Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 24, 1913.djvu/340

 ;^iS Ccreuionial Ctistoins of the British Gipsies.

time. In the central area the state of affairs is a little different. It is only within the last hundred years that the Hemes and Boswells, with sonne of the Smiths and Lees and Grays, migrated into it from the south-east of England, and there is still a perceptible drift northwards, and, to a lesser extent, westwards. It is no rare thing now to meet Welsh Lees in Lancashire, Lancashire Boswells in Ireland and Cumberland, or Yorkshire Hemes in Scot- land, but it would be quite extraordinary to meet them to the south of their recognized districts. Wide-wandering bands are not at all common, a fact which is bound up with the absence of any family organization.

The ill-defined, consanguine groups that, followiiig the example of the Gipsies themselves, I have "called families, are quite unorganized. Not this kind of family, but the individual family, — husband, wife, and children, — is the social unit. There appear, however, to be some survivals from an earlier stage in the process of family evolution. At the present time descent is as a rule reckoned in the male line, but from a study of English Gipsy pedigrees it seems probable that matrilineal descent was a little more frequent in times past than it is now. No particular custom or rule can be discovered. Elijah Boswell, for instance, had three wives at the same time, two of whom were Gipsies and sisters called Smith, and the third a gdji, (a non-Gipsy). His children by the Gipsy wives were all called Smith, those by the gdji Boswell. The Youngs, on the other hand, owe their surname to Miller Heme's wife, Winifred Young, who can have been little better than a gdji. Women seem to retain their own surnames after marriage ; at least they are nearly always referred to by them. Sophy Heme, the wife of Taiso Boswell, used to be very indignant, and not infre- quently violent, whenever anyone so much as suggested that her name was Sophy Boswell.- Again, after marriage

^Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, New Series, vol. v., p. 149 ; (Old Series, 1888-92 ; New Series, 1907 onwards).