Abstract
THE TABOO OF WOMEN AMONG GYPSIES.—The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, now happily revived with good prospects of success, publishes in its opening number an article by Mr. T. W. Thompson on “The Uncleanness of Women among English Gypsies,” which brings us back, in this England of ours, to savage taboos which Sir James Frazer has copiously illustrated in the “Golden Bough,”and reminds us that the Gypsies are a foreign, oriental race established in our midst. Women, not only at special periodical seasons, are treated as impure. Gypsies will destroy any piece of crockery or any cooking utensil touched by a woman's skirt: no woman may walk over a stream or spring from which drinking water is taken, lest it may become denied: and this power of contamination without contact applies to things like crockery: “Suppose now,” said a girl, “my mother or one'm the girls had stepped over the tea-things as we was getting our teas, d'ye think my father'd ha' eaten another bite?” Women engaged in cooking never touch “red meat”—beef, mutton, or liver—but roll up their sleeves and put the meat into the pot with a fork. Men object to women using for washing up the crockery the soap they use for washing themselves. The article deserves consideration as describing a remarkable survival of taboo among a civilised race.
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Research Items. Nature 109, 319–320 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109319a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109319a0