I was absorbed in another genealogy, for Ollie, a friend from sixth form days who I had recently reconnected with on facebook. Stuart Alcock was his full name. In his family there was a story about them being related to Howard Carter who had discovered the tomb of Tutankhamun. As I saw from my research, Ollie's was a family full of illegitimacies from way back to a Susan Stagg who had been locked up for being a lewd woman. She had a whole brood of little fatherless kids, being a pioneer single mother. Such rebellion carried all the way down to modern times, with the men of the family marrying girls who already had fatherless children. Even Susan's daughters and granddaughters had followed this trend.
One tragic family story, as always there was at least one, was of Ollie's ancestress, Louisa, newly married with a baby, who aged 20 fell down some stairs and died, which was said to be due to an epileptic fit. Ollie's mother knew of this and had told him that after Louisa died her husband, Robert Carter, caused a scandal by running off with a 16 year old. And there was the usual stuff one finds, like families getting fined for not sending their children to school. The Carters of the family may or may not have been related to Howard Carter who found the tomb of Tutankhamun, but it is to be seen that one member of the family was given the middle name of Phoenix. The only thing was, although all did have links with Swaffham, Howard Carter's people were rich and Ollie's were all pool labourers; so maybe all was but wishful thinking. One could not know, and then were there not plenty of anonymous biological fathers in this Norfolk family, so maybe...
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![]() I watched some documentaries about gypsy peoples, always fascinating, of Bulgarians, Russians, and Romanians, their child marriages, barefoot dancing, and of girls staying home. When I see such old style traditionalism something there has an appeal. Its that bohemian kind of freedom, of no school and nomadism, of ethnic long skirts, and yes, bare feet. Its a kind of hippy style I myself have had. It is interesting that my mother has this 2% eastern European and myself 1%. I have already considered that the Mediterranean DNA I have may be gypsy. And now, on looking at an Irish gypsy documentary, I see a picture of old world traditional gypsies with the features of my County Kerry Irish. This is the first time I consider that my Sugrue/Sheehans may also have been gypsy. The gypsy theme in my families past is really but a fanciable one with no solid facts, but I do have some fascination about this. Modern gypsies don't have a good reputation for their feuding and crimes and for the dominance of their men over the women. But I do see that there were certain qualities further back, in regard to their closeness to nature, their love of music, the closeness of families that help one another in life's journeying, and their living separate from societies overbearing demands and rules and regulations, posings and limitations. I watched more gypsy documentaries, one being a tragic perspective, and one a so interesting historical account. On a visit round to Jeremy's I talked with him about gypsies, this being topical now, and on account of realisations I'm now having that a real reason why I find myself unacceptable in the eyes of some people, how I get judged and have even had social services bloody turned onto me, basically being disregarded, is because I have 'the gypsy' in me. So does Jeremy and he also is easily dismissed. I have at least, potentially that is, 11% of me being gypsy and that is just of the Mediterranean type, as whatever else in me is of gypsy derivation would up that number to an unknown amount. Those Irish travellers I may be linked to, it may be that they are descended from the original nomads of Ireland, before all other invaders came and took over their lands. Either way, eastern or western, these gypsies have kept themselves freer from societies neurotic imposed standards and hoity-toity impositions. I am free too in this regard. My kids may get dirty in their play, so what. I know how to rough it and don't mind clutter and chaos in my life. I don't poof up in general my appearance. I don't insist my kids go to school or do homework. I prefer them to be free, to just be natural. I accept handouts if need is there without getting hung up or guilty. I stole as a child. I can't be done with small talk. And I don't know how to deal with authorities and even avoid all that. And right now I feel that all this is because of the gypsy in me, that 11% plus. I get this from both my parents. And then there's Jeremy, with plenty of money and yet he chooses to scavenge food in bins. Its not that we are 'low class' as lower classes don't accept us either. And middle classes exceptionally judge. Higher classes, rather curiously, can actually accept because they have no need to prove themselves and appreciate individuality, that old British eccentricity. Both Jeremy and I have gypsy in us, as far as I can work out, and not from modern times, but further back. And I have so been attracted to India where the gypsies originated. My Irish Sugrues were dysfunctional, this I have discovered, and this has kind of helped me to understand more my own dysfunctionalism. And to comprehend all now within the greater context of gypsyness makes more sense and has more impact. Because this is as if a whole family clan which was lost is now refound. And for this I have attained some identification along with group pride, and this sense that all the hoity-toity judges do just that because they sift through those around them marking out who is of worth and who is of them, their type, their people, and all this even though their people have enslaved, attacked and persecuted others. This is why I refer to their ill placed hoity-toity superiority complex. So I would sum up one trouble stirring critic from my village with her 'oh you come to the pub and lay your sleeping child on a bench while partying' (horror of horrors) - not worthy of being a mother then, this being what is in her head. Yes, well, I breastfed my children, I carried them around, and slept with them. I stayed with them, rather than going off chasing money and a career, rather than leaving them with a child minder. I took them along with me on all my travel adventures. I have a nomadic soul. I am free and you are not. But its your society, your rules, and you can just phone anonymously child protection services and get my darlings taken away from me. Because the way you and others think life should be lived is so limiting and all not in your box is condemned. So long I thought others picked on me because I am gentle and not assertive. How could I have any satisfaction in this matter, that being pleasant makes me inadequate. With new understanding, that it is my gypsyness attracting hostility, then its not so personal and against my own lack. It is rather a war on my tribe. And now I have a people to align with and I would rather feel I am with them than your uptight communities in which I never belonged. I have always been an outcaste, an outsider. My standards are different to yours, more relaxed. You are the lines on the pavement and I am the spaces between and beyond. My mother has 7% English in her, unlike me, and its that Anglo-Saxon in her that despises all that is not of civilisation and posturing. I don't have that same brake on me, of what has been more free flowing in our ancient peoples and their ways of relating to the world. This is how I can attune more to more natural elements in my being. So it is, that of such things I talked to Jeremy, though not in such detail. And people nowadays call the travellers Romanys, not gypsies, or at least some people assert this. But either way such names reflect places long lived in since leaving India, whether Romania or Egypt. The gypsy word gets labelled as fake and erroneous along with the statement that never really had travellers come from there. And yet the brilliant documentary I'd watched revealed that the gypsies did go to Egypt and still are there, and even by that north African route had travelled to the south of Spain. Around Granada they lived in cave houses and spoke of coming from Africa, and this is even though others of their people crossed Europe and came down into Spain from other directions. Even in Egypt, some family stories talk of having been in Hungary before going down to Africa. Although associated with musicians historically gifted to Persia, gypsies also have plenty of military words in their vocabulary hinting that they had also been employed as warriors, maybe against the Islamic colonisations of the near East. In Egypt, although it has put them in danger, there are still gypsies who have kept apart from Islam. Either way, in Egypt they have lived on the peripheries, surviving through their music, by their dancing girls, even prostitution, whatever must be done to survive. The Egyptian gypsies admit that crime has also been a part of their overland journey. Although long in Persia, Islam drove them out from there into Turkey which was then safely still part of the Byzantine Empire. With ottoman conquerings they had to travel on yet again, into eastern Europe. There they were legally forced by the civilisation around them into slavery. This brutal history of imposed slavery could go a long way to explaining the modern degradation still affecting these people, their impoverishment, drug and alcohol addictions, family neglect, and unsafe settlements. For they had been broken. Hitler had rounded up so many of them for his death camps. But some escaped all that, having instead gone down to Egypt and all the way round to southern Spain. Their music and songs are also their healing, from all past inflicted sufferings, emotional turmoils channeled into creative sustenance. That passionate music has anciently the quality of depth still found in Indian bhajans. And they never lost their goddess Kali, transforming her at the very least into the Christian Sara Kali in the Carmargue of France. Those gypsies that crossed Europe, I am both of them and the southern Spanish. And it appears that the gypsies soon enough both encountered and interbred with the nomadic Irish. When I see in my DNA that I am Anatolian, middle eastern, eastern European, Greek, Italian, Spanish, and have some French too, well, this is all the journey they took. More and more, then, I make sense of this Mediterranean Europeanness I have as being, at least in part, of gypsy derivation. Anciently gypsies had a sense of their own nobility as a people and when they first came to Britain were even seen as such. But attitudes changed and they had to adapt or disguise who they were or else soldier on regardless. I can't even express just how much happiness I have knowing my roots all the more and how much that means to me. And others will say that the past is irrelevant, but such words are of no consequence to me, because for me our family roots are part of our divinity even. And by this we find our vital historical place amongst the teeming masses of faceless people who have no stories. Not at all is the past an irrelevance and I have long known this. I have travailed so hard over the years to uncover such forgotten history, that which was reduced to but mysteries and disregarded shadows, while yet being essentially part of who we are, unknown and yet vital. I know that new age spiritually motivated people, of whom I have often situated myself, want to escape the body and the material, into a void, and I had originally accepted something of this dismissiveness, but not anymore. Because it is the totality that is relevant, being part of the miracle of evolving life, being precious, divine, and deserving to be honoured. All my research now leads somewhere and it feels so good. I am gypsy; it is the only way to make sense of the diverse patch-work of association with so many countries, places they travelled through and dwelt in. I'm happy to know. I'm gypsy and viking and Irish and Welsh. My dad disliked his Welshness and my mum her Irishness, but I love it all. And my squatters of the Forest of Dean, who were people outside of any parish, they were travellers too! Red haired, natural, rebelling against any imposed authority, they had no home but the forest, where they made their huts and repeatedly saw them destroyed, and then built more. Evicting them was a nonsense as they were homeless and belonged nowhere. There was nowhere else for them to go. They were extraneous to the system. All lands beyond the forest had been enclosed, partitioned and claimed, everywhere divided into parishes where people belonged, but not them. And what kind of travellers they themselves were, who knows. But I am so happy. I have made sense of a past that otherwise would not have been known. And I knew of Shetland Vikings and Welsh and Irish and Forest of dean, but I never knew of gypsies. If some of the elders of our family knew of this they preferred it forgotten. But I have discovered it anyway. It wakens a whole part of me, reinvigorates what was lost and yet was always there. And that feels so good. AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. |
AuthorSusie Harrison and her hobby of genealogy, always looking into her own and her friends family trees. Categories
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