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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The Romani word for: Vision Poet, Seer, Shaman is :
filefilidh[/i] |
Old Irish or Greek ([i]philo as in philosophy)?
| If you assemble a mercenary force, you send them home again when the job is done. If not, they're either dead or still in the army. |
The Swiss were traditionally the mercenaries of choice, weren't they? There's a Romansh community still hanging on, the fourth Swiss ethnic group, which may be as close to a homeland as they could get?
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Ishmael
In: Toronto
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| EndlesslyRocking wrote: | | How do we prove this isn't the case? |
I don't think that's a valid methodology.
What we want to do is lay out a list of anomalies and then find the simplest model to account for those anomalies.
The principal anomaly with Gypsies and Roma, I've always held (and, indeed, members of this group have long discussed it), is their names! How in heck did they come to be named for Egypt and Rome?
I offer above, one explanation. And it accounts for a few other things as well.
That doesn't make it true. But it's the right methodology.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| "What happened to all the people in those 'crusader states' when the territory was lost to the Turks?" I wondered what it would have been like returning 'home' to Europe after a 200 to 400 year absence? |
Tell me more about crusader states. How would their experience be different from Anglo-Saxons when the Normans arrived, say? Or the Romans, who evidently had somewhere to retreat to?
| About the only option would be to set up as roving travellers offering exotic goods, entertainments and in desperate times, operating as thieves. |
Time and time again I hear of things introduced to Europe by returning Crusaders, which I can never fathom since the Middle East didn't fall down in a shower of rain. ('Course, in this picture, knights are going to and fro all the time. Was there a significant number that 'stayed away' for centuries?) A positive reason for a positive effort to market exotic goods makes more sense of it. But...
Were the Gypsies ever known for their exotic goods? Or for operating regular trade? It's beginning to sound altogether too 'Establishment'. (Which still leaves the random occupations.)
| Fomenko expressly identifies the original 'Egypt' and 'Rome' as crusader states set up by European mercenaries on the area of Asia Minor... The crusaders were not Christian. And neither are their Gypsy and Roma descendants. |
Interesting. But the genetics say the Roma are Subcontinentals.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| Maybe they domesticated horses just as the ice started encroaching, and have been on the move ever since. |
You seem to imagine the ice a trigger: once a threshold is crossed, a new lifestyle is created and they never go back.
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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One thing that mustn't be overlooked is that gypsies are an underclass. Masters of survival but not much more. So it is unlikely they are remnants of anything elite like cavalry -- or even 'crusaders'. Butchers and knackers that got away....that's more like it!
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Tatjana
In: exiled in Germany
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| Mick Harper wrote: | | One thing that mustn't be overlooked is that gypsies are an underclass. Masters of survival but not much more. So it is unlikely they are remnants of anything elite like cavalry -- or even 'crusaders'. Butchers and knackers that got away....that's more like it! |
what. did.you. just. say. Mick?
what's the next word you gonna use - something like
inferior?
_________________
-Gory at thasp, keener fortha karabd-
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Mick Harper
Site Admin
In: London
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OK, inferior if you prefer, though underclass is more sociological.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| One thing that mustn't be overlooked is that gypsies are an underclass. Masters of survival but not much more. So it is unlikely they are remnants of anything elite like cavalry -- or even 'crusaders'. Butchers and knackers that got away....that's more like it! |
So, the cavalry will have had homes to go to or ended up lording it over someone else... but the "squire class" (wives included), isolated in Europe and not important enough to recall or be retained, was left to fend for itself? They are known as wagoners rather than individual horsemen, aren't they?
So which ruling class was "migrating" around Europe during/after the Crusades? Or was it an age of banditry? Or were the knights awarded estates within the Ottoman(?) Empire?
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| what. did. you. just. say. Mick? |
Don't be thin-skinned, Tani. It's as objective to say they are an underclass as it is to say they do not have an independent lifestyle.
I was gonna coin the term para-social, but it's already taken and doesn't mean what I wanted it to; though one-sidedness does apply, one side knowing about the other, but not vice versa.
Gotta watch for things being lost in translation, but which is more fraught, English-to-German or English-to Liberal?
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Tatjana
In: exiled in Germany
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Oh, please excuse me for getting a bit thin-skinned by now - after reading in post after post, what a thieving, underclass lot the gypsies are, all of them mainly earning their living by stealing Canadians' wallets and frauding poor Americans from their mafia-like headquarters at Murphy's, right?
Who of you know any gypsies personally? Have you ever been to a camp and actually talked to them? Goodness gracious, from the contents of some of you guys' posts I take it you didn't even bother to check some of the links I gave for info!
I never would have thought that a bunch of educated people would utter such a stream of prejudices and even arrogant statements close to racism like some of what I had to read about MY PEOPLE repeatedly here.
UNDERCLASS??? >>Under<< what exactly???? Seen from which point?
Para-social? - or did you want to say a(nti)-social? Well, in our own communities we are extremely social - to an extent that you UPPERCLASS people haven't known for at least a century.
And don't worry, Dan - nothing gets lost in translation. I think I'm quite fluent in English. But you won't have to worry what words to choose in the future.
Boy, I am quite happy now that Ish could apparently not be relied on to fix the other place's account!
Well, I'm outta here. Now you can go on about the gypsies - never mind this is a racist term - never mind I told you the right names, Mick, go on calling them underclass (objective? don't make me laugh, Dan!) and gypsies - and now you can add yet another point to your list of stereotypes:
All gypsies are thin-skinned.
I won't be around to read the word >sub-human< one of these days.
_________________
-Gory at thasp, keener fortha karabd-
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| Tatjana wrote: | Oh, please excuse me for getting a bit thin-skinned by now - after reading in post after post, what a thieving, underclass lot the gypsies are, all of them mainly earning their living by stealing Canadians' wallets and frauding poor Americans from their mafia-like headquarters at Murphy's, right?
Who of you know any gypsies personally? Have you ever been to a camp and actually talked to them? Goodness gracious, from the contents of some of you guys' posts I take it you didn't even bother to check some of the links I gave for info! |
I am sure they are all quite reasonable. No one ever said they are abysmally depraved.
| Tatjana wrote: | | UNDERCLASS??? >>Under<< what exactly???? Seen from which point? |
For one count, under-educated. This is not a moral judgement but a fact. If they strived to be educated in the same way as everyone else, the community would likely disintegrate. If all travellers (roma, whatever the proper term is) strove to go to university and get a degree in accounting and move to the suburbs, within a few generations, their culture would no longer exist in any meaningful sense. Ask them why they don't go to university and get an accounting degree? Because they don't want to, or because the admissions officers bar them from entry?
| Tatjana wrote: | | Para-social? - or did you want to say a(nti)-social? Well, in our own communities we are extremely social - to an extent that you UPPERCLASS people haven't known for at least a century. |
The middle class suburban life (what's the British byword for it again - Petunia Street?) is chosen because people don't want to live in a community. Once this non-community aspect of life is achieved, everyone complains about it and wants the community back. You are absolutely right. I couldn't comment on community in the upperclass, but I bet there is more of it than in the middle class - except in the upperclass it's not thought of so much as community as it is a clique.
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| DPCrisp wrote: | | Maybe they domesticated horses just as the ice started encroaching, and have been on the move ever since. |
You seem to imagine the ice a trigger: once a threshold is crossed, a new lifestyle is created and they never go back. |
Yeah, I was thinking more of a coincidence, but trigger is probably a better word for it. I just think it's kind of fascinating to think that maybe they started wandering for a reason they had no control over, and have been wandering ever since. Maybe they are really ancient. It would be impossible to prove one way or the other, but I think it's interesting to think about.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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| So, the cavalry will have had homes to go to or ended up lording it over someone else... but the "squire class" (wives included), isolated in Europe and not important enough to recall or be retained, was left to fend for itself? They are known as wagoners rather than individual horsemen, aren't they? |
There was a 'tribe' called the Khevsurs (blue-eyed, red-haired) in the Caucasian mountains of Azerbaijan who claimed to be descended from medieval 'Crusader knights' but I suspect that mythologising an ancient (and noble) ancestry is common in isolated areas, ie. they've no idea where they originated; how many 'lost tribes of Judah' are there? It's plausible or at least unprovable; the Crusades for want of a better word took place after the demise of the Khazar empire noted for its tolerance towards different faiths and the Caucasus was a region where peoples of many races and creeds found a home.
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Hatty
Site Admin
In: Berkshire
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The Travellers of East Anglia programme was better than expected, got interruped mid-way by a phone call but don't think I missed anything new; various themes discussed here were aired, like the 'secret language of the Romani' which is passed on orally from parents to children. Interestingly, similarities with Pakistani words was mentioned.
The group's centre seems to be Peterborough (which featured recently in another programme about Polish and Lithuanian immigrants who hotfooted it to Peterborough to be employed as unskilled manual workers) but the big event is the Midsummer Fair at Cambridge, which gypsies thought of as 'theirs'. A worried-looking housing officer from Peterborough Council was interviewed about the clash of cultures and there were some delicate issues to be negotiated such as Traveller children in school whose parents wouldn't countenance sex education in the classroom. They were called 'the last of the Victorians' on account of the strict rules regarding sex and morality, but rules on washing and conduct such as fighting (bare knuckle) are just as strict.
Racial or class tension amongst the community itself was apparent; English gypsies considered Irish tinkers to be a solitary group and different or 'foreign' groups or tribes with their own customs and folklore didn't seem to mix easily. They said the Romani, Sinti et al. aren't indigenous to Britain, vaguely 'from the Continent'.
Harrassment and being moved on are still practised; despite legislation and the 1968 Caravans Act the Travellers have few rights and attitudes can't be changed by legislators. Official stopping places exist but there are not enough sites. Hard to see how a nomadic lifestyle can survive when the land is being more and more built upon. When I speak to people about Travellers the usual reaction is 'why can't they clean up after themselves instead of leaving litter for the council to clear up?' but the BBC avoided confronting this complaint.
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DPCrisp
In: Bedfordshire
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| And don't worry, Dan - nothing gets lost in translation. |
Sorry Tani, I must beg to differ. F'rinstance, you said
| Para-social? - or did you want to say a(nti)-social? Well, in our own communities we are extremely social |
I think you mean sociable, but I didn't: by para-social, I meant a society that runs parallel to the majority, sedentary society: dependent on it but distinct from it. Is that not a fair characterisation?
And is "underclass" not also fair in the overview of how different layers of society interact with each other and how travellers are viewed by the majority? You may wish to change perceptions, but we were talking about what the perceptions are and have been.
You don't just translate a language: you have to translate a Culture, a Form of Life. (In this case, the culture of Applied Epistemology.)
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