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

Went To See The Gypsy

Sitting here at the airport waiting to catch a plane, listening to Bob Dylan's New Morning album of 1970. Some called the album lightweight when it came out, but I think it has a lot of very fine songs, and a sweet sound with plenty to take away.

So I'm sitting here listening to Went To See The Gypsy, which many people say was about an encounter with Elvis, reading this meaning into lines like, "He did it in Las Vegas and he can do it here." The last two nights I've been staying at the Hilton, Elvis' stomping ground out here. Elvis paid annual homage to his fans here in the Mecca of Decadence during the month of August.

I personally love the chord structures and kinetic keyboard playfulness in the music even apart from the lyrics themselves. It's musically interesting with the building in of organ chords overlaying the tune, and the squirelly way the guitar gets a-pickin' as the song picks up.

The song describes an incident in "a little Minnesota town" and this, too, fits my mood today as I wait for the next flight to bring me home to my own little Minnesota town.

I didn't see Elvis or his ghost while I was here the past two days, but he did leave a lot of fingerprints.

Went To See The Gypsy

Went to see the gypsy
Stayin’ in a big hotel
He smiled when he saw me coming
And he said, “Well, well, well”
His room was dark and crowded
Lights were low and dim
“How are you?” he said to me
I said it back to him

I went down to the lobby
To make a small call out
A pretty dancing girl was there
And she began to shout
“Go on back to see the gypsy
He can move you from the rear
Drive you from your fear
Bring you through the mirror
He did it in Las Vegas
And he can do it here”

Outside the lights were shining
On the river of tears
I watched them from the distance
With music in my ears

I went back to see the gypsy
It was nearly early dawn
The gypsy’s door was open wide
But the gypsy was gone
And that pretty dancing girl
She could not be found
So I watched that sun come rising
From that little Minnesota town

Copyright © 1970 by Big Sky Music; renewed 1998 by Big Sky Music