2007 1st edition. Birlinn. Edinburgh. 4to paperback. Pp216. B/w photographs, bibliography. Fine new copy.
Notes: This book consists of a collection of interviews with Gypsies, describing their nomadic way of life, covering the period within living memory, up to the present. Historical context is given from published sources by the authors, and there are a large number of photographs of the people giving interviews and their families as well as a certain amount of archive material from the last hundred years or so. Chapters include; gypsies in the West Country - an introduction; the road; family and community; childhood; get an education and lose your; weddings and celebrations; working lives; music; fortune telling; religion, belief and superstition; herbs and healing; campfire cooking; fisticuffs, fairs, a bit of courting ...and a few more fisticuffs; horses - chopping, nashing, and pouffing the grais; Gypsies and Gadjes - a battle of wits; memories of Wartime; old age; overgrown tracks and burning waggons; the road of childhood lanes. An interesting and solid book which does not repeat material so frequently seen elsewhere.
