Gypsies: An English History

This chapter gathers thousands of shreds of evidence from a vast span of sources to trace the fates of English Gypsies from their first arrival among us until now. It first argues that early theorists suggested that Gypsies were descended from Pharaoh's scattered soldiery after the Israelites' exodus. But in the late eighteenth century, as the chapter recounts, German philologists discovered that Romany, the Gypsy language, is related to Sanskrit and Hindu, and carries linguistic clues that record the Gypsies' emigration route from north-east India through central Asia to the Byzantine Greek world. The chapter also elaborates on the evidence which shows that Gypsies could travel round England, visiting a circuit of markets and fairs, with little risk of molestation. The chapter proceeds to talks about fearsome anti-Gypsy measures on the Continent and in Scotland. It also examines how Romanticism, with its passion for wildness, freedom and the natural world, changed the image of Gypsies.