A question to stump the tartan experts.

[Dreadbelly]

Dread my friend, this is a stretch to end all stretches. The Russian word "cossack" came from observing the Kazakh nomads in Central Asia, and in Russian was originally used as a reference to serfs who fled to the East of Beyond to live without masters. Originally the word came from a Turkic phrase meaning "free man." Now, if you hie yesel over to www.district-tartans.com and click on tartan finder, then Europe, and then Kazakhstan, you'll see an artifact tartan, in blue and gold and black. It's listed as a Kazakhstan tartan, but that's just because it was found there. Who knows what tribe wove it? From the Kazakh nomads to the Cossacks in one easy step, and playing off the "free man" or "independent spirit" to the gypsy/Roma blood you've got . . . Matt Newsome lists this tartan as available woven to order, and I know someone who'd be willing to go in with you on the order. In fact, I actually AM someone who'd be willing to go in with you on the order.

However, I have also heard that the gypsies originated in India (allegedly proven through linguistic regression . . . ). Could a madras print possibly be appropriate?

Just throwing out ideas, amigo!

Maybe when I have the money.

[Ialtog]

It looks like you might run into the same problem with Capercaillie tartan - having to order it special woven.

I ran across this website though: http://www.scottishgypsies.co.uk/

I got to thinking that if you wanted to honor this strand of your family, it might be easier (and less expensive) to perhaps choose a district tartan from Scotland where Gypsies lived. The district tartans often utilize colors reflecting the land, rather than a family, thereby allowing you to focus on the colors of the areas these people lived in. Maybe this would be an acceptable way of honoring them. Also, many of these Gypsies (or Egyptians as they were often called in Scotland) were forcibly removed to the Carolinas in the US. The Carolina tartan might also be a "melting pot" selection that would work for you.

[Dreadbelly]

It looks like you might run into the same problem with Capercaillie tartan - having to order it special woven.

I ran across this website though: http://www.scottishgypsies.co.uk/

I got to thinking that if you wanted to honor this strand of your family, it might be easier (and less expensive) to perhaps choose a district tartan from Scotland where Gypsies lived. The district tartans often utilize colors reflecting the land, rather than a family, thereby allowing you to focus on the colors of the areas these people lived in. Maybe this would be an acceptable way of honoring them. Also, many of these Gypsies (or Egyptians as they were often called in Scotland) were forcibly removed to the Carolinas in the US. The Carolina tartan might also be a "melting pot" selection that would work for you.

In 1571, an Act of stringency was passed upon them and all the hangers-on which they attracted - bards, minstrels and vagabond scholars. During the next thirty-three years the penalties on the Gypsies increased, just as in England. The Court Records show how hanging, drowning and being deported were the order of the day for those convicted of being Gypsies.
An Act passed in 1579 refers to the gypsies as 'the idle peopil calling themselves Egyptians'.
This Act included the requirement that any person found to be a gypsy was to be nailed to a tree by the ears, and thereafter to have the said ears cut off.
In 1603, the Privy Council ordered the entire race of gypsies to leave Scotland by a certain date, never to return on pain of death.

Oooh I don't like this at all. Horrors! Nailed to a tree by your ears just for being a gypsy? And that whole never to return on pain of death thing... Ugh.

Gypsies seem to be the last acceptable target for racism.

[Splash_4]

Gypsies seem to be the last acceptable target for racism.

Not to get too far off topic, but in many ways your are correct. In the countries I have visited (Russia, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, etc), Gypsies are routinely set up for harrassment by both the public and the authorities.

However, back to the topic, I think the suggestion of the Capercaillie tartan is the most appropriate!

[macwilkin]

STOP THE PRESSES!

Here is a tartan with a "gypsy connection":

The Meg Merrilees tartan was first produced by William Wilson of Bannockburn in 1829 to celebrate the fictional gypsy character in Sir Walter Scott's novel "Guy Mannering" published in 1815.

-- http://www.merrileesclan.org.nz/tartan.html

or

-- http://www.electricscotland.com/tartans/story4.htm

So there you go.

Cheers,

Todd

[gilmore]

STOP THE PRESSES!

Here is a tartan with a "gypsy connection":

The Meg Merrilees tartan was first produced by William Wilson of Bannockburn in 1829 to celebrate the fictional gypsy character in Sir Walter Scott's novel "Guy Mannering" published in 1815.

-- http://www.merrileesclan.org.nz/tartan.html

or

-- http://www.electricscotland.com/tartans/story4.htm

So there you go.

Cheers,

Todd

Hmmm....a tartan invented by a mill owner to celebrate a fictional character that was, most likely, a far cry from anything gypsies were actually like in the period portrayed. I wonder if an actual gypsy has ever even seen it.

But then maybe I am missing the point, which seems to be mill owners and kilt merchants making money off of people so deparate to claim some kind of heritage that they will swallow most anything.

[Dreadbelly]

Hmmm....a tartan invented by a mill owner to celebrate a fictional character that was, most likely, a far cry from anything gypsies were actually like in the period portrayed. I wonder if an actual gypsy has ever even seen it.

But then maybe I am missing the point, which seems to be mill owners and kilt merchants making money off of people so deparate to claim some kind of heritage that they will swallow most anything.

A: It is pretty looking.

B: It is a start. Some times, it really is the thought that counts.

C: If you have something better to offer, please, by all means, post up! Otherwise, why bash?

[macwilkin]

Hmmm....a tartan invented by a mill owner to celebrate a fictional character that was, most likely, a far cry from anything gypsies were actually like in the period portrayed. I wonder if an actual gypsy has ever even seen it.

But then maybe I am missing the point, which seems to be mill owners and kilt merchants making money off of people so deparate to claim some kind of heritage that they will swallow most anything.

Methinks you are reading far too much into this, gilmore. Dreadbelly wanted a tartan with a gypsy connection, and this one had it, albiet a fictional one. And besides, Sir Walter was just as much as anyone "to blame" for many tartan myths, so why not chuckle at the irony of his connection to this supposed "gypsy" tartan instead of getting upset?

T.

[ccga3359]

Wow interesting thread, Dread! I'm curious did the League of Nations have a tartan or certain colours? My paternal Grandmother was a gypsy, born ia a caravan of no fixed abode. These caravans were very ornately coloured perhaps something along those lines?

[gilmore]

Methinks you are reading far too much into this, gilmore. Dreadbelly wanted a tartan with a gypsy connection, and this one had it, albiet a fictional one. And besides, Sir Walter was just as much as anyone "to blame" for many tartan myths, so why not chuckle at the irony of his connection to this supposed "gypsy" tartan instead of getting upset?

T.

Who is upset? I am wryly amused and saddened at the same time.

It is about more than irony. It is the perpetuation of myth at the expense of learning the truth about one's ancestors, their lives and their other now-living descendants, myths and distortions that were invented at the time to romanticize people---gypsies, travellers, Jews, and others---who were actually being demonized and persecuted by the powers that be.

Similar examples come out of the Clearances of the late 18th/early 19th centuries. Today, many of us in the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc are the descendants of Scots emigrants who were thrown off the lands their families had lived on for generations by the landowners, who found it more profitable to raise sheep than have the land farmed. Both the landowners and tenants often had been of the same clan, albeit some centuries previous to this, when the clan system was actually a living entity, a way of life, and thus often went by the same surnames. Nonetheless, the cheifs and cheiftans who had become land owning aristocracy, forced many of our ancestors, who had become or remained peasants (or agricultural laborers, to use today's vernacular) to leave, and burning their homes so that they would not return.

These same cheifs and cheiftans often decided upon, or more usually acquiesed to, the tartan designs that the descendants of their evicted tenants and badly mistreated "fellow clansmen" so proudly wear today, totally unaware of their own history, of how the remnants of the clan system in Scotland played a part in their own ancestors forced migrations to the New Worlds.

Meanwhile, the Scots peasantry was being romanticized, by Burns, Sir Walter Scott and others, not unlike the romanticization of the gypsies and travellers.