From: The Encyclopedia of Canada's Peoples/Gypsies/rom/Matt T. Salo
The best overall introduction to the origins and history of Gypsies is Angus Fraser, The Gypsies (Oxford, U.K., 1992). The most comprehensive bibliography on the subject, Gypsies and Travelers in North America: An Annotated Bibliography , by William G. Lockwood and Sheila Salo (Cheverly, Md., 1994), is indexed by subject, ethnic group, geography, and chronology. The best source on the language of the Rom, which is quite similar to that spoken by the Canadian Rom, is The Language of the Swedish Coppersmith Gipsy Johan Dimitri Taikon (Uppsala, Sweden, 1963).
From the anthropological perspective, the most general introduction to Gypsy groups in North America is Matt T. Salo, “Gypsy Ethnicity: Implications of Native Categories and Interaction for Ethnic Classification,” Ethnicity , vol.6 (1979), 73–96. Based primarily on personal ethnographic research, including fieldwork among American and Canadian Rom, and Ludar and Romnichel Gypsies in the United States, the study analyses the varieties of Gypsies in North America and presents brief historical sketches of each.
An important aspect of the Rom world-view, which has to be understood by any serious student of Rom culture, is explained in Carol Miller, “Machwaya Gypsy Marime ” (M.A. thesis, University of Washington, 1968). It contains an exposition of Rom purity regulations and pollution taboos which, although based on United States Machwaya Rom, is equally applicable to the Canadian Rom.
The first detailed study of Canadian Rom is Matt Salo and Sheila Salo The Kalderash in Eastern Canada (Ottawa, 1977). It is the most comprehensive ethnography of Canadian Rom, based solely on first-hand observation and interviews. An earlier attempt by an historian, Andrew Marchbin’s “A Critical History of the Origin and Migration of the Gypsies” (Ph.D. thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1939), has a chapter titled “Gypsy Immigration to Canada,” which also appeared in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society , vol.13 (1934), 134–44, under the same title.
The only other attempt to provide an overview of Canadian Gypsies, although it focuses primarily on the Rom, is a series of articles by the Canadian author Ronald Lee, “The Gypsies in Canada: An Ethnological Study,” that appeared in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society , vol.46, nos.1–2 (1969), 38–51; vol.47, nos.1–2 (1969), 12–28; and vol.48, nos.3–4 (1969), 92–107. More detail on the Rom are presented in Lee’s semi-autobiographical novel Goddam Gypsy (Montreal, 1971). The book is an odyssey into the world of the Canadian Rom which provides vignettes of Rom daily life in eastern Canada, vignettes, however, that are marred by some inaccurate speculations on matters not based on the author’s personal observations.
More specialized topics on Canadian Rom are treated in Werner Cohn’s series of sociological studies focusing on kinship and marriage. These include “Some Comparisons between Gypsy (North American Rom) and American English Kinship Terms,” American Anthropologist , vol.71, 476–82; “La persistance d’un groupe paria relativement stable: quelques réflexions sur les Tsiganes nord-américains,” Études tsiganes , vol.16, nos.2–3 (1970), 3–23; “‘Marko and Moso’: A Gypsy Tale from Canada Told by Biga,” Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society , vol.51, nos.1-2 (1972), 13–27; and “Marriage chez les Rom nordaméricains: quelques conséquences du ‘prix de la mariée’,” Études tsiganes , vol.18, nos.2–3 (1973), 4–11. Some of this research is also summarized in a somewhat more general work: Werner Cohn, The Gypsies (Reading, Mass., 1972). Cohn’s studies, based mainly on the author’s first-hand research with a Machwano Rom family in western Canada, are exemplary in their reliance on solid data rather than on the kind of speculation that weakens much of the literature on Gypsies. Also among the more specialized works is Chantal Hilaire, “La divination chez les Tsiganes Rom Kalderash” (Ph.D. thesis, l’Université Laval, 1988). The author attempts to make a case, not otherwise verified, that Canadian Rom fortune-telling reflects Rom cosmology.
The only item attributable to a Canadian Rom, Steve Demitro, consists of a brief collection of “Folk Tales” in Survey Graphic , vol.59, no.1 (1927), 17–19, 58–59. The piece consists of an assortment of tales, legends, and anecdotes collected during interviews with Demitro while he was visiting Chicago as a boy.
In addition to the small body of literature on the Canadian Rom, the National Museums of Canada, Centre for Folklife Studies, in Ottawa, has the beginnings of a collection of ethnographic material on the Rom. Incidental sources may be found in other libraries and archives, but no other institution has attempted systematically to collect information on Gypsies in Canada. The only journal regularly publishing information on Gypsies in the Americas is the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society , founded in 1888 and currently published in Cheverly, Maryland. The Victor Weybright Archives of Gypsy Studies, which attempts to collect all existing sources of information on North American Gypsies, is housed at the offices of the Gypsy Lore Society.‘
