rheumatism follows it.
     No clean water is available, and yet the boyars stigmatize the
     Gypsies for being filthy. They go in rags, even in temperatures
     of minus twenty degrees, their feet wrapped in rags and the skins
     of dogs" (Colson, in Roleine, 1979:112).


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                    VI.  Treatment Elsewhere in Europe:
                     Transylvania, Hungary and Russia
                                   

     The instituionalized Oppression of Gypsies existed in other
     places besides Moldavia and Wallachia; Wlislocki has written
     about the "appalling and unmentionable punishments" inflicted
     upon Gypsies in Transylvania (also part of greater Rumania) "not
     only for attempting to escape, but for such trivial offences as
     stealing [a piece of fruit]"; another incident, also from
     Transylvania and recorded in 1736, is found in the journal of a
     landowner who entered the details of the recapture of an escaped
     Gypsy slave as follows:
      

          At my dear wife's request, I had him beaten with rods
          on the soles of his feet until the blood ran, then made
          him bathe his feet in strong caustic.  Afterwards, for
          unbecoming language, I had his upper lip cut off and
          roasted, and forced him to eat it (Anon., 1912:45).

      
     The case of a free Gypsy in Transylvania selling himself for life
     to one General Farkas Macskasy for "fifteen florins, a horse,
     three and a half bushels of wheat and four cups of wine" is on
     record from 1755 (Ursutsiu, 1974).

     When Gypsies first reached Hungary, their experience was similar
     to that in Moldavia and Wallachia. King Mathias authorised the
     City of Harmannstadt to employ them as slave labor in 1476; since
     they were slaves of the Crown, they were distributed in this way
     throughout the land, most often employed in blacksmithing and the
     manufacture of weapons and implements of torture.

     In the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gypsies were also made the
     property of the landowners. Certain individuals were given
     administrative positions by them, as shown in the following
     document, a letter originally written in Hungarian and dated
     October 25th, 1776, which permitted its bearer to collect taxes
     from other Gypsies. The original remains in a private collection
     in Nashaud, in Rumania:
      

          You are strictly enjoined by the present letter that
          such State Gypsies as have hitherto been under your
          authority, and in addition the Gypsies Dombi Stoika,
          Adam Stoika, Samu Stoika and Adam Cuka, shall remain
          under your command. It is your duty also to collect
          tax-money for haymaking and the quota which in virtue
          of the conscription list is due to His Majesty ... the
          holder of this document, Dimitru Borcza, Gornik ...
          must not impose anything on, nor exact anything from,
          the four guilder Gypsy tax (Lebzelter, 1933: 213-214).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     "Imagination will easily conceive how dismal and horrid the
     inside of such Gipsey huts must be to civilised humanity. Air and
     daylight excluded, very damp, and full of filth, they have more
     the appearance of wild beasts'dens, than of the habitations of
     intelligent beings. Rooms or separate apartments are not even
     thought of, all is one open space: in the middle is the fire,
     serving both for the purpose of cooking and warmth; the father
     and mother lie half naked, the children entirely so, round it.
     Chairs, tables, beds or bedsteads, find no place here; they sit,
     eat, sleep on the bare ground, or at most spread an old blanket
     or, in the Banat, a sheepskin, under them. Every fine day the
     door is set open for the sun to shine in, which they continue
     watching so long as it is above the horizon; when the day closes,
     they shut their door and consign themselves over to rest.  When
     the weather is cold, or the snow prevents them opening the door,
     they make up the fire, and sit round it till they fall asleep,
     without any more light than it affords. The furniture and
     property of the Gipseys ... consist of an earthen pot, an iron
     pan, a spoon, a jug and a knife; when it happens that everything
     is complete, they sometimes add a dish; these serve for the whole
     family" (Grellman, 1807:34-35).

     During the reign of Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780), daughter
     of the Hapsburg King Charles VI, measures were taken to settle
     and assimilate the Gypsy population: they were conscripted into
     the army, and forbidden to speak Romani or call themselves Rom
     (they were instead referred to as Uj Magyar, "New Hungarians").
     The children were sent to school, and their parents were no
     longer allowed to pursue any of the traditional occupations. The
     means of achieving this were sometimes quite cruel and ruthless;
     no regard was paid at all to Romani values or culture, and the
     forced assimilation was seen by the Gypsies themselves as an
     effort to exterminate them as a distinct people. Violent
     anti-Gypsyism from the Hungarian people continued to be a fact of
     life, however, and Gypsies increasingly became scapegoats for the
     most insignificant of charges. The more imaginative crimes of
     vampirism and cannibalism were also attributed to them: In 1782
     some forty were broken on the rack and cut into pieces because
     they were accused of roasting and eating several dozen Hungarian
     peasants, even though Maria Theresa's successor, Joseph II
     subsequently proclaimed that the charges were baseless. The
     policy of assimilation was not a success.

     The government of Catherine the Great of Russia during this same
     period (1729-1796) passed laws to make Gypsies Slaves of the
     Crown (Clébert, 1963:74)*. The earliest, and most complete
     firsthand account of Gypsies in Europe two hundred years ago is
     found in the works of Edward Daniel Clarke, who describes the
     Gypsies in Russia thus:
      

          In their dress, they lavish all their finery upon their
          heads. Their costume in Russia is very different to
          that of the natives. The Russians hold them in great
          contempt; never speaking of them without abuse; and
          feel themselves contaminated by their touch, unless it
          be to have their fortunes told. Formerly they were more
          scattered over Russia, and paid no tribute; but now
          they are collected, and all belong to one nobleman, to
          whom they pay a certain tribute, and work among the
          number of his slaves (1800:208).

      
     The circumstances of the post-abolition migration of the Russian
     Gypsies to the Americas is discussed in Chapter XIV.

     While the eastern European states were enslaving and otherwise
     making use of Gypsies as a source of labor within their own
     territories, countries in western Europe were attempting to rid
     their soil of Gypsies altogether.

     *The name for these slaves is given as Slaves of the Crown.
     Professor Victor Friedman tells me, however, that this is a
     religious term in Russian for "human beings" (lit. "slaves of the
     lord").

  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                   VII.  Treatment Elsewhere in Europe:
                        Spain, Portugal and France
                                   

     In 1568, Pope Pius V attempted to drive all Gypsies from the
     domain of the Roman Catholic Church; similar expulsion orders
     were already in effect in individual countries, resulting in an
     ongoing shuffling back and forth of Gypsy populations between
     them. With the maritime expansion, and the establishment of a
     colonial plantation economy, however, a way was finally found to
     clear Gypsies out of western Europe more efficiently.

     The Spanish were the first Europeans to convey Gypsies to the
     Americas, although a reference dated February 11th, 1581,
     indicates that the earliest made their way there on their own.
     Referring to Charcas Province in Peru (corresponding to part of
     present-day Bolivia), it tells of Gypsies who had "passed
     secretly to some parts of our Indies [and ...] who go about with
     their native dress and language...among the Indians, whom they
     dupe easily, on account of their simplicity" ("pasado a algunas
     partes de las Nuestras Yndias xitanos ... que andan en su traxe y
     lengua ... entre los yndios, a los quales por su simplicad
     engańan con facilidad"). (Colección, 1872:138-139). Ironically,
     this early document asked that those Gypsies be rounded up and
     returned to Spain, although that country had begun ordering their
     expulsion as early as 1499. Before that, it had briefly
     considered attempting their assimilation into the Spanish
     population, possibly because a labor force was needed to replace
     the expelled Moors and Jews (Alfaro, 1982).

     Evidence that Gypsies could be made the property, for perpetuity,
     of Spanish citizens in the sixteenth century is found in a
     document published in Valladolid in 1538:
      

          Gypsies are not to move about these kingdoms, and those
          that may be there, are to leave them, or take trades,
          or live with their overlords under penalty of a hundred
          lashes for the first time, and for the second time that
          their ears be cut off, and that they be chained for
          sixty days, and that for the third time that they
          remain captive forever to them who take them. Decree of
          their Highnesses given in the year 1499, and Law No.104
          in the Decrees; confirmed and ordered to be observed in
          the court which was celebrated in Toledo in the year
          1525, Law No.58, in spite of any clause which may have
          been given to the contrary (de Celso, 1538).

      
     Moraes (1886), Coelho (1892) and more recently Couto (1973) and
     Locatelli (1981) have all documented the shipment of Gypsies out
     of Portugal. In the 17th and 18th centuries, Ciganos were being
     sent to work in the Portuguese colonies in South America, Africa
     and India. One can only imagine how the latter individuals must
     have reacted upon finding themselves in the land of their
     ancestors. Boxer mentions briefly the victimization of
      

          entire communities of Gypsies, against whom King John V
          seems to have conceived an obsessive hatred, for no
          reason that I can discover. These unfortunates of all
          ages, and both sexes were shipped off in successive
          levies to Brazil and Angola, without any specific
          charge being brought against them, in a (largely
          futile) attempt to banish the Romany race from Portugal
          altogether (1969:314).

      
     It was in this particular respect that the trans-Atlantic
     shipment of the Africans differed from that of Gypsies: the
     former were transported for economic reasons; the latter, for
     reasons of hate.

     A decree which came into effect in August, 1685, redirected the
     shipments from the African settlements at Cabinda, Quicombo and
     Mossamedes to Maranhăo, a vast colony to the north of Brazil. In
     1718, the Brazilian city of Bahia became the central offloading
     point for Gypsies from Portugal. The governor was ordered at that
     time to make it illegal for Gypsies to speak Romani or to teach
     it to their children, in order that it should quickly become
     extinct:
      

          Foram degrados os ciganos do reino para a praça da
          cidade da Bahia, ordinando-se ao governador que ponha
          cobro a cuidado na prohibiçăo do uso da sua lingua e
          giria, năo permitindo que se ensine a seus filhos, a
          fim de obter-se a sua extincçăo (Moraes, 1886:24).

      
     Expulsion orders in France go back to 1427, but were applied only
     sporadically at that early date. By 1560, Gypsies were being
     ordered to leave that country at once, or be committed to the
     galleys, a practice which was also in effect in Spain at that
     time. In 1682, Louis XIV ordered bailiffs throughout France to
      

          arrest, and cause to be arrested, all those who are
          called Bohemians or Egyptians ... to secure the men to
          the convicts' chain to be led to our galleys and to
          serve there in perpetuity, [and as for the women, they
          were to be] flogged and banished out of the kingdom;
          all this without any other form of trial (de
          Fréminville, 1775:305).

      
     Gypsies were probably reaching North America within two or three
     decades after this order was effected; Jones, writing of these
     transportees from France, says that
      

          There is a colony of 'Gypsies' on Biloxi Bay in
          Louisiana [now in Mississippi] who were brought over
          and colonized by the French at a very early period of
          the first settlement of the state [i.e., ca.1700]. They
          are French 'Gypsies' and speak the French language,
          they call themselves 'Egyptians' or 'Gypsies'
          (1834:189).

      
     Olmsted provides a further interesting account of Gypsies in
     French North America, in the form of a conversation with a local
     planter while he was visiting Louisiana:
      

          I afterwards spent the night at the house of a white
          planter, who told me that, when he was a boy, he had
          lived at Alexandria. It was then under the Spanish
          rule, and 'the people they was all sorts. They was
          French and Spanish, and Egyptian and Indian, and
          Mulattoes and Niggers'. 'Egyptians?'. 'Yes, there was
          some of the real old Egyptians there then'. 'Where did
          they come from?. 'From some of the Northern islands'.
          'What language did they speak?. 'Well, they had a
          language of their own, which some of 'em used among
          themselves, Egyptian, I suppose it was, but they could
          talk in French and Spanish too'. 'What color were
          they?. 'They was black, but not very black. Oh! they
          was citizens, as good as any. They passed for white
          folks'. 'Did they keep close by themselves, or did they
          intermarry with white folks?. 'They married mulattoes
          mostly, I believe. There was heaps of Mulattoes in
          Alexandria then-free niggers-their fathers was French
          and Spanish men, and their mothers right black niggers.
          Good many of them had Egyptian blood in 'em too ...'
          The Egyptians were probably Spanish Gypsies; though I
          have never heard of any of them being in America in any
          other way (1861:638).

      
     The population Olmsted refers to were probably from France rather
     than Spain as he suggests, and related to the earlier
     transportees mentioned by Jones. Spanish shipments to Louisiana,
     their solución americana, part of a proclamation issued in 1749,
     is discussed by Alfaro (1982:318,329).

     Roma had already been transported out of Spain with Columbus on
     his third voyage in 1498 (Wilford, 1984:C1,3; Lyon, 1986:604),
     and were similarly expelled during the time of the Inquisition
     (Ortega, 1985). A mixed Afro-Romani community lives near
     Atchefalaya in St. Martin Parish, some seventy-five miles
     south-east of Alexandria, though it shuns social intercourse with
     the surrounding black, white and American Indian populations, as
     well as with the Vlax and Romanichal Gypsies who live in the
     state.

     A further account from the same region from about 1780 of another
     mixed Romani population, though here with the local Indians, is
     found in Milfort (1802:39):
      

          On leaving Mobile, I went to Paskagola. The inhabitants
          of this village are very lazy; but, since they have
          little ambition, they are happy, and lead a completely
          tranquil life. They are for the most part Gypsy men who
          married Indian women; there are a few French Creole men
          among them. They are all carpenters and build schooners
          with which they engage in coasting trade in Mobile Bay,
          at New Orleans, and at Pantsakole.

      
     Cuban anthropologist Dr. Beatrice Morales-Cozier of Georgia State
     University in Atlanta is working with another mixed
     African-Romani community which lives in the interior of her own
     country.

     On July 30th, 1749, King Ferdinand VI ordered the wholesale
     redada or arrest of all Roma throughout Spain, in order to
     "extinguish once and for all" this population which had "infected
     (his domains) for so many years."  Many where imprisoned; others
     were sent by sea to La Coruńa on English and Swedish vessels
     "with the loss of many people" (Alfaro, 1993:103).

     On November 22nd, 1802, the Prefect of the department of Basses
     Pyrenees, M. de Castellane, issued an order calling for measures
     to be taken "to purge the country of Gypsies"; subsequently, ...
     on the night of December 6th, the date set by the Prefect, all of
     the Gypsies throughout the Basque Country were rounded up, as
     though in a net, and were taken via various depots to ships which
     put them off on the coast of Africa. "This vigorous measure
     which, on being put into effect, brought all the approval which
     humanity and justice could muster," said a writer of the time,
     and "was a veritable kindness to the Department" (Michel,
     1857:136).

     In an unsigned article which appeared in the first issue of the
     Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society (1888:54), it was suggested
     that the Lowbey people of the Senegambia may be the descendants
     of these transportees; they are said never to marry out of their
     community, are reputed to have come from somewhere far away, and
     to be cursed to keep on the move for stealing. They make a living
     from carving wooden utensils for sale, and in an earlier article
     in the Archaeological Review (Hartland, 1888:15), they are
     referred to as "the Gypsies of the Gambia." Michel's report does
     not give the destination of the French ships, but it seems
     unlikely that they would have traveled as far south along the
     African coast as the Gambia before disembarking their human
     cargo. There is a town on the Senegambian coast, however, called
     Ziguinchor (pronounced "ziganshor") whose name, it has been
     suggested, may derive from Tzigane. Lespinasse (1863:42) had
     earlier suggested that those vessels may not in fact have left
     European waters, but might instead have been waylaid off the
     French coast by a British naval blockade and returned to shore.

     [Illustration with caption]
     French court order dated 1612 ordering all Gypsies out of France


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
               VIII. Treatment Elsewhere in Europe: Germany
                                   

     In the Hanseatic townships of mediaeval Germany, Gypsies were
     subject to the extremely rigid laws which affected all the
     inhabitants during that period. Many were imprisoned, for
     example, for not being on the taxpayer's register, or for not
     having a fixed address or steady employment. Because of their
     circumstances, Gypsies were especially vulnerable, and many
     sought refuge in the forests to escape these penalties. The
     difficulty of maintaining a livelihood under such conditions, and
     the harshness of the northern European winters, together with the
     steadily increasing harrassment of Gypsies in particular, reduced
     their numbers in Germany drastically within the first few years.

     Those who remained were subject to growing persecution; in the
     museum in the Ancient Free City of Nördlingen may be seen many of
     the implements of torture used against the Gypsies in Germany,
     and a placard showing a Gypsy, whose flesh had been whipped from
     his body before being taken to the gallows, bearing the words
     "Punishment for Gypsies and their women found in this country."
     In 1726, Charles VI passed a law that any male Gypsy found in the
     country was to be killed instantly, while Gypsy women and
     children had their ears cut off, and were whipped all the way to
     the border. Gypsy hunting was a common sport; in 1826, Freiherr
     von Lenchen displayed his trophies publicly: the severed heads of
     a Gypsy woman and her child. In 1835, a Rheinish aristocrat
     entered into his list of kills "A Gypsy woman and her suckling
     babe."

     The first academic treatment of Gypsies was written by the German
     ethnographer Heinrich Grellmann in 1783, upon whose research all
     later scholarship was built. With few exceptions, 19th century
     studies  reflected the distaste and prejudices of their authors;
     Grellmann himself admitted to feeling "an evident repugnancy,
     like a biologist dissecting some nauseating, crawling thing in
     the interests of science" while doing his fieldwork ("ein
     offensichtlicher Widerwille wie der eines Naturwissenschaftlers,
     der ein ekelerregendes Kriechtier im Interesse der Wissenschaft
     seziert"; 1783:7). His contemporary, the Lithuanian minister M.
     Zippel, wrote that "Gypsies in a well-ordered state in the
     present day are like vermin on an animal's body" ("Zigeuner in
     einem guten geordneten Staat während der gegenwärtigen Zeit, sind
     wie Schädlinge an der Körper eines Tieres"1793:148). In the 20th
     century, Martin Block exhibited much the same attitude. He could
     not help experiencing "an involuntary feeling of mistrust, or
     repulsion, in their presence" ("ein unfreiwilliges Gefühl des
     Misstrauens oder des Widerwillens in ihrer Gegenwart"; 1936:16).

     [Illustration with caption]
     "Punishment for Gypsies and their women found in this country"
     Nördlingen, 1700

     This detached attitude is not unusual among those who specialize
     in Gypsy Studies; in his foreword to the 1963 reprint of Groome's
     Gypsy Folk Tales, the late Walter Starkie drew attention to this:

      

          [Groome's] experiences with the majority of
          Gypsiologists in Germany and elsewhere left him
          dissatisfied, for he discovered that they were not
          interested in frequenting the Gypsy camps or talking to
          the Romanichals; all their interest was concentrated
          upon Romani, as though it were a dead language like
          ancient Greek (Groome, 1963:v).

      
     It has nevertheless been German scholarship in this area, more
     than any other, that has provided the foundation for modern
     Romanological studies. Grellmann's work attracted a number of
     Indianists, who became interested in Romani and who made passing
     references to its genealogy in their work. Such scholars included
     Schlegel, Bopp and Jülg. Contemporary with them was a handful of
     Romanologues who were publishing descriptions of specific
     dialects of European Romani: Bischoff, von Heister, Puchmeyer and
     Graffunder among them. In 1844, Augustus Pott produced the first
     scientific historical and comparative study of the language, for
     which he has come to be regarded as the father of Romani
     linguistics; this work was supplemented by the research of
     Ascoli, also writing in German, and in the 1870s and 1880s Franz
     Miklosich produced the first etymological and dialectological
     studies. A number of 19th-century German Indo-Europeanists cut
     their philological teeth on Romani, although its study today
     remains, as then, marginal.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                      IX. German Treatment of Gypsies
                         in the Twentieth Century
                                   

          "You talked about Auschwitz. My name is Gustav Wexler.
          I know about Auschwitz. "
          "Mr. Morris, my name is Mrs. Hersh. May I say
          something? Israel was bought and paid for with the
          blood of six million martyrs ... Why do you think the
          Jews should be the only people without a homeland?"'
          "Do I think that? On the other hand, Mrs. Hersh, where
          is the homeland of the Gypsies? What did their blood
          buy and pay for?"
          "Gypsies? ", Wexler said. "What's Gypsies got to do
          with it?"
          "Half a million Gypsies also died in the concentration
          camps, "Adam said. "Doesn't that even earn them a
          couple of fields? One caravan site with running water?
          A day trip to a stately home? Nothing?"'
          "The Gypsies, " Wexler said, "have no historic
          homeland.
          "Ah. That must be where they made their big mistake. "
          "The Gypsies, "Mrs. Hersh said, "what culture have the
          Gypsies got?"
          "No culture?" Adam said. "To hell with them."
          "Mr. Speaker, " Wexler said, "may I ask you something?
          Because can you give me the names of ten famous
          Gypsies?"  (Raphael, 1977:253-254).

      
     Towards the end of the 19th century, a conference on "The Gypsy
     Filth" (Der Zigeunerunrat) was held in Swabia, and plans were
     made to round up all Gypsies throughout the German-controlled
     territories. A system was proposed whereby bells would be rung in
     villages as a means of signalling their presence. This led to the
     later establishment, in Munich in 1899, of the Central Office for
     Fighting the Gypsy Nuisance (Zentrale zur Bekämpfung des
     Zigeunerunwesens), under the direction of Alfred Dillman. This
     bureau was not officially closed down until 1970.
      

          Long before the Nazis came to power, the Gypsies had
          been treated as social outcasts. Their foreign
          appearance, their strange customs and language, their
          nomadic way of life and lack of regular employment had
          increasingly come to be regarded as an affront to the
          norms of a modern state and society. They were seen as
          asocial, a source of crime, culturally inferior, a
          foreign body within the nation. During the 1920s the
          police, first in Bavaria and then in Prussia
          established special offices to keep the Gypsies under
          constant surveillance. They were photographed and
          fingerprinted as if they were criminals. With the Nazi
          takeover, however, a new motive was added to the
          grounds for persecution: their distinct and allegedly
          inferior racial character (Noakes, 1985:17).

      
     When Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, his Nazi administration
     inherited anti-Gypsy laws which had already been in force in
     Germany since the Middle Ages. The January 20th edition of Le
     Temps that same year carried the following story (see also
     Shoemaker, 1933:158-160):
      

                                Gypsy Island

          According to the Viennese papers, mayors in the
          district of Oberwarth, in Burgenland, have today
          examined the question of the Gypsies who, they claim,
          have become a veritable plague in the country. They
          maintain that the Gypsies are multiplying three or four
          times more rapidly than the indigenous population ...
          These mayors want to withhold civil rights from the
          Gypsies, and institute the same kinds of laws against
          them as exist in Hungary, which include in particular
          clubbing, in cases of theft. The mayors have endorsed a
          proposal made by the District Prefect that the Société
          de Nations be invited to examine the establishment of a
          Gypsy colony on one of the Polynesian islands.

      
     During the first few months of Nazi rule, an SS study group
     proposed that all Gypsies then in Germany should be killed by
     drowning them in ships taken out into mid-ocean and sunk. There
     were not, at that time, any anti-Jewish laws in effect, and in
     fact the Weimar Constitution of 1918 had reaffirmed the equality
     of  Jews with other Germans in that year (Gilbert, 1947:493).
     Instead, the authorities in the Research Center for Racial
     Hygiene and Biological Population Studies began a lengthy process
     of codifying persons of Romani origin (dealt with in the recent
     novels of the Romani Holocaust by Ramati (1985) and Florence
     (1985); the novels of Kosinsky (1965) and Kanfer (1978) also deal
     with the same theme). On September 15th, 1935, Gypsies became
     subject to the restrictions of the Nuremberg Law for the
     Protection of Blood and Honor, which forbade intermarriage or
     sexual intercourse between Aryan and non-Aryan peoples (Noakes,
     loc. cit.). Criteria for classification as a Gypsy were twice as
     strict as those later applied to Jews: if two of a person's eight
     great-grandparents were even part-Gypsy, that person had too much
     Gypsy ancestry to be allowed, later, to live. The Nuremberg
     decree on the the other hand defined a Jew as being minimally a
     person having one Jewish grandparent, i.e. as someone who was one
     quarter Jewish (Hilberg, 1961). If the criteria applied to the
     Jews had also been applied to the Gypsies, nearly 20,000 Gypsy
     victims would have escaped being murdered by the Nazis (Kenrick
     and Puxon, 1972). The subsequent classificatory treatment of Jews
     was in fact derived from, and patterned upon, those developed for
     the Romani population. An article which appeared in the British
     press on the eve of the Second World War included the prophetic
     words "In case Hitler is interested, they are pure Aryan"
     (Sulzberger, 1939:7).

     [Illustration with caption]
     Document dated December 12th, 1925, calling for a joint
     conference to discuss the "Gypsy problem"

     Eva Justin, one of those concerned with compiling genealogical
     data of this sort was, after the war, employed as a social worker
     and never prosecuted. In her treatise on Gypsies, she expressed
     the hope that her research would prevent any further flow of such
     "unworthy primitive elements" into the German nation. Her
     companion during the war, Dr. Hermann Arnold, remains today a
     respected 'Gypsy expert', and until recently was a consultant on
     Gypsies with the Ministry of Family Affairs in Bonn.

     Some Gypsies were sterilized as early as 1933, though no Jews had
     yet been; beginning in the same year, camps were being
     established by the Nazis to contain Gypsies at Dachau,
     Dieselstrasse, Mahrzan and Vennhausen, although at so early a
     date, Jewish victims were not being sent en masse to any camps.
     It is a matter of singular disgrace that, in 1936, the anti-Gypsy
     campaign became globalized, through the establishment of the
     International Center for the Fight against the Gypsy Menace by
     Interpol, in Vienna, which today has branches in 138 countries.
     Again, this did not happen for the Jews. In effect, the Nazi
     Party sought, and was given, the cooperation of other European
     governments in its campaign to locate and identify Gypsies
     throughout Europe for its later plans for extermination.

     In 1938, a Nazi Party proclamation stated that the Gypsy problem
     was categorically a matter of race ("mit Bestimmtheit eine Frage
     der Rasse"), and was to be dealt with in that light; a year
     later, Johannes Behrendt, speaking for the Party, declared that
     "elimination without hesitation" ("Austossung ohne Zögern") of
     the entire Gypsy population had to be instigated immediately,
     although a number of families were to be kept in a compound for
     future anthropologists to be able to study. Among the many
     categories of victims in Hitler's Germany, only the Gypsies and
     the Jews were singled out for annihilation on racial grounds,
     only Jews and Gypsies being considered genetically so "manifestly
     tainted" as to pose a threat to German racial purity.

     [Illustration with caption]
     German police interrogating Gypsies, 1925

     [Illustration with caption]
     Document entitled "The Fight Against the Gypsy Nuisance" dated
     July 6th, 1927, dealing with their incarceration

     [Illustration with caption]
     A Gypsy transport awaiting departure, 1938
      

          [At the U.S. Government War Crimes Tribunal] Ohlendorf
          ... told Musmanno that he did his duty as best he could
          at all times. Asked if he killed other than Jews,
          Ohlendorf admitted he did: Gypsies.

          "On what basis did you kill Gypsies?."
          "It was the same as for Jews," he replied.
          "Racial? blood?."
          Ohlendorf shrugged his shoulders. "There was no
          difference between Gypsies and Jews" (Infield,
          1982:61).

      
     In July, 1938, the machinery of the Endlösung or Final Solution
     was put into effect with the transportation of a group of Gypsies
     to Berlin. During the following months, transportations to the
     camps in Poland began, but were later stopped because of the
     expense involved, and the need to use the trains for moving
     German weapons and troops to the Eastern Front.  Gypsies in
     Poland and the Baltic States, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France,
     Italy, Hungary and the rest of Nazi-occupied Europe were herded
     into camps for later extermination, though others were frequently
     dispatched on the spot. The treatment given to a Gypsy mother and
     her young daughter by a group of soldiers in northern Jugoslavia
     is not untypical:
      

          First the girl was forced to dig a ditch, while her
          mother, seven months pregnant, was left tied to a tree.
          With a knife they opened the belly of the mother, took
          out the baby, and threw it in the ditch. Then they
          threw in the mother and the girl after raping her. They
          covered them with earth while they were still alive
          (Paris, 1962:62).

      
     The effectiveness of Hitler's campaign of genocide ensured that
     there were almost no Gypsy writers who survived the War, and
     because Gypsies have been overlooked since then, it has been hard
     for chroniclers to piece together this story; they have had
     largely to rely upon the accounts of Jewish and other survivors
     for their information.  A man named Grabów who escaped from the
     death camp at Chelmno was able to get a letter through to his
     relatives telling of the atrocities being perpetrated against
     Gypsies there:
      

          ... The place where everyone is being put to death is
          called Chelmno, not far from Dabie; people are kept in
          the nearby forest of Lochów. People are killed in one
          of two ways: either by shooting or by poison gas. This
          is what happened to the towns of Dabie, Izbica
          Kujawska, and others. Recently, thousands of Gypsies
          have been brought there from the so-called Gypsy camp
          in Lodz, and the same is done to them ... (Dobroszycki,
          1984:xxi, letter dated January 19th, 1942).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Families awaiting deportation, 1939

     [Illustration with caption]
     Document from the Oberbürgermeister of Hannover stating that the
     city did not want to serve as a Gypsy detention center, April
     1st, 1939

     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsy families in Auschwitz

     Shoshana Kalisch was a survivor of the Lodz concentration camp,
     and tells of sharing it with Gypsies brought there from Austria:
      

          The Gypsies did not last long. Left without food for
          days, they were tortured sadistically by their special
          guards, who often forced them to do gymnastics until
          they collapsed or died ... The Nazi commander ordered
          squads of Jews to bury the Gypsies in the Jewish
          cemetery. Surviving Gypsies were deported to Auschwitz
          ... when we were deported to Auschwitz, my sister and I
          were assigned to a barracks of "C" compound at
          Birkenau, adjacent to the camp in which the Gypsies
          were detained ... One night in early August, we heard
          spine-chilling shrieks coming from the Gypsy camp,
          augmented by the sound of trucks coming and going and
          the ferocious barking of dogs. The elder in charge of
          our barracks told us that the Gypsies were being taken
          away. The sound of the trucks, the barking of the dogs,
          and the screaming and wailing of the Gypsies permeated
          our camp throughout the night.

          We held onto our shoes, our only possessions aside from
          the single garment on our bodies, ready to run - which
          would of course have been useless - expecting in silent
          terror to be the next ones taken away. Feeling only my
          sister's and my heartbeats, I made up my mind not to
          scream when they came for us. The Gypsies, I thought,
          had been screaming for me too (Kalisch, 1985:87-88).

      
     Shoshana Kalisch (op. cit.) also reproduces a song which was
     written about the Gypsies in her camp. "Strictly quarantined and
     isolated from the rest of the ghetto, the Gypsies were easily
     ignored or forgotten," she says. "Thus it is all the more
     touching to hear a song describing the Gypsies' plight by the
     Lodz, ghetto musician David Beigelman." Beigelman died of
     exhaustion in a slave labor camp just three months before
     liberation:

	Tsigaynerlid 

	Finster di nakht, vi koyln shvarts,                     
	Nor trakht un trakht, un s'klapt mayn harts.                        
	Mir Tsigayner lebn vi keyner,                  
	Mir laydn noyt, genug koym oyf broyt.         
                                     
	Dzum dzum dzum,     
	Mir flien arum vi di tshaykes,              
	Dzum dzum dzum,     
	Mir shpiln oyf di balalaykes.               
                                     
	Nit vu men togt, nit vu men nakht;               
	A yeder zikh plogt, nor kh'trakht un trakht.                      
	Mir Tsigayner lebn vi keyner,                  
	Mir laydn noyt, genug koym oyf broyt.         
                                    
	Dzum dzum dzum,     
	Mir flien arum vi di tshaykes,
	Dzum dzum dzum,     
	Mir shpiln oyf di balalaykes.


	Gypsy Song*               

	Dark is the night, like blackest coal.              
	I brood and brood, my heartbeats toll.             
	We Gypsies live like no no others do,
	Suffering pain, and hunger too.            
                                   
	Dzum dzum dzum,       
	Like seagulls we fly near and far,
	Dzum dzum dzum,       
	We're strumming our Gypsy guitar.                
                                   
	Nowhere to stay, almost no food;             
	Everyone struggles, but I just brood.                  
	We Gypsies live like no others do,           
	Suffering pain, and hunger too.             
                                   
	Dzum dzum dzum,
	Like seagulls we fly near and far,
	Dzum dzum dzum,
	We're strumming our Gypsy guitar.


	Rromani Dzhili

	Tunjariko e rjat, angar kalo,
	Nekezhi' ma, marel o  jilo;
	Trajin el Rrom sar nisave
	Rrevdin e dukh, sa bokhale.

	Dzum dzum dzum
	Sar macharki pash-dural hurjas,
	Dzum dzum dzum
	Amare levuci rromane bashas.

	Chi beshav katende, kak manaj te xav,
	Saorre chingarel, 'ma man te nekezhisavav;
	Trajin el Rrom sar nisave
	Rrevdiv e dukh, sa bokhale.

	Dzum dzum dzum
	Sar macharki pash-dural hurjas,
	Dzum dzum dzum
	Amare levuci rromane bashas.

     *English translation of the original Yiddish by S. Kalisch,
     Romani translation by the author. The score for this song may be
     found in Kalisch, op. cit., pp. 89-90.

     [Illustration with caption]
     Document dated August 31st, 1938, dealing with the problem of
     finding locations in which to confine Gypsies

     In 1942, information on the Gypsy population of England, Sweden
     and Spain began to be collected in anticipation of eventual Nazi
     takeover of those countries. In Germany itself, large-scale
     roundups were established by February, 1943, and by April over
     ten thousand Gypsies had arrived in Sachsenhausen where they were
     put to work. Conditions in these and other concentration camps
     are painfully described in Kenrick and Puxon (1972), which also
     recounts the terrible medical experiments which were carried out
     on Gypsies, especially upon young girls. Twins were also selected
     for experimentation; the "Angel of Death," Joseph Mengele, used
     Gypsy children in particular for his research. One Gypsy
     survivor, Hans Braun, who now lives in Canada remembers Mengele
     and his experiments at Auschwitz, where on just one day, August
     1st, 1944, four thousand Gypsies were dispatched to their deaths.
     Braun has an especially vivid recollection:
      

          I remember very well how he gave a small Gypsy boy of
          five or six an injection with a needle about 30
          centimetres long. He stuck the needle into the boy's
          back to extract the spinal fluid; he stuck it up to the
          neck vertebrae. The needle broke, and it didn't take
          long for the child to die. Behind the building there
          was a kind of butcher's block with a trough for blood,
          like a wash basin ... Mengele cut the child open from
          the neck to the genitals, dissecting the body, and took
          out the innards to experiment on them. This was
          something I will not forget (Tyrnauer, 1985b:7).

      
     A Jewish survivor, Vera Alexander, had the job of supervising
     fifty sets of Gypsy twins in the same camp. She describes an
     incident which took place in 1943:
      

          I remember one set of twins in particular: Guido and
          Nina, aged about four. One day, Mengele took them away.
          When they returned, they were in a terrible state -
          they had been sewn together, back to back, like Siamese
          twins. Their wounds were infected and oozing pus.They
          screamed day and night. Then their parents - I remember
          their mother's name was Stella - managed to get hold of
          some morphine, and they killed their children in order
          to end their suffering. Soon after that, I was taken to
          another camp, and the Gypsy camp was entirely
          liquidated (Davis, 1985:23).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Translation of a letter written by Gauleiter Portschy of
     Steiermark calling for the enforced sterilization of Gypsies,
     January 9th, 1938

     Nineteen-forty-three was also the year Himmler decided that the
     Gypsy camps were to be done away with, and so began a program of
     liquidation which was ultimately to destroy over half a million
     Romani lives. Gypsies were beaten and clubbed to death, herded
     into the gas chambers and forced to dig their own graves and jump
     into them. In Lithuania, a thousand Gypsies were locked inside a
     synagogue, which was then burnt to the ground killing them all.
     Children had their heads smashed by being swung by the feet
     against a wall. One eyewitness account tells of Gypsies screaming
     through the night in anguish, waiting to be murdered. It is
     ironic that the Romani word sastipe, the general greeting for
     health and luck, should have the same Sanskrit root (svastha)
     from which the word Swastika is also derived.

     An account of the punishment meted out to one Gypsy who tried to
     escape from Dachau, is found in Kogon:
      

          He was locked in a large box with iron bars over the
          opening. Inside, the prisoner could only hold himself
          in a crouching position. Koch (the camp commander) then
          had big nails driven through the planks so that each
          movement of the prisoner made them stick in his body.
          Without food or water, he spent two days and three
          nights in this position. On the morning of the third
          day, having already gone insane, he was given an
          injection of poison (1950:102).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Auschwitz: Gypsies dig their own graves

     Manfri Wood, a Gypsy serving with the British Royal Air Force,
     told of his first impressions as a member of a liberation team
     entering Belsen after the collapse of the Third Reich:
      

          We faced something terrible. Heaps of unburied bodies,
          and an unbearable stench. When I saw the surviving
          Romanies, with young children among them, I was shaken.
          Then I went over to the ovens, and found on one of the
          steel stretchers the half-charred body of a girl, and I
          understood in one awful minute what had been going on
          there (Kenrick and Puxon, 1972:187).

      
     Since the end of the Second World War, little of benefit has been
     achieved from the Gypsy point of  view. Not a single Gypsy was
     called upon to testify at the Nuremberg Trials, or has been to
     any of the subsequent war crime tribunals.
      

          The downfall of the Third Reich did not halt the
          devaluation of Gypsy lives. Though West Germany paid
          nearly $715 million to Israel and various Jewish
          organizations, Gypsies as a group received nothing ...
          [although] Gypsy activists have uncovered a case of a
          woman who received ten dollars for the death of her
          baby in Auschwitz.

          West German officials have rejected the efforts of
          several thousand Gypsy survivors of the War to
          establish citizenship in the Federal Republic, even
          though their families have lived in Germany for
          Generations (Anon., 1979:67).

      
     Romani Rose, Vice President of the World Romani Union and its
     most vigorous activist, has been trying, so far without success,
     to obtain compensation from a number of German companies for
     their use of  Gypsies as slave labor in Nazi Germany:
      

          Seven companies have paid more than 58 million marks
          ($29 million) to Jewish forced laborers and their
          families. Rose, 39, was interviewed in the offices of
          the Gypsy Central Council in Heidelberg. He said
          "absolutely none" of the Gypsies have been paid so far
          ... Rose said 700 German Gypsies have notified him of
          claims for slave labor, but he added that the number
          could rise to 1,000. He estimated that up to 15,000
          Gypsy survivors of the Nazi forced-labor program are in
          Germany and Austria alone. One of those, Hugo Franz,
          said at the press conference: "Prisoners died like
          flies from breathing in poison gas. Civilian workers
          and SS guards both beat us. Many of the prisoners went
          blind from the poison gas; we went for days without
          sleep." The Gypsies have named 11 companies for which
          they say members of the Sinti and Roma were forced to
          work during the Nazi era. Rose said demands had been
          sent to all of them. Among companies Rose named was the
          Daimler-Benz car and truck manufacturer (Costelloe,
          1986:3A).

                                   * * *

     Since the mid-1970s, representatives of various Gypsy
     organizations have been in conference with Herr Willy Brandt and
     Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in an attempt to claim reparation
     amounting to $365 million. Stimulated in part by Jewish
     activists, Gypsies are pressing more and more openly for
     recognition of their plight. In October, 1979, 2,000 Gypsies
     marched to Bergen-Belsen where thousands died between 1939 and
     1945. Today, there is a growing acknowledgement of the Gypsy
     situation among German scholars (e.g. Günther, 1985), although
     prejudice at the popular and governmental levels remains deeply
     entrenched. German government spokesman Gerold Tandler, as
     recently as the 1970s, called Gypsy demands for war crimes
     reparations "unreasonable" and "slander[ous]" (Pond, 1980:B17),
     while in 1985, the Mayor of the City of Darmstadt Günther
     Metzger, told the Central Council of the German Sinti and Roma
     that they had "insulted the honor" of the memory of the Holocaust
     by wishing to be associated with it (Wiesenthal, 1986:6). German
     Gypsies are now learning that it is to their advantage to pass as
     Jews; a recently-documented example is that of a musician who
      

          ... changed his Romany name, Kroner, to Rosenberg; with
          a Gypsy name, he had been out of work for months, but
          with a new Jewish name, he was highly employable. "The
          German conscience is very selective," he laughed (Marre
          and Charlton, 1985:196).

      
     The Gypsies in West Germany, now numbering some 50,000 (no
     population estimates have been released by the East German
     government, although they are probably extremely small), live
     mostly in ghettos and receive minimal schooling and health care.
     In a recent government survey of German attitudes towards
     Gastarbeiter and other non-indigenous groups, Gypsies were
     clearly ranked at the very bottom in terms of their perceived
     social worth and acceptability. "Owners of almost 90 percent of
     West Germany's campsites ... have tacked up signs reading GYPSIES
     FORBIDDEN. Police periodically descend upon camping Gypsies with
     guard dogs and submachine guns, and force them to move on"
     (ibid.). In November, 1973, a villager in Pfaffenhofen in Bavaria
     opened fire upon a group of Gypsy women who had come to buy
     produce from his farm, killing two and wounding a third. The
     sympathies of the police were with the farmer (David, 1973:75).

     [Illustration with caption]
     Wax face masks made from Gypsy prisoners for Nazi anthropological
     studies

     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsy prisoners at Dachau

     One of the most pressing issues facing American Rom is the
     securing of representation on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
     Council. This was established in 1979 by President Jimmy Carter
     to be an enduring memorial to all those who perished in Hitler's
     Germany. Sixty-five individuals were appointed but, as with
     Nuremberg, no Gypsies were ever approached. Elie Wiesel claimed
     in his Report for the Holocaust Memorial Commission to the
     President of the United States that Jews were "certainly the
     first" victims of the Holocaust (1979:3), and that the Holocaust
     was "essentially a Jewish event ... the Jewish people alone were
     destined to be totally annihilated, they alone were totally alone
     ... At the same place appears the definition that "The Holocaust
     was the systematic, bureaucratic extermination of six million
     Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators." In the entire report,
     the word Gypsy appears just once, along with Poles, Soviet
     prisoners of war, Frenchmen, Serbs and Slavs as "others," in an
     appendix. The total number of Romani dead is now estimated to be
     some 600,000.  While this amounts to a tenth of the number of
     Jewish victims, in terms of the genocide of an entire people, the
     proportions are nevertheless similar - a fact which has not
     escaped a number of Holocaust scholars:
      

          The Nazis killed between a fourth and a third of all
          Gypsies living in Europe, and as many as 70 percent in
          those areas where Nazi control had been established
          longest (Strom and Parsons, 1978: 220).

          How many people in Britain and America today are aware
          that the Gypsies of Europe were rounded up by the Nazis
          and sent to their death in almost similar proportions
          to the Jews? (Heger, 1980:15).

          ... the Gypsies had been murdered [in a proportion]
          similar to the Jews; about 80 percent of them in the
          area of the countries which were occupied by the Nazis
          (part of a letter dated December 14th, 1984, from Simon
          Wiesenthal to Elie Wiesel, protesting the exclusion of
          Gypsies from the Holocaust Memorial Council).

      
     Pressure for recognition from Gypsy groups in the United States
     consistently met with indifference to begin with. When
     acknowledgement was made at all, it was invariably unkind.
     Professor Seymour Seigel, former chairman of the U.S. Holocaust
     Memorial Council, in an article which appeared in the Washington
     Post questioned whether Gypsies really did constitute a distinct
     ethnic population - a particularly insensitive comment when it
     was because of their ethnicity Gypsies were targeted for
     extermination - and called attempts to obtain representation on
     the Council "cockamamie" (Grove, 1984:C4). Other journalists
     reported that they were told by the Council's liaison staff that
     Gypsy protesters were "cranks" and "eccentrics" (Doolittle,
     1984:5). Clearly, the individuals controlling the U.S. Holocaust
     Memorial Council were as ignorant of the true facts of Gypsy
     history as any other Americans, and their concern has contrasted
     very sharply with that demonstrated by Jewish supporters in
     Europe, for whom the facts are better known. Since the staff in
     Washington reads the same novels and watches the same films as
     the rest of the population, their biases were hardly surprising.
     In July, 1985, a 167-page work by Dr. Marilyn Bonner Feingold
     entitled Report on the Status of Holocaust Education in the
     United States was circulated, "to bear witness and to remember
     the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust and the millions
     of others who perished at the hands of the Nazis" (p.1), but once
     again, one will search in vain for the words Gypsy or Romani in
     its pages. A report and bibliography on the fate of Gypsies in
     the Holocaust commissioned by the Council by Tyrnauer (submitted
     in February, 1985), on the other hand, had still not been
     publicized or circulated a year and a half later, and according
     to a letter from the Council's Executive Director Richard Krieger
     to Dr. Tyrnauer, dated September 26th, 1986, there are still "no
     immediate plans for its publication." Gypsies either played a
     bit-part in the Holocaust, apparently, or were not a part of it
     at all.

     Continuing agitation from Gypsy organizations such as the World
     Romani Union and the U.S. Romani Council, brought the beginnings
     of a response; picketing in Washington by members of the latter
     organization was covered by the press, and while the reports were
     not always the most objective, public attention has been brought
     to the situation. The struggle has benefitted from non-Gypsy
     support also, most of it Jewish. Miriam Novitch has spoken up for
     the Gypsy cause, and Simon Wiesenthal threatened to make the fact
     that Gypsies were being excluded from the Council a public issue
     (1985:3). Perhaps largely because of this intervention, the post
     of Special Advisor on Holocaust-Related Gypsy Matters to the
     Council was created in May, 1985, and a representative appointed.
     But when questioned a year later why that advisor's involvement
     had never once been sought, the Council's then acting director
     Micah Naftalin told the Washington Post that it had only ever
     been an "honorary" position (Hirschberg, 1986:A16).

     New appointments to the Council were to be announced in Spring,
     1986, and it was expected that one or more Gypsy representative
     would be included. Naftalin and Wiesel both told the New York
     Times (for January 14th, 1986, p.B4) that they "bet they would do
     it."  American Gypsies had been waiting since 1979 for the
     situation to be redressed, and the names of eight candidates had
     been submitted in 1985. The announcements were anxiously awaited.
     The Rornani community was stunned when word came that the Office
     of Presidential Appointments had voted not to include any Romani
     representation; once again, Gypsies had been excluded. White
     House spokesman Linas Kojelis told a World Romani Union
     representative that Gypsies might have received more
     acknowledgement if they had been a more powerful people; a
     classic example of blaming the victims for the crime.

     Since then, the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council has taken a more
     active interest in the Gypsy situation. Former acting director
     Micah Naftalin has gone on record as stating that "the only other
     ethnic group [besides Jews] marked also as a genocidal target was
     the Gypsies" (1986:185) - the first time this fact has been
     acknowledged in print by the Council. A meeting to apprise Gypsy
     representatives of the Council's plans was held on May 5th, 1986,
     and was well attended. In June, a representative of the Romani
     Union was for the first time invited to address the whole
     assembly. A ceremony to commemorate Gypsy victims of the Nazis
     was held in September the same year, and a Conference called "The
     Other Victims" was likewise planned for February, 1987, in which
     Gypsies were asked to participate. Such separate treatment was
     not well received by Gypsies, however, who argued that there was
     after all just one Holocaust: ande jekh than hamisajlo amaro
     vushar ande'l bova, "our ashes were mingled in the ovens" - why
     should that be remembered separately today?

     The fact that the Rom and Sinti were Hitler's first real victims
     is gradually becoming better known; but Elie Wiesel, who watched
     helplessly as his father was beaten by a Gypsy Kapo in Auschwitz
     (Wiesel, 1982:36-37) still felt it necessary in his address at
     the Romani Day of Remembrance, to emphasize that the Jews were
     nevertheless "the supreme victims" of the Third Reich, and in his
     speech upon accepting the Nobel Peace Prize in the following
     month, he made the Point that the Nazi victimization of the Jews
     was "unique." At the ceremony on September 16th, Professor Wiesel
     made the following statement:
      

          I confess that I feel somewhat guilty towards our
          Romani friends. We have not done enough to listen to
          your voice of anguish. We have not done enough to make
          other people listen to your voice of sadness. I can
          promise you we shall do whatever we can from now on to
          listen better (Anon., 1986b:A23).

      
     At that ceremony, California representative, Congressman Tom
     Lantos, gave his assurances that he would initiate a letter,
     signed by members of the Congress and of the Senate, to be sent
     to Chancellor Helmut Kohl of West Germany, Opposition Leader
     Johannes Rau, and East German Premier Erich Honecker, urging that
     war crimes reparations be made to Romani survivors in those
     countries (loc. cit.).

     [Illustration with caption]
     5,000 Gypsies were transported to this Gypsy camp in Auschwitz
     from Burgenland (Austria) prior to their extermination

     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsy deportation, massacres and revolt, 1939-1945 (Gilbert,
     1982)

     [Illustration with caption]
     American Rom protest outside the Holocaust Memorial Council's
     offices, Washington, July, 1984


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
              X. German and Dutch Transportations to America
                                   

     Germany had been trying to rid its territories of Gypsies since
     their arrival there in the early 15th century (Hancock, 1980a),
     and found a convenient dumping ground in their colony in
     Pennsylvania. Shoemaker (1926) wrote of the havoc caused by the
     Thirty Years War which devastated the Rhineland, and which
     resulted in a wave of Palatine migration: individuals who 'sold'
     themselves to redemptioners for the price of their fare to
     America. "This species of servitude, and the selling of emigrants
     for their passage had not a few of the features about it, of
     involuntary chattel slavery, and it was characterized at the time
     as the'German slave trade"' (Beidelman, 1894:584, and discussed
     in detail in Mühlenberg, 1741). Wright (1927:212) refers to their
     also being brought to Pennsylvania by Dutch slave traders,
     possibly a misinterpretation of Shoemaker, op. cit., upon whose
     work his own essay was based. Shoemaker indicated that numbers of
     Gypsies from Germany were indentured and shipped out during this
     same period, although they were not allowed to obtain passports,
     which would presumably have given them the legal means to return
     to Europe - a tactic most recently employed by the Polish
     government in 1981 (Michalewicz, 1982:7).

     In the same article, Shoemaker described the circumstances of an
     attempted passage to America:
      

          On a number of occasions Gipsy bands endeavored to
          charter whole ships at Rotterdam, but as they were
          watched with the same argus-eyed authority as are
          bootleggers today, their efforts were always at the
          last minute frustrated. It is related that one ship,
          the 'Stein-Awdler', giving it its Pennsylvania Dutch
          pronunciation, got away under cover of darkness, but
          during an unfavorable tide, it still lay in the harbor
          at daybreak, when the papers were scrutinized and
          declared invalid by the port authorities.  Several boat
          loads of port wardens went in pursuit, but the boats
          were not to carry the unfortunate Chi-kener back to dry
          land, but to order them off the ship - they were driven
          overboard, men, women and children, like a plague of
          rats, and had to jump out in the mud up to their
          waists, and get ashore as best they could, leaving
          their possessions behind, which were seized as a fine
          levied against them as a body. On shore, the
          mud-saturated refugees were attacked by a mob armed
          with boat hooks and soundly beaten, and probably quite
          a few died of their wounds and exposure afterwards
          (1924:4-5).

      
     He also said that of those "hundreds of Romanies" who were able
     to sell themselves in return for passage, "most of the Chi-kener
     families were broken up ... as some were dumped on the
     inhospitable New England coast, others in New Jersey and still
     others in the Far South, instead of at the ports along the
     Delaware" (1925:4).

     A letter published in the National Gazette on May 19th, 1834,
     tells of the indiscriminate flogging of Gypsies, called
     "Yansers," in neighboring New York state, apparently as a means
     of sport for whoever could afford it:
      

          There is yet another tribe, at or near Schenectady,
          called Yansers, although their patriarchal name is
          Kaiser. A gentleman appointed some years ago to some
          town office there, states that he found a charge of
          four pound ten shillings for whipping Yansers; the
          amount, being small, was allowed. A similar charge
          being brought the next year, he asked what in the name
          of goodness it meant? Behold, it was for chastizing
          Gypsies whenever occasion presented, which was done
          with impunity and for some profit ... it is supposed by
          the best informed of my neighbors, that they came over
          with the early settlers in the German Valley ... they
          are everywhere manufacturers of baskets, brooms and
          other wooden wares.

      
     Legislation against Gypsies in this part of the country dates
     from at least this time, and continues sporadically to be
     enforced. In 1976 "a band of gypsies ... was arrested on entering
     Washington County from neighboring Pennsylvania. Since one of the
     gypsies was suspected of stealing 'a few hundred dollars' from a
     Pennsylvania gas station, all the band's property was confiscated
     and sold" (Logan, 1976), even though the charge was never proved.

     [Illustration with caption]
     Public notice dated November 22nd, 1726, stating that any Gypsies
     coming into the Lordship of Overyssel (in northern Holland) would
     be put to death


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                    XI. Treatment Elsewhere in Europe:
                           England and Scotland
                                   

     An account dated 1528 claimed that there were ten thousand
     Gypsies in the British Isles by that year. Two years later the
     first anti-Gypsy act was passed, which stated that "hensforth no
     such Psone be suffred to come within this the Kynge's Realme";
     any Gypsy entering England had his property confiscated, and was
     ordered to leave within two weeks. Until that time, Gypsies in
     England, as elsewhere in Europe, had shown "counterfaicte
     passeports" signed by state or church dignitaries requesting that
     local officials allow them to pass unhindered (Acts, 1589:279)*.
     An earlier record of banishment from Scotland is found in
     Denmark, however, dated July, 1505, which stated that they had
     been transported thence by James IV. Walter Simson, whose book
     deals principally with the Scottish Romani population, writes of
     Gypsies in that country during this period who were put to death
     "... on the mere ground of being Egyptians ... The cruelty
     exercised upon them was quite in keeping with that of reducing to
     slavery the individuals" (1865:121-122). Quoting from Miller,
     1775, he goes on to indicate that Gypsies employed as
     coal-bearers and salters in 18th century Scotland were "in a
     state of slavery or bondage ... for life, transferable with the
     collieries or salt works."

     One reference by Gairdner (1898, vol. xv, p.325) documents
     shipment from the Lincolnshire coast to Norway in 1544; links
     between Gypsies in Britain and Scandinavia during the 16th
     century are dealt with in more detail by Bergman (1964:13ff.). In
     1547, Edward VI instituted a law (I Edward VI, c.3) which
     required that
      

          they be seized ... and branded with a V on their
          breast, and then enslaved for two years. Such slaves
          could be legally chained and given only the worst food;
          they could be driven to work by whips. If no master
          could be found, they were to be made slaves of the
          borough or hundred or employed in road work or other
          public service ... if the criminals ran away or were
          caught, they were to be branded with an S and made
          slaves for life (Kinney, 1973:45).

      
     By Cromwell's time in the 1600s, it had become a hanging offense
     not only to be born a Gypsy, but for non-Gypsies to associate
     with Gypsies. Roberts referred to this in his 1836 treatise on
     the origins of the Gypsy people:
      

          In the days of Judge Hale, thirteen of these unhappy
          beings were hanged at Bury St. Edmunds, for no other
          cause than that they were Gypsies; and at that time it
          was death without benefit of clergy for anyone to live
          among them for a month (1836:112) ... In England, many
          penal laws were enacted against them, and very great
          numbers were executed for no other crime but being
          Gypsies. At one Suffolk assize, no less than thirteen
          of these poor wretches were executed, legally convicted
          of being born of Gypsy parents (1836:171).

      
     A law in the State of Maryland similarly penalizes non-Gypsies
     apprehended in the company of Gypsies: "all the property of
     members of any group with which [a Gypsy] may be traveling can be
     confiscated and sold to pay any fine a court may levy against the
     arrested Gypsy" (Logan, 1976). The same is true in Indiana, where
     "it shall be ... unlawful for any person or persons associating
     or consorting with any such wandering or nomadic band of Gypsies
     to subsist ... having no visible means of earning a fair, honest
     and reputable livelihood" (State of Indiana Statutory
     Regulations, Section 1; quoted in Marchbin, 1939:151-152).

     *I am entirely indebted for this reference to my colleague David
     Smith, who takes full credit for discovering this important
     source. It has previously been believed that the British Isles
     were one of the few places in which Gypsies did not make use of
     such passes.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                  XII. British Shipments to the Americas
                                   

     It was widely believed during much of the 19th century that no
     Gypsies had ever come to North America. Hoyland stated that
     "Grellmann is of opinion, that America is the only part of the
     world in which they are not known" (1816:11); Crabb confidently
     wrote that while they inhabited "... many countries of Europe,
     Asia and Africa ... on the continent of America alone are there
     none of them found" (1831:6), and a story published in the United
     States in 1843 in The Lady's Book included the remark that "...
     you must be deceived! There never has been a gipsy in North
     America!" (quoted in Groome, 1899:xv). As late as 1874, the
     American Cyclopaedia told its readers that it was "questionable
     whether a band of genuine Gipsies has ever been in America." Even
     Matt Salo, who has collected the most extensive documentation of
     North American British Gypsy ancestry, has stated more than once
     that the "Romnichels began appearing in the U.S. in the 1850s"
     only (1982:281). It is clear from existing records, however, that
     those first to arrive here from Britain did so nearly two
     centuries before that. Simson devotes several pages to this,
     maintaining that the fact that
      

          many Gipsies were banished to America in colonial
          times, from England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland,
          sometimes for merely being 'by habit and repute'
          Gipsies, is beyond dispute ... Gipsies may be said to
          have been in America almost from the time of its
          settlement (1865:418).

      
     Hall noted that "Thickly sprinkled with Gypsy names are the
     'transportation lists', 1787-1867, reposing on the shelves of the
     Public Records Office in London" (1915:281), while
     Brown(1929:148) quoted one Romanichal verbatim who told him that
     he remembered his grandfather telling him that his great-uncle
     fought in the American Revolution in 1776. Paine's History of
     East Harwich, in Vermont, mentions a Romanichal family named
     Cahoon living at Grassy Pond during the mid 1700s, also referred
     to briefly in Kipling's Captains Courageous (Paine, 1937:464).
     But the earliest actual document known to us, dates from the time
     of the administration of Oliver Cromwell's successor, his son
     Richard, when the first trans-Atlantic expulsion of Gypsies was
     instituted:
      

          In 1661 'Commissions and Instructions' were issued anew
          to justices and constables, by Act of Parliament, with
          the view of arresting Gypsies ... a great many Gypsies
          must have been deported to the British 'plantations' in
          Virginia, Jamaica and Barbadoes during the second half
          of the seventeenth century. That they had there to
          undergo a temporary, if not 'perpetual' servitude,
          seems very likely (MacRitchie, 1894:102).

      
     A reference dated November, 1665, comments upon the motives for
     indenturing Gypsies and others in this way:
      

          The light regard paid to the personal right of
          individuals was shown by a wholesale deportation of
          poor people at this time to the West Indies ... out of
          a desire as weel to promote the Scottish and English
          plantations in Gemaica and Barbadoes for the honour of
          their country, as to free the kingdom of the burden of
          many strong and idle beggars, Egyptians, common and
          notorious thieves, and other dissolute and looss
          persons banished and stigmatised for gross crimes
          (Chambers, 1858:304).

      
     In 1714, British merchants and planters applied to the Privy
     Council for permission to ship Gypsies to the Caribbean, avowedly
     to be used as slaves (MacRitchie, op. cit.), and in the following
     year, according to a document dated January 1st, 1715,
      

          Prisoners ... were sentenced ... to be transported to
          the plantations for being [by] habit and repute gipsies
          ... On the said gipsies coming here the town was
          brought under a burden [and] they had used endeavours
          with several merchants who have ships now going abroad
          [i.e., to transport them as slaves], for which they are
          to receive thirteen pounds sterling  (Memorabilia,
          1835:424-426).

      
     Among the family names of those individuals were Faa, Fenwick,
     Lindsey, Stirling, Robertson, Ross and Yorstoun.

     Gypsies, according to the legal definition which was in effect
     throughout this period in England, included "all such persons not
     being Fellons wandering and pretending [i.e. identifying
     themselves to be Egypcians, or wandering in the Habite, Forme or
     Attyre] counterfayte Egypcians" (Statutes, Eliz., 39.c.4, quoted
     in Smith, 1971:109. See also Axon, 1897, passim, and Beier,
     1985:58-62).

     Barbados served as an entrepôt for the distribution of slaves to
     other British territories in the western hemisphere for many
     years. Whether ultimately bound for Virginia, Jamaica or
     elsewhere, large numbers of slaves passed first of all through
     that island (Hancock, 1980b). However, while the designations
     Gypsy, Gypcian, Egyptian, &c., turn up in the records of
     transportation located in Britain, nothing similar appears
     anywhere in the documents examined in Barbados, visited for this
     purpose by the writer in the Spring of 1979. These were Hotten
     (1874), Nicholson (n.d.), St. Hill (1937), Anon. (1963), Headlam
     (1964), Kaminkow (1967), A. Smith (I 971), Coldham (1974) and F.
     Smith (1976). Nevertheless, an examination of the lists of
     transportees found in these works and in the Barbados Records
     indicated that a great number of individuals bearing Romanichal
     (British Gypsy) surnames did in fact arrive in Barbados: the
     names occurring include Boswell, Cook/Cooke, Hern/Herne/Heron,
     Lee/Leek, Locke, Palmer, Penfold/Pinfold, Price, Scot/Scott,
     Smith and Ward, ranging from one Pinfold to nine Boswells to over
     a hundred Smiths. Only a small percentage of these were likely to
     have been Gypsies, of course. Sometimes, a further clue was
     provided by the county of origin of the individual, where given
     (Cookes from Middlesex and Kent), or by occupation (Boswell, a
     blacksmith), but these must also be considered non-conclusive.

     Alexandre Exquemelin remarked upon a number of "Egyptian wenches"
     among the bondservants in Tortuga, when he visited that island in
     1666, but we cannot be sure that Gypsies were meant here. So far,
     only one reference to Gypsies as a discrete group in the West
     Indies, and referred to as such, has been located, and that from
     Jamaica:
      

          I have known many gipsies [to be] subject from the age
          of eleven to thirty to the prostitution and lust of
          overseers, book-keepers, negroes, &c., to be taken into
          keeping by gentlemen, who paid exorbitant hire for
          their use (Moreton, 1793:130).

      
     The censuses themselves do not mention Gypsies, although Jews are
     listed separately from other whites (Dunn, 1962). This omission
     may not be significant, however, since the Amerindian slaves
     brought in from South America, and possibly New England, are not
     listed either - a fact remarked upon by Handler (1970:127).
     Robert Rich, a resident of Barbados writing in 1670, noted that
     the population there consisted of English, Irish, Scottish,
     Dutch, French, Jewish, colored and black slaves (in Ogilby,
     1671:378-379).

     This leaves four possibilities: firstly, that Gypsies were
     counted together with the white population, perhaps because of a
     common point of origin at time of shipment, and were therefore
     not officially registered separately; secondly, that most were
     shipped on to the North American colonies, and did not remain
     long enough in the West Indies to become a recognized,
     established community; thirdly, that by some means, some of them
     at least were able to return to Britain, and lastly, that the
     population was ultimately bred out of existence.

     Against the first stands the fact that Gypsies, being of Asian
     origin, are ultimately not 'white', despite the presence in
     modern times of many English-looking Romanichals, resulting from
     miscegenation with Europeans. Such genetic mixture would, in any
     case, have been far less apparent in the 17th century, and even
     today, it would be difficult to attribute the white Barbadian's
     "sickly white or light red" complexion (Price, 1962:49) to the
     British Gypsy population. Furthermore, the fact that the Gypsies
     who were brought to the West Indies were not native speakers of
     English would have served to distinguish them from other
     non-African bondsmen. Their speech, which "none could understand"
     was often referred to in 17th century descriptions of Gypsies in
     England (cf. Hancock, 1984:92-95, and Beier, 1985:60).  Von
     Uchteritz, in 1652 (before the first-known trans-Atlantic English
     or Scottish shipments of Gypsies) noted that among the slave
     population, "Those who are Christian speak English; the Negroes
     and Indians, however, have their own strange languages" (Gunkel
     and Handler, 1970:93). The existence of the factors, together
     with the deeply-entrenched Romani cultural restrictions on
     over-fraternizing with non-Gypsies, must certainly have made them
     an easily-recognizable group.  The second possibility is
     supported by the fact that we do have a concrete reference to the
     presence of British Gypsies in North America during this period,
     turning up in Virginia in 1695 from Henrico county. It is on
     record that what appears to have been a charge of rape made by a
     Gypsy woman was dismissed by the magistrate,
      

          it being the opinion of this Court that the Act ag'st
          ffornication does not touch her, she being an Egyptian
          and noe Xtian woman (Anon., 1894:100).

      
     The family name of the woman, Joane Scot, occurs in the Barbados
     annals, and survives among American Romanichals today.  The
     Colonial Entry Book during the same period contained a law which
     provided that "all ... gypsies ... shall either be acquitted and
     assigned to some settled aboade and course of life here, or be
     appointed to be sent to the plantations for five years" (Wright,
     1939:141).

     There is also documentary evidence to support the third
     possibility. Investigation of court records, transportation
     certificates and the local British press of the period, together
     with compilations published in the United States (such as e.g.
     Boyer, 1979), indicate not only extensive shipment of Gypsies,
     but the subsequent return of numbers of these to the country of
     origin. The conclusion, that "there was a fairly regular traffic
     of returnees, both legally and illegally" (Smith, 1979), has much
     to uphold it, though with more relevance, possibly, to the penal
     colony at Botany Bay in South Australia. This was established
     after America's achievement of independence closed Georgia as a
     dumping-ground for England's criminals. Numbers of Boswells,
     Lees, Skeltons, Scarretts and Smiths were shipped there from the
     Midlands counties during the first quarter of the 19th century,
     though as felons rather than as slaves or bondservants. The works
     of George Borrow and others contain references to Gypsies being
     bitcheno pawdel or bitchady pawdel, "sent across" to America or
     Australia, a period of Romani history by no means forgotten by
     Gypsies in Britain today. One term in contemporary Angloromani
     for "magistrate" is bitcherin' mush, the "transporter." Some
     factual references to the American situation are to be found in
     Pinkerton (1880), and to the Australian situation in Langker
     (1980), but much work remains to be done in these areas.

                                   * * *

     The notion of Gypsy is well-established in the West Indian folk
     tradition, though no more accurately here than anywhere else in
     the world. Wright (1938) tells of the panic the arrival of
     Gypsies in Jamaica caused earlier in this century. The word
     itself turns up in several of the island creoles, variously
     meaning "playful," "frisky," "meddlesome," "mischievous" and
     "bossy." In both Jamaica and Trinidad, it also refers to 'pig
     Latin', a secret way of talking; in the related dialect of Sierra
     Leone, where Jamaicans went to settle in 1800, it has come to
     mean a "short person." Similarities between some proverbs in the
     same creole with those in Romani have also been noted (Hancock,
     1977:73).  In Guadeloupe, Le Gitan is a name with which drivers
     commonly christen their taxis, trucks, &c. (Métraux, 1950:1411),
     while in her introduction to Jekyll's collection of Jamaican
     folktales, Alice Werner draws parallels with Gypsy themes
     (1907:xxvi).

     A search for the existence of Romani words in the Caribbean
     creoles has so far turned up only two, the items bul "buttocks"
     and kori "penis." The former is known in Barbados, Tobago,
     Trinidad and probably elsewhere. It is unlikely that the word
     which, like the Romani language itself is of Indian origin, came
     in with the thousands of indentured East Indian laborers, since
     they did not go at first to Barbados. In any case, the word is
     unknown to them in their own speech, mainly Bhojpuri, which uses
     instead the terms bunda or gar.  The latter has so far only been
     found in Trinidad. Its form is specifically Angloromani, i.e. the
     type of Romani spoken only by Romanichals, and again differs from
     the equivalent term in Bhojpuri.

     The world-famous pre-Lenten carnival in Trinidad traditionally
     has a Gypsy section, and the costumes colorfully and accurately
     represent the Hollywood stereotype. Indeed, it is quite possible
     that this portrayal owes more to modern fictional literature
     imported from Britain than to any unbroken continuum with the
     17th century. There is also currently a popular calypsonian
     called 'Gypsy'.

     The Gypsy slaves may have been absorbed into the (mainly Irish,
     Scottish and south-western English) white bondservant population,
     though it is hard to imagine this happening voluntarily. This is,
     however, the argument maintained by Marchbin (1939:119). More
     likely intermixture with the general free colored population took
     place as a result of the forced concubinage described by Moreton
     above - the same process which has produced, though not by force,
     the 'Black Irish' of Jamaica and the Afro-Gypsy community at
     Atchefalaya. Bercovici, with a fair amount of imagination, has
     speculated that
      

          It is very possible that these Gypsies, then in
          Barbados, sought refuge with the Indians, intermarried,
          and were completely assimilated by the aborigines ...
          perhaps this might account for some customs common to
          the American Indians and the Hindus (1928:510).

      
     Shoemaker has also referred to the interaction of the two
     peoples, rather anticlimactically: "... the first contact between
     Gipsy and Indian, a romantic and historic foregathering of
     oppressed peoples ... as one old man from the Little Sand Hills
     of Dauphin County said in describing it, 'they hated one
     another"' (1924:6).

     There is a local poor white population in Barbados, known as the
     Redlegs, whose members are distinct in their appearance from
     other whites in the country. A similar white West Indian
     population is found in Montserrat, and there are numbers also in
     Bequia, St. Vincent, Grenada, Jamaica and elsewhere (Williams,
     1985), but none has yet been investigated with Romani genealogy
     in mind. The list of Barbadian Redleg families (Bradshaw, Davis,
     Dowding, Edwards, Gibson, Gooding, Graves, Harris, Hinkson, King,
     Marshall and Medford) contains a few surnames also found among
     North American Romanichals (e.g. Davis, King and Marshall) but
     Hotten, who was well-acquainted with Romanichal language and
     history, made no reference to Gypsies in his standard work on
     transportations to the islands (1874). The two most
     easily-available and complete sources on the Redlegs, Price
     (1962) and Sheppard (1977) also make no mention at all of
     Gypsies.

     There are a great many Romanichals in the United States,
     especially in the South. Salo believes that they may constitute
     "the largest among the Gypsy groups" in the whole of the country
     (1977:7), although estimates within the Romani population put
     their own numbers at ca. 80,000, compared with ca. 500,000
     Vlax-speaking Gypsies. While descendants of the Gypsies sent here
     by the Germans and the French are still sometimes to be found in
     the areas they were taken to, Gypsies from Britain, being in
     greater numbers, have spread out over the country, and statements
     about their history since arrival are speculative at best.
     American Romanichal families are aware of the circumstances of
     their arrival, and an examination of their oral tradition will
     surely help complete the picture. Such internally-transmitted
     tradition is being gathered by Harry Bryer, whose family arrived
     in North America in the mid-1800s, while a file of
     externally-documented records is being compiled by Matt Salo from
     an examination of newspapers, parish registers and so on.
     Meanwhile, non-academic speculation will surely also continue to
     find a place in the printed page, such as that by Burnett, who
     believed that the ancestors of the Melungeons of Tennessee "may
     have entered the country as Portuguese or gypsies, and afterwards
     some families may have intermingled with the negroes or Indians
     or both" (1889:349).  Until Romani history is documented by
     Gypsies themselves, recording this kind of information will
     proceed slowly, and inquisitiveness from outside will continue to
     be discouraged. The editor of the February, 1986, issue of Romany
     Fires of Revival, for example, a privately-circulated evangelical
     newsletter sent out monthly to some 600 American Romanichals,
     cautioned his readers that two specialists were "gathering
     information about the Travelers and doing a research on our
     people."

     It is tempting, perhaps, to look for Gypsy elements in North and
     South American and West Indian music, dress, folklore and
     cuisine; this is a justifiable line of pursuit and one which has
     not received the attention it should have. There are several
     reasons for this: the inaccessible nature of the Romani
     communities, the vagueness of the documentation available, and
     the strength of the fictional image which confuses the perception
     of the reality. False leads are many: "gypsies" in the American
     theatre have nothing to do with Gypsies; there is no connection
     whatsoever in Romani culture with Hallowe'en, though Non-Gypsies
     perceive one; in Cuba, a kind of cake called brazo gitano turns
     out to be an importation from Spain.

     A case for extensive Romani contribution to Brazilian culture has
     already been made by Mello Moraes (op. cit.), who believed that
     "the Brazilian nation, from the highest to the lowest, is
     strongly tinctured with Gypsy blood," a notion also supported
     later by Groome (1899:xvii). Writing nearly ninety years ago
     about the West Indian islands, MacRitchie (op. cit.) wondered "to
     what extent the people of those places today are possessed of
     seventeenth century Gypsy blood ... an interesting, though
     perhaps delicate, question." Irving Brown too, writing of the
     situation in the United States, believed that "Some of the oldest
     Dutch families of Manhattan, and some of the most aristocratic
     Creoles of the South, must have a dash of Romani blood in their
     veins" (1927:12). But until the British, Caribbean, and North and
     South American sources are re-examined at first hand, and
     recollections from and by the people themselves are
     systematically gathered, it will be difficult to guess, and
     little more is likely to be forthcoming in this chapter of Romani
     history.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                XIII. The Contemporary Situation of Gypsies
                                 in Europe
                                   

     The history of the enslavement and persecution of the European
     Gypsy population dealt with in these pages is factual. It is also
     a fact that, even in the best of times, Gypsy populations have
     had to deal with discrimination and prejudice on a daily basis;
     much is made in the press of the "Gypsy problem," with scant
     regard for the problems which the non-Gypsy population creates in
     turn, and with which Gypsies themselves have to deal with on as
     daily basis. In Britain, where according to the 1983 report of
     the Save the Children Fund the infant mortality rate among
     Gypsies is fifteen times higher than the national average, the
     City of Bradford sought a court injunction in May, 1985, to make
     it illegal for Gypsies to trespass within city limits - a move
     which the press called "a policy of apartheid" (Leeds, 1985:6-7).
     In the same country some years earlier in March, 1968, a speaker
     in a political broadcast from the City of Birmingham publicly
     proclaimed that "There are some of these Gypsies you can do
     nothing with, and you must exterminate the impossibles; we are
     dealing with people whom members of this Council would not look
     upon as human beings in the normal sense" (Kerswell, 1979:6). In
     October of the same year, the Sundon Park Tenants' Association
     Report included the statement that "There is no solution to the
     Gypsy problem short of mass murder" (The Essex Post for November
     24th, 1969). Teams employed by local governmental bodies to keep
     Gypsies on the move by using strongarm tactics are becoming
     increasingly common in Britain:
      

          Spook Erection is the name of a company that throws
          Gypsies out of their homes; it is employed by several
          Midlands councils ... Spook's people are apt to use
          violence and intimidation, and there is disturbing
          evidence that Spook's methods are condoned by some
          local police and council officers.

          According to Hughie Smith's eyewitness account ...
          Spook's men found Dempsey Boswell and his family; they
          were camped on a small site, with [the local Borough
          Surveyor's] permission. Watched by police,  Spook's men
          started to tear the place apart. Boswell's pregnant
          sister ran towards the caravan to put out a fire, and
          to put away crockery that was being tipped over. In the
          ensuing struggle Dempsey Boswell came to the aid of his
          sister, whose baby was stillborn later that day.
          Dempsey Boswell was arrested for assaulting five police
          officers ... Mr. Boswell pleaded guilty; he was fined
          l50 pounds and bound over for two years ...

          Tough tactics against Gypsies are now widespread.
          Cardiff Council, for example, uses a local company
          called Property Protection Agency to clear sites. A
          police search instigated by Hughie Smith uncovered an
          array of implements such as pick-axe handles, but the
          Agency said these were "for defensive purposes only,"
          and no further action was taken ... Wolverhampton has
          asked outright for a 'Gypsy Task Force', to engage in
          "Gypsy prevention operations" (Cook, 1983:16-18).

      
     An earlier incident in the same city of Wolverhampton in 1969 led
     to the deaths of four Gypsy children, when a trailer was pushed
     over with a bulldozer by the authorities who were attempting to
     move it. The wife was ready to give birth to her fourth child,
     and her husband had refused to remove his home until the baby had
     come. When it was bulldozed, the kerosine lamp was smashed and
     started a blaze which killed her three children and resulted in
     the still-birth of the child she was to have delivered that day.

     The huge discrepancy which exists between official attitudes in
     Britain towards Gypsies and towards other minority populations is
     starkly illustrated by the following two job advertisements,
     issued in 1985 by the City of Leeds Department of Environmental
     Health. These were posted side by side on the same document (No.
     CD3703, June 28th, 1985):
      

          1) ASSISTANT GYPSY LIAISON OFFICER

          The postholder will assist in the enforcement of the
          Council's policy on Gypsies ... serving eviction
          notices and physically evicting caravans from
          Council-owned land ... Assisting in the treatment of
          male clients for head, body or pubic lice, scabies and
          other conditions. Appearance in court to produce
          evidence in support of applications for possession
          orders.

          2) ASIAN LIAISON OFFICER

          To be responsible to the Director of Housing for work
          on various housing matters, including housing welfare
          ... involving the Asian ethnic minority in Leeds, both
          in the public and private sectors. To assist the
          Department in efforts to achieve equal opportunities in
          the field of housing, and to assist in bringing about a
          better understanding of the needs and requirements of
          ethnic minorities. To provide assistance by acting as
          interpreter to overcome the inevitable language
          problems which arise.

      
     Just as governmental spokesmen in Britain have, since the end of
     the war called for the extermination of Gypsies as a way of
     dealing with them, ensuring their non-propagation by means of
     sterilization did not stop with Hitler either. The
     Czechoslovakian newspaper Vychodoslovenske Noviny, in May, 1976,
     carried the text of a governmental proposal which called for the
     compulsory sterilization of Gypsies as an act of "socialistic
     humanity," and sterilization is clearly what is being referred to
     in a more recent news bulletin first published in Bratislava
     Smena on August 6th, 1986, and in the Western press in Insight,
     on the following September 15th. Claims of a 20 percent rate of
     mental retardation among the Romani population are now being made
     to justify its instigation:
      

          The destruction of the Romany (Gypsy) minority is the
          task of Czechoslovakia's Government Commission for
          Problems of the Gypsy Populace. One of its Slovak
          officials, Jozef Prokop, who recently expressed
          official horror at the high Romany birthrate, claimed
          that 20 percent of the 7,000 Gypsies born annually were
          mentally retarded. He asserted that those who still
          maintained the traditional itinerant lifestyle were
          genetically unfit.

          Prokop announced that "we will also in the future
          pursue regulation of the birthrate of the unhealthy
          population." And, as for any children born to
          traditional Romany families, "we will have to seek
          alternative methods of their upbringing; for example,
          in foster homes, special boarding schools and the like
          (Anon., 1986a:40).

      
     In Hungary, according to the newspapers Magyar Hirlap and
     Kritika, a 1983 pop-song by a group called Mosoly at the Mosaic
     Club in Budapest, began
      

          The only weapon with which I can defeat them is a
          flame-thrower;
          I will exterminate all Gypsies, adults and children,
          Though they can only be destroyed if we cooperate.
          If we exterminate them successfully,
          We'll have a land free of Gypsies.

      
     In an article entitled "Hungary's Gypsy explosion" in the World
     Press Review for October, 1983, a spokesman for the Hungarian
     government expressed fears that if Romani nationalism were
     encouraged in that country, "we could have pogroms, with Gypsies
     killing Hungarians, and vice-versa" (p.12). The same article
     pointed out that less than ten percent of Hungary's
     officially-estimated nearly 400,000 Gypsies are in the
     professions (the unofficial estimate is something over half a
     million), and the life expectancy is fifteen years lower than the
     national average. According to another article about the
     Hungarian situation, "about 15 percent of Gypsy pupils are sent
     to schools for mentally deficient children, whereas their
     handicap is chiefly a cultural one" (Satory, 1986:5). A medical
     investigation by a team of Swedish doctors which was conducted
     ten years earlier, concluded that Gypsies are "on average no less
     intelligent" than non-Gypsies (Duckenfield, 1976:5). In Italy,
      

          Infant mortality rates are very high - most families
          refused to say how many children they had lost, but
          over 70 percent of those who answered had lost one or
          two, and many families had lost as many as 10 to 15
          children.

          Respiratory and digestive diseases are rife, life
          expectancy is much lower than for the average Italian,
          and less than three percent of Gypsies are over 60 (The
          Baltimore Sun for October 13th, 1985, p.16A).

      
     A lower life expectancy among Gypsies than the national average
     is also reported from Spain, where
      

          Gypsies have been condemned by a hostile society to
          live in poverty and ill-health. The average life
          expectancy of a Gypsy male is 64 years, nine fewer than
          the Spanish average. Only a quarter of Gypsy children
          attend school, only 26 percent of Gypsy men have
          regular employment ... (Ellman, 1985:J2).

      
     A year prior to that report, in Zaragosa, Spain, non-Gypsies
     violently opposed city authorities' building houses for the local
     Gypsy population, and retaliated by burning them down and
     attacking the Gypsy children trying to attend school there,
     pelting them with bricks (The New York Times for October 25th,
     1984).

     In December, 1985, Reuters released details of the arrest of a
     gang of Yugoslav kidnappers in Austria who, since 1980, have been
     stealing children from defenseless Gypsy families and selling
     them to Americans and Italians. The parents of the of 100
     kidnapped children have been too frightened of the authorities to
     report these crimes (The Daily Colonist for December 1st, 1985,
     p.5 and Rullmann, 1986).

     Gypsy children were also systematically taken from their parents
     since 1926 in Switzerland, to provide them with a "better life."
     An organization named Pro Juventute has headed a program called
     "Operation Children of the Road" for many years. "The idea, based
     on proto-Nazi ideas of 'racial hygiene', was to destroy the
     Romany way of life" (Williams, 1986:10), and are reminiscent of
     the new plans announced by the Czechoslovakian government
     detailed above.
      

          Although newspaper reports, which often described the
          program as a form of "kidnapping," were published as
          early as 1973, little was done to unite the families
          until recently ... many of the children wound up in
          prisons, mental institutions or juvenile detention
          centers. [... the lawyer] said "We don't know where all
          the children are, if some were adopted, or sent abroad,
          if some died." ... In one case cited by Swiss
          newspapers, a woman lost five of her seven children to
          the program (Netter, 1986:A9)

      
     From Sweden, it was reported in the London Times (for August
     21st, 1985), that "An enquiry is to be held into an incident in
     which police watched from a patrol car as 50 youths attacked a
     Gypsy family with stones and a firebomb, in Kumla, central
     Sweden."

     Most of the newspaper accounts included here have intentionally
     been selected from those which have been published during the
     present decade, to give an idea of the situation as it is today.
     Hundreds of similar reports are on file in the archives of the
     Romani Union, which date back to the last century. But they have
     had little effect on the public conscience.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                XIV. The Contemporary Situation of Gypsies
                             in North America
                                   

     It is a sad reflection on the state of justice in the United
     States that, despite its unconstitutionality, Gypsies remain the
     only American ethnic minority against whom laws still operate,
     and who are specifically named in those laws. As with Balkan
     slavery and the Nazi genocide, it too illustrates the general
     lack of awareness among non-Gypsies of the true details of Gypsy
     history, despite the vast number of literary works having Gypsy
     themes. This fact also serves to demonstrate the enormity of the
     separation between the fictional and the real Gypsy. Some of
     these laws, only the first two of which were still in effect at
     the time of writing, include:
      

          gypsies ... for each county ... shall be jointly and
          severally liable with his or her associates [to a fine
          of] two thousand dollars (State Code of Mississippi,
          Section 27-17-191).

          The governing body may make, amend, repeal and enforce
          ordinances to license and regulate ... gypsies (New
          Jersey Statutes, 40:52-1).

          After the passage of this act, it shall be unlawful for
          any ... gypsies ... to ... settle ... within the limits
          of any county of this state [without having first
          obtained a yearly license to do so] (Pennsylvania
          Statutes,  Section 11810).

          Any person may demand of any ... gypsies that they
          shall produce or show their license issued within such
          county, and if they shall refuse to do so ... he shall
          seize all the property in the possession of such
          [Gypsies] (Pennsylvania Statutes,  Section 11803).

          Gypsies [in the State of Maryland] must pay
          jurisdictions a license fee of $1000 before settling or
          doing business. When any gypsy is arrested, all his
          property and all the property of members of any group
          with which he may be traveling, can be confiscated and
          sold to pay any fine a court may levy against the
          arrested gypsy. Sheriffs are paid a $10 bounty for any
          gypsy they arrest who pays the $1000 fee after he is
          arrested (Logan, 1976).

          Whenever ... gypsies shall be located within any
          municipality ... the county department of health or
          joint county department of health shall have power ...
          to order such [Gypsies ...] to leave said municipality
          within the time specified (Pennsylvania Title 53:
          Municipal and Quasi-Municipal Corporations, Chapter
          xvii, Section 3701).

          It is illegal in Pennsylvania to be a Gypsy without a
          license ... Any Gypsy who insists on being what he was
          born - a Gypsy - without a license, is liable to up to
          $100 fine and 30 days injail. A constable may
          confiscate and sell a convicted Gypsy's possessions to
          satisfy the sentence ... any person may demand to see a
          Gypsy's license. If the Gypsy cannot produce a license,
          the person may turn the Gypsy in to any convenient
          justice of the peace (Smart, 1969).

          Upon each company of ... Gypsies, engaged in trading or
          selling merchandise or livestock of any kind, or
          clairvoyant, or persons engaged in fortunetelling,
          phrenology, or palmistry, $250 [is] to be collected ...
          [from those who] live in tents or travel in covered
          wagons and automobiles, and who may be a resident of
          some country or who reside without the State, and who
          are commonly called traveling horse traders and Gypsies
          (Georgia Acts and Resolutions, 1927, Part I, Title II,
          Section 56, p.3).

          Texas law refers to "Prostitutes, Gypsies and
          vagabonds" in the same breath, and charges the Romany
          people $500 to live there (Bernardo, 1981:108).

          Be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of
          Indiana, that it shall be unlawful for any band of
          Gypsies ... to camp in tent, wagon or otherwise, on any
          public highway in this state, or lands adjacent thereto
          ... Any person or persons violating the provisions of
          this Act shall be deemed guilty ... and upon conviction
          shall be fined not exceeding twenty-five dollars or
          imprisoned in the county jail not exceeding thirty
          days, or both (State of Indiana Statutory Regulations,
          Section I). "This statutory law has been used so often
          against the Gypsies in that state, that Indiana has not
          been visited by Gypsies for a long time" (Marchbin,
          1939:152).

      
     Many of these laws, a list of which fills thirty-four pages
     (Gilbert, 1947:567-601), were inherited from Europe and were
     intended to be used against the earlier Gypsy populations in the
     United States; they have since found new application against the
     more recently arrived, and more visible, Vlax-speaking Rom. Smart
     (loc. cit.) pointed out the injustice inherent in such laws:
     "Because the state does not require an Irishman to have a license
     to be Irish, or an Italian to have an Italian license, it is both
     un-American and discriminatory for the state to require a Gypsy
     to have a license to be a Gypsy."

     Steve Kaslov, who founded the first Romani benevolent society in
     the United States, the Red Dress Association in New Jersey in
     1927, and who met with Franklin D. Roosevelt to try to get some
     support for the plight he saw his people in, believed that it was
     the police, enforcing such laws, who posed the greatest threat to
     American Gypsies:
      

          In county after county, state after state, troopers
          whisk unwanted Gypsies over the boundary ... Steve
          tells of one such journey: "We were not allowed to stop
          for rations" ... Real tears ran down his cheeks at the
          bitter memory of that experience ... In New York, as in
          other places, the law is often applied to them with
          needless cruelty. Only a few weeks ago, a five weeks
          old nursing baby died of starvation in an unheated room
          when the mother, who was arrested on a charge of
          stealing a wallet, was held in the custody of the
          police for three days (Weybright, 1938:142,145).

      
     Ironically, while the earliest Gypsies were being brought to
     America as unwilling immigrants, the U.S. Government sought to
     ban their entry at the end of the 19th century:
      

          ... after passing in the early 'eighties the Chinese
          Expulsion Act and the Act that barred European contract
          labour ... the welcoming arms of the goddess of liberty
          that surmounts the huge pedestal on Bedloe's Island at
          the entrance of New York harbour, holding aloft the
          torch of enlightenment to a darkened world, were at the
          end of the nineteenth century extended to selected
          immigrants only. The bias against Gypsies which has
          obtained for generations in Europe had, through
          distorted stories in continental newspapers, by this
          time reached America and produced a profound effect. By
          the year 1885 Gypsies arriving in parties, as they
          usually did, on the shores of the North American
          Continent were frequently denied entrance, and the
          steamship companies were obliged to take their human
          cargoes back by the same boat (Marchbin, 1934:135).

      
     Trigg adds to this:
      

          In the latter half of the nineteenth century, many more
          Gypsies, mostly from Slavic countries, were to arrive
          in the United States. By 1885, however, Gypsies were
          excluded by immigration policy, and many returned to
          Europe (1973:224).

      
     Benton's 1985 history of Ellis Island refers to "massive
     deportations" of Gypsies by U. S. Immigration Department
     authorities in 1905 and 1909 in particular, while Pitkin quotes
     from the Tribune for July 25th, 1909, which supported
     Commissioner William Williams' upholding of the government's
     exclusion policy: "the whole country is better off without them,
     even though their wealth per capita was several times greater
     than the amount commonly required" which was $25 (Pitkin,
     1975:60). A detailed account of Romani immigration into the USA
     is found in Marchbin (1939).

     Anti-Roma policies towards the end of the 19th century probably
     derived their impetus from the increase in discrimination evident
     at the beginnings of Reconstruction, following the abolition of
     slavery in America; there are several references to Roma as a
     "people of color," i.e. as a visible minority, in the literature
     of that period. In 1866 President Andrew Johnson expressed his
     fear that the requirements of the Civil Rights Bill were designed
     "to operate in favor of the colored, and against the white, race"
     because they "comprehend the Chinese of the Pacific States,
     Indians subject to taxation, the people called Gipsies as well as
     the entire race designated as blacks" (Legislation for the
     Colored Man, Philadelphia, February, 1866). This presents the
     possibility, at least, that Vlax Roma from eastern Europe were
     already finding their way into the United States at this early
     date.

     Calahane indicates that the effects of the American policy had
     repercussions even on the other side of the Atlantic; one group,
     which had reached Britain from the Continent, could not find a
     company willing to bring them across:
      

          We find record of one hundred Gypsies who arrived by
          train at Liverpool in July, 1886. They were called the
          "Greek Gypsies" and had started from Corfu, but
          according to their passports, had come from all parts
          of Greece and European Turkey, bound for New York. The
          United States being closed to pauper immigrants, no
          steamboat would accept them, and they encamped at
          Liverpool ... Their subsequent fate is unknown. No
          doubt at some later date some of them, at least,
          succeeded in reaching these shores (1904:326-327).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsies from Hungary waiting to be sent back in 1905 (Benton,
     1985)

     Gypsies were attempting to reach North America from all parts of
     eastern Europe during these years; well-represented in this
     exodus were the Rusurja or Russian Vlax Rom, who remember the
     events leading to their settlement in this country. The late John
     Megel, grandson of Steve Kaslov and until his untimely death in
     August 1986, a spokesman for his community, recounted that, prior
     to abolition, Gypsies in Russia, although in a condition of
     slavery (Hoyland, 1816:32), were not otherwise being brutalized.
     With the influx of the thousands of liberated slaves from
     Rumania, however, this relatively calm situation was affected,
     leading ultimately to a wave of anti-Gypsyism throughout western
     Russia serious enough to force many groups to consider leaving
     for good. Sons were sent out with instructions to return with
     information about  the best place to make for. The United States
     was an attractive choice, but immigration laws there made it a
     problem to enter in the conventional way. It was not difficult,
     however, to buy Argentinian documents and thus enter the United
     States as nationals of that country; as a result, many Russian
     Gypsies sailed for South America, subsequently to make their way
     overland along the Pacific coast into the USA. The Argentinians
     soon realized that the Rusurja were coming into their country
     with considerable amounts of gold, however, and those
     newly-arriving started to be apprehended and relieved of all
     their possessions by the local people. Gradually, Argentina
     ceased to be a principal means of gaining access to the United
     States, although there is still a small influx of Rom entering
     the country across the border with Mexico. In 1976, one such
     group, who had come here from Czechoslovakia and who had been
     smuggled across the border by Mexicans hired to bring them in,
     were beaten and robbed and abandoned in the Arizona desert ("Just
     the Gypsy in their soul?," The Miami Herald, February 1st, 1976,
     p.2E). "The border patrol moved at once to deport them to
     somewhere. Anywhere, even," and drove them north out of the
     state, where they were once again abandoned. In this way, the
     group made its way to New York ("Officials seeking to deport
     Gypsies frustrated," The New York Times, July 27th, 1976, p.16)
     reaching the Canadian border which they crossed, immediately to
     be detained by Canadian officials, since the U.S. authorities
     promptly refused to allow them to re-enter.  One of the women in
     the group attempted to hang herself in her cell, rather than go
     on living being hounded from place to place ("La mort plutôt que
     l'expulsion," Journal de Montréal, August 17th, 1976, p.3) Two
     anonymous landowners offered the group places where they could
     live temporarily, although the offers were not allowed ("Gypsy
     clan offered farm in Canada," The Montreal Star, 19th August,
     1976, p.A3). Not one of the newspaper reports of this tragic
     train of circumstances indicated the slightest sympathy for the
     victims, who were eventually deported, but instead made use of
     all the journalists' clichés one predictably associates with
     Gypsies.

     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsy family being detained at Ellis Island

     While the expulsion act against the Chinese was repealed in 1946,
     the situation regarding the immigration of Gypsies remains
     unclear and unresolved. The policy of driving Gypsies away,
     however, is still actively upheld by the American legal system.
     The June, 1975 issue of The Police Chief ("Official Publication
     of the International Association of Chiefs of Police") contained
     the recommendation that
      

          Strict laws and the enforcement of them will deter
          Gypsies from inhabiting your community. The laxness of
          the laws in a certain area ... will attract Gypsies.
          Only in this way can you protect your community
          (Boughourian and Alcantara, 1975:74).

      
     Since the publication of that article, a whole book has appeared
     written in the same vein, by an ex-policeman and a lecturer on
     legal matters from Chicago (McLaughlin, 1980), and a number of
     police department "Gypsy Divisions," reminiscent of those in
     pre-war Nazi Germany's police state have been established around
     the country, some with specially-assigned resident "experts."
     Needless to say, this kind of legalized discrimination is leveled
     at no other ethnic minority, although there are presumably
     Italian, Navaho, Irish, &c., criminals as well preying upon the
     American public. In 1981, Terry Getsay ("a nationally-recognized
     Gypsy expert"), who at that time headed the Illinois State
     Police' Gypsy Activity Project, published a particularly vicious
     three-part article entitled "GYP-sies: the people and their
     criminal propensity" in Spotlight; his lecture tours in the
     northern states have led to a marked increase in the harrassment
     of Gypsies by members of local police departments who have
     attended his talks. He also presented his views on television
     station WDIV in Detroit in 1984, in a three-part documentary
     entitled "Gypsy scams and schemes." In an article in another
     police magazine, Centurion, he is quoted as believing that
      

          The label of 'Gypsy' refers to any family-oriented band
          of nomads who may be from any country in the world ...
          The only measure of respect a Gypsy woman can get is
          based on her abilities as a thief (Schroeder,
          1983:59,63).

      
     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsies at Ellis Island awaiting deportation, 1909

     Detective Sergeant William Bradway, chairman of the Michigan
     State Police Gypsy Criminal Activity Task force, defines Gypsies
     as "domineering, very loud, outspoken, cunning and quick-witted
     ... they are completely comfortable with a lifestyle centered
     around victimizing others. They are not very nice" Willing,
     1984:3A). A year earlier, a documentary on the NBC news program
     Monitor began "American Gypsies, known as Travelers: if you've
     never met the Travelers, lucky you!" (NBC transcript for March,
     1984).

     The association of Gypsies with crime is deep-rooted. Some of it
     is justified; Gypsies have often turned to theft in order to
     survive in a universally hostile environment. Much of it is not
     justified, however, and is the result of exploitation of a
     stereotype by a popular press which is less interested in the
     honest Gypsies who have not been equipped to challenge this
     misrepresentation. Journalist Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, in his
     review of Peter Maas' highly defamatory King of the Gypsies, went
     so far as to refer to Gypsies as the "slag in the [American]
     melting pot," and to call them "an ethnic sick joke" (The New
     York Times for October 28th, 1975). The notion of Gypsies as
     criminals has received scholarly sanction too, in the past. A
     study of crime by a professor of psychiatry and criminal
     anthropology at the University of Turin, published by the
     American Institute of Criminal Law and Criminology in 1918,
     described Gypsies thus:
      

          They are the living example of a whole race of
          criminals, and have all the passions and all the vices
          of criminals. "They have a horror," says Grellmann, "of
          anything that requires the slightest application; they
          will endure hunger and misery rather than submit to any
          continuous labor whatever; they work just enough to
          keep from dying of hunger" ... they are vain, like all
          delinquents, but they have no fear or shame. Everything
          they earn, they spend for drink or ornaments. They may
          be seen barefooted, but with bright colored or
          lace-bedecked clothing, without stockings, but with
          yellow shoes. They have the improvidence of the savage
          and that of the criminal as well ... they devour
          half-putrified carrion. They are given to orgies, love
          a noise, and make a great outcry in the markets. They
          murder in cold blood in order to rob, and were formerly
          suspected of cannibalism ... this race, so low morally,
          and so incapable of cultural and intellectual
          development, is a race that can never carry on any
          industry, and which in poetry has not got beyond the
          poorest lyrics (Lombroso, 1918:40).

      
     This appeared in a textbook which for years provided a basis for
     American legal attitudes, and has been relied upon, just as
     Lombroso relied upon Grellmann before him, by subsequent
     specialists. Similar biases were found even earlier in the 1911
     edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica: "Cleanliness is not one
     of their characteristics ... they are self-professed liars ...
     The Gypsies can, with some justification, be called parasites ...
     Both the men and the women are gaudy, ostentatious, boastful,
     arrogant and superstitious ... those who wish to think of them as
     verminous dirty wastrels will be able to find examples to back
     ... their claim," while at pp. 43-44 in Volume XI of the 1956
     edition of the same work, these attitudes are even more plainly
     stated:
      

          The mental age of an average adult Gypsy is thought to
          be about that of a child of ten. Gypsies have never
          accomplished anything of great significance in writing,
          painting, musical composition, science or social
          organization. Quarrelsome, quick to anger or laughter,
          they are unthinkingly but not deliberately cruel.
          Loving bright colors they are ostentatious and boastful
          but lack bravery. They have little idea of time,
          proportion or measurement and are superstitious about
          childbirth, fertility, food and sickness. Their tribal
          customs sometimes have the force of law. Believing in
          charms and curses, they admit the falsity of their
          fortune telling. They betray little shame, curiosity,
          surprise or grief and show no solidarity.

      
     The reasons for this prejudice, which has its roots in the
     Mediaeval conflict between Christian and Muslim, as well as for
     its perpetuation in the modern day, are discussed further in the
     following chapter.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                             XV. Anti-Gypsyism
                                   

     Gypsies have existed as an oppressed people for a variety of
     reasons. Perhaps the most significant of these originated in the
     time and circumstances of arrival in Europe, but a number of
     other factors complicate the picture as well.

     Because of the nature of their entry into Europe, Gypsies arrived
     as a scattered nation of people united by language, culture and
     origin, but at the same time lacking any of the means by which
     other populations bound by the same factors assert and defend
     their identity.  Gypsies had no political or military strength,
     and no geographical territory with which they could identify. Nor
     had they a history, or a religion, or a language which was
     familiar to those around them.  Association with the Islamic
     threat, their dark skin, and the various means of livelihood
     which exploited the superstitious nature of the Medieval
     Europeans, all helped instill a negative image of the Gypsy in
     the Western tradition. When a group lacks the conventional means
     of redressing wrongs done to it, it will make the most of what is
     available; the fear of Gypsy magic was called upon as a means of
     reprisal some years ago in Florida, for example: a mother whose
     child was the victim of a hit-and-run accident "vowed to cast a
     Gypsy curse extending over three generations on the driver and
     his family if he does not come forward and pay the child's
     hospital bill" (Buchanan, 1975:1B). Such incidents help only to
     reinforce the stereotype from which they ultimately derive.

     In addition to these external factors, internal factors have also
     helped keep the barriers firm. To a greater or lesser extent all
     Gypsy groups have inherited from India concepts of pollution and
     cleanliness, and these form a powerful basis for maintaining
     social distance from non-Gypsies. These beliefs extend into many
     areas of daily life, regulating involvement with food and its
     preparation, animals, personal hygiene, and interaction with
     others, both Gypsy and non-Gypsy. Among some groups, these
     concepts are vaguely defined; among others, the Vlax in
     particular, they are deep-rooted and pervasive. It is because of
     these cultural beliefs that Gypsies have discouraged familiarity
     with non-Gypsies who, by their manner of living, fall
     automatically into an unclean category, and are therefore able to
     pollute by association. The earliest accounts of Gypsies
     unanimously agreed that Gypsies had no religious or cultural
     beliefs; some more modern treatments, while admitting that these
     exist, maintain that they have all been adopted from outside. It
     is understandable that writers such as Hoyland, Crabb and others
     came to such conclusions - they were permitted no such
     information by the Gypsies they were so ardently trying to
     civilize. Contemporary exponents of this view, such as Jiri Lipa
     or Jozsef Vekerdi, are less easily accounted for.

     This reserve has had other, further-reaching effects; not often
     being able to obtain information at first hand about the true
     nature of Romani life, novelists have embellished their prose
     with fantasies of their own, and in doing so created in the last
     century the literary figure with which the Gypsy is today most
     often associated: a composite Gypsy, wearing Spanish flamenco
     dancer's dress, traveling in an English Gypsy caravan, playing
     Hungarian Gypsy music.

     The first American account to discuss Gypsies at any length
     appeared in the Christian Enquirer for September 29th, 1855;
     American readers were given a picture which must have helped set
     the stage for what followed:
      

          The Gipsies ... are an idle, miserable race, a curse to
          the countries they inhabit, and a terror to the farmer
          through whose lands they stroll. They seem utterly
          destitute of conscience, and boast of dishonesty as if
          it were a heavenly virtue ... Laws have been passed in
          several countries to banish them, and great cruelties
          sometimes practiced to enforce these laws ... So deeply
          rooted are sin and vagrancy in the hearts of this
          miserable race, that neither penal laws nor bitter
          persecution can drive it out. They are not beyond the
          power of the Gospel, however, nor yet beyond the mercy
          of the Redeemer.

      
     Attitudes towards the Gypsy today are mixed; while negative
     characteristics, usually theft or baby-stealing, often provide
     the rationale in fiction for introducing Gypsies into the plot,
     other, more positive characteristics also find a place. One such
     is the supposedly unfettered nature of Gypsy life, an outlet for
     the Victorian reader who no doubt longed for simpler,
     pre-Industrial Revolution times. But however Gypsies are defined
     and presented by the dominant culture, such definition and
     presentation denies Gypsies their real identity, and this is
     ultimately a kind of oppression.

     The notion of an "outlet" has been discussed by Cohn, who
     believes that Gypsies "persist because they, or groups like them,
     are needed in our culture" (1973:61), in other words, there
     exists a need for an avenue of escape, for whatever reason, and
     Gypsies, or more accurately the fictional image of Gypsies, are
     useful in providing this (discussed at length in Hancock, 1976).
     Sibley, quoted in the introduction, goes further and sees the
     denial of the real Gypsy identity as one means by which the
     dominant society can maintain its own parameters. Quoting from
     Erikson (1966:13,64), Ronald Takaki has also elaborated upon this
     notion of parameter-maintenance by keeping non-members in their
     place:

     Deviant forms of behavior, by marking the outer edges of group
     life, give the inner structure its special character and thus
     supply the framework within which the people of the group develop
     an orderly sense of their own cultural identity ... one of the
     surest ways to confirm an identity, for communities as well as
     for individuals, is to find some way of measuring what one is not
     (1979:126).

     Yet another rationale is provided by Kephart, who explains
     anti-Gypsyism in terms of Gypsies being seen as a countercultural
     population, a group of people actually working against the values
     of the majority:
      

          American Gypsies, too, continue to face prejudice and
          discrimination ... Some observers contend that it is a
          matter of ethnic prejudice, similar to that experienced
          by blacks, Chicanos and other minorities. However, it
          is also possible that the Rom are perceived as a
          counterculture ... If people perceive of Gypsies as a
          counterculture, then unfortunately for all concerned,
          prejudice and discrimination might be looked upon as
          justifiable retaliation (1982:43).

      
     The Rom least well-equipped to retaliate against such social
     pressures are those best represented in the American Gypsy
     community: the Vlax, most of whose history in Europe has been one
     of enslavement. Existing for centuries in a society which
     provided all of what little material possessions they had, and
     which allowed them no involvement in any kind of decision-making,
     their modern descendants still look to the establishment as a
     source of support rather than as something to be worked with for
     the long-term good.  British and Hungarian Gypsies, subject to
     more assimilative pressures in their countries of origin, for
     better or for worse have learned to melt more effectively into
     the larger society, and have a much higher proportion of
     "professional" occupations represented among them in the United
     States. An exception among the Vlax are some of the Machvaya and
     other Rom of Serbian origin, a number of whom have also aquired
     mainstream occupations as well as high status within the Vlax
     community. It is likely that this is also due to assimilative
     factors. After abolition, those fleeing from Rumania westwards
     into Bosnia, Croatia and Serbia fared very differently from those
     who went eastwards into Russia:
      

          In Servia, the leveling power of Turkish rule, exerted
          for successive ages, had the effect of  elevating the
          Gypsies somewhat toward the social status of the other
          rayahs. Here, therefore, although they are still an
          inferior caste, and not allowed to exercise the rights
          and powers of citizenship, the Gypsies are perhaps less
          widely separated from the peasantry around them than
          anywhere else in Europe. They fought bravely with their
          Servian neighbors against the Turks, and as smiths,
          farriers, and dealers in live stock, have many of them
          earned a comfortable livelihood, and proved themselves
          respectable members of society (Clark, 1898:504).

                                   * * *

     It cannot be denied that the fuel for much of the discrimination
     against Gypsies in contemporary America is provided by the media.
     It requires very little effort on the part of those writing for
     the popular press, whether as journalism or fictional literature,
     to consult the existing sources and come up with material of
     their own without ever approaching Gypsy agencies themselves for
     their information. Almost all of the thousands of works relating
     to Gypsies have been written by non-Gypsies, and it is probably
     true that most of those have based their creations on the works
     of other non-Gypsies without ever checking their facts at first
     hand.

     Despite the enormous responsibility that journalists have in
     transmitting information to the public, with very few exceptions
     the media continue grossly to misrepresent Gypsies and to
     perpetuate negative, and often defamatory, stereotypes. Appendix
     two consists of a collage of such representation, from
     newspapers, magazines, comics, books and films. It has become so
     commonplace for the press to define Gypsies, an ethnic people,
     solely by behavioral criteria, that Gypsies themselves will
     frequently deny their identity:
      

          A Houston builder and Gypsy ... now doesn't tell anyone
          he's a Gypsy because he says it would ruin his
          business. "I'm not ashamed of it," he says, "but you've
          got to understand the effect it could have" (Linthicum,
          1985:8G).

      
     It is also true that, because of the widespread enforcement of
     laws over the past centuries which have forbidden Gypsies to stop
     anywhere, and consequently to attend school, Romani cultures have
     developed as non literate cultures. Even in countries with
     long-settled Gypsy populations - and today the majority of the
     world's Gypsies are not nomadic - a way of life which does not
     include literacy as a primary skill continues to be perpetuated.
     As a result, the kinds of organized approaches made to television
     stations, congressmen, newspaper editors and the like which other
     minorities have used to bring their point of view before the
     public, have simply not been within reach. Lacking access to
     lawyers, and other establishment means of seeking redress,
     Gypsies have not, until recently, been able even to take the
     first step towards challenging media misrepresentation. A
     situation exists today in which those who write for the popular
     press feel quite at liberty to say the most outrageous things
     about Gypsies, while they would be aghast if they were ever
     expected to put their names to the same kind of article about,
     say, Italians or Jews or Afro-Americans.

     Non-Gypsy populations receive most of their knowledge of Gypsies
     from works of fiction and from the media, rather than from
     Gypsies themselves. Journalists and novelists for years have had
     completely free reign to exploit their fantasies in print,
     comfortable in the knowledge that no one would be likely to
     challenge them - and certainly that no Gypsy ever would. When
     Peter Maas was asked in a Washington Star interview (November
     25th, 1975) why he felt he could make such negative claims about
     Gypsies in his book, he replied that no Gypsies had challenged
     them, that protesters were "just not out there." A traditional,
     fictional image of the Gypsy, of non-Gypsy origin, has emerged
     and has become so deeply entrenched in the popular mind that the
     real thing remains unseen.
      

          From an urban perspective, "real" Gypsies - that is,
          those conforming to the romantic myth - are a rural
          people; from a rural perspective, "real" Gypsies no
          longer exist; they are a part of a vanished folk
          culture. We might compare Brody's description of the
          "real" Eskimo as conceived by the white community in
          the Canadian North: "the tough, smiling, naive,
          ultimately irrational soul who, animal-like, is deeply
          attracted to roaming the open spaces of the limitless
          tundra and ice." Again, the mythical individual is
          removed from the dominant society and merges with
          nature (Sibley, 1981:18).

      
     In Britain and France, Romani Gypsies in dirty roadside sites are
     condemned as unsanitary squatters who give the "real Gypsies" a
     bad name. The romantics defend the "true Romany" and write of
     their "purity of blood," perceiving a clear distinction between
     the Borrovian ideal and what they see in real life. Others are
     less charitable: a letter to the press from an angry citizen in
     England complained that "they are very much detested and feared
     ... even the true gypsy glamourised by George Borrow was never
     liked" (The Surrey Advertiser for April 19th, 1977). In the
     United States and Canada, the average citizen is likely to think
     that there are no Gypsies in those countries at all. They never
     see the campfires and waggons they associate with Gypsies, or the
     violin-toting individuals sporting earrings, embroidered vests
     and tambourines. Books and articles have been written which refer
     to Gypsies as "hidden" or "invisible" Americans, and Gypsies make
     good use of this fictional image as a shield between themselves
     and outside society, even giving it back if it is in their
     interests to do so.

     Over a century ago, Simson dispaired at the widespread false
     perception which existed of the Gypsy, and at their exaggerated
     image as "wanderers":
      

          The popular idea of a Gipsy, at the present day, is
          very erroneous as to its extent and meaning. The
          nomadic Gipsies constitute but a portion of the race,
          and a very small portion of it (1865:8).

      
     Little has changed in the intervening century. Okely, in a
     recently-published work on the British Traveller population shows
     how "Outsiders have projected onto Gypsies their own repressed
     fantasies and longings for disorder" (1983:232), and makes the
     point that "Gypsies do not travel about aimlessly, as either the
     romantics or the anti-Gypsy suggest" (p.125). Much is made of
     this, as well as of stealing and promiscuity, in sustaining the
     stereotype. Stealing in particular is seen as a Gypsy trait;
     specialists such as Lombroso or Getsay have even implied that it
     is a genetic characteristic. Certainly some Gypsies steal, just
     as some Eskimos or Berbers or Englishmen steal; others don't. It
     is social behavior, and it is not transmitted biologically. To
     believe that such a thing is possible reflects not only
     prejudice, but an ignorance of scientific fact.

     Problems which exist today are the result of a continuum of
     circumstances going back for centuries. Few could argue that
     there has not been moral justification for subsistence stealing
     in the past, or that in some places it continues to be necessary,
     although this is not likely to be taken into consideration in a
     court of law. Historically, stealing has meant survival, and
     there are many shopkeepers throughout Europe even today, who will
     not serve Gypsies. There are homeowners, too, who will refuse to
     give Gypsies as much as a glass of water*. Given the the choice
     between seeing one's family starve, or else stealing, the latter
     is going to be the likelier option, whether one is a Gypsy or
     not. But the public doesn't seem to be interested in Gypsies who
     don't steal; perhaps it spoils the image it has created.

     *A newspaper item which appeared in the South Ealing Post for
     January 18th, 1974, carried the headline "Residents 'scared' by
     the gipsies." Speaking for the Wayfarers' (sic) Tenants
     Association, spokeswoman Norma Halford said "It is terrible, some
     of the things they are doing: they are knocking on doors and
     asking for water."

     There are a number of cases on file in the archives of the Romani
     Union, of crimes such as shoplifting being perpetrated by people
     reported as Gypsies, but who in fact turn out not to be Gypsies
     at all.  The label is freely applied by police reporters on the
     basis of behavior assumed to be typical of ethnic Gypsies - which
     of course it is, if the model sought is the Gypsy of fictional
     literature. It is to the credit of the Saint Paul Chief of Police
     that he apologized publicly in 1985 for thus misapplying the word
     in the news bulletins issued by his department.  There are
     hundreds of thousands of Gypsies in the United States who deplore
     the illegal activities of those who make the news, and who make a
     clear distinction between themselves and "le Rom kaj choren,"
     i.e. Gypsies who steal, and there are hundreds of thousands who
     try to make a decent and honest living in the face of adversity.
     Gypsy priests and ministers don't ever seem to generate media
     interest.

     History has shown time and time again that oppressor nations
     either attribute their own techniques of domination to the people
     they dominate, or else reinterpret their oppressive acts in what
     they perceive to be a positive way. Shifting blame onto the
     victim is a self-exonerating response well known in psychiatric
     circles. Dougherty devotes a whole appendix (1980:354-358) to the
     theme of Gypsies stealing babies, but gives no irrefutable
     evidence to support this widespread belief. The documentation
     gives another side to the story: it has been Gypsy children who
     have been stolen from their parents by non-Gypsies. The Swiss
     situation which came to light in 1973, discussed in chapter XIV,
     is one recent example. The author's own father was taken from his
     parents in 1918 for the same reasons, ostensibly for his own good
     (Hancock, 1985:53). Hoyland writes that "from such Gipsies who
     had families" in Maria Theresa's Hungary, "the children should be
     taken away by force; removed from their parents, relations, and
     intercourse with the Gipsey race." One child, "a girl fourteen
     years old, was forced to be carried off in her bridal state. She
     tore her hair for grief and rage, and was quite beside herself
     with agitation" (1816:69-70). Grellmann recommended that taking
     Gypsies' children be used as a means of coercion:
      

          The Gipseys, in common with uncivilized people,
          entertain unbounded love for their children. This
          excessive fondness for their children is, however,
          attended with one advantage: when they are indebted to
          any person, which is frequently the case in Hungary and
          Transylvania, the creditor seizes a child, and by that
          means obtains a settlement of his demand, as the Gipsey
          will immediately exert every method to discharge the
          debt, and procure the release of his darling offspring
          (1807:65-66).

      
     In the introduction to the new edition of her book Gypsies: The
     Hidden Americans from the Waveland Press, (1986), Anne Sutherland
     tells of a communication from the Chief of Police of one northern
     city who, having read the first edition of her book, expressed
     gratitude at having learned of such close family feeling amongst
     the Rom because he could now use it, by exerting pressure upon
     Gypsy children, to keep their parents in line.

     "Wandering" or "roaming" is another commonly-repeated attribute,
     and are words which frequently find a place in accounts about
     Gypsies. Yet the words imply aimlessness, as though Gypsy lives
     have no purpose or direction; they are often qualified by words
     like "carefree." The harsh conditions of life on the road are
     never dealt with, and the day-to-day responsibility of feeding a
     family and keeping it clothed and warm is trivialized out of
     existence.
      

          If I am fancy free,
          And love to wander -
          It's just the Gypsy in my soul*.

      
     *Copyright Messrs. Boland and Jaffe (1936)

     Gypsies in western Europe have traditionally been kept on the
     move because of laws which have given them no alternative. Means
     of livelihood have been developed which are adapted to this kind
     of life, and have subsequently become part of the stereotype.
     Individuals not conforming to these - who include a growing
     number of those involved in the Romani civil and political rights
     movement - are not infrequently denied their Gypsy identity by
     sociologists and others whose investment in them depends upon
     their remaining passive and traditional. A Gypsy in a horse drawn
     wooden caravan is ideal; in a motorized trailer, not quite so
     authentic; in a house, he's a total disappointment; as journalist
     Ira Berkow said in a 1975 feature story, "Gypsies are,
     shockingly, also becoming home owners!" (1975:20).

     [Illustration with caption]
     Gypsies in France must have their papers examined and stamped by
     the police in each district they enter

     Another stereotypically attributed characteristic is that Gypsies
     care nothing for material possessions, in  keeping, of course,
     with the perceived "freedom" of a people unencumbered with the
     trappings of civilized society. Elsewhere (Hancock, 1986b), I
     have illustrated this with statements that the Romani language
     does not even contain a word for "possession," reiterated by six
     different writers over the course of almost a century. Anyone
     with any familiarity at all with Gypsies would quickly be
     disabused of this notion: the traditional lack of material
     possessions is a result of social circumstance, not personal
     whim. Other words the language is not supposed to contain are
     "truth" (Phelan, 1951:81) and "beauty" (Woolfe, 1928:78). None of
     these writers could speak Romani, however.

     Gypsy women have for long been represented as sexual temptresses,
     and Gypsy men as a sexual threat to non-Gypsy women, in both song
     and story. The Impressions' Gypsy Woman has been recorded by a
     dozen artists since it was first released in 1961, and tells of
     the singer's watching the girl, longing to kiss and hold her as
     "all through the caravan, she was dancing with all the men" in
     the "campfire light"; Gypsy Davy is a traditional ballad about a
     lady who left her mansion and her husband to go off with a Gypsy;
     Lawrence's novel The Virgin and the Gypsy is a typical literary
     work along the same lines. And yet it was the European
     slaveowners who took Gypsy women at their will and used them,
     while calling them "whores," and it was the European slaveowners
     who castrated their male slaves to protect their own women from
     their servants' lust.

     Cohn may be right when he argues ( loc. cit.) that non-Gypsies
     need a Gypsy image to project their fantasies onto; an example of
     this appeared in the Sunday supplement of one Boston newspaper in
     August, 1986. Describing a Romani family in that city, the writer
     stated on the first page of her article that from their
     appearance, "... they could be Spanish, or French, or Italian, or
     Irish," but by the second page she had already begun to be
     carried away by the lure of the stereotype:
      

          They are glitter and gold, decked out in bright
          babushka of legend. They are exotic women in colorful
          skirts, dancing in sensual swirls. They are dark men
          with smoldering eyes. They are carefree spirits playing
          the tambourine. The entire image is crowned with a halo
          of mystique, shrouded in a cloak of mystery. And there
          is some truth to all of it (Brink, 1986:4-5).

      
     The article also stated that Gypsies don't work, have no
     professional people among them, and are not officially recognized
     as an ethnic community in the United States.

     In addition to the popular observer, there exists a substantial
     body of academics who specialize in Gypsy Studies, and who have
     established scholarly reputations for themselves by doing so. The
     opinions of these individuals are perhaps even more important
     than those of the untutored, since these are the specialists who,
     if it is sought at all, are approached for information about
     Gypsies. Romani scholarship rests upon the work of these people:
     Grellmann, Pott, Miklosich, Ascoli and others have laid the
     foundation for what we know of Romani language and history.

     The Victorian preoccupation with the "purity" of the noble savage
     is understandable in the light of those times, and the attitudes
     of 19th century "Gypsy buffs" whom Dougherty says "tended to be
     either superficial sentimentalists or genteel snobs looking for a
     feudal relic to coddle and patronize" (1980:273), must be
     interpreted with that in mind. But it is a singular
     characteristic among some of the contemporary students of Gypsies
     that the same attitudes persist. Where these people could do more
     than any other outsiders to help the Romani cause, they
     stubbornly refuse to disturb their anthropologists' and
     folklorists' perception of the Gypsy. We may compare 19th century
     statements made by such specialists with those made in the 20th
     century: Paspati maintained that "it is in the tent that the
     Gypsy must be studied, and not in the villages of the bastardized
     sedentary Gypsies" (1880:14), and Pischel believed that "the
     Gypsy ceases to be a Gypsy as soon as he is domiciled and follows
     some trade" (1883:358).

     Twentieth century investigators have sometimes challenged reality
     in the light of direct evidence. Jaroslav Sus, a Czech, claimed
     that it was an "utterly mistaken opinion that Gypsies form a
     nationality or a nation, that they have their own national
     culture, their own national language" (1961:89). The former
     sub-editor of the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, Brian
     Vesey-Fitzgerald, scorned the Romani nationalist movement as
     "romantic twaddle" (The Birmingham Post for July 14th, 1973,
     p.2), echoing the words of Dora Yates, honorary secretary of the
     same society, to which she belonged for 63 years and who,
     referring to the same movement, asked "except in a fairy tale,
     could any hope ever have been more fantastic?" (1953:140).
     Another member, Werner Cohn, believes that
      

          The Gypsies have no leaders, no executive committees,
          no nationalist movement ... I know of no authenticated
          case of genuine Gypsy allegiance to political or
          religious causes (1973:66).

      
     The most recent denial of the nationalist movement has come from
     yet another member of the Gypsy Lore Society, Jiri Lipa:
      

          To be exact, there is no one Gypsy culture nor one
          Gypsy language ... If in the process of looking for
          native assistants and for training them [the
          gypsilorist finds that] literary talents should appear,
          so much the better ... In reality, however, it is mere
          toying, a waste of energy and material means which are
          not abundant for Gypsy studies. While a missing
          attribute is being artificially contrived, which is
          supposed to make the Gypsies an ethnic minority in the
          conventional sense in the eyes of wishful thinkers and
          bureaucrats, irreplaceable values of Gypsy culture are
          being lost in our time (1983:4).

                                   * * *

     These attitudes on the part of the non-Gypsy population, whether
     academic or popular, are a direct result of centuries of
     oppression, an oppression which has denied Gypsies the
     wherewithal to make their voices heard and to challenge
     discriminatory laws and widespread negative media stereotyping.
     Other persecuted peoples have begun to redress the wrongs being
     perpetrated against them; there are now no laws operating against
     American Indians or Afro-Americans in this country, nor are they
     maligned and misrepresented in the press. Books presenting them
     in a defamatory light are removed from school libraries now as a
     matter of course. Not so for Gypsies, however, who continue to
     provide a source of romantic and other exploitation, and who
     continue to be taken advantage of because of their traditional
     lack of organized political, academic or military strength.
     Writing of the post-emancipation situation in Moldavia and
     Wallachia, and of the gains made by other linguistic and cultural
     minorities in modern Rumania, Beck makes this point well:
      

          Romania's German-speaking populations have received
          support from the West German state, Magyars are
          supported by the Hungarian state, and Jews by Israel.
          Groups like the Tsigani did not have such an
          advantage.  Lacking a protective state they have no one
          to turn to when discrimination is inflicted upon them
          as a group. Unlike ethnic groups represented by states,
          Tsigani are not recognized as having a history that
          could legitimize them (1985:103).

      
     Gypsies use their language and core-culture as a kind of moveable
     country; wherever they have gone, ethnic identity has usually
     been maintained despite fragmentation and, until recently, a lack
     of international cohesiveness. Whether the three branches of
     Gypsy discussed at the beginning of this book prove to belong to
     one migratory stock or not, it is clear that the Western Romani
     people were united linguistically and culturally at the time of
     entry into Europe.  Whatever factors divided the contemporary
     populations, and they are not inconsiderable, they are
     overwhelmingly the result of involvement with the non-Gypsy, and
     are directly relatable to the oppression here described. If
     Romani Gypsies are to regain that unity, the causes and nature of
     the oppression which destroyed it have to be understood and
     challenged.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                              XVI. Afterword
                                   

     In the preceding chapters, an attempt has been made to describe
     the prejudicial treatment of the Rom in non-Romani societies,
     both in North America and throughout Europe, and to propose an
     explanation for the origin of anti-Gypsyism in history and its
     perpetuation in the present day.

     That such bigotry exists at all levels is clearly evident; the
     very people appointed at the official level to deal with this
     ethnic minority work from the assumption that there is no such
     thing as a decent Gypsy: "To Jose Alcantara, one of two officers
     permanently assigned to the so-called Gypsy detail [in Los
     Angeles], there is no such thing as an honest Gypsy
     fortune-teller. Or an honest Gypsy, for that matter" (Stumbo,
     1984:1). Gypsies are routinely blamed for their own condition; a
     Czechoslovakian spokesman defended his government's program of
     taking Romani children from their families and placing them in
     foster homes, by saying that it was "the Gypsies' fault for
     refusing to let their children be civilized" (Rosenblum,
     1984:6C).

     The two attributes seen to be lacking here are honesty and
     civilization, and in such arguments, both are perceived of as
     corollaries to the "nomadic" way of life of the Gypsy people.
     Individuals who are here today and gone tomorrow, are potentially
     prime suspects in cases of theft, for example - especially if
     they already have a reputation as thieves, and if they can be
     accused with little likelihood of that accusation's being
     challenged.

     I have also discussed the various arguments, such as those of
     Cohn, Sibley and Crawford, which in one way or another maintain
     that non-Gypsy societies need an outsider group such as the Rom
     upon whom to project their fantasies, or else to serve as
     scapegoats, or to help maintain the boundaries of their own
     cultural perception. All of these, I believe, have some merit;
     the extent to which such rationales are reflected in the folklore
     and the popular culture of the countries dealt with here
     testifies to this.

     Although it has been demonstrated that the mobility of the Romani
     population has been the result of historical circumstance, which
     in most countries left no option other than torture or death, and
     which forced such mobile families into a way of life and
     livelihood compatible with a stop-and-start existence, this
     mobility has been romanticized in fiction and has become a
     mainstay of the Gypsy stereotype. Much of Europe's Romani
     population was held in slavery until the middle of the last
     century, and never left the estates at all, except perhaps to be
     driven to the slave auctions to be exhibited for sale. Those in
     northern and western Europe, paying the price for having been
     confused with the "Tatars" and "heathens" who threatened
     Christianity and the whole of the western economy, were subjected
     to the extremes of oppression dealt with in earlier chapters.

     Most of the American Rom descend from the Gypsies freed from
     slavery in south-eastern Europe between 1855 and 1864. As Acton
     has pointed out, this places the modern population only four or
     five generations from a sedentary existence which stretches back
     to the Middle Ages, and which hardly qualifies that population as
     "nomadic." An FBI crime squad investigating an alleged case of
     racketeering by a group of Rom in Virginia was designated
     "Operation Nomade", however, indicative of the kind of
     preconception most commonly held about Gypsies (The Seattle Times
     for September 27th, 1986). During the time of emancipation and
     arrival in North America, Gypsies, like many other immigrant
     groups, came fleeing persecution, but met anti-Gypsy laws which
     were designed, as in Europe, to keep them on the move and out of
     the way. American Gypsies have learned to hide their identity in
     order to avoid discrimination, and since the end of the Second
     World War in particular, as Gropper (1975) has shown, the
     American Romani population has become increasingly urban and
     increasingly settled, though living invisibly in order to be able
     to do so free of harassment.

     This gradual integration has not been easy; integration leads in
     time to assimilation and the loss of one's traditional language,
     culture and identity, and among the Rom this is strenuously
     resisted. At the Romani tribunals, or krisa Romane, the
     continuance of tradition and the Romani language frequently
     become serious issues, as are discussions of dress, marriage and
     territorial jurisdiction.

     Such fierce adherence to the ethnic identity seems to annoy some
     non-Gypsies. Jews have experienced the same kind of resentment,
     as though this exclusivity were a threat to the outside world.
     People who have been traditionally uncommunicative are perceived
     as secretive, and if they are secretive, they cannot be trusted.
     And if they remain on the move, never mind why, they must have
     something to hide. Another common reaction is that such groups
     must feel themselves to be superior and aloof from the rest of
     the world - and this, too, does little to enhance their image.

     American Gypsies make a distinction between themselves and more
     recently arrived immigrant groups and maintain, rightly or
     wrongly, that it is the criminal activity of these people which
     gives them a bad name. Despite the situation in the United
     States, it is a much better place to live for Gypsies than any
     European country, and given that the Vlax Romani population
     arrived here illiterate and legislated against, many have done
     remarkably well. But some groups who came here, from Poland, or
     Czechoslovakia, say, left incredibly oppressive environments
     where schooling, or access to shops or even churches has been
     denied them, and where any means possible to survive were
     necessary. Part of a letter smuggled out of Rumania to the West
     and received in November, 1986, describes the situation of Rom in
     that country today:
      

          Every time we request our rights as citizens, and the
          rights of our minority, we are arrested by the police
          and detained for many days without food, violently
          beaten, interrogated and threatened with expulsion from
          the town. Because of all these reasons, we crossed the
          Rumanian border illegally, but were sent back to
          Rumania where we were sentenced and imprisoned for one
          year. Since our release, we have found that the social
          and political situation of our minority is worse ...

      
     Like such behavior among other older immigrant populations, who
     shun more newly-arrived members of their own group, little is
     done either on the part of the established Romani community to
     help the themenge Roma or "foreign" Gypsies coming here, although
     it is widely known that the situation in Europe is a drastic one.
     Among third- and fourth-generation American Romani families, the
     lessons of history have ensured that the plight of those in
     trouble with the law, or elsewhere in the world, or even in the
     Holocaust, be regarded with fatalism. Perpetuation of a family
     has meant breaking up into smaller groups, each one for itself,
     either to escape and survive, or else to be tracked down and
     destroyed or transported.

     Although the distinction between American and foreign-born
     Gypsies is an important one within the Romani population itself,
     it is not one recognized by the larger society, which remains
     unaware, in fact, that there even exist wide differences of
     ethnic type within the overall American-born Gypsy population.
     The word "gypsy" is often applied to any people who conform to
     the perceived image, whether they are ethnic Romanies or not. It
     is paradoxical that while this great land was settled by men and
     women crossing its vast expanses with horse and wagon, and
     American society remains the most mobile in the world today, the
     inherent distrust of the non-sedentary population, of which
     Gypsies are believed to be the archtypical members, is everywhere
     in evidence. An out of town checking account or an out of state
     driver's license invite suspicion, and they can certainly hamper
     one's daily interactions outside of one's own settled community.
     Populations on the move suffer especially from being subject to
     laws designed for static communities; the history of the American
     Indian has similarly been one of violating the laws of another
     people and paying the price as a result.

     While the situation for Gypsies in the world today is crucial,
     and according to reports may be getting worse (Rosenblum, 1984),
     we have moved into a new phase of Romani history. As the true
     facts of that history become more widely known, and the mystique
     which clouds the real issues gradually disappears, positive
     changes are for the first time being brought about. Romani
     spokesmen are becoming more vocal and more evident as confidence,
     and the educational ability to be so confident, grow. This is not
     a trend which is likely to change, but its progress is uneven. We
     have come a long way from slavery, but while Pope John Paul asked
     Africans to forgive Christians for their past role in the
     enslavement of that people (The Easton Express for August 14th,
     1984, p.C12), the Romani population has yet to receive the same
     acknowledgment. The Holocaust is nearly half a century behind us,
     but the Romani population still waits for the world to recognize
     its fate under the Nazis, and for a place on the U.S. Holocaust
     Memorial Council, where it remains (as of November, 1986) an
     often unnamed category within that Council's "ethnic outreach"
     program. The Congressional Caucus on Human Rights sent a petition
     to the Czechoslovak government in October, 1986, protesting its
     treatment of Gypsies, yet the coverage by CBS of the kidnapped
     Gypsy children being trained as thieves in Italy and France by
     criminals, themselves Gypsies (on 60 Minutes, November 9th, 1986)
     was needlessly trivial, succeeding only in reinforcing the
     stereotype of the Gypsy as Thief. The same situation is being
     exploited in the form of an entire movie, called "Gypsy Caravan",
     being made by London-based Saltzman Lowndes Productions, and
     scheduled to appear in August, 1987. Since the completion of this
     manuscript, with Congressional intervention, the U.S. office of
     the Romani Union has been instrumental in bringing about the
     complete removal of all anti-Gypsy laws in the state of
     Pennsylvania. It has also begun working with the British legal
     firm of Bindman and Partners, who have been retained by the
     Commission for Racial Equality to bring legal proceedings against
     the businesses in Britain which discriminate against Gypsies and
     which carry signs outside their premises indicating that Gypsies
     will not be served.

     Pariah status means not belonging; the syndrome, or multiplicity
     of factors, which underlies this status as outcast as described
     in this volume has led to Gypsies' having become locked into a
     cycle of anti-social behavior which is the result of a continuum
     of centuries of oppression, but which has ensured the
     perpetuation of that oppression.  More and more, Gypsies
     themselves are initiating, and participating in, moves to end
     this situation, and to challenge discrimination in the news and
     in the media. The cycle is at last being broken.

     A NOTE ON ORTHOGRAPHY

     Throughout, except in quotes from other works, the spelling
     Rumania(n), rather than the more widely-accepted Romania(n) has
     been preferred in order to distinguish it more readily from
     Romani.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                   XVII. Appendix A: Definition of Terms
                                   

     ATHINGANOI. A heretic Byzantine group with which Gypsies were
     confused, hence the various names such as Zigeuner, Cigan, &c.
     (Greek).

     ANGLOROMANI. The variety of Romani spoken by the Romanichals or
     British Gypsies, wherever they have gone to live. It differs
     considerably from the inflected Romani of the Vlax Rom, and is
     not mutually intelligible with it.

     AURARI. Goldwashers. Also called ZLATARI (Rumanian).

     BALKAN. As applied to dialects of Romani, includes those which
     developed south of Moldavia and Wallachia. They are spoken today
     mainly in Greece and Bulgaria.

     BALKANS. An area of south-eastern Europe which includes
     continental Turkey, Bulgaria, Greece, Albania, Jugoslavia,
     Rumania and sometimes Hungary.

     BITCHADY PAWDEL (or BITCHENO PAWDEL). Transported to the American
     or Australian penal colonies, lit. 'sent across'. A term used by
     the Romanichals or British Gypsies (Angloromani).

     BITCHERIN' MUSH. Magistrate, lit. 'sending man'. A term used by
     the Romanichals or British Gypsies (Angloromani).

     BOSHA. Gypsies in Armenia who call themselves LOM; speakers of
     Central Gypsy dialects (Armenian).

     BOYARS (also BOIARS, BOYARDS). The landed gentry; barons
     (Rumanian).

     BOYASH (also BAYASH, BEYASH, BEASH). A Vlax Romani population,
     wide spread throughout Europe and the Americas, who descend from
     the RUDARI and who have a Rumanian dialect as their native
     language instead of Romani (deriv. from preceding).

     BYZANTINE EMPIRE. A Christian empire incorporating what are today
     Turkey and parts of south-eastern Europe, which lasted from the
     sixth to the fifteenth century.

     BYZANTIUM (later CONSTANTINOPOLIS, CONSTANTINOPLE, ISTANBUL). The
     capital of the Byzantine Empire; sometimes wrongly applied to the
     empire itself.

     CALDERARI (or KALDERASHA). Makers of copper vessels (Rumanian).

     CANGUE. A spiked harness used as a restraining device around the
     neck (French).

     CETE. A group of Gypsies to be sold in a single lot (Rumanian).

     CHIVUTSE (CHIVUTSELE, SPOITORESELE). Whitewashers (Rumanian).

     CIOCOI (also VATAVE). An overseer (Rumanian).

     COSTORARI. Tinners (Rumanian).

     CHURARI. Sievemakers (Rumanian).

     DANUBIAN. A branch of European or Western Romani: also called
     VLAX.

     DESROBIREJA. Emancipation from slavery (Romani, from Rumanian).

     DOM. Speakers of Eastern Gypsy dialects.

     DOM. A menial class in India whose occupations include musicians,
     slaughterers, janitors, &c., and members of the SHUDRA caste.
     Believe by some to be the ancestors of the Gypsies.

     DOMARI. The language of the DOM; speakers of the dialects of
     Eastern Gypsy, inhabiting Syria and other parts of the Middle
     East (Domari).

     DOMBA. Hypothesized ancestors of all three branches of Gypsy.

     DOMBARI. The Proto-Gypsy language.

     ENDLÖSUNG. During Hitler's Nazi regime, his policy of
     exterminating all unwanted racial, ethnic and social elements
     from his new society. The 'Final Solution' (German).

     FALAGUE. Flaying the soles of the feet as a means of punishment
     (French).

     FERARI (or HERARI). Workers in iron (Rumanian).

     GADZHIKANO. Masculine singular adjective meaning "non-Gypsy"
     (Romani).

     GADZHO. Male non-Gypsy, plural GADZHE. The feminine form is
     GADZHI, plural GADZHJA (Romani).

     GORNIK. In Hungary, a title meaning Gypsy overseer (Hungarian).

     HOSPODAR (or GOSPODAR). A word meaning 'lord', formerly born as a
     title of dignity by the governors of the Ottoman PORTE for the
     provinces of Wallachia and Moldavia.

     JEKHIPE (or JEKHETHANIBE). Unity, lit. 'one-ness' (Romani).

     KIRPACHI. Basketmakers (Rumanian).

     KOVACHI. Blacksmiths (Rumanian).

     KSHATRIYAS. A member of the military caste, the second highest of
     the four castes among the Hindus.

     LAIESHI (or LAIETSI). Slaves who were allowed to move about on
     the estates, an who did a variety of jobs (Rumanian).

     LAUTARI. Musicians; strictly, fiddlers (Rumanian, from
     Turkish/Arabic).

     LINGURARI. Makers of wooden spoons (Rumanian).

     LOMAVREN. The language of the Bosha (Lomavren).

     LOWBEY. A people inhabiting The Gambia in West Africa which, it
     has been suggested, descended from the French Gypsies abandoned
     on that coast in 1802. Known locally as Lawbe or Laybe (Peul).

     MAMALIGA. Cornmeal porridge, commonly eaten throughout Rumania
     and other parts of eastern Europe. A staple diet for the slaves
     (Rumanian).

     MESTERE-LACATUCHI. Makers of keys, locks and burglar-bars
     (Rumanian).

     MONGOLS. Invaders from central Asia, some of whom had begun to be
     converted to Islam by the late 1200s.

     NAJU (also NAYU, NAIU). A pan-pipe; musical instrument fashioned
     from reeds cut to different lengths fastened side by side, the
     tops of which are blown across.

     NETOCI (or NETOTSI). Plural of NETOTO, q.v.

     NETOTO. A slave who escaped to the mountains and who lived as a
     fugitive. The word is said to mean "not complete" (Rumanian).

     OTTOMAN. The Turkish dynasty belonging to Othman (Osman) I,
     founded ca. AD 1300.

     PORTE. The Ottoman court at Constantinople (French).

     POTCOVARI. Ironworkers and shoers of horses (Rumanian).

     RABI GOSPOD. Name given to Gypsy slaves in Russia (Russian).

     RAJASTHANI. The language of the Rajputs (Indic).

     RAJPUTANIA (or RAJASTHAN). Part of north-western India inhabited
     by the RAJPUTS.

     RAJPUTS. A predominantly military north-western Indian people,
     who claim to be descended from the KSHATRIYAS. Believed by some
     scholars to have been the ancestors of the Gypsies.

     ROBI. Slaves. In European Vlax Romani, Rrobo means "captive" or
     "prisoner"; in American Vlax it means "one unwilling to work"
     (Rumanian, from Slavic. Cf. RABI GOSPOD).

     RROM. In all varieties of Western Romani this word is found
     meaning "husband" or "Gypsy man" (as opposed to GADZHO or
     non-Gypsy man); for Vlax-speaking Gypsies, it is further used to
     define themselves as opposed to other, non-Vlax-speaking Gypsy
     groups. The feminine is RROMNI (Romani).

     RROMANES. Adverbial form meaning "in the Gypsy manner"; sometimes
     used to mean the Romani language.

     ROMANI. Feminine singular adjective meaning "Gypsy." Often
     applied to the language, and used also as a noun (older spelling
     ROMANY, plural ROMANIES).

     ROMANICHAL (also ROMNICHAL, ROMNICHEL). Designation for those
     Gypsy populations from northern Europe, and especially the
     British Isles, as opposed to, e.g., the RROM.

     RUDARI (also RUDARS, LUDARI, BLIDARI, LINGURARI). Makers of
     wooden spoons, troughs, plates, spindles, &c. The name RUDARI was
     also applied to those engaged in goldwashing.

     SALAHORI. House-builders (Rumanian).

     SALASH. A job-lot of slaves sold together (Rumanian).

     SHATRA. A Gypsy village. Also used to refer to a job-lot of
     slaves sold together (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI. Slaves (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI COEVESHTI. Slaves of the barons, also called SCLAVI
     BOIARESHTI (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI CURTE. Slaves of the court (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI DE MOSHII. Slaves belonging to the petty landowners
     (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI DOMNESHTI. Slaves of the gentry (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI GOSPOD. Slaves of the householders (Rumanian).

     SCLAVI MONASTIVESHTI. Slaves of the Church (Rumanian).

     SCINDROME. Slave (plural SCINDROMI) (Rumanian).

     SELJUKS. Members of a Turkish dynasty ruling between the 11th and
     13th centuries, prior to the OTTOMANS.

     SKOPICA (also SCOPITSA, plural SCOPITSI). A eunuch; one of a
     caste of coachdrivers castrated as children and used to transport
     the female gentry (Rumanian).

     SLOBUZENJA. Freedom (Romani, from Slavic).

     SPOITORESELE (or CHIVUTSE, KIVOUTSE, CHIVUTSELE). Whitewashers
     (Rumanian).

     SUDRA. Lowest of the four Hindu castes, believed by some to have
     been the ancestors of the Gypsies (Sanskrit).

     TATARS (sometimes TARTARS). Name applied to various Turkic
     peoples, including the Turki and Kirghiz, who overran the
     Byzantine Empire. It was also applied indiscriminately to the
     MONGOLS, who are not a Turkic people.

     TSIGAN (plural TSIGANI). Gypsy (Rumanian).

     TSIGANI DE CASATSI. House slaves (Rumanian).

     TSIGANI DE OGOR. Field slaves (Rumanian).

     TRIBUT. Taxes (Rumanian).

     URSARI. Bear trainers (Rumanian).

     VATAVE (or CIOCOI). Overseer (Rumanian).

     VATRASHI (or VATRARI). Slaves who did a variety of jobs,
     including those of groom, stable keeper, coachman, &c.
     (Rumanian).

     VAXUITORI DE GHETE. Cobblers and leather-workers (Rumanian).

     VICA (or VITSA; plural VICI, VITSI). A clan or social division
     within Vlax Romani society. Literally "vine" or "tendril"
     (Rumanian, from Slavic).

     VINZATOARE DE FLORI. Flower-sellers and sellers of sheaves of
     grain (Rumanian).

     VLAX (also VLACH, WALLACHIAN or DANUBIAN). A branch of European
     Gypsy consisting of those dialects which developed in the Balkans
     during slavery time. They are characterized by massive lexical
     and structural influence from Rumanian.

     VRAJITOARELE (or GICHISORI). Fortune-tellers. This was not a
     legitimate category within slavery but provided amusement for the
     gentry; these women were among the LAIESHI, and moved all over
     the estates (Rumanian).

     YANSERS. Name applied to Gypsies in 19th century New York.

     ZLATARI (also called AURARI). Goldwashers (Slavic); not slaves.

                   --------------------------------------

                 XVIII.  Appendix B. Media Representation
                                 of Gypsies

     A collage of newspaper headlines, comics, cartoons, &c., mainly
     taken from American and British sources, depicting Gypsies.


  ------------------------------------------------------------------------

                            The Pariah Syndrome
                       XIX. List of Works Consulted
                                   

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