Who were the first Gipsies?

In about the tenth century, groups of people began to leave northern India and to travel all over Europe. Being very independent, they kept their original language to a great extent – this is what we now call Romany, and it is a descendant of a form of Sanskrit.

Gipdies’ beliefs are basically Christian, but they also have a very complicated set of superstitions and legends. Gipsies are still extremely independent, and insist on their right to live as nomads in their wagons and caravans. There are few real gipsies about these days – most of Britain’s nomadic people are not fully Romany at all, but did-dikai’s, or half-breeds, as the full Romanies call them. Gipsies first came to Britain in the early sixteenth century.