Dictionary of Gypsy Life and Lore

By Harry E. Wedeck & Wade Baskin

Publisher Description

This comprehensive reference volume offers in-depth information on one of the world’s most fascinating and misunderstood cultures.

Throughout history, Gypsies all over the world have been maligned and rejected. Outcasts of the countries in which they live, these nomads have wandered for years over the face of the earth. They have no homeland, no political unity, no recognition among nations. In popular folklore, they are vagrants, thieves, tinkerers, and con artists, which is to say, egregiously misunderstood.

Until about a century ago, these travelers’ original home had been a matter of dispute. Their language had been a source of puzzlement. Yet their conduct and their traditions, their feeling for music, dance and song, have all been acclaimed. Harry Wedeck’s Dictionary of Gypsy Life and Lore sheds much-needed light on the true history and culture of the Gypsies, separating fact from fiction while celebrating their folktales, rites, and customs.

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About Harry E. Wedeck

Harry E. Wedeck was a linguistic scholar of the classics, an observer of spheres beyond the norm, and a practicing witch. A native of Sheffield, England, Wedeck was chairman of the department of classical languages at Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn from 1935 to 1950 and then taught the classics at Brooklyn College until 1968. Afterward, he lectured on medieval studies at the New School for Social Research until 1974. Some of his excursions into the unusual remain available in reprint editions. They include Dictionary of Astrology, Dictionary of Aphrodisiacs, A Treasury of Witchcraft, and The Triumph of Satan.