GYPSY. BtVS Intertext/Allusion. 

In “Angel” (1007), we are told how Angel came to be a (then) unique vampire. But not until the Angel episode “5 x 5” (1018), do we see the event which occurred in Romania in 1898 and led to Angelus’ curse:

DARLA: Happy birthday, Angelus.

ANGELUS: She’s a Gypsy.

DARLA: I looked everywhere.

To those who specialize in the history, culture and future of the Romani peoples, and the people themselves, “Gypsy” is a problematic term. Often pejorative, it tends to refer to the ethnic communities, otherwise known as the Rom, who speak Romani, and any of its dialects. However, not all who are called Gypsy come from the four tribes of the Rom: Kalderash, the Machavaya, the Lovari, and the Churari. Other Gypsy groups include: the Romanichal, the Gitanoes (Kalé) from Spain and Portugal, the Sinti from Germany, the Ungaritza, the Luri, and the Xoraxai.

Gypsies are, historically, a nomadic people who trace their ancestry back to northwest India. While the ancestors of the modern-day Gypsies arrived in Turkey and Greece in the tenth century, they did not enter Europe until the fourteenth century. Due in part to their dark coloration and in part to the legends utilized to their benefit, Europeans originally believed the new migrants were from Egypt, hence the name Gypsy. It was not until the late nineteenth century that the lexical similarities between Romany, the language of the majority of Gypsies, and languages of the Indian subcontinent were analyzed, thus supporting the notion of an Indian heritage.

Gypsies have lived under the threat of slavery and intense persecution since the Middle Ages. Their darker coloration, nomadic nature, as well as the laws enacted against them throughout the ages enabled the stereotypes of Gypsies to persist.

In “Buffy vs Dracula,” the Season Five opener, Riley questions Spike about the reality of Dracula, as opposed to the myth surrounding him. Spike implies that Dracula, like the Gypsies with whom we associate him, are  showmen, putting on “circus” acts, telling fortunes and entertaining any who cared to watch:

RILEY: But he's not just a regular vampire. I mean, he has special powers, right?

SPIKE: Nothing but showy Gypsy stuff. What's it to you, anyway?

Ironically, Dracula never displayed any “Gypsy tricks” in the novel. The Gypsies living around his castle, who shoveled dirt into caskets so he’d have “native soil” with him on his journey, treated him as an employer, or master. Historically, in 1445, Vlad Tepes (Count Vlad Dracul) brought a large number of Gypsies into Wallachia as slaves. Slavery was abolished in Romania in 1856, only forty years before Dracula.

Today, Gypsies live in almost every part of the world. Migration to the New World began with colonization, but like a large proportion of East Europeans, the majority of North American Gypsies trace their family’s arrival to the great migrations of the late nineteenth century.

Select Bibliography:

Acton, T. 1974. Gypsy Politics and Social Change. London: Routledge, Kegan and Paul.

Fonseca, Isabel. 1996. Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey. London: Vintage. (This text is best read for the sections covering the — largely ignored — Gypsy suffering during the Holocaust. Before reading it, however, see the review in Patrin’s bibliography.)

Fraser, Angus. 1995. The Gypsies. Oxford: Blackwell.

Hancock, Ian. [1987] 1999. The Pariah Syndrome, rev. ed. http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/pariah-ch14.htm.

Liégeois, Jean-Pierre 1986. Gypsies: An Illustrated History. London:Al-Saqi. (Translation of his 1983 book Tsiganes, Paris: La Decouverte.)

On-line sources:

Gypsy Lore Society: http://www.gypsyloresociety.org/.

The Patrin Web Journal: Romani Culture and History. 1999: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/5121/.

Roma in the Czech Republic. 2000: http://www.romove.cz/en/

Romani.org: http://www.romani.org/.

--Jennifer Dowling