My grandma used to sometimes rhyme at me: "My mother said, I never should, play with the gypsies in the wood ..." .. offensive slang term these days is usually 'Pikeys' so don't use that term. I've met a few over the years as well as living on a 'traveller' (the term most prefer) site or two. I've had them threaten to trash a café I was cooking in in Skegness, saved a couple of 6 year old traveller girls from getting in trouble because they were shoplifting prawns from us (I caught them and handed them over to their Dad instead of security lol) and dodged a bar work shift when about 60 or so of the f*****s tried to storm a pub I worked in.
Having said that, I've also lived with them, got pissed up and stoned with them at Hatfield Court when the old school hippy author Jeremy Sandford let us live at his crumbling mansion and I'll buy whatever crap they're peddling when they come into town ... so I now own two 'lucky' stones and apparently I'll one day be the father of 4 children .. and the key ring attached to my back door key is a gypsy made wooden clothes peg. I bought 5 of those for about £3 off an old traveller woman in Cromer. Half of them will try to rob you though. Their kids are the worst for that.
.. they're little bastards.
The English authorities crack down pretty hard on travellers since the mid 80's at least (Google The Battle Of The Beanfields) so most of them have relocated to France and other parts of Europe these days. Glastonbury Festival '92 saw the travellers knock down the fence keeping them out which is partly why there's a patrolled double fence around the festival these days. I was there and it was epic. A group of them bought a field next door to the festival. They refused to move their vehicles at a different illegal rave so the department that deals with unemployment benefit moved their tables to the sites to pay the travellers that way instead. The Criminal Justice Act came out not long after to clamp down on traveller's movements.