RW Gypsies (or, as they call themselves, the Romany Rye) are descended from an Indian group (as in the country India) which left India no later than about 1000 C.E. (as I recall reading; I don't have the sources in front of me). Their language, Romany, is in an Indian language group. Europeans in the Middle Ages believed that they were from Egypt, maybe because of their dark skins. Hence the name "Gypsy." They are quite distinctive looking, being below average height, dark skinned, but with sharp caucasian-like features. (At least the ones I know all answer to this description.)
In the Middle Ages, Europeans had a legend that the Christ was crucified with only three nails because the Gypsies stole the fourth. Thus, the Gypsies were collectively forgiven the crime of stealing.
Gypsies have long had a reputation for being petty thieves and for cheating people in trading. Hence the (offensive) English word "gyp," meaning to take advantage of someone in a deal, or to defraud someone about the quality of goods being traded. The Gypsies in my area (Prince William County, Virginia) have a reputation of running driveway paving scams.
For those of you unfamiliar with this particular scam (or who don't live in a country with lots of driveways), I'll explain the two most common types: A. Offer to pave a person's driveway for $x "per foot." The property owner thinks you mean linear feet, and then you bill him for square feet. B. Offer a ridiculously low price to pave someone's driveway. Dump a big pile of asphalt at the base of the driveway, and threaten to leave it there instead of rolling it out unless they pay a ridiculously high price. In both the A. and B. scenarios, it helps to claim that you just finished a job and have some left-over asphalt you'll let go for cheap.
The gypsies I know are semi-nomadic, living out of trailers for the most part and spending every winter in Florida. One effect of this lifestyle is that their children do poorly in school and end up with no options but to follow in their parents' footsteps.
The Gypsies I know all have English-sounding surnames.
Many American travellers to Europe in the past few years have returned
with tales of Gypsy beggars and pickpockets/purse snatchers in France,
Germany, and Italy.
And that's all I know about Gypsies. A little less romantic than tarot-reading and all that jazz, but a bit more of a realistic portrait, at least of how outsiders see them.
As for Gloranthan Gypsies, there are probably all sorts of displaced populations in Glorantha, including some which are somewhat Gypsy-like. Some are permanent minorities, others are representatives of a population in the majority elsewhere (like Hungarians in present day Slovakia or Romania), and still others have different situations. Think of the Wends, the Welsh, and the Walloons, or the Bretons, the Basques, and the Burgundians. Each has a different and interesting story, and that's just European analogues. It seems odd that we know little or nothing about Gloranthan minorities/refugees, other than the Tarsh exiles and some Pelorian populations. The West should be chockablock with people nursing old territorial ambitions. Safelster should be the Balkans and then some.
--Martin
End of Glorantha Digest V2 #250
WWW material at http://hops.wharton.upenn.edu/~loren/rolegame.html
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