Potato, peppers, cabbage and rice are often the building blocks in Romani cuisine. Rabbit stew is made with rabbit meat, innards, bacon and onions. The Roma consume roasted apples, almond cakes, clay-baked hedgehog and trout, snails in broth, and fig cakes as a snack. Baked hedgehog is flavored with garlic.
Typical Romani foods include wild game and birds, potatoes, rice and vegetables such as onions, swedes and cabbage. These foods tend to be prepared as stews, or fried and are highly seasoned with ground black pepper and hot chili peppers.
They take what they can get until it becomes a new food of choice. Some foods they eat are “oase tziganesti” ( “Gypsy bone”), describing meat-stripped animal bones that shoppers usually get for their dogs. The Romani put this in soups and in the popular dish “shak te mas” which is meat and cabbage.
To earn a living today, gypsies might weave furniture, make bricks, resell clothing and goods, or trade horses, but employment is typically a side note in their existence. Sources repeatedly underscore the difficulty that the Roma have in obtaining regular work because employers often don't want to hire them.
The Roma do not follow a single faith, but are Catholic Manouche, Mercheros, and Sinti; Muslim Ashkali and Romanlar; Pentecostal Kalderash and Lovari; Protestant Travellers; Anglican Gypsies; and Baptist Roma.
Roma, singular Rom, also called Romany or Gypsies (considered pejorative), an ethnic group of traditionally itinerant people who originated in northern India but live in modern times worldwide, principally in Europe.
A Gypsy is a member of a race of people who travel from place to place, usually in caravans, rather than living in one place. Some Gypsies object to this name, and prefer to be called Romany.
Their lifestyle is comparable to what it was five hundred years ago. The task of the Romani woman is to take care of the children, to maintain the household, and to hold together the extended family. As mother, she knows precisely the details of her children's lives, including all of the stupid things they do.
Gypsies Live a Simple Life
Gypsies don't have a permanent home because their life is more on traveling, because of this, it is impossible for them to have a job at the office and make a lot of money. Most gypsies settle making money by looking for temporary jobs like gardeners, nail artists, and painters.
originally Gypsies would travel on foot, or with light, horse-drawn carts, or would build bender tents – so called because they were made from supple branches which they bent inwards to support a waterproof covering. One half of the vardo was the sleeping area with a raised bed and carpet.
Most Eastern European Roma are Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or Muslim. Those in Western Europe and the United States are mostly Roman Catholic or Protestant. In southern Spain, many Roma are Pentecostal, but this is a small minority that has emerged in contemporary times.
Only two in five Gypsies and Travellers surveyed said that they use the internet daily, compared to four out of five of the general population. Only 38% of Gypsies and Travellers (33% if housed) had a household internet connection, compared to 86% of the general population.
Couples marry young - girls at around 16 or 17, and boys between 18 and 19. They're not supposed to marry non-travellers but marriage to second cousins in families is common.
In comparison with other studied groups from Ukraine (mainly Ukrainians but also other minorities) Djaczenko found that Gypsies have the lowest cephalic index, the widest nose, darkest pigmentation, and the most dense beard.
Talk to older relatives for clues and family stories. Old family photos can help to identify Gypsy heritage. Photographs taken at gatherings such as hop picking or fairs might be a sign, although these were often annual events which brought together families from many backgrounds, not just Gypsies and Travellers.
In the Gypsy culture, there is a ritual that determines if the bride still retains her virginity, the so-called “handkerchief test” is performed to check the purity of the bride on the same wedding day. Sometimes, it is also called “town hall.”
Rom (man) and romni (woman) also mean "husband" and "wife." Roma avoid Soviet ceremonies and have their own interesting wedding ceremonies, which are strictly observed, even in big cities. These ceremonies blend Orthodox wedding ritual and Gypsy custom. Weddings generally take three days.
At the same time both qualitative and quantitative studies show a steady trend of gradual increase in the marriageable age and age at first child birth among Roma, and today most of the Romani females get married after reaching the lawful age of 18.
Romani is the only Indio-Aryan language that has been spoken exclusively in Europe since the Middle Ages and whose vocabulary and grammar are related to Sanskrit. The language used by Romani people is a source of great pride, facilitating the connectivity and communication between people across the world.
Gypsy leaders. The Boswells were for centuries one of England's largest and most important Gypsy families. The Boswell clan were a large extended family of Travellers, and in old Nottinghamshire dialect the word bos'll was used as a term for Travellers and Romani in general.
Here is the Peaky Blinders Gypsy debacle explained. Tommy Shelby and his kin are Irish-Romani (sometimes spelled Romany) Gypsies, a unique cultural and ethnic group present in Britain since the 1500s. The award-winning Peaky Blinders is directed by Steven Knight and has run for 6 seasons, the most recent hitting U.S.
The Gypsy, Roma and Traveller group
Gypsies (including English Gypsies, Scottish Gypsies or Travellers, Welsh Gypsies and other Romany people) Irish Travellers (who have specific Irish roots) Roma, understood to be more recent migrants from Central and Eastern Europe.
Roma (Gypsies) originated in the Punjab region of northern India as a nomadic people and entered Europe between the eighth and tenth centuries C.E. They were called "Gypsies" because Europeans mistakenly believed they came from Egypt. This minority is made up of distinct groups called "tribes" or "nations."
A gorger is a Romani word for a non-Romani person.