This is a stub I’ll build on this more when I have more time. I recently was able to observe a Romany family holding a funeral and was lucky to have someone so quick to tell me about the practices. So I wanted to record my diary notes right now and build on it later. Remember I have only experienced one family funeral and so this might not be a consistent family.
Romany Funeral
A Romany funeral involves a lot of loud crying and wailing from both men and women or at least it did when I attend one. Men who tried show a stiff upper lip were looked upon like me as non-Romany with slight disdain, but the Romany men do show more restraint than the women, I guess as a macho expectation of them.
Everyone dresses in black with the odd bit of colour but there was not an aim to look smart in fact most of the women were trying to look sexually appealing and the men were mostly unshaven with very few wearing ties.
The coffin is laid out in the home open and some people put things in the coffin including food, a lot of framed pictures which look like they are only pictures of the deceased, a leather jacket, a few pairs of shoes (as if there is a long journey to come) and jewellery. In this case the deceased was a man, but it seemed he had a lot of chains and rings (or maybe some where added as a farewell present). The mother of the deceased was helped to add a putsi bag with coins into the coffin. I am told the rest of the clothes and possessions have been burned, “so there is nothing to keep them attached to this world”, however clearly a few expensive items including some leather furniture and the deceased’s car seem to have been spared this tradition to save on waste.
I had heard before about the practice of covering mirrors and images of the deceased before, but in this case I noticed a bathroom mirror which was not covered, but did have a painting of flowers over much of its surface. There was a large framed image of the deceased, which was the only thing covered and it was still covered by a very thin veil so the picture could still be seen. A lot of pictures have been put in the coffin rather than being covered. Some have huge frames so I wonder how the coffin will close. Many pictures around the house, which showed the deceased were proudly on display. I concluded the practice of covering mirrors and pictures is saved for the movies and television and not actually practised.
A song in Romany was sung with a dance around the coffin that made me think of Greek dances and Wiccan circles. Soon after the stuff inside the coffin was shuffled around and it was carried out to the hearse. Apparently it is traditional to have a horse draw cart so some people did not like that there was a motorcar.
After a very Christian funeral the coffin is lowered into the ground and many people chose this moment to scatter crumbs of food, rice, petals and flowers on the lid of the coffin. A weather beaten chap who I guess might be the brother of the deceased poured half a bottle of beer, which he had been drinking, on top of the coffin and as it fizzed up I couldn’t help but think of the damage the beer would do to the varnished coat of the coffin. Not that it will make a difference considering it is going to be 6 feet under. This gesture wasn’t looked upon with disdain, so I took it to be an offering to the dead rather than an insult.
The head stone looks very modern it has a black and white picture of the deceased on it in a golden frame and like many of the other ones around it is HUGE! I heard two Older ladies speaking about how they thought the grave stone was nice one responded with “Yes, she really did love him,” so I came to the conclusion that while in my culture it seems to be common to be minimalist and modest with grave markings, in the culture of this Romany group, it is an opportunity to display your love for the deceased. So the bigger; the better. Also I thought the flowers at my own family’s funerals were excessive when people began to leave the grave quickly became surrounded some of the largest arrangements of flowers and the grave was quickly inaccessible.
This Romany area of this cemetery stands out. The garden is very well kept where as it is messier in other places. The Romany tombs stones are MUCH bigger and the graves are covered in beads and drinks and trinkets.
As we walked off to the local pub, I noticed a mother telling her children to be quiet and yelled at them when they jumped over people’s graves. “You’ll disturb their sleep!” she told them. I wondered if this was a figure of speech, a boogeyman to keep the children in line while they’re at a funeral or whether it might betray a belief among this family that crossing a grave or making noise in a graveyard would disturb the dead that are resting there.
Romany Ancestor Worship
I am amazed at how tidy the garden of the graveyard yet how many things had been left on the graves. I commented on the garden in comparison to the cemetery at St John’s Church near where I live which is massively overgrown. My comment meant that an elder gentlemen who’s name I quickly forgot decided to introduce me to the Romany practice of Ancestor Worship. He didn’t have a specific name for it, it was simply this is “our customs”.
I am told it is common for a spouse to attend the grave of their deceased spouse every single day for a year following the death. They will do some gardening, neatening the grass and leaving flowers right in front of the headstone. It is common for them to take care of their own close relatives graves, but they will apparently also take care of other people’s. When you take care of the grave you say things to the dead person about how the children are doing and you encourage them that everything is well. I was told it wasn’t customary to ask the spirit for anything, you would pray to God if you wanted things, but you could ask the dead to pray for you while you’re busy. An elder gentleman called Tom who is a neighbour, apparently lost his wife many years ago and he takes care of many graves including some for a couple of families that moved away. The gentlemen I was talking to seem to feel this was a good respect of “the gypsy way”.
The graves are covered in stuff that could be mistaken for rubbish.
Nearly all of them have little white angels some of them have a few. A smaller grave, probably of a very young child, has lots of plastic toys on it. Many of which has been blown off in the wind and lost their colour in the rain. Other ones have beaded necklaces surrounding the base of the stones or draped over the top. A couple of them have horse shoes engraved. One has beer bottles on it which are full. Many of them have cups which have grown dirty over time. But nothing compares to the sheer number of flowers around the graves.
One grave had lots of candles and a virgin Mary instead. I was told that was “the Irish”, “they leave candles instead”.
What I am told, though I have not experienced it, is that you often weave something out of flowers, perhaps something they will need like a bed or pillow. You will sometimes bring them a pot of tea, or whisky and flowers and tell them how their descendants are getting on. This process of telling the deceased about their legacy is extremely important. It seems the more traditional Romany have many children, my friend is child number 9. It would seem his parents married young and pushed one out once a year. It was said that if you had enough children you were considered a Gypsy King or Queen. (Strangely a group can have multiple kings/queens, but one person called “uncle” who seems to be the alpha male who everyone refers to.
Some people apparently will scatter crumbs on the grave of loved ones the day after Halloweeen (All Saint’s day). “At any time” pouring alcohol on the earth is giving an offering to the dead.
When a person is accused of being guilty of a crime they are brought to the grave of their mother / grandmother where a table with an altar cloth and offerings of flowers is set up at the foot of the grave and they are made to stare at their mother while the accusers accuse him in front of her. Again its as though it bothers the spirits so it is only done to get the confession.
What can we learn from Romany culture
Actually expressing grief might be healthier than repressing it to show a stiff upper lip. The ritual of the funeral focuses on the deceased and uses emotion and sing-song chanting which are techniques used in Wicca to raise energy. It could be inferred that they provide a similar function to the barbarous words in Greek sorcery such as appears in the PGM.
Also regular offering to the dead might help to build a connection between the living and the dead. The offerings are similar to things seen in many other traditions around the world including drinks and food, but there is a huge focus on jewellery in the Romany tradition. The lack of desire to retain things which are worn like clothes or jewellery may indicate their intimacy with the deceased. Images and statues of angels, saints and good luck symbols like horse shoes are placed by the grave perhaps to help the soul in the after life similar to the markings on the walls of the pharaohs of Egypt and the statues of guides in their burial chambers. An image alone could help a spirit move on.
So there is plenty we can take from these traditions, but we need to be careful of the restricting potential of too many superstitions.
Egyptian Ancestor worship
This should in no way resemble a complete entry, but it is worth noting that offerings were occasionally made to the dead by putting them on the soul in Egyptian custom. In one of the first mentions of Imhotep before he is deified as Hermes Trismegitus a person’s funerary inscription reads as follows:
The wab-priest may give offerings to your ka. The wab-priests may stretch to you their arms with libations on the soil, as it is done for Imhotep with the remains of the water bowl. (D. Wildung (1977), Egyptian Saints: Deification in Pharaonic Egypt, p. 34)
It is clear that the ka required feeding with offerings and in some cases with person that had become somewhat deified in the folk tradition they were mentioned in other people’s epithets. Historian Alan Gardiner suggest that this practice of pouring it on the soil might have been odd otherwise why would they need to mention the mechanisms of the practise?