It wasn’t always common for gypsies to reveal the secrets of their remedies, but they would be inclined to do so where they had built up a trusting friendship with local gaujos.
The Romanies practised herbal medicine in Britain and Europe for more than 700 years and it was usual for people to ask them for cures, as their folk remedies could always be trusted, but sadly nowadays only people in their later years can remember incidents like the one above. Yet many Romani remedies are still being used today. It is only a pity that those wild people in the forests who worked so tirelessly to preserve herbalism are not always credited with the origins of this ancient healing art.
I have stressed that the magical elements within the plant are more important in Romani folk medicine than anything else, and this is true not only when ingesting herbs or plants, but also when interacting with them, as part of the cure, which is sometimes a requirement in certain conditions.
For instance in cases of toothache, the herb groundsel is dug up and has to touch the tooth a magical number of times, in this case five. The patient is then required to spit a magical number of times, in this case three. The plant is then buried again exactly where it was found and the toothache heals.
The number five in this instance relates to change and uncertainty and to working through doubts and fears about the self. If this is recognized, then the number three will provide a relevant method of sealing what has been accomplished between yourself and the plant, brought about by spitting. By burying the plant again you are returning your pain to the Earth, who will deal with it for you and turn it into something positive.
Problems like toothache can be dealt with in a great many ways by Romanies - among them, chewing the foot of a hotchiwitchi, or hedgehog (when it’s dead, of course), who is considered to be a powerful animal. Apart from removing an aching tooth, a last resort, old Romanies will find any remedy they can find to try to heal the situation, before taking such drastic measures.
But numbers, as mentioned before, play a very important part in the Romani gypsy culture, and many people still go back to such old magical practices when they find themselves counting stairs or cracks in the pavement or in the back of their minds doing things a certain number of times to avoid bad luck.
Doing something three times is particularly lucky, but it is also a test. The old saying ‘three times lucky’ has great meaning. If you become aware of working with natural laws, you will find that the number three will play a prominent part in your life. For instance, something special you may be attempting to achieve might be difficult to bring about. Doing it three times can ensure that it stays with you and brings you luck in the future. Also, the Romani Gypsies would consider something worth having if it had tested you three times before it came to you! You need to have patience indeed.
Because we live in an ‘instant’ world where we want everything to come to us without delay, we perhaps do not have the patience to work with the universal law of numbers any more, but this is our loss, because many of us are busy moving from one thing to another in life, without success, without waiting to see if the magic of numbers will work for us.
Number Nine is probably the most testing number of all and a very protective number. If you do something nine times, you are tested to the hilt. This, to my mind, is easily explained when you think of trying to achieve something over and over again. If you are trying that hard, i.e. nine times, you deserve to win! Such is the foundation upon which spiritual initiations are laid. How keen are you to achieve what you are aiming for and to work with the greater energies around yourself to bring it about?
The Patrinyengri will use numbers as part of her skill. She may wave a herb over your head three times or nine times. It is important to remember that she does not just dose patients with herbal teas or herbal pills. The plants need to communicate with the patient themselves and the Patrinyengri will see to it that they are given every opportunity to do so.
The Patrinyengri is a walking encyclopaedia of herbal lore and no one in the old gypsy tribe would suffer so long as people like her were around. Of course, the Patrinyengri today would have the greatest trouble procuring natural herbs along the hedgerows, simply because there are few hedgerows left.
We are all fond of ingesting a natural remedy when we feel ill, but for the Romanies - the Patrinyengri as well as the Chovihano - the mere presence of a herb, part of a tree, or even a piece of food, can serve to drive an ailment away, largely because the herb, tree or food is seen as a powerful being which will therefore have some effect on the ailment and the person who is sick. This is difficult for many of us to comprehend in a world where everything that is considered to be healing must be scientifically tested to justify its use as a medicine.
As an example of this, a lady I knew, who was being treated by a Patrinyengri, had a sore throat and a suspected cold on the way. She had received an education on seeing herbs and food as sentient beings and she had been learning to talk to them over a period of time. On this occasion she had been recommended lemon, ginger, honey and some coltsfoot tea, drunk with a little whisky. The lady acquired a large lemon and some root ginger and put them in her kitchen, talking to them about her condition in the old Romani way as she went through her day. She intended to make a drink with the lemon and ginger the following evening, but by that time her throat was better, the cough had eased and it seemed that she no longer needed the medicine. She said afterwards that she strongly felt that the spirit of the lemon and the spirit of the ginger had heard her speaking about her problems and had come to life. It seemed that the more she believed in them as real beings, the better she felt.
It is always important to acknowledge the spirits of all natural things we ingest if we want a plant’s powerful magic to work for us. It is because these spirits are so very powerful that they can sometimes offer healing to us. However, some foods and herbs have lost their magic, especially when they have been picked in the wrong way, stored for too long, or else simply ignored. In such cases a Chovihano and Patrinyengri may need to work together to bring their spirits back so that they may ‘live’ again.
By far the best way to treat yourself with herbs is to grow them in your own garden. But make two rules: never forget that they are thinking, feeling beings who need to be talked to and respected, and never forget that they hold great magic.
In modern times, it is perhaps hard to comprehend the animist view Romani gypsies have had of life and the universe. As already explained, we live in a world of geographical space, where a cup on a table, directly in front of us, is considered to be part of our world, while a star that is a speck in the sky, millions of miles away, is thought to have little or nothing to do with our immediate personal worlds. The old gypsies considered that anything you could see or hear or touch or sense or smell was without doubt contained within your own personal world, otherwise you would not be experiencing it, and everything within your own personal world must inevitably contain life and a spirit of its own. It is a sad fact that in modern times even a tree which might be directly outside our window can have little or nothing to do with our personal world. It therefore doesn’t have a being or spirit of its own and therefore cannot talk. This is not so in Romani tradition. Absolutely everything you are experiencing at this moment in time is able to talk to you, wherever you are, whoever you are with!
So for the old Romani healer, life was all about seeing the world as a living, breathing, thinking, talking world, and the natural world had a lot to say and was considered to be the most important world of all. For the Romani Chovihano and Patrinyengri, life still is all about seeing all things as containing individual spirits, because there is nothing more powerful than the linking of spirits during the process of healing, whether those spirits be human, animal or plant.
The Drabengro, however, is a different story. This is a man - or a woman if Drabengri - who existed in older gypsy tribes and who worked in a way that was vastly different from the Chovihano and Patrinyengri. The nam
e Drabengro was often given to gaujo doctors who administered poisonous drugs, for the word, literally translated, means ‘man of poison’.
In earlier times, when it was easier to bypass the law, poisoning was a means of permanently finishing someone off if you didn’t think they should be around any more! And who better to acquire the poison from than a Romani gypsy, who lived in the forest, whom nobody knew, and who had an excellent knowledge of natural poisons. You could visit him and tell him everything and your secret was safe, for he usually had little contact with gaujos, and little time for them.
The vengeful gaujo who might enter the Romani encampment asking for poison to polish off a spouse would have been offered other remedies first, however, such as a spell to entice the spouse to move away or some other such magical and more humane remedy.
Romani gypsies were not in the habit of using their herbal knowledge for negative purposes; in fact, it is true to say that murder has rarely been known in their own society and gypsies in earlier times who might have committed such a crime would certainly have been turned out of a tribe. To them, murder was an entirely gaujo creation - they had had personal experience of that - and it never ceased to amaze them how gaujos could do such things to one another so unselfconsciously. But it is necessary to remember that all gypsies in earlier times would have seen gaujos as a very strange and quite unfathomable breed, and many would have accepted that they behaved in these peculiar ways as a normality. However, it is interesting that the word drabengro was soon being used to describe a gaujo doctor when gypsies learned that medical doctors administered dangerous drugs to people.
Similarly, Romanies were often consulted when farmers wanted to be rid of vermin, for gypsies were able to provide the relevant herbs to entice vermin away. Interestingly, the Pied Piper of Hamelin is a good example of this, for he used the herb valerian to carry the rats away from the town, enchanting them with it. It has been suggested that the Pied Piper may well have been a Romani gypsy, even though the story is recorded as having taken place long before the gypsies officially entered Europe. Who he actually was will probably long remain a mystery.
In earlier times, entering the forest specifically to find Romani gypsies was not the easiest thing to do, for if you were not already familiar with a particular tribe you might well need to make a few visits before even finding them. Gypsies have always been clever at being invisible and in the forest they were kings and queens of their magical domain, for they were unafraid of - or perhaps knew how to handle - the evil spirits, ghosts and wild animals that the gaujos said lurked in the forest. Driven by their protective instincts as nature’s guardians, gypsies were, in fact, inclined to play upon this idea. There was an advantage in strengthening the ignorance that was developing about forest life - at least it kept the gaujos away.
A gypsy walking in the forest, alone, between 100 and 300 years ago, would have been in a place very different from the one we might imagine him walking in today, for it would have been rich with the voices of ancestral spirits whispering in the trees, and rich in signs and omens all along the path, such as the shapes made by the branches of trees, the activities of birds and a good many other things besides. The Chovihano would often have walked alone, observing the signs and communing with the spirits of trees and, of course, the Bitee Fokee.
The Bitee Fokee, or fairy people, as already mentioned, are a race of beings who have long been in the Romani gypsies’ lives and from the Romanies’ point of view they have long been a race of beings who have been grossly misunderstood. The two words Bitee Fokee came from the English ‘small folk’.
I have always found where the Romani language is concerned it is far easier to use phonetic spellings and I always remind students that no Romani gypsy ever wrote their grammatical language down. In eastern Europe the word Keshali, sometimes pronounced as ‘Keshahlen’ in western Europe, has been used to describe the Bitee Fokee.
For all gypsies, though, the Bitee Fokee are really a part of the old ancestral world, for in Romani lore they have inhabited the forests since the beginning of time. It is said that in earlier times, when they were recognized as protectors of the ancient woodlands, they were able to move about the forests more visibly and freely than today. Now, however, like many wild animals, it has been important for their safety that they separate themselves from humans, because humans became hostile towards them, so hostile that in recent centuries it became far too dangerous for them to reveal themselves. They therefore needed to remain in a place where they knew they would be safe: deep under the ground. But it is also their deepest wish to return to us one day and again be part of our culture and society. This is how it was all explained to me in my younger days, and I fully believed what I was told, as my elders believed it all without a shadow of a doubt.
We perhaps need to remind ourselves today that the fairy stereotype we might be accustomed to - the sweet-natured, delicate and innocent little-girl being with gossamer wings - is really a creation of the Victorian era which had its roots in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries when flower fairies became popular due to fashionable and wealthy young ladies spending more and more time in their flower gardens. These images were possibly created to counteract some of the rougher, tougher versions of fairy people who had been known in earlier times and who were reputed to have superpowers beyond human understanding, as well as being considered to be quite ugly, which ultimately increased their power.
Perhaps there has been also a deeper social issue at work regarding ‘fairies’ where the
feminine image is concerned. The innocence enforced upon women in these eras of great social change was an attempt to curb their Otherworldly powers, and this also extended to fairies, who have really suffered a similar fate. Anything which had its own mind and, moreover, Otherworldly powers, was doomed to be tamed and spoon-fed a whole new set of rules.
There are many Romani gypsy stories of the trials and tribulations of the unfortunate human victims who unwittingly happened to stray into the territory of the Bitee Fokee. These are stories which have long been told around Romani campfires in the depths of forests on dark evenings and have sparked fear into the minds and hearts of the primitive gypsy who understood only too well how dangerous and unlucky it could be to harm or injure one of these ancient people and the wild natural places they inhabited.
I have already mentioned that flowers are very much protected by the Bitee Fokee. Many gypsies have superstitions about bringing them inside the home and my mother had personal experience of this when she once brought some bluebells into the house and developed a severe attack of hay fever as a result - something she had never suffered before in her life. She was in no doubt that she was suffering because she had unthinkingly brought these wild flowers into the house, for wild flowers, as every Romani gypsy will know, are very much like wild animals and also wild people - they do not warm to being suddenly captured and confined, and they will give off their bad magic instantly, rather as a skunk might give off an unpleasant odour when it believes itself to be under attack. Also, if you remove flowers from their natural habitat without permission, the Bitee Fokee will be especially annoyed and will see to it that you have bad luck as a result; combined with the fact that when bluebells are picked they do not grow in the same place again, one needs to be mindful of picking wild flowers at all. Needless to add, my mother never brought wild flowers, especially bluebells, into the house again.
Of course, flowers can be used positively for healing if treated with respect and used in the right way. I have used flowers many times to carry away a sickness. As they die, in your house, so your sickness can die, if they are able to successfully attune to what is troubling you. They will carry all that is bad away with them, given the chance, but to do this in a sound way, it must be prearranged with the Bitee Fokee, the flowers’ guardians, and also with the spirits of the flowers themselves. The Bitee Fokee will wish to give you all the help they can, however, if you have proved yourself worthy and respectfu
l of them.
It has been said that only special people pass the test to become a Chovihano, for the Bitee Fokee will always ask for a great deal in return for the knowledge and protection they can give. In many Romani gypsy stories it is common for them to ask for ‘meat’ when testing human beings - that is, actual flesh. This always represents facing all the things you would really prefer to avoid. It is, collectively, all the fears and dark spots within you, which you will be called upon to sacrifice for the sake of developing your ancient craft - not an easy thing to do. I have seen many walk away from the magical path when realizing what will be demanded of them. In my own culture, it is not for the faint-hearted.
Once a Chovihano has exhibited the courage to face his fears, however, the Bitee Fokee will look upon him kindly. And there is a sunny, golden, magical place deep in the Otherworld where the Bitee Fokee reside, waiting for him when he has finally made the grade. The Bitee Fokee will then be his friends forever and will stand by him whatever happens.
The life of a fairy person and the life of a tree usually go hand in hand, at least in Romani lore. Of the many trees I have developed relationships with over the years, a handful stand out as having taught me a good deal about their lives, but I have never learned anything about them without the help of a fairy person - or two.
Many people do not imagine that trees can have characters as diverse as human beings. I was introduced to this fact not only by my great-grandfather, who impressed upon me the need to approach trees as politely and as sensitively as one should approach people, but also in my young adult life, when I happened to be lodging with a friend, an older lady named Julia.
In the garden of Julia’s house there lived four trees, forming a square at the edges of a well-kept lawn. When I was first shown around the garden, I didn’t know of the complex relationship, which would ultimately develop between myself, Julia, these four trees and a most protective female member of the Bitee Fokee race.
We Borrow the Earth: An Intimate Portrait of the Gypsy Folk Tradition and Culture Page 11
