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Tsinganos and Yiftos: Some Speculations on the Greek Gypsies*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 January 2016

Gordon M. Messing
Gordon M. Messing*
Affiliation:
Cornell University
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Extract

In 1956 Manos Hadzidakis composed music for a movie entitled , ‘Hurdy-Gurdy, Poverty and Self-Esteem’. While the film itself enjoyed a moderate success, one of the songs from it, ‘Carnation over the ear’, became enormously popular all over Greece. It was in the form of a modern folksong, and the refrain contained some words which have a direct bearing on the theme I wish to develop here:

‘hit your tambourine, babe,/you Turkish Gypsy girl!’

Type
Research Article
Information
Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies , Volume 7 , 1981 , pp. 155 - 167
Copyright
Copyright ©The Centre for Byzantine, Ottoman and Modern Greek Studies, University of Birmingham 1981

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References

1. Quoted from the edition and translation by Esposito, M., Itinerarium Symonis Semeonis ab Hybernia ad Terram Sanctam (Dublin, 1960), p. 45 Google Scholar. The author’s name was Simon Fitzsimons, according to Hoade, Fr. Eugene, Western Pilgrims (Jerusalem, 1952)Google Scholar, in the preface to his own English translation; a note in Esposito, p. 22, prefers the variant fitz Simon for Brother Symon’s Hiberno-Norman family name. In the passage quoted, the phrase here translated ‘of the race of Cain’ (in the Latin, ‘de genere Chaym’) was much less appropriately translated ‘of the race of Ham’ by earlier scholars (and still by Hoade). Esposito states, p. 7, that ‘there can be no reasonable doubt that we have here a reference to an encampment of Gypsies’; I am inclined to agree, although many scholars, reasonably or not, remain sceptical.

2. See Foletier, F. de Vaux de, Mille Ans d’Histoire des Tsiganes (Paris, 1970), pp. 37–41 Google Scholar; Clébert, J.-P., The Gypsies [translation of Les Tziganes (Paris, 1961)] (New York, 1963), pp. 26–9 Google Scholar. The article, Gipsies, by M. Gaster in the 11th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1910) is still of value.

3. Taken from Dr.Groote’s, E. von edition, Die Pilgerfahrt des Ritters Arnold von Harff (Köln, 1860), p. 67 Google Scholar. A propos of ‘what we call them’, Heiden ‘heathen’ is one of the terms still used to mean ‘Gypsy’ in Dutch.

4. Letts, M., translator and editor. The Pilgrimage of Arnold von Harff, Knight (The Hakluyt Society, 2nd Ser., 94 [London, 1946]), p. 81 Google Scholar. Letts took his text directly from von Groote’s edition (preceding footnote).

5. In the summer of 1956 the present writer watched latter-day kinsmen of those Gypsies building several similar reed huts to occupy on the beach at Loutsa.

6. It is a great pity that in his meeting with the Gypsies Arnold did not follow his usual practice of eliciting some common words and phrases in their language. His curiosity led him to compile such a list for Croatian, Albanian, Greek, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Hungarian, Basque and Breton. Despite inevitable distortion and misunderstanding on his part, most of these forms are recognizable, and for all their inaccuracy, the Basque and Albanian collections in particular have become important documents for students of the historical development of those languages.

7. i.e., as in the preceding passage, wander about in our countries (back home).

8. In the original, Suginien.

9. More precisely, was first reduced to , and this form was then built into a new paradigm; for the details, including the origin of the dialect variants and , see D. J. Georgakas, Glotta, XXIX (1942), 156–61.

10. The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (1966) cites some earlier attestations (gipcyan, gipsen, gipson) but suggests that the word might come directly from Lat. Aegyptius, noting Skelton’s phrase, (by) Mary Gipsy, i.e. Mary of Egypt, Maria Aegyptiaca. The Spanish Gitano is similarly formed (from Egitano). Egyptian can mean ‘Gypsy’ in older texts, e.g. in Othello III. iv. 56: ‘This handkerchief/Did an Egyptian to my mother give;/She was a Charmer, and could almost read/The thoughts of people’.

11. In Spain the Hungaros are nomadic Gypsies and in contrast to most Gitanos still speak Romany; Yoors, cf. Jan, The Gypsies of Spain (New York, 1974).Google Scholar

12. Anne Sutherland makes this point in her book, Gypsies, The Hidden Americans (London, 1975), in describing the relationship between Gypsies and the welfare system.

13. I shall not discuss still a third word, , said to come from a derivative of It. cattivo ‘bad’ or from Vlach cacivel. In either case, it would go back to Lat. captivus ‘captive’, with a pejorative semantic development somewhat similar to that of our English word caitiff.

14. Borrow, George, The Zincali, An Account of lhe Gypsies of Spain (1841).Google Scholar

15. This etymology is accepted by N. P. Andriotes in his (Athens, 1951 [and 2nd ed., Thessaloniki, 1967]).

16. Furthermore, wherever they have gone, the Gypsies have invariably and without any fuss adopted the faith of the host country or of their community; it is hard to imagine them as having ever been sufficiently concerned about religious beliefs to set themselves up as fanatic heretics and thereby court the hostility of the Byzantine populace.

17. In this case, (Thessaloniki, 1978), but other dictionaries which I have consulted display comparable entries.

18. The Greek word ‘miserly’ comes from Turkish çingene, itself cognate with

19. Needless to say, this is a very poor definition: increasing numbers of Gypsies are sedentary rather than nomadic, and by no means all of them are swarthy, even if a great many are.

20. is contained in the third volume of (Athens, 1960).

21. Sherrard, P., The Marble Threshing Floor, Studies in Modern Greek Poets (London, 1956), p. 67.Google Scholar

22. Stephanides, T. Ph. and Katsimbalis, G. C., translators, The Twelve Words of the Gipsy (London, 1974), p. 55.Google Scholar

23. p. 290 in the Greek edition (n. 20).

24. Translation (n. 22), p. 8. Note that the translators (perhaps influenced by the following words, ) have subtly inserted a nuance in rendering by ‘some ordinary Gypsy’.

25. Greek edition (n. 20), p. 335; translation (n. 22), p. 61. Perhaps at most there is an incipient distinction in social status hinted at in these two passages (cf. the preceding note). Palamas may have sensed that in his own usage a ranked below a .

26. See my earlier article, ‘Influence of Greek on the speech of a Greek Gipsy community’, BMGS, III (1977), 81–93.

27. I have unfortunately been unable to consult a work by K. I. Bires, (Athens, 1954), which might bear upon this question.

28. Tziganes d’Attique (Athens, 1947). Incidentally, she mentions that before the last war sedentary Gypsies were often living in vacant lots along the Athens-Piraeus electric rail line. Nowadays, Monastiraki is still an area where Gypsies congregate.

29. As in Greek, where has a more generalized counterpart, , so rom contrasts with manuš ‘man-as-human-being’. All these words are extremely common in other European Gypsy dialects.

30. According to a Gypsy informant, the word specifically refers to a Russian Gypsy.

31. See the article cited above, n. 26.

32. Paspati, A. G., Études sur les Tchinghianés ou Bohémiens de l’Empire Ottoman (Constantinople, 1870), p. 13 Google Scholar. It is true that in Paspati’s day the nomad Gypsies were mainly Moslem and the sedentary ones Christian, and the difference of religion created still further friction.

33. Love is widely used by European Gypsies. See e.g. Rozwadowski, J. M., Wörterbuch des Zigeunerdialekts von Zakopane (Cracow, 1936 [Polish dialect])Google Scholar; Bhatia, Rishi Gopal, A Gypsy Grammar, University of Pennsylvania Ph.D. dissertation, 1963 Google Scholar (American Gypsy dialect ultimately from central Europe). Serboianu, C. J. Popp, Les Tsiganes (Paris, 1930 Google Scholar [Rumanian dialect]), cites only p(h)ares. The singular lovo, is listed in Sampson, J., The Dialect of the Gypsies of Wales (Oxford, 1926 [reprint, 1968])Google Scholar. Another singular, lov, is listed in the vocabulary of O. Gjerdman and Ljungberg, E., The Language of the Swedish Coppersmith Gypsy Johan Dimitri Taikon (Uppsala and Copenhagen, 1963)Google Scholar, which also lists parala.

34. In Greek Romany, kanza(y)uri, clearly a borrowing from Greek . This is a favourite Gypsy dish, as is apparent from the lengthy entry, s.v. urcos, in the vocabulary to Sampson, op. cit. (n. 33); English Gypsies call the hedgehog hotchi-witchi. It is called niglo by central European Gypsies, according to Clébert, op. cit. (n. 2), who includes an account of how it is best cooked.