Gypsy Gal

When it appeared that all was lost, that both mother and child would soon perish, Olney sent word to the gypsies to send someone who could help deliver his wife from her suffering.

Three gypsy women arrived and his son was born within the hour. Partly out of gratitude and partly from delirium, the young father asked the gypsies to bless his son. The women wept and said it would be a privilege.

The boy, who was named Thomas after his father, was placed in the midst of a circle of candles. A strange ritual followed, with incantations in strange languages. The women rubbed a foul ointment on the infant's forehead and proceeded to prophecy. "One day, when this boy is a man, he will be permitted the gift of having one wish granted by the gods, when he wishes for it with all his heart. It will be like a dream, and the world will never be the same."

The prophecy was accompanied by a curious feeling of both elation and dread, which pierced Olney's heart like a thorn. He wondered what it would be that his son would wish for. And he wondered how the world would be changed.

~Excerpt from my short story "Unremembered History of the World"

When I wrote this story, which is now published and available in my first collection of published stories, I didn't know all that much about gypsies. Or rather, my understanding of gypsies was a fuzzy one associated with scenes in movies, fortune tellers and a sense of the exotic. One of our dogs, a black border collie, is named Gypsy.

So I woke this morning thinking about gypsies because the Bob Dylan song Spanish Harlem Incident was playing in my head. Spanish Harlem Incident appeared on his third album, Another Side of Bob Dylan.

Gypsies are not a homogeneous entity, however. According to the Joshua Project, there are approximately 266,000 people in this ethnic group that originated in India. They were musicians, entertainers and metal workers who were pushed out of India and went to Persia where they eventually broke into two branches, one group moving into Europe and the other remaining Middle Eastern. But there are also Scottish gypsies, and according to Wikipedia there were a number of different groups of these as well, tinkerers and the like.

According to the Smithsonian Education Project, on a page titled Migrations In History, there are as many as six groups of gypsies in the United States. Each has cultural, historic and linguistic traditions. Hungarian, Rom, Ludar, and "Black Dutch" are a few of these.

In many respects these gypsy groups reflect the sense of being strangers and pilgrims in a weary land, of being outcasts. Those who have their heart's hope set on a better place often feel as if "this world is not my home." Gypsies and many other groups through history have known this feeling of being outcast, this sense of apartness.

The word gypsy conjures up an image of something foreign yet fascinating. While the Beatles were singing I Want To Hold Your Hand, Love Me Do and She Loves You, and Gale Garnett was making popular his We'll Sing in the Sunshine, Dylan was scrawling lyrics like these from another dimension of the lyric universe.

Spanish Harlem Incident

Gypsy gal, the hands of Harlem
Cannot hold you to its heat
Your temperature’s too hot for taming
Your flaming feet burn up the street
I am homeless, come and take me
Into reach of your rattling drums
Let me know, babe, about my fortune
Down along my restless palms

Gypsy gal, you got me swallowed
I have fallen far beneath
Your pearly eyes, so fast an’ slashing
An’ your flashing diamond teeth
The night is pitch black, come an’ make my
Pale face fit into place, ah, please!
Let me know, babe, I’m nearly drowning
If it’s you my lifelines trace

I been wond’rin’ all about me
Ever since I seen you there
On the cliffs of your wildcat charms I’m riding
I know I’m ’round you but I don’t know where
You have slayed me, you have made me
I got to laugh halfways off my heels
I got to know, babe, will you surround me?
So I can tell if I’m really real

Copyright © 1964 by Warner Bros. Inc.; renewed 1992 by Special Rider Music

An Unremembered Historyof the World (The Beginning)

SHORT STORY MONDAY

An Unremembered History of the World
"I, Daniel, was deeply troubled by my thoughts, and my face turned pale, but I kept the matter to myself." Daniel 7:28


When we speak of history, we must always remind ourselves that we are speaking only of "history as we know it." The task of historians to document, revise and debate the events and meanings of events in human history is a daunting one, even when simplified to contain only that which is known. (By known, I mean known by the human race in our specific line of experience from Adam to the present.)

We are not debating Adam and Eve here. That is a tedious debate that is ultimately a matter of faith. Rather, I am proposing that our historians make a greater effort to record the alternate histories alternate histories, the streams that flow from alternate choices that could have been made throughout the courses of time.

In the village of Dunn on the outskirts of Devonshire, England, in the spring of 1698, a sequence of events occurred which would have a dramatic impact on the history of the world. Like the fabled grain of mustard seed, the events seemed small and would have otherwise gone unnoticed had they not been recorded in a journal which has been passed to us through the generations.

The thing that happened - or rather, the sequence of events which this story seeks to uncover beginning with this singular incident in the life of Thomas Olney, a Dunn tailor - is staggering to consider. Perhaps this is why our minds repress such knowledge. It is too weighty. But then, what if... Let us leave off from musings and examine that which we have come to know.

It is well known that in these parts nomadic tribes of gypsies passed with frequency and, on certain occasions especially associated with lunar convergences, the gypsies believed themselves to have the mystical ability to confer special powers to newborn infants.

Olney's wife had been in an unusually protracted labor. He feared her life was endangered. It was a particularly bitter blow to Olney, being naturally inclined to optimism as he was. The only town physician, his name is not important, had gone to the sea for a holiday. Because Olney had expected the good doctor to return in time to deliver the baby, he thus prevented his wife from going to stay with her sister in Devonshire where there were several doctors in service.

When it appeared that all was lost, that both mother and child would soon perish, Olney sent word to the gypsies to send someone who could help deliver his wife from her suffering.

Three gypsy women arrived and his son was born within the hour. Partly out of gratitude and partly from delirium, the young father asked the gypsies to bless his son. The women wept and said it would be a privilege.

The boy, who was named Thomas after his father, was placed in the midst of a circle of candles. A strange ritual followed, with incantations in strange languages. The women rubbed a foul ointment on the infant's forehead and proceeded to prophecy. "One day, when this boy is a man, he will be permitted the gift of having one wish granted by the gods, when he wishes for it with all his heart. It will be like a dream, and the world will never be the same.

"The prophecy was accompanied by a strange feeling of both elation and dread, which pierced Olney's heart like a thorn. He wondered what it would be that his son would wish for. And he wondered how the world would be changed.


TO BE CONTINUED
Photo credit: K Pattern 3 by Susie, upper right image on this page