We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture

by Patrick Jasper Lee

  Gypsies believed that whatever was on your path was volunteering to give something of itself to you, and that included food. If an animal didn’t appear and you went hungry, it was a matter of fate, and the animal’s choice not to be there at that particular time.

  If anything in the area of food was to be avoided it was unweaned animals and animals who had died a natural death. This also had to do with magic. Unweaned animals, to the Romani, are as magically powerful as human babies, because they too are close to the Otherworld. And animals who have died a natural death might well have been contaminated with the bengesko yak, or evil eye, and could therefore render you mokado. The Mulo and bad magic could lurk in the most unlikely places. If you hunted and killed the animal yourself, you were more likely to know that the meat - and the death - was ‘clean.’

  In fact there is no word for ‘animal’ as such in Romanes. Animals are creatures of the Earth, like ourselves, and all are addressed by whatever species they happen to be. This is perhaps a more respectful way of viewing the fellow creatures who share our Earth. Many animals are given names, which simply describe what they are, such as rukengro, or squirrel, which means ‘tree fellow’, and puvengro, or mole, which means ‘earth fellow’ - but there again, puvengro is also used for potato!

  The Romani gypsies have always been big meat-eaters, for many reasons. Among other things, meat is a nourishing way of sustaining yourself, particularly when you are inclined to live for a number of days on what you find, which has been a natural occurrence for hunter-gatherers the world over. Hunting is never easy though on land that is ‘owned’ and gypsies therefore developed stealth when looking for food. Watching and listening in hunting became as important an accompaniment as the knife you might take with you to kill your prey. Interestingly, some gypsies called a pocket a poachy, which perhaps speaks for itself.

  Some Romani words have been swallowed up by the English language, just as many English words have been swallowed by the Romani language. Some Romani words can be helpful in highlighting certain meanings for us in our own language, however. Dosh is one such word, the word some of us may use as slang for ‘money’. When Romanies could no longer hunt because there was no free land left to hunt on, they were forced to buy their food. Interestingly, dosh in Romanes means ‘harm’ or ‘evil, stemming from the Sanskrit dush, ‘bad’. There is no doubt that some of us see money as being the root of all evil, and when we use the phrase, ‘What’s the damage?’ when asking for a bill, we may see a connection. My grandmother always used to say that a caught fish was always luckier than a bought fish!

  Romanies were always fiercely protective of their own language in earlier days. It was a language spoken not only in Europe, Asia and its native India, but in Australia, America and Canada as well once Romani Gypsies travelled further afield. Gypsies who had been in the Welsh hills since the seventeenth century managed to preserve this native tongue for an astonishingly long time, but in other areas of Britain it soon became diluted as gypsy and gaujo merged, culminating in a somewhat comical version of the original.

  Gypsies today will still at times use words picked up by their ancestors in places like old Persia some 900 years ago, Chovihano, meaning ‘witch, sorcerer, magician, shaman’, is the best example and also stresses the importance of magical practice to the gypsies whilst travelling through that country. In England it was once thought that Romanes was an ‘invented’ language, enabling gypsies to speak to each other in code. However, a great many words have passed into English as slang, pal, meaning ‘brother’, being one such example. The word has its roots in the Sanskrit bhratr, stemming from the Proto-Indo-European word bhratar, from which English also gets ‘brother’. The old Romani word for ‘brother’, prala, was a step on the way from bhratr to ‘pal’, the latter being used so frequently that gaujos adopted it, giving it the meaning ‘friend’. This is because anyone who becomes a good friend to a gypsy automatically becomes a brother, and the same is true of ‘sister’, pen.

  Another Romani word frequently used as slang is posh, which in Romanes means ‘half’. A gypsy might be posh, or a posh rat, in the product of a gypsy/gaujo partnership. Posh rat may appear to be describing a toffee-nosed rodent, though it is pronounced more as ‘pahsh raht’, but actually means ‘half-breed’. Some gypsies would sneer at their half-breed cousins for being the offspring of someone who had become a member of a society which refused to live in the old proper manner and it didn’t take long for posh to be absorbed into the English vocabulary as slang to describe anyone who assumed airs and graces because they thought they had more than anyone else, particularly with regard to owning rather than borrowing. There are other theories behind the word ‘posh’, but I think the gypsy theory is significant.

  Most are of course familiar with the word diddikai and many people ask me to clarify what this word actually means. If posh rat is a half-breed, a diddikai has only a small amount of kalo rat, or black gypsy blood.

  The older Romani gypsies would say they were ‘black’ if they were true gypsy. My mother used to tell me I was behaving in a kalo, or black, manner if I was behaving in a very Romani way. The word kalo is of course possibly connected with Kali, the female Hindu goddess.

  The old Romani gypsy language was spoken almost musically and the language would therefore have best been preserved in Wales where the accent is naturally lilting. Most gypsies in earlier times would undoubtedly have spoken with an Indian accent, and if one thinks of the Indian accent and the Welsh accent, it is possible to hear a similarity, particularly in pitch, resulting in a rich sing-song effect. For those gypsies who settled in England and who adopted some of the many English accents, there resulted a more comical sound to some of the words, purely because of different tensions. Those who can speak with an Indian accent will probably be best suited to speaking Romanes in the old way!

  Curiously, though, the old Romani language has also helped to preserve some old English words, which are no longer used, something I only discovered more recently when looking through some of the words recorded by John Sampson in the early twentieth century and collected in his Dialect of the Gypsies of North Wales. There I discovered the word houfe, an old English word meaning ‘cap’ or ‘bonnet’. The Romani word for this is hufa, which I immediately recognized, for at home we always used the word when our cats rubbed their heads against us in affection. My grandmother always told us that when the cats were huffing us they were giving us their bonnets! I still use this word to this day, so much so, that my family now refer to cats as ‘huffkins’!

  Another old English word was ‘urchin’, which was always used for ‘hedgehog’. This word, now associated with scruffy, unkempt little children was retained by the gypsies, who once called the hedgehog urchos. I believe that the name ‘urchin’ was transferred to scruffy children because of the Romani gypsy children, who were not only scruffy, but also ate ‘urchins’! This is perhaps an example of the way Romanies preserve things, words just constituting one small area.

  I still conduct my rituals in Romanes today, because I believe it gives a ritual far more power and purpose, and I still hear my boro dad’s musical voice and my Puri Dai’s sometimes squeaky voice speaking in the old tongue. I believe that by continuing to use the old language in the old way I help to evoke the spirits of old, who still live beyond the hedgerows, in that special secret magical place where all old Romani souls still dwell.

  Chapter Five

  THE WHISPERING FOREST

  The Romani World of Woodland Magic and Fairies

  My experience in the red-gold wood was only the beginning of a long and exciting relationship with trees and the magical elements within the natural world, which I had been taught to use in a respectful way. But the more I journeyed into gaujo society, the more I was to discover just how much people tended to separate themselves from nature, preferring to see the splendours of Earth as something to be explored as a leisurely pastime rather than a backdrop for all our experiences.

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nbsp; Our history books, in fact, do not always give us an accurate picture of life in our British woodlands in days gone by. Rarely do they mention the ribbons of smoke curling up from clusters of wagons or bender tents, seen from nearby lanes or roads by passers by, and rarely do they mention how the wild woodland people were frequently consulted for any number of medicinal and magical cures. One is usually reduced to seeking out more obscure reference sources in order to discover such information.

  A gypsy ‘healer’ of 200 years ago might have been one of three very different people: a Patrinyengri, a herbalist, a Drabengro, which accurately translated means ‘man of poison’ but became the word that was used for a doctor of physical medicine, or a Chovihano, the tribe’s ‘magical’ medicine man, who was concerned with the Otherworld life of the patient.

  The Patrinyengri and Drabengro could often work alongside the Chovihano, depending upon the kind of healing that was required, but all three had a special and unique relationship with the forest, which was ultimately governed by the formidable Bitee Fokee, otherwise known as the fairy people. Any plant removed from the forest or anywhere on the ground usually demanded a sacrifice of some kind on the part of the healer, something that could be offered in return for the plant and also something that could be offered to the Bitee Fokee. The Chovihano was perhaps the best equipped for making these offerings as he would usually have undergone initiations with the Bitee Fokee down in the Lowerworld and knew the way these natural beings tended to think and behave. He might even know the Bitee Fokee personally, in any of the areas he camped in. But anyone seeking out a plant for medicinal or magical use was wise to make an offering of some kind. This was, after all, a polite thing to do and would preserve good relations with the natural world. This is no different from doing good deeds for family, friends and neighbours. It is a politeness, which we have sadly forgotten in our modern times when we rip plants from the ground without a thought for their welfare. In the past it was unthinkable to expect an aspect of nature to do a good deed for you if you were not going to give something back in return.

  Milk was sometimes offered to the Bitee Fokee when it was available. Some native people, in particular, Mongolians, offer milk from their mares as an offering to the spirits, especially when they drink the milk themselves. Romanies also gave offerings of beer, mostly because they enjoyed beer themselves. My grandmother told me of a Romani Chovihano who was criticized by gaujos for wasting beer, because having been given some by them he promptly took it into the wood and gave a substantial amount of it to the Bitee Fokee. Doubtless, it was believed that he was just throwing the beer away, but such is the Chovihano’s devotion to the Otherworld and the woodlands.

  The Patrinyengri - Patrinyengro if male - was a very popular person in the Romani gypsy tribe. This Romani herbalist was not always a woman, but many women seem to be naturally equipped as herbalists as they care and attune themselves easily to Grandmother Earth. The Patrinyengri could be consulted regularly for all kinds of ailments, particularly if those ailments were minor. It was also common for her to work alongside the Chovihano during in-depth rituals if the patient’s soul was at all troubled or at risk - which usually meant that there were some emotional or inner disturbances accompanying the sickness.

  The Patrinyengri usually develops an instinctive rapport with plants as a child, rather as the young Chovihano develops an instinctive rapport with the Otherworld. The young Patrinyengri is attracted to spend time with plants, learning about their worlds, usually from an older Patrinyengri in the tribe, sometimes the child’s mother or father, who will take the apprentice under his or her wing for a good many years.

  One of the first rules the child is taught is respect for the plants. Several methods are employed as teaching aids, such as encouraging the child to converse with the plants, so that eventually he or she will get to know them on a more personal level, developing a rapport with one in particular, who may then become an adviser. For instance, one may develop a strong rapport with the sage plant, which has a very strong personality. Such a herb will then advise its Patrinyengri on how best to use other herbs for various conditions.

  Alongside respect, the apprentice must also learn of the strong magic that accompanies plants and herbs. This is perhaps one of the most fundamental rules for every Patrinyengri to learn, because if the magical essence of a plant is not fully recognized, the healing properties will not be activated and simply will not work, and this can ultimately mean a loss of power for the Patrinyengri concerned. This is something many people do not understand when practising herbal medicine today. Most fully expect a plant to heal them in some way, but if they have been trained to ignore its magical power - and unfortunately most people have - the plant will not give of its best, for it will feel most unloved and uncared for.

  Many people might wonder why some tribal people say it is bad to use different parts of a plant rather than the whole plant itself. The only answer I can give to this is that once you attune yourself fully to what I would call ‘whole-plant magic’, you will never look back to doing things in the old way. Using bits of plants is not only highly disrespectful to that plant, but is also much like being on a side road to healing instead of being on the main road! It is all about communication and understanding the fundamental needs of plants, much as you would understand the fundamental needs of any children or animals you care for. Many wouldn’t dream of disregarding the needs of their children and animals; when using ‘whole-plant magic’ you are not disregarding the needs of Puv, the Spirit of the Earth. Does she not give to us every single day? I think it is not too much to ask of ourselves to care for her plants in the same way that she will care for us. Perhaps it is a matter of reintroducing older habits, which we all once had in earlier times, and bringing ourselves home to her laws again.

  Many Romanies believe that a plant may in fact fear a human just as much as a human may fear a plant, for the magic can be very strong in either species. Jack Lee always defended plants and trees by maintaining that human magic was far more harmful than plant magic, because humans, in creating their own magic, often go against all the rules of the old natural laws, which plants never do because it is impossible for them to do so, apart from which they know better. We also perhaps expect too much of a plant when we only choose to see it broken down into scientific components. I have always thought it cruel to extract and process what one needs from a plant, scientifically, whilst ignoring the powerful being that it is. It is like slicing an arm or a leg off your doctor when you ask for his or her medicine!

  In past times great power was rightfully ascribed to plants, so much so that they were once revered and worshipped, and treated as gods. We may still worship aspects of alternative medicine as gods when using herbal treatments, but we may sometimes be worshipping the scientific components alone. Only tap into that golden magic and you will see how a plant will not only work for you, but will work a lot more quickly, being your friend and only too pleased to help you. It is certainly a matter of talking to your plants, and also of always remembering to ask them what you require of them and thanking them for their trouble. After all, you wouldn’t dream of walking into your doctor’s surgery, expecting medicine without bothering to thank anyone for it.

  The Patrinyengri knows this perhaps more than anyone else. She is aptly qualified to administer herbs to sick people, for she has spent so much time living with the souls of herbs, in their world. Every Patrinyengri who has ever used a herbal cure has carried out a personal ritual before making up a remedy because every true Romani gypsy knows the rewards that come from respecting nature in this way.

  It is quite possible that the Romani Patrinyengri gave much to the image of the old witch living in her remote cottage in the forest with her herbal brews. This female figure features in many old Romani folk tales, as do her powerful herbs. She is sometimes an ethereal figure, with supernatural powers, an expression of the plant or tree itself, as she is considered to dwell within them. Most gypsies, p
articularly the Patrinyengri, saw a need to appease the spirits contained within nature, which were sometimes referred to as ‘witches’, for these might otherwise escape and wreak havoc upon humans and animals. It is possible, therefore, that a ‘witch’, as seen by the Patrinyengri, was more like a member of the fairy race than a member of the human race. The image of the ‘witch’ and the image of the Patrinyengri must often have been greatly intertwined in past times.

  Romani folk medicine is popular today when we are all seeking natural remedies for our ills, but there is in fact a good deal that this ancient craft has given to the remedies we already use in modern times.

  Some years ago a Romani gypsy Patrinyengri in my family’s part of the world made up a herbal remedy for a baby who was severely distressed by a skin complaint, which we thought was eczema. The mother didn’t like the ointment because it smelled and was ‘a horrible dirty grey’, but having known the gypsy and his family for a long time, she trusted him and persisted with the treatment over several days, and slowly, she watched the baby’s skin heal. The woman was elated and wanted to thank the gypsy, but typically, he had disappeared. (Romanies seem to have a habit of doing that!) The local chemist, however, had discussed the ingredients with the gypsy himself and was so impressed that he made up the ointment for others suffering from similar conditions. The gypsy, though, was never seen in the area again.

  The ointment was doubtless made up of tar from pine-tree bark - which possibly caused the strong smell - and skin-healing herbs such as marigold and chamomile. These tar-based applications were often used in cases of eczema. A cream would have been made by pulverizing the bark and heating it with fat, which turned it into an ointment. Goose or pig fat was commonly used by Patrinyengris, along with hedgehog fat, for mixing up these potions.