A gypsy woman might either use or just assume magical power where men were concerned. When a female cousin of mine married, for instance, she announced openly on her wedding day that she had a date with someone else on the following evening. She was addressing the females in the party at the time, but word naturally filtered through to the males, including her husband to be, probably deliberately so. I doubt if she ever kept her engagement, or even if the meeting was ever due to take place at all. It was merely her way of flaunting her feminine power and getting off on the right foot in the marriage.
It is only in modern times that I dare speak openly about the power of gypsy women. In my own lifetime such silent power has been strong, and is never questioned, even by the Chovihanos, who never interfere with domestic affairs unless invited to. I have heard it said many times that Romani gypsy families are male-dominated, but this has not been my own experience. A gypsy male knows his place when in the presence of a gypsy woman - particularly if she happens to be a Puri Dai. Similarly, women do not interfere with men’s affairs. The males usually strike up the business deals in the tribes and are considered to know what they are doing. However, they will invariably seek matriarchal approval if any major decisions are to be made, or at least an agreeable nod from the Puri Dai. It was not uncommon for me to see my own Puri Dai occasionally cuffing the ears of her menfolk -including her own husband when she thought he was not behaving in the appropriate manner! The Puri Dai is, without doubt, the most wise and revered person in any gypsy clan, and is rarely crossed.
As an illustration of this, a friend of mine visited a gypsy encampment some years ago and was shown around by the resident Puri Dai, who also happened to be a member of the Lee or Purrum clan. She was proud to show off the inside of the wagons, in one of which was her son, busy having a shave. The power of the Puri Dai is absolute, so her son did not question being pulled out of the wagon, his face covered in foam, to wait for an age while his mother and her visitors continued their tour.
In another instance a Lee male was mending the roof of his wagon when he accidentally fell off, which, true to the spirit of a Lee male, resulted in hysterical fits of laughter as he lay on the ground - fortunately he hadn’t hurt himself - but only his wife could put an end to his frivolity by clouting him on the head!
Lee women are usually small but fierce. Although my grandmother had a strong warlike side to her nature, she was also extremely gentle and caring towards her brood. I still miss her dreadfully. A gypsy child, particularly a potential Chovihano, is often closer to grandparents and great-grandparents than parents.
We are all familiar with the stereotype gypsy female, the Carmen-like figure who will always play with men’s affections, and there has always been a strong sensuality deep in the Romani gypsy spirit, which I believe is related to distant tantric ways back in India. I certainly believe this natural sensuality has contributed to the romantic picture we have built of the Romani gypsy in more modern times. Female gypsy dancers, such as Spanish Flamenco dancers, can be openly provocative, and young gypsy women commonly flaunt their ‘come and get me’ message to both gypsy and gaujo alike, but the provocation usually starts and ends there. Their open sensuality has long caused people to believe they are free and easy with their affections, but we Romanies have always said that the female spirit is very sensuous and flirtatious in her nature. The provocative woman, the provocative moon, the provocative Earth - it is a spiritual rather than a physical matter and gypsy women have long allowed the essence of all that is naturally sensuous in the spirit to shine through. Romani males usually understand this; unfortunately gaujo males merely see women whom they think will be an easy catch. The power of the gypsy woman naturally extended in a big way to the female Chovihani, who already had a head start in magic just by being born a girl.
It is not difficult to imagine how powerful gypsy women could be when gathered together. In some cases, power was increased when two women took one husband. I put it this way round because it is more common to say that one man has two wives and to assume that the man must inevitably be in the more powerful position. This was not quite the case in gypsy society. Any man who married two gypsy women was considered to be courageous indeed, for he was taking on a double helping of magical power! Although polygamy has never been common in modern gypsy society, it was practised up until the Edwardian era by some tribes.
At the beginning of the twentieth century unfaithfulness in couples increased when artists and intellectuals like Augustus John made a fashion out of emulating the Romani gypsy lifestyle. In turn, many gypsies emulated the lifestyle of these influential members of high society and began keeping lovers - and sometimes wives - in many parts of the world and abandoning the old ways, which dictated that the sexual act was also a sacred act. In the hills of North Wales gypsy males who had been isolated from Western civilization for so long and who were ordinarily deeply respectful of their women were suddenly taking off and developing carefree relationships with gaujo women. The modern romantic idea of the gypsy male had truly been born, a role many gypsy males played out with ease, because of their charming, artistic and somewhat intelligent characters. This image of a mysterious and aloof lover who hadn’t a care in the world was attractive to many upper and middle-class women, but it was also an image which would eventually contribute to the splitting of many families in gypsy society, though many gypsy males simply preferred not to talk about their sojourns away from their families, Jack Lee being one of them.
A gypsy woman’s power was also evident at the time of giving birth. In earlier times she would have had a special tent erected for her where she could give birth away from the rest of the tribe. Surrounded by lucky charms, such as bits of gold and silver and perhaps particular stones or leaves she might have picked up along her path, and protective herbs, such as rosemary, mugwort and garlic, and also effigies, perhaps little animals or people representing protective guardian ancestors, she would manage her own power within the tent, while a fire was kept burning outside as protection for everyone else.
As soon as a mother and child were up and about, the tent and any bedding would be burned to ensure that no strong magic filtered through to the clan. Mother and child were so powerful just after a birth that not even the child’s father would risk venturing into the tent. If he did, others might well avoid him, for he could pass on his mokado state.
Women and newborns could cause those around them to become magically vulnerable because the child was considered to have only just stepped out of the Otherworld; in fact, the baby could very well still be attached to it. A door was open to the Otherworld whether you were going into it, as in death, or coming out of it, as in birth. The Romanies considered the Otherworld to be the most powerful place of all and it therefore always deserved the greatest respect.
Certainly my own birth was watched somewhat cautiously, as Jack Lee foretold that a child would come into the family who would carry on our traditions, and my grandfather, Gladdy’s husband, therefore took it upon himself to ensure that my mother wanted for nothing while she was pregnant with me, not only because she needed looking after at such a delicate time, but also to ensure that the spirits of both mother and child were appeased. My mother has told me how he carried this to an extreme, often nervously jumping to attention whilst in her presence and sometimes holding up traffic whenever she crossed the road - which she found extremely embarrassing.
Despite this, nobody seemed very certain that I would be eligible material for the role of Chovihano. I was born with a twisted arm and hand, which everyone thought would be a deformity, until it righted itself. This was the first sign that I was able to use a power to put things right and, coupled by the unusual characteristics I displayed as a toddler, it sealed my fate.
My grandmother, ever a follower of the old ways, gave birth to her children more or less on her own, resisting medical attention. My mother, who allowed medical attention at the birth of her children, admired my grandmother’s stren
gth and loyalty to the old spirit.
In fifteenth-century Europe a gypsy woman is recorded to have given birth to a child in the middle of a market-place and then remained there for three days - a magical number for the gypsies - before she rejoined her clan. Being surrounded by the gaujo community at this delicate time would not have troubled her, for it used to be said that if you passed bad luck to gaujos it was not as bad as passing it to your own kind! This is because Romanies perceive all people as belonging to separate tribes, each tribe having a basic need to preserve its separate identity: a primitive idea, but one that has moved with the gypsies into the twentieth century. So a gypsy would have looked upon gaujos as one might look upon a different species.
I have given a good deal of thought to this subject, which links with the caste system in India, and which, in its roots, also links human instinct with basic animal instinct: i.e. we all stick to our own kind, get on with our own business and leave everyone else to get on with theirs. This instinct works in accordance with natural law, where no one species is higher or lower than another, all just existing alongside each other.
Of course, this instinct is no longer honoured in India, nor anywhere else in the modern world. A ‘class system’, to both strong and mild degrees, has now ousted the old tribal animal instinct in more civilized communities. Such an instinct is still very much acknowledged in the animal world, however, as you may put many species of animal in a field together, or many species of bird in a cage, but each separate species will stick to its own kind.
Romani gypsies have long had a reputation for simply ignoring the gaujo population around them in a very animal-like way and sticking to their own kind, which brings to mind quite vividly something Jack Lee told my grandmother many years ago: that it can be bad luck for one species of animal to interfere or interbreed with another. He maintained that animals saw it that way, too, and that was why they always left each other alone. There are doubtless scientific reasons behind this instinct, but it is obviously a natural law, which the Romani gypsies honoured through their generations.
On a deeper level, marriage and birth for the gypsies re-enact a powerful drama set in the sky hundreds of years ago when Kam, the sun, mated with Shon, the moon, something which I believe to have been an eclipse. Whether this occurred when the gypsies first came out of India, when tribes first interbred, or even hundreds of years before this, I do not know.
Romani gypsies describe an eclipse as ‘the moon blackened the sun’ and in these words I also hear the gypsy male saying, ‘My wife made me mokado. She put her powerful shadow over me.’ The moon would doubtless say that the sun should have taken care when chasing her in the sky!
An eclipse is clearly a time when primitive people see all things on Earth as being extremely vulnerable to great magic, and Shon was seen to have practised her great magic on Kam, her brother, and given birth to a whole new race of people who were destined to travel the world as no other nomads had, perhaps ritualistically enacting this forbidden incestuous drama over and over again with every gypsy marriage.
If you grow up with such strong primitive customs dominating your life these naturally colour your thinking. As a teenager, my ‘different’ views caused a few bumps and bruises along my way on social occasions.
When young, my sojourns into the gaujo world were few and far between, and the ways of men and women were therefore often strange to me. As an older teenager I found myself exposed to a new set of rules, which tended to highlight my ignorance regarding social interaction. I found myself confronting unspoken laws and, for want of a better term, ‘rituals’, which were sometimes alien to me. It had been instilled in me never to let down my shields too eagerly in the presence of gaujos, otherwise they could plot and scheme and deceive, and if they got to know you were gypsy, you would become vulnerable to their magic - which wasn’t considered to be too healthy! They were considered to be somewhat ‘out of control’ and even ‘out of touch’ with their understanding of life and magic, so they could therefore weave spells and hardly know they were doing it.
Although the subject of food is never an issue for Romani gypsies, in my earlier years it could well have appeared to be a problem. A friend and I were musicians and when teenagers had formed a band together with others, but I was reminded by my elders that, nice as these gaujos were, they were gaujos nonetheless and that I should take special care that their ‘unhealthy’ magic didn’t influence me - particularly at the table! So on each occasion that I was invited to dinner at my friend’s house I was under strict instructions not to eat the food provided and always arrived with a can of soup, which my mother had packed up for me. I would sit in embarrassment eating the soup, while others around me partook of the delicious home-made meal that my friend’s mother had prepared for them. Never did this friendly woman tire of trying to entice me to eat what she had made and never could I tell her why I wasn’t able to eat it. No one present even knew I was a Romani gypsy at that time and I did not dare mention the fact, as I naturally feared the worst.
Fortunately, my friend’s mother was a very far-sighted and persistent lady who eventually became one of my dearest and closest friends, and I am always grateful to her for her patience and for introducing me to the ways of the world outside.
The Romanies can be fussy about their food, not because they are conscious of good health, but because food, like everything else, has magical properties and when it is eaten you either become what it is or may be influenced by the magic of the person who prepared it. This was so deeply ingrained in me that I was able to introduce aspects of this very old way of dealing with food into my healing retreats some years ago, which proved to have very beneficial effects.
Some gypsy habits with food die hard, though. When my mother and grandmother were on the road they carried evaporated milk with them for their tea, both because they could not always find fresh milk and because they considered it to be a treat. To this day my mother still thinks it a treat to drink evaporated milk in her tea, but she also believes it is a treat for everyone else! Many of my friends have had to suffer her ‘rich’ cups of tea and she never seems to understand that some people have no taste for it.
Some foods not only choose to be with you but also talk to you - which I will deal with more fully in another chapter. Often when I invite someone to dinner I will automatically prepare something which I feel will be relevant to that person, for food symbolizes elements within nature which we need for our inner well-being. At least that is the way I have been encouraged to look at food.
The magical potential of food can also be enhanced by numbers. In fact the number of vegetables in a meal may often be as important as the type of vegetable. The counting also extends to serving food. I have frequently amused people with my counting, when spooning out soup. They wait patiently while I count out an uneven number of servings with the spoon: first five, then seven, then three and five again. This is behaviour which some would doubtless consider to be ‘obsessional’, but I am counting because the numbers can form a lucky combination and such luck will pass into the soup when we eat it. Forget to count out those lucky combinations and you could find that luck will forget you!
Stews, broths, rabbit, hare, deer, ‘tickled’ trout and in earlier times wild boar would often have been on the gypsies’ menu, mostly cooked over the fire. Many people know of the gypsies’ preference for hotchiwitchi, or hedgehog, baked in clay. Some indeed prepared this special delicacy that way, but the method of cooking would usually depend upon the area a band of gypsies happened to be in. After all, you couldn’t bake food in clay if there was no clay to be found, but all food took a long time to prepare, however it was cooked, because gypsies were dependent upon natural means for cooking it, and it always had to be eaten in daylight. My grandmother told me that on the road you needed to prepare your meals well in advance of darkness, not only because otherwise you would not be able to see what you were eating, but also because you never actually knew what magic might a
ttack your plate if you couldn’t see it! Such rules could be as important as basic table manners at Romani gypsy mealtimes.
Gypsies ate certain foods sometimes just to be able to wear, use or carry the skins, teeth, claws and seeds of those foods, or the fellow beings they had hunted, so that they would take on aspects of what had been absorbed. The word ‘health’ rarely came into the picture, yet Romanies have usually been healthy enough and many have lived to a great age. Whenever I myself have spent time living in the traditional way, in my vardo - or caravan - even through a whole winter I will rarely become ill, which says a lot for the natural nomadic life.
Gypsy hunting skills were developed over thousands of years and invariably involved a deep respect for the animal concerned. ‘Hare-charming’ was something my great-grandfather practised regularly. This involves mesmerizing the animal so that she is completely enchanted by you. Whistling or singing to a hare will captivate her if it is done in the old caring, sensitive way. Gypsies of old would slowly encircle a hare for a very long time, gaining her confidence before finishing up right beside her and maybe gently tossing a coat over her head.
Similarly, not so long ago gypsies would wait patiently for hours outside rabbit holes for rabbits to appear. If you sit there long enough you become part of the surroundings and rabbits will ignore you - far better than giving chase or shooting or trapping them.
Invariably, animals who were hunted came to a gypsy, rather than the other way about. Perhaps that is hunting in its most natural form, for there is an easy rhythm about it all and the animal is at liberty to choose his own destiny. But it always means that a lot of patience has to be exercised on the part of the hunter.
We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture Page 9
