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Children Stolen By Travelling Folk (Gypsies, Carnies, Nomads): UL?

Gambeir said:
Should add here that in America there's no such thing as gypsies any longer. You're never going to hear anyone talking about gypsies. When I was child of about 5 or 6 I saw a long line of cars and trailers being escorted by the cops out of the city. I remember this very clearly and I asked my pop what was going on, and he said: "Gypsies." I took it that gypsies weren't a good thing, whatever they were. It was a big show for a 5 year old back in the day.
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you're quite wrong to say there are no such things as gypsies in America, nowadays. or that no one speaks of them.

Their classic move is to gain entry to a home, distract the residents, while one of them tosses another room, grabbing jewelry, cash, small valuables. The owner never realizes he's been robbed, until they are gone. Police regularly warn residents to never let anyone in claiming to be from utilities, asking for water for their pregnant daughter seems to be a popular scam. They usually hit poorer neighborhoods, because those people keep cash, and are more likely to help them, and not immediately call the police. Police call them Gypsies. but they just don't mean vagrant thieves, they mean gypsies.

my experiences- i walked a park road everyday, with my son in a stroller, and dog by our side. one particular summer, a large group of teens and preteens, boys and girls, were in a park shelter almost every day. These kids had dark skin, but weren't african american or Indian. I couldn't place their ethnicity. The boys wore clothes a little formal for american kids their age and for the weather...long sleeve shirts and long dark trousers, the girls wore full skirts, horizontally striped with bright colors. They were an odd bunch, but seemed bemused by ME as i walked by, as if I was the oddity. One afternoon, we returned home. Our house was at the end of a little used cul de sac. I was sitting on the porch, which was covered by an awning and shaded by large yew shrubs. the dog was on a long lead, and was resting in the shade of the porch. Sitting quietly, I could not be seen from the street by a casual passerby , but i could see the street perfectly well. My little son was ambling about on the little bit of yard in the front of the house. A car with 4 of these teenagers pulled slowly down our street, turned in the turn around, came back down, and stopped in front of our house. They were eyeing my son! i could see them thru the shrubs. I jumped up and ran out onto the lawn, grabbing my son. That got a big laugh from all in the car, and they sped away. Later I spoke to the police, and they said, gypsies. They had gotten a lot of complaints, things missing, cars gone into, these kids found where they shouldn't have been, that sort of thing. My mother's instinct told me my son was in danger, and I believe he was about to get snatched.

A year or so later, small groups of gypsies invaded the local mall from time to time, doing distract, grab and runs. The police were looking for a large late model cadillac (the big barge type) with stolen Texas plates. Police said gypsies, local news had to more politically correct, and they called them a gang of migrant thieves.

In a neighboring local town, a rash of thefts. Police said small windows were smashed out behind the shops,and children were lowered into the windows, and they then opened the doors for their adult handlers. Once again police said gypsies.

So while it may be considered passe or even racist to say the the G word. They still exist. And some perhaps are up to no good.
 
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uair01 said:
I rode home from Berlin and I sat in a compartment with a German couple, my age, 50-ish. I told how I once was trespassing (and met a german shepherd watchdog and how the guard said "don't be afraid, she only bites when I tell her to") and then she told me this:



I was pleasantly surprised by this bit of modern folklore:
1) Yes, Gypsies do this kind of thing, it's a classic trick.
2) But Gypsies steal normal useful things, not children.
3) The lady was really very convinced that the Gypsies were after her. So that must be a part of local folklore in the Westfalian countryside.
4) It reminded me of the stories of fairies stealing children.
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why would you assume the story she related was "fokelore"? thats pretty presumptuous. does it make you uncomfortable to think that children are stolen?
 
The current reports are appalling - but it's interesting to see how modern technology becomes part of the same hysteria.

(I found the following in newspapers from August 1893:
An old superstition has been revivied in Bosnia. The people have believed at all times that a bridge could not be firm and lasting unless a human being was walled up in it. There is a legend connected with the Roman bridge at Mostar to the effect that the fine arch across the Narenta could not be finished until the architect walled up in it a bridal pair. Now that a solid bridge is being built across the Save at Braxcka, this superstition is revived. It is rumoured everywhere that gypsies are stealing children to sell them to the contractors, who wall up one in each pillar. A few days ago there was a regular pursuit of some gypsies.​
Yeah don't blame the bridge builders even though they're subcontracting to the gypsies!)
 
I remember as a kid in England in the 70's a 'pat a cake' rhyme that started with:

My Mother says
I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood ..

My Grandma knew the rhyme as well. Does anyone here remember the rest of it ? .. I think it involved gypsies abducting children.
 
Swifty said:
My Mother says
I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood ..

My Grandma knew the rhyme as well. Does anyone here remember the rest of it ?
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My Mother Said I Never Should

Children's Song

My Mother said, I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood.
If I did, she would say;
'Naughty girl to disobey!

Your hair shan't curl and your shoes shan't shine,
You gypsy girl, you shan't be mine!
And my father said that if I did,
He'd rap my head with the teapot lid.

My mother said that I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood.
The wood was dark, the grass was green;
By came Sally with a tambourine.

I went to sea - no ship to get across;
I paid ten shillings for a blind white horse.
I upped on his back and was off in a crack,
Sally tell my mother I shall never come back.

maximus otter
 
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maximus otter said:
My Mother Said I Never Should
Children's Song
My Mother said, I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood.
If I did, she would say;
'Naughty girl to disobey!

Your hair shan't curl and your shoes shan't shine,
You gypsy girl, you shan't be mine!
And my father said that if I did,
He'd rap my head with the teapot lid.

My mother said that I never should
Play with the gypsies in the wood.
The wood was dark, the grass was green;
By came Sally with a tambourine.

I went to sea - no ship to get across;
I paid ten shillings for a blind white horse.
I upped on his back and was off in a crack,
Sally tell my mother I shall never come back.

maximus otter
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Thanks Max, I've been wondering about it for years :)
 
:botp:
Getting back to topic, or at least back to Gypsies:

I had a friend who did her MFA in Krakow, Poland circa 1980. She told me that a close friend there was kidnapped by Gypsies as an infant and raised by them. The reason, as the "victim" explained it, was that when Gypsies see something they like, they take it.

Certainly it was believable to me. On my two trips to Poland (once when my friend was there and once in the late 1990s) I encountered Gypsies in the cities who looked and acted essentially just like the stereotype: flashy costumes, big earrings, using crying (but not maimed) children to help beg. On my earlier trip, I turned down a dead end street in the old city of Krakow to suddenly find a Gypsy camp right out of a Wolf Man movie. On another occasion I was walking through the barbican of the old city wall and came across a Gypsy band and a dancing woman. After a bit I felt a nearby presence, and saw a man next to me with his hand held out for some coin. I could hardly say no as I had just spent five minutes or more staring at what I assume was his daughter. I never met anyone like these people in the U.S.

I should probably say I am using the word Gypsy (which some find insulting) because it was in the story told to me, and because these people in my experience were acting in every way like stereotyped Gypsies. I have no idea if they were Romany or any other ethnic group associated with the word. They could have been Swedes or Peruvians in costumes for all I know. I did once know a Romany woman here in the States, and she was in no way what I would call a Gypsy.
 
More online false rumours leads to attacks on Roma.

A series of unprovoked vigilante attacks on France's Roma community have erupted after false reports spread online about child abductions.

But police say the warnings of a "man in a white van" kidnapping children off the streets are "totally unfounded". Some 20 people were arrested on Monday night after attacking the Roma community with makeshift weapons. A police chief in one of the suburbs warned officers of "a psychosis that is starting to set in."

Claims of a man in a van abducting children and others - reportedly to fuel prostitution rings or the illegal organ trade - have been circulating online in recent weeks. Sometimes the van is red, or yellow, in a different region, or of Bulgarian or Romanian origin. The reports have spread rapidly on Whatsapp, Snapchat, and other social media networks. But there is no evidence of any of them.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-47719257
 
I was on a train from Germany to Denmark the other day. I did wonder why this group of turkish-looking people had an infant with them that looked blonde and blue-eyed. Probably an innocent explanation though.
 
uair01 said:
I rode home from Berlin and I sat in a compartment with a German couple, my age, 50-ish. I told how I once was trespassing (and met a german shepherd watchdog and how the guard said "don't be afraid, she only bites when I tell her to") and then she told me this:

I was pleasantly surprised by this bit of modern folklore:
1) Yes, Gypsies do this kind of thing, it's a classic trick.
2) But Gypsies steal normal useful things, not children.
3) The lady was really very convinced that the Gypsies were after her. So that must be a part of local folklore in the Westfalian countryside.
4) It reminded me of the stories of fairies stealing children.
Click to expand...

I take issue with point 2. Children are useful as slave labor. Romanian Gypsies snatched 200 children for use as beggars. Gypsies have long served as an important part of the Europe's criminal underworld, which should surprise nobody. They cross borders frequently, have a tight, insular and mobile community, and a long history of mutual hostility with the settled populations of Europe. Gypsies serve as excellent smugglers and fences, but thieving is normally what they get arrested for. As to the child stealing, well, it is probably exaggerated, as all too frequently kids who weren't all that happy with their home life would run away to join a circus or a travelling community such as the gypsies, but their parents would then accuse the gypsies of having stolen the kids, who were often escaping abuse at home. Of course there are exceptions to the exceptions too, and to say that gypsies never stole or never steal children, is also wrong. Kidnapping is a potentially lucrative crime, even if one isn't actually stealing children to use as slave beggars.

Ethnographically, there is substantial evidence to suggest that the Gypsies fled India during the Muslim invasions as a wave of refugees. Their martial arts are synonymous with those of the Thugee (involving strangling scarves and concealed knives), and their dancing carries many Indian and Middle Eastern influences, and they venerate a Black Madonna who is shorthand for Kali. Thus one might call them crypto-thugee, in the same way that there have been crypto-jews, and crypto-christians at various times in history. Interestingly, one theory about the Voynich manuscript that is as plausible as any other is that it is written in an old Syriac script during the period of the gypsy migration, but the language is old or proto-Romany; a language which if not actually extinct is very close to it.
 
Xanatic* said:
I was on a train from Germany to Denmark the other day. I did wonder why this group of turkish-looking people had an infant with them that looked blonde and blue-eyed. Probably an innocent explanation though.
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Yes, mum had a Nordic bit on the side.
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
"when Gypsies see something they like, they take it. "

Our local neighbourhood Internet support scheme has seen a huge spike in activity since the Coronavirus lockdown.
Amongst the offers of help for shopping and collection of prescriptions etc. there have been occasional reports of antisocial and otherwise suspicious behaviour.
The last couple of days has included reports from a few parts of town, of a fat, bald man with two children in tow, walking the streets and paying attention to neighbourhood cats. The children were seen trying to put "coats" on the cats and pick them up. There has been speculation that these were gypsies/travellers snatching cats to train their pit-bulls for dog-fighting.
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Speculation from whom? Sources please.

We have already addressed how inadvisable it is to use this place to further an agenda against a group of people, taking one example to vilify and entire subsection of humanity.

Frideswide
 
ChasFink said:
:botp:
Getting back to topic, or at least back to Gypsies:

I had a friend who did her MFA in Krakow, Poland circa 1980. She told me that a close friend there was kidnapped by Gypsies as an infant and raised by them. The reason, as the "victim" explained it, was that when Gypsies see something they like, they take it.

Certainly it was believable to me. On my two trips to Poland (once when my friend was there and once in the late 1990s) I encountered Gypsies in the cities who looked and acted essentially just like the stereotype: flashy costumes, big earrings, using crying (but not maimed) children to help beg. On my earlier trip, I turned down a dead end street in the old city of Krakow to suddenly find a Gypsy camp right out of a Wolf Man movie. On another occasion I was walking through the barbican of the old city wall and came across a Gypsy band and a dancing woman. After a bit I felt a nearby presence, and saw a man next to me with his hand held out for some coin. I could hardly say no as I had just spent five minutes or more staring at what I assume was his daughter. I never met anyone like these people in the U.S.

I should probably say I am using the word Gypsy (which some find insulting) because it was in the story told to me, and because these people in my experience were acting in every way like stereotyped Gypsies. I have no idea if they were Romany or any other ethnic group associated with the word. They could have been Swedes or Peruvians in costumes for all I know. I did once know a Romany woman here in the States, and she was in no way what I would call a Gypsy.
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It was quoted from ChasFink's post above.
 
Be that as it may, you didn't then have to quote it in toto.
blessmycottonsocks said:
There has been speculation that these were gypsies/travellers snatching cats to train their pit-bulls for dog-fighting.
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Exactly, speculation. It's up there with local FB groups and "There's a van parked opposite and there's foreign-looking people in it talking foreign." Not all dog-fighters are travellers, and not all travellers are dog-fighters.

There's nothing wrong per se with Gypsy as a term, but when used pejoratively it does become a slur. Do I really have to use a comparison from 80+ years ago to illustrate this, or does everyone have the intelligence with which I've hitherto credited them to see it anyway?

The thread is specifically about - generically - children being stolen by nomadic communities, be they Gypsy, Roma, Carnies, or what have you. I dare say in the far East there are similar stories about Steppe-dwellers, in northern Scandinavia about reindeer-herders, etc. As soon as we veer off into "X rocked up in my local park and nicked bikes and left rubbish everywhere and stole Mrs Jenkins' poodle" then we're off topic, and any further diversions this way will be deleted forthwith. Stick to the topic.

If you need any clarification just say so.
 
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"We have already addressed how inadvisable it is to use this place to further an agenda against a group of people"

Well why allow a thread discussing gypsies stealing children then?

I've deleted my post about cats anyway, as I can see it's a very sensitive subject.
 
It was only recently that I realized that the word gypsy in the UK is applied ignorantly to the "travellers", a British phoenomenon of people who prefer to avoid community regulation by, well, travelling around in trailers. Gypsies were originally Romany, and ironically originated in the same ethnic group that invaded and colonized India around say 1000 BC ( I may be off a little on the date). They do have a distinct culture and in Western Europe certainly are identified with entertainment, fortume-telling and possibly scams. I don't know enough to know if this is accurate. In the US as far as I know they are integrated in permanent communities like many people who are also members of native american tribes. Don't know if there are any actual Gypsies left in the UK and cant imagine why they would ever have wanted stolen children. It sounds to me like an inherited trait from the myths of the fairies stealing human children, and a great way to conceal fatal results of child abuse,
 
Stolen children can be used as beggars.
 
Lb8535 said:
Don't know if there are any actual Gypsies left in the UK...
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Yes, there are. Some years ago, I drove down the A1198 and I went past a small Romany encampment on the grass verge. It looked like something from an earlier time - painted up traditional caravan, horses, camp fire, the works.

Lb8535 said:
...and cant imagine why they would ever have wanted stolen children.
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Slavery?
 
Mythopoeika said:
Yes, there are. Some years ago, I drove down the A1198 and I went past a small Romany encampment on the grass verge. It looked like something from an earlier time - painted up traditional caravan, horses, camp fire, the works.


Slavery?
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being child-averse I'd rather just sit in the rain with the begging bowl. I suppose that in farming communities there is a great need for many children.
 
Lb8535 said:
It was only recently that I realized that the word gypsy in the UK is applied ignorantly to the "travellers", a British phoenomenon of people who prefer to avoid community regulation by, well, travelling around in trailers. Gypsies were originally Romany, and ironically originated in the same ethnic group that invaded and colonized India around say 1000 BC ( I may be off a little on the date). They do have a distinct culture and in Western Europe certainly are identified with entertainment, fortume-telling and possibly scams. I don't know enough to know if this is accurate. In the US as far as I know they are integrated in permanent communities like many people who are also members of native american tribes. Don't know if there are any actual Gypsies left in the UK and cant imagine why they would ever have wanted stolen children. It sounds to me like an inherited trait from the myths of the fairies stealing human children, and a great way to conceal fatal results of child abuse,
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in the UK, Gypsy and Irish Traveller is a distinct demographic and seperate from Roma or Romany. in the last uk census Gypsy and Irish Traveller had its own tick box.

it might vary around the country but people are generally meaning Irish Travellers when they say 'gypsy' or 'traveller'.

this group generally is settled, at least for much of the year, but not neccesarily within the community at large. the stereotype of the uk gypsy has 'them' running building scams and the such rather than stealing children.
 
If anyone is interested in listening to and or/"talking" with actual real live and non-stereotyped Travelling People, I know relevant FB groups :)

If anyone wants to explore the links between Travelling People and The Autistic Community I can definitely help! :rollingw:
 
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