Jan Yoors The Gypsies
"The Gypsies" by Jan Yoors tells the story of the author who, at the age of 12, ran away from his privileged and cultured Belgian family to join a Kumpagnia of traveling Gypsies....My copy of this wonderful book is falling apart for all my love. When I read it, I am aware that I hold in my hands an entire world. Many passages are highlighted and in the margins, stars and exclamation points..The pages are no longer affixed to the binding and some of them fall out when turned...I think I will order a new copy after posting this blog:
Little Mozol sat in the corner of the compartment facing forward and
nearest the corridor. Her eyes were closed, her head leaning back, and
she breathed gently. Her hands, demurely folded, rested in her lap and
she looked touchingly young and pure. There was a slight fullness in
the way the ample faded lilac skirt and the low cut yellow blouse were
draped around the well rounded but still slender shape of her young
body, which I had never noticed before. Somehow it was the first time I
had ever paid any attention to her at all, even though we lived side by
side in the same kumpania. In her colorful if ragged and faded dress
she struck me incongrously as a tender Gypsy Madonna, as seen in a
dream.
She sat squeezed in by a generous-looking, middle aged woman, who could
have been a small shopkeeper's wife. She kept staring with pity at
Mozol and alternately delivered heated, disapproving comments to Tshaya
who sat squarely opposite, patient and unconcerned. With insistent
Romany courtesy Tshaya gave her seat to Bidshika and joined us outside
in the corridor to smoke an elegant , gold tipped Turkish cigarette she
had begged from one of our fellow passengers. Once in a while I looked
in our compartment, finding it hard to resist staring at sweet little
Mozol. Both she and Bidshika sat back with their eyes closed, obviously
to avoid conversation with the Gaje. They had not moved in more than
half an hour.
Then, with her eyes still shut, Mozol gently but persistently started
scratching herself. At first with great modesty and restraint she
rubbed her knee through the many ample skirts; then after a pause she
scratched the back of her slender neck; then again, reaching inside the
loose fitting blouse, she scratched her bare right shoulder. When the
middle aged woman sitting next to her moved away, apprehensive about
the scratching, I began to understand. After a period of more subdued
scratching, the woman, by now purple faced and angry, finally got up,
cast a last look at the little Gypsy girl, and left her seat, taking
her luggage with her. She didn't return.
We all sat merrily together . The suggestive scratching had ceased and
there were no Gaje left among us. Not suspecting the ruse, they had
fled before the implications of vermin.
---------------
The members of the bride's family kissed her, and they wept together as they symbolically unbraided her hair. They put a white satin shiftlike dress over the red one she was wearing on this day - the one exception to the rule that red was never worn by an honest Gypsy woman. A group of playful young relatives of both the groom and the bride had gathered in the open space between the wagons hiding the two protagonists in thir midst. They were going to enact a scene of abduction. For, even though the parents had agreed upon the marriage and paid the bridal price and the uynion had been celebrated with a festive meal, the bride still had to surrender ot her new husband.
The bride's champions, all unmarried youths, linking arms, stood as a protective wall before her. In the descending darkness there were some good humored exuberant skirmishes, until the groom's side either forced its way through the barrier or tricked the others to make it possible for the groom to kidnap his bride. Paprika screamed and wept and violently thrashed her head from side to side. Unalarmed, Yayal took her away and they disappeared in the night. Fifika also fought with violence. She whimpered and tore her hair. But by temperament she was less wild than her new sister-in-law.
A short distance away near Butsulo's wagon a similar scene was presumably taking place, but he harsh piercing lament we heard from that direction hardly sounded like Tsuritsa acting out the tragicomedy ordained by the tradition of the Lowara...When we approached the spot, we witnessed a wild free-for-all that nobody could have anticipated.In the half-dark a handful of young men were trying to disentangle three youths fighting in a blind frenzy.
We were told that Tsinoro's son had halffheartedly pretended to abduct the bride, who appeared more willing to go than was proper for a virgin. She had sighed to convey alarm, but those present claimed it was almost a sigh of pleasure. Upon which her younger brother, Fonso, took offense, deeply resenting the dishonor brought by her on their family. He had seized a horsewhip - some said he had carried it with him all along - and thrashed her. The groom and his brother had vainly tried to protect her, but nonetheless she had been marked on the face and hands. She sobbed hysterically.
The Rom went back to the inn and drank the rest of the night.
The following morning, after the display of the bridal bed linen, the mother-in-law assisted the bride in knotting her kerchief after the fashion of the married women. She would never again be without it. Malicious gossip would have it that so and so had taken a pigeon along on her bridal night; for it was necessary that there should be blood for all to see as proof of virginity.
As there had been no wooing, so there would be no honeymoon. After their marriage the groom's life went on much as before, except that he mingled more with the married men and less with the boys. He remained within his family and with the kumpania in which he had grown up. Whereas in this way the men were all related by kinship ties, a bride left her group to join her husband's, with the result that the married women were all strangers to the group into which they had been brought by marriage. The new bride was taken in charge by her mother-in-law and by her sisters-in-law who had gone through the same experience before her. Some girls said, with uncharacteristic pessimism, that Tsuritsa's marriage only meant "a new set of harness sores."
-----------------------------------
His few personal belongings had been burned. The Gypsies did not believe in keeping anything that had in any way been connected with a deceased person.
At the time the coffin had been ordered from the village carpenter, the Rom had taken the measure for it with a length of "Romany String" This was a narrow piece of cloth, roughly one to one and a half inches wide, ripped lengthwise froma piece of flowery cotton and left unhemmed. The Rom had insisted on taking the measure in their own traditional way, over the protest of the carpenter who had brought his own tape measure in centimeters. Afterward the long, homemade ribbon was cut into short pieces three to six inches long. Each was tied individually in a simple knot. These were possessed of great magical potency and were given to close relatives of the deceased. These bits of magical ribbon were called mulengi dori, or dead man's string. ....
--------------
Little Mozol sat in the corner of the compartment facing forward and nearest the corridor. Her eyes were closed, her head leaning back, and she breathed gently. Her hands, demurely folded, rested in her lap and she looked touchingly young and pure. There was a slight fullness in the way the ample faded lilac skirt and the low cut yellow blouse were draped around the well rounded but still slender shape of her young body, which I had never noticed before. Somehow it was the first time I had ever paid any attention to her at all, even though we lived side by side in the same kumpania. In her colorful if ragged and faded dress she struck me incongrously as a tender Gypsy Madonna, as seen in a dream.
She sat squeezed in by a generous-looking, middle aged woman, who could have been a small shopkeeper's wife. She kept staring with pity at Mozol and alternately delivered heated, disapproving comments to Tshaya who sat squarely opposite, patient and unconcerned. With insistent Romany courtesy Tshaya gave her seat to Bidshika and joined us outside in the corridor to smoke an elegant , gold tipped Turkish cigarette she had begged from one of our fellow passengers. Once in a while I looked in our compartment, finding it hard to resist staring at sweet little Mozol. Both she and Bidshika sat back with their eyes closed, obviously to avoid conversation with the Gaje. They had not moved in more than half an hour.
Then, with her eyes still shut, Mozol gently but persistently started scratching herself. At first with great modesty and restraint she rubbed her knee through the many ample skirts; then after a pause she scratched the back of her slender neck; then again, reaching inside the loose fitting blouse, she scratched her bare right shoulder. When the middle aged woman sitting next to her moved away, apprehensive about the scratching, I began to understand. After a period of more subdued scratching, the woman, by now purple faced and angry, finally got up, cast a last look at the little Gypsy girl, and left her seat, taking her luggage with her. She didn't return.
We all sat merrily together . The suggestive scratching had ceased and there were no Gaje left among us. Not suspecting the ruse, they had fled before the implications of vermin.
Jan Yoors
The Gypsies 
Jan Yoors The Gypsies
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the gypsy chronicles
June 2009 
Alison Mackie
Access: Public
