Gypsy Language and Literature

FAIN: FT-12356-75

Francis D. Mulcahy
Polytechnic University of New York (Brooklyn, NY 11201-3840)

A two-month period of intensive language learning and preliminary study of oral literature among the conservative metal working Gypsies of Catalonia, Spain. Gypsy oral literature, especially the Swatura, a combination of myth, epic, folk tale, ethnosociology, and ethno- history, acts on a daily basis to reify in the minds of the Rom (a group of Gypsies) a distinct societal image. This image has helped char a particular course of interaction with the Western world throughout some 500 years of history, a course which permitted the Rom at all times to select those aspects of Western civilization which were best suited to their societal welfare and integrity, and reject others.