Gypsy Folk Tales (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781410203045)

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. 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. 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.

Author: Francis Hindes Groome
ISBN-10: 1410203042
ISBN-13: 9781410203045
Publisher: University Press of the Pacific
Language: English
Published: 12/10/2002
Pages: 388
Format: Paperback
Weight: 1.08lbs
Size: 8.50h x 5.50w x 0.86d