Eva
Peulengro tells her own personal story of growing up in a Romany gypsy family.
This childhood she speaks of seems idyllic as she travels the countryside with her family in their painted
caravan, spending evenings by the fire listening to songs and stories. The men hunted
for food and tended to horses to make a living and the young girls joined the
women as they read palms.
But
the post-war years changed everything for the Romany people due to law and the
entrapment of society upon this culture. Eva lived her childhood comfortably in
the painted caravan alongside her hardworking well respected family.
However by the time she was 21, her family had moved into a home of bricks and
their vardo forced off the roads by tarmac, cars and a new kind of ‘traveller’
whose chaotic and often dishonest lifestyle besmirched the heritage of the real
Romanies.
From
Reading this book, it was so obvious that these people were incredibly intelligent
in their fields and worked very hard. Their knowledge of nature and their ability
to live sorely from the land was almost magical. For example, Eva’s father was
sought over all over the English countryside by farmers to come and heal their
sick animals. He had such a deep connection to animals it was almost magical,
as if he could talk to and understand them. Using natural materials, he would concoct
medicines that would heal these sick animals as well as humans.
They also used the land to eat and build shelter from. Aside from the
vardo, the gypsies would use bender tents to sleep in. These simple structures
were made from hazel or willow, tied together with nettle or root rope and
covered with canvas and this got me thinking that these cage like structures would
make really nice art objects and would give my work another perspective.
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