The Roma: A Homeless and a Free People

     The villagers hear the approaching sound of hoofs, rolling wagon wheels, and the clamor of the rocking pots and pans that dangle along the sides of the moving caravan.  The villagers feel a sense of excitement for that the Gypsies bring and also a sense of dread based on folklore and prejudice.

     The Romany people, better known to some as the Gypsies, have a long and colorful history shrouded in legend and folklore.  The name Gypsy is a distortion of the name for Egyptians, even though modern scholars argue that the Roma almost certainly orignate from the area around Northern India.  To the Europeans, they were a cursed people.  As expert blacksmiths, one of the legends claimed that the curse originated because they were the ones who made the nails used in the crucifixion of Jesus.  The Roma have been known to put their own spin on the tale by saying that they were forced to do so, but they made the nails particularly thin so as to inflict as little pain as possible.

     In more modern folklore, the Roma are portrayed as sinister, as in the case of the Brahm Stoker novel, Dracula, where they are allies of the great vampire.  Sometimes the image is quite the opposite.  In the classic 1941 film, The Wolfman, the Gypsy are misunderstood but wise people who are aquainted with all forms of the supernatural.  This knowledge is linked with the tradition that they are expert in fortune telling, and privy to the creatures of the night.

     The Roma have often been portrayed as an immoral people.  This is likely linked to the very clear fact that they enjoy flirting, which is something of an art among the young women.  Even if this is true, they have a strong culture of fidelity in marriage.  A rather nausiating tradition that builds on this is the "Lubenny Kiss."  Though sometimes know as the "Harlot Kiss," this is a public ceremony where the husband or the betrohed bites off the tongue of the unfaithful woman.

     Among some of the Roma people is the Cult of the Dead.  In almost all groups of Roma, there is the tradition that the dead are potentially harmful to the living.  If the deceased were slighted or offended by anyone in life, they will return for vengence.  This might tie into the Romanian tradition of the Strigoi Mort (vampire).  It therefore became a tradition to burn the bodies of the Gypsy dead to prevent this and to speed the souls on to the next life.  In my own novel, Carpathian Nights, I play with this concept in the chapter entitled "Dark Horse Rider," where a supernatual Gypsy travels the country, obsessed with the destruction of all buried bodies.