About the Book

A close observer of English and Welsh gypsies, Francis Hindes Groome assembled seventy-six traditional tales from them and from a group of East European gypsies who came to the north of England in 1886. The tales belong to the Indo-European category of magical fictions, and include comparative end-notes written by Groome.

Introduction and Theories

In a seventy-four page introduction he developed his diffusionist theory of the gypsies as carriers of folk tales from India to Persia and America, to the Balkan Peninsula and thence to western Europe.

Themes and Characters

What others saw as survivals in German peasant tales Groome perceived as living realities in gypsy tales, whose characters sold blood to the devil, saw fairies, worshiped trees, and observed taboos, just as the storytellers did in their own lives.