This study of the most famous family of Welsh Gypsies is a remarkable combination of historical and linguistic scholarship with inside knowledge drawn from family tradition.
The Gypsy family of Abram Wood first arrived in Wales in the eighteenth century, a tawny-skinned people speaking a language close to Hindi and Sanskrit. Welsh society found their customs strange and sometimes unacceptable.
The Gypsies lived their nomadic lives separate from the Welsh community for several generations. They included such colourful characters as Abram Wood himself, their chieftain, who always rode a pedigree horse but died in a cowshed on the slopes of Cader Idris; Silvaina, who was feared as a witch and who insisted that Robin her mule could understand every word of her Romani speech; Harry, who tried to emulate his idol Dick Turpin by riding a farm horse madly around a field; John Roberts of Newtown, known as 'Telynor Cymru' for his skill in the Welsh triple harp, and his family of whom nine sons and a daughter were all skilled musicians. Indeed the Wood family, from Abram to the twentieth century, provided Wales with many famous skilled harpists and fiddlers who performed Welsh music.
This book describes their lives, records their habits and culture, and tells their story up to their gradual integration by the twentieth century into the communities in which they had settled. Some of the Gypsy folk-tales and sayings are retold, and a chapter deals with the Romani language as it was spoken in Wales, in a surprisingly pure form, until quite recent times.
Eldra Jarman is a descendant of Abram Wood in the sixth generation. She is a great-granddaughter of John Roberts of Newtown and inherited the family gift for harp-playing. A. O. H. Jarman, her husband, was Professor of Welsh at University College, Cardiff until his retirement in 1979, and is the author of many distinguished volumes on early Welsh literature. Together they wrote Y Sipsiwn Cymreig (UWP, 1979) the Welsh volume of which this is an expanded and improved version.