--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...>
wrote:
>
> Is there any record of the original Gypsy mythology?
>
>
> Joao SL
Also check colmeiro oriental spain.pdf in the files section.
M. kelkar
Title: Find More Like ThisMyths of the Czech Gypsies.
Authors: Pavelcik, Nina
Pavelcik, Jiri
Source: Asian Folklore Studies; 2001, Vol. 60 Issue 1, p21, 10p, 1
chart, 1bw
Document Type: Literary Criticism
Subject Terms: *ROMANIES
*MYTHOLOGY in literature
FOLKLORE in literature
Abstract: Describes gypsy myths enclosed in the manuscript of
Rudolf Daniel. Manifestation of the myths relevant to Gypsy
traditions; Significance of the myths to identify location and time
of Gypsy migration; Study on the traditional narratives and
cosmogonic myths relative to gypsy tradition.
Full Text Word Count: 4022
ISSN: 0385-2342
Accession Number: 5178099
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MYTHS OF THE CZECH GYPSIES
Contents
Abstract
TABLE 1: Queen Ana's Children
REFERENCES CITED
NOTES
Abstract
In this article two Gypsy myths that are recorded in a manuscript by
Rudolf Daniel are introduced and described. These two myths are
significant because they indicate that some of the oldest Gypsy
traditions on record were long preserved in the Gypsies' oral
traditions. On the basis of the individual elements that make up
these myths and others like them, the authors suggest that a more
exact determination of the location and time of the Gypsy migrations
can be determined.
Keywords: European Gypsies--origin of Gypsies--etiology of disease--
Gypsy mythology--cosmogony
THE MAJORITY OF EXPERTS are of the opinion that the Gypsies
originated from central India, from where they had been forced to
emigrate in several great waves. These experts look to the Gypsies'
old homeland of India to discover the roots of the anthropological,
linguistic, and sociocultural differences that characterize the main
ethnic subgroups of the present European Gypsy communities. Most of
the Gypsies, after their arrival in Europe, lived isolated from the
majority of the population in reclusive, clan-based communities. For
a long time they preserved their traditional ways of life, the
rituals related to their life, and the myths that told of their
origins and conceptions of life. Being faithful to these traditions
ensured the survival of individual communities as well as the whole
ethnic group. During the twentieth century, under the impact of
industrial society and the political developments in the communist
part of Europe, there began a rapid destruction and loss of the
Gypsies' original ethnic cultural system, with its traditional
habits and a wealth of original verbal art. This destruction has
been particularly prominent among the majority of the settled
Gypsies.
The traditional culture of the individual subgroups among the Gypsy
population has mainly been upheld through oral tradition. Some items
of this tradition were recorded and published already during the
nineteenth century, but only during the last few years have
ethnologists begun to attempt a more thorough analysis of the
diversity of these forms of tradition. In the following, one item of
this tradition will be introduced: a text whose source is not well
known among specialists. It is an authentic and rare document
written by the teacher Rudolf Daniel, who was one of the first
academic Gypsies in Moravia to write about his people. In the
manuscript, which carries the somewhat poetic title Housle a kun
(Violin and Horse), he describes in detail the history, the customs,
and ways of life of his predecessors and contemporaries in order to
preserve knowledge of them for future generations. The sources that
Daniel uses for the text are his own personal experiences,
narratives of his relatives and friends, and published literature
that was available at the time of his writing (circa 1955). Among
other items, he recorded very old myths that were believed to have
disappeared from the memory of most Czech and Slovakian Gypsies in
the second half of the twentieth century. For specialists in Romany
studies, this part of Daniel's record is particularly interesting
because it indicates that many of the Gypsies' oldest oral
traditions that were recorded and analyzed in texts were actually
preserved in the people's minds for a rather long period, and
survived throughout a much wider territory than what the majority of
experts have hitherto assumed.
THE FIRST MYTH
Out of the many mythic narratives that can be found in Daniel's
manuscript, two in particular attract our attention.[ 1] The first
of them takes us back to the times when, according to this
tradition, Mother Earth and Father Sky had a quiet and untroubled
marriage. Together they had five king-sons whose names were Sun,
Moon, Fire, Wind, and Haze (Rain) (cf. BERGER 1984, 794-95). While
the sons were still small, they were a wellspring of pleasure for
their parents; they were well-behaved and sweet children. But when
they started to grow up they began to quarrel among themselves. In
order to prevent the worst, a fratricidal fight, the parents put
their sons between them and nestled so strongly against one another
that only a small space remained where the quarreling sons were
locked in.
But even this tactic did not help. The young kings still quarreled
and looked for reasons to fight. The space between the parents was
so tight and narrow that the sons were afraid they would suffocate.
So once during a virulent fight, the sons decided to separate the
parents by force and to escape into the world. If they could
successfully escape by attacking their parents, they planned to part
and go as far away as possible to a place where each of them could
have his own new home and create his own sovereign kingdom.
King Moon carried out the first attack against Mother Earth trying
to rip her away from Father Sky. He failed, probably because he did
not have enough strength to carry out his plan. The second attack
was performed by King Haze who attacked Father Sky. But he, too,
failed and so did King Fire. Even the strength of the fourth son,
King Sun, was not enough to destroy the parents' grasp on one
another, he got the parents only to twitch. King Wind, however,
seized the moment of his parents' twitching and by smashing himself
up against Mother Earth using all his wild power, he was able to
push her off Father Sky. In this way, earth and sky became separated
forever. The sky spread above the earth and their sons were free.
However, because of the young kings' innate restlessness, they were
still not satisfied. They decided that they did not want to go into
the wide world anymore. So they started to wrangle about who was
going to stay with mother and who with father. The strife was
decided by Mother Earth. She said, "King Sun, King Moon, and King
Wind, you have opposed your mother; you attacked me. Therefore you
stand back. You two, King Haze and King Fire, you caused me no pain,
so stay with me!" In one of the preserved versions of the myth, the
story ends here with the five sons of Mother Sky and Father Earth
incessantly quarreling.
In their collection of Wallachian fairy tales, Artur and Albert
SCHOTT (1845) included this myth in a version from the nomadic
Romany of Wallachia. According to this version, the winner of the
feud was Wind because he proved to be the most powerful--he
separated the mother from the father. He became, therefore, the
leader of the brothers.
In the traditional narratives and cosmogonic myths of many nations,
the bipolarity of the principles of fertility constitutes a basic
element. And yet, we can hardly find a direct genetic connection
between these narratives. For example, in myths of ancient Greece,
Mother Earth (Gaea) is fecundated by the sky, Uranos, and from this
union other gods are born. From ancient Egypt we know the core of a
myth in which the roles of sky and earth are cast in the opposite
way: the female element (the goddess Nut) represents the sky and the
male element (Nut's brother Geb) represents the earth. They, too,
were separated by force but the agent was their father, the god of
air (Shov).
Daniel also presents a different and more detailed end of the myth,
one that accounts for the traditional respect Gypsies have for
mountains. In contrast to the first (cosmogonic) part of the myth,
this second part has the character of an orographical myth, i.e., a
myth about mountains. In it the reprobated sons did not want to
depart from the mother whom they loved, and none of them wanted to
break with her forever. However, the parents were ruthless. Father
Sky decides to haul Sun, Moon, and Wind away. The sons react by
clinging to their mother with all their strength. They dig their
fingernails into their mother's clothes, but her clothes are torn
from her when the father pulls them off her and carries them away.
From the pieces of the mother's clothes that fell from their hands
after being pulled away, grow small and high mountains. Wind tried
to carry the pieces, but since he was very tired, he let the pieces
that were a memory of his mother fall onto Mother Earth. This is how
the high mountains appeared in this world. Because Mother Earth took
pity on her bad sons, she left the pieces of her clothing where they
had fallen in order to stay as close to her children as possible.
She let them build their castles on the tops of the mountains as
shelters for times when they grew weary of staying with their
father. But she was careful to prevent other attacks against her
person and populated the mountains with good nymphs and bad demons
who were supposed to be the guardians of her sons and their progeny.
According to Daniel, Gypsies respected the mountains as happy places
and expressed this feelings in songs and prayers up to the time he
was writing; their curses also frequently allude to a "happy
mountain" as the residence of bad demons (e.g., "May the devil have
you perish on the happy mountain," "May the dogs eat your heart on
the happy mountain").
Gypsies from Serbia preserved a further variant of this mythic
story. According to their version, earth is situated between the
horns of an ox (a cosmic animal representing the sky[ 2]), which
shakes its head from time to time and by doing so causes
earthquakes. Jan Filipsky of the "Orientalni institut AV CR" in
Prague has recorded the same myth among the Gond and the Bhil in
India, and among the Indian "Gypsy" ethnic group Kandzar.
THE SECOND MYTH
The second story from Rudolf Daniel's collection is a myth about
demons that cause particular diseases. Daniel probably drew the core
of this long myth from a written source, and most probably from the
work of H. von WLISLOCKI (1892). It is noteworthy that the names
Daniel attributes to the individual demons are not in accordance
with the pattern of names that, according to H. BERGER (1984),[ 3]
issued from the terminology known only to the Turkish and Serbian
Gypsies at the end of the nineteenth century. However, Daniel states
that central European Gypsies knew (or even created) this myth, and
he presents the names of the demons in the forms that, according to
him, correspond better with the forms used in his own homeland. It
should be noticed that the elements of this myth can be found also
among Slovakian Gypsies.
The story tells of Queen Ana, who was the queen of the Keshali
nymphs ("Kesali" according to Filipsky) who were the daughters of
King Haze living in the mountains. Three of them visited the queen
every morning, and each one gave the queen one drop of blood from
her left hand. This was the only food that kept the queen alive. As
long as the queen was alive, the Keshali nymphs would not be
attacked and eaten up by the Locolics ("Loholici" according to
Filipsky) who were a bunch of humans cursed by elves and changed
into ugly demons (devils). Such was determined in the treaty
concluded a long time ago between Queen Ana and the king of the
Locolics.
The story begins at the time, thousands of years ago, when Queen Ana
was the most beautiful and desired virgin in the world. At that
time, the king of the Locolics fell in love with her, but the queen
did not like him and refused his proposal to marry him. After her
refusal she became afraid that she might be abducted, and therefore
took cover in a black rock castle. The king was outraged and his
mind was clouded by his passionate love. In his anger he and his
subjects attacked the innocent Keshali nymphs and began to eat them.
When the unhappy Ana saw the effect of her refusal, she left the
castle and agreed to marry the king. From their union nine children
were born, who were all mischievous demons because they were all
products of a love-deficient marriage. The later in the marriage
that a child was born, the more mischievous that child would be
compared to his or her older siblings. When the ninth demon was born
he had such horrible looks that even his own father suffered a
shock. By the time this ninth child was born, the king of the
Locolics had finally learned from his own experience that his forced
marriage had no future. He therefore allowed Ana to go free, and the
two signed a divorce agreement that was to be valid until the
queen's death (see treaty mentioned above). The agreement contained
the important clause that every Keshali nymph had to be given away
to the Locolics after she had reached the age of 999 years.
According to Daniel's version, the origin of the name "Ana" is the
word ana, which means "pass" or "bring." With this word she calls
lonely walkers in the mountains, and when they hear it, they have to
grab a frog, a beetle, or some other animal and throw it into the
nearest bush. If they fail to do this, they must run away very fast
lest they be in danger of being crushed by the rock the queen will
throw at them. The great danger for mankind are Ana's children.
Unfortunately, they remained on the earth and became the demons that
cause diseases. When they grew up, they began to copulate among
themselves and became parents and grandparents of subsequent
generations. In general, their degree of propinquity to Queen Ana
and the king of the Locolics, determines how deadly the diseases are
that they cause.
The oldest of the demons is Ana's son Melalo ("The Dirty One"). He
causes many psychic and physical malfunctions. He has the form of a
little grey bird with two heads. The person in whom he enters falls
into a rage, destroying and murdering without mercy. Daniel reports
in this context that people in his placein the 1950s still said "You
hin jiamutr Melaskero" (He is Melalo's son-in-law) in reference to a
ruffian or a brutal person.
Melalo's wife is his sister, Ana's second child, Lili (according to
Daniel, her name is Lilyi and her form that of a hagfish). She has
the form of a fish with a woman s head and causes inflammation of
the mucous membranes that result in, for example, coughs, influenza,
and dysentery.
The third child is Tculo ("The Fatty One"; according to Filipsky he
is also called Thulo). He has the form of a ball covered with
spines, and his attacks, especially of the intestines, cause great
pain. He likes to attack pregnant women more than anyone else. His
wife is his sister, and Ana s fourth child, Tcaridyi ("The Hot One";
according to Filipsky she is also called Tharidi). She is a worm
with long hair and attacks only women. She moves through women's
veins and arteries, where she gradually loses her hair thereby
causing fever and inflammations. Her attacks are most painful after
childbirth. All the diseases caused by this incestuous couple and
their children are women's diseases.
The third of Ana's daughters is Shulalyi (Silali, "The Cold One").
Her mother hated her because she was not born the normal way--she
was born out of her mother's mouth. She has the form of a white
mouse and causes all types of fever and rigor. According to Daniel,
such diseases were treated with a powder made from the dried lungs
and stomachs of mice, and liquefied in firewater (alcohol). To prove
how strong this folk believe was Daniel cites a story about an event
that allegedly happened in Banska Bystrica (central Slovakia) in
1845:
Two Gypsies entered a pharmacy to offer their services, and
there they saw the cage in which the pharmacist bred white
mice that he probably intended to use for experiments. One
of the visitors grabbed the cage and both ran with it to the
end of the town, where they threw it into a well. When the
police interrogated them for theft, they declared that the
pharmacist should be punished for his breeding of such
dangerous demons in a publicly accessible place.
Shulalyi's husband Bitoso ("The Fastening One") is Ana's third son
and sixth child, He is a small multiheaded worm moving quickly
through the human body and causing banal affections, such as qualms,
gripes, and stomach pains. But his children are worse. They cause
toothaches, leg spasms, and tinnitus.
The name of the fourth son corresponds to his form. in Daniel's text
his name is Lolmistro ("Red Mouse"; according to Filipsky his name
is Lolimiso). This mouse runs on a person's body at night and causes
diseases such as hives and ulcers that are very common among the
Gypsies. His wife is Ana's eighth child, Minceskre (Minceskre
according to Filipsky: "The One Who Came Up From The Female
Genitals"). The Gypsies Visualize her as a hairy beetle that creeps
over the body and leaves on it the tracks of its destructive work
(Figure 1). She causes all venereal diseases including syphilis.
Daniel says that old people still remember the procedures for
treating this scourge. A patient was buried in manure and "watered"
with firewater. The drastic method frequently drove out the beetle
and, if the disease wasalready in its second stage, the ulcers
disappeared.
Ana's youngest child is Poreskoro ("The Caudate One"). He has four
dog heads and four cat heads; his body is that of a bird and his
tail is like a serpent. He is the most fulsome of all of Ana's
children because he is an epicene creature. He lives together with
his descendants deep under the ground and appears on the surface
only occasionally. But when he appears "it is always a terrible
event," because he causes destruction and confusion. He is the
originator of the plague, cholera, and smallpox.
CONCLUDING REMARKS
The daughters of King Haze, the Keshali nymphs that live in forests
and on mountains, figure in the myths and tales of Gypsies from
southern Russia, Ukraine, Transylvania, and the countries on the
lower Danube. Their name originates from their long silky hair. (The
term Keshali derives from either the Sanskrit kes, which
means "silk," or from kesa, which means "hair.") As we have
mentioned before, at the end of the nineteenth century scholars
thought that the names of these demons could be found only in myths
transmitted among the Gypsies from Turkey and in part of Serbia.
However, the myths recorded by Daniel and other authors prove that
these names were also found in myths that were current and
widespread among Moravian and Slovakian Gypsies even in the
twentieth century. This makes us think that the common source of
these myths is older than the local traditions mentioned.
According to Czech Indologists, no direct parallels with this myth
from Indian mythology can be found in the available literature.
However, specialists agree that various migrating streams of the
Gypsy population passed through Iran and took either a southern or a
northern route around the Caucasus on their way to Europe after they
had been displaced from India. According to the estimates of
historians, they may have stayed in Iran for 600 or even 800 years
under their original name Domos or Lomos. There are some indications
in the text of the second myth related above that suggest a possible
connection with myths of the nations or traditions the Gypsies could
have encountered on their journey to Europe. For example, the name
Lili or Lilyi reminds us of the Babylonian-Sumerian female demon
Lilit, the Sumerian Lillake, and of Adam's apocryphal first wife
Lilith. All these names designate demonic entities that were said to
cause numerous diseases or death, including the murdering of babies
during the night. In a similar vain, the goddess Lamastu could
correspond with Tharidi of Assyria. Like the Gypsy demon, this
goddess had an unnatural form: she was imagined as having the head
of a wolf or lion, the body of a woman down to the waist, and below
the waist her figure was described as being similar to that of an
eagle.
Researchers in present European Romany literature, using fragmentary
historical records and studies of the development of Gypsy dialects,
are looking for the roots of the Gypsies as an ethnic group, and for
the routes their waves of migration might have taken. They pay great
attention to the traditional habits and the sociocultural systems of
the Gypsy communities and compare these with the ways of life of
past and present populations in India (see, for example FRASER 1993
and HUBSCHMANNOVA 1998). Even though there has been a tradition of
collecting Gypsy oral folk art in Europe since the second half of
the nineteenth century, no in-depth study has been made so far that
compares the Gypsy narratives with the mythologies of those nations
with which the Gypsies had come into contact during their long
migrations.
As I have tried to indicate in this short article, the chapter of
Daniel's manuscript that deals with old mythical images of the
Gypsies offers a feast of interesting food for reflection as well as
themes for comparison with mythic stories of the Asian nations with
which the Gypsies lived for a part of their history. More in-depth
studies of individual elements of the myths that belong to the
oldest parts of the oral tradition could contribute to (beside other
scientific results) a more exact determination of the time and
locations of the migrations of the Gypsies. We assume that
specialists of Asian mythology would be able to find many further
possible connections that might guide us when looking for prototypes
and parallels of the myths of the Gypsies now living in central
Europe. Rudolf Daniel's manuscript, introduced in this article, and
some of the contexts of the information he cites will no doubt be of
use to future studies. His manuscript and the information in it
should spur an interest among the scientific community for
cooperation in searching for indicia that may help to clarify the
details of the origin and the courses of migration of the
contemporary European Gypsy population.
NOTES
1. We do not offer a translation of Daniel's manuscript, but
paraphrase those sections we deem to be relevant for the purpose of
this article. We believe, in fact, that it is nearly impossible to
accurately translate the manuscript. Daniel indulges in digressions
and remarks that are difficult to understand when translated into
English. It is also not quite clear how much Daniel might have known
of the literature available.
2. It should be a bull, not an ox.
3. We wish to thank Jan Filipsky for having drawn our attention to
this fact.
4. The idea that the name "Melalo" means "The Dirty One" is
supported by the fact that the Gypsies of eastern Slovakia called
him Bizuzo, "unclean" (see LACKOVA 1997).
TABLE 1: Queen Ana's Children
Legend for Chart:
A - Name
B - Order of birth all children
C - Sons
D - Daughters
E - Relationship
A B C D E
Melalo 1 1 -- --
Lily 2 -- 1 couple
Tculo 3 2 -- --
Tcaridyi 4 -- 2 couple
Shulalyi 5 -- 3 --
Bitoso 6 3 -- couple
Lolmistro 7 4 -- --
Minceskre 8 -- 4 couple
Poreskoro 9 -- -- epicene
PHOTO (BLACK & WHITE): FIGURE 1: Ana's eighth child, Minceskre.
REFERENCES CITED
BERGER, Hermann
1984 Mythologie der Zigeuner. In Worterbuch der Mythologie, 1. Abt.,
Band V, Hrsg. Hans Wilhelm Haussig, 775-823. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
DANIEL, Rudolf
n.d. Housle a kun (Violin and Horse). Manuscript, collection of the
authors.
FRASER, A.
1993 The Gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell.
HOBSCHMANNOVA, M.
1998 Saj pes dovakeras--muzeme se domluvit (We can make ourself
understood). Olomouc: PU.
LACKOVA, E.
1997 Narodila jsem se pod st' astnou hevezdou (I was born under the
Happy Star). Praha: Triada.
SCHOTT, Artur und Albert SCHOTT
1845 Walachische Marchen. Stuttgart.
WLISLOCKI, H. von
1892 Aus dem inneren Leben der Zigeuner. Berlin
~~~~~~~~
By Nina Pavelcik, 68801 U. Brod, Czech Republic and Jiri Pavelcik,
68801 U. Brod, Czech Republic
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Source: Asian Folklore Studies, 2001, Vol. 60 Issue 1, p21, 10p
Item: 5178099
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