As i sit quietly reading threads (yes i can read and do joined up writing) I am amazed at how often threads turn to the travelling fraternity, most ideas are split, we are either theiving no good na'do wells, or we are a romantic musical people with a way of life others aspire to, well folks , we react to given situations, we can be either, but hey dont put us all in one box, our history (in uk) goes back into the deep dark realms, often we had to poach, rob or beg to live, but we are a proud race, we like to work for our crust. We tend to stick together wether settled or travelling, sadly thanks to legilation, its hard to travel, there are no more stopping places those that do travel often harrassed to the point of madness, as for the threads relating to irish and the like travellers, yes there is a difference, between all of us, also, the owning of land issue is a case in point, many romanies have bought land thinking they would be able to live on it, i can only quote a case that my family were involved in, uncle bought land next to a non gypsy man who had three mobile homes on it and a trnsport company parking their lorries in it, uncle thought planning permission would be a doddle, oh no, he was told outright, NO GYPSIES ever got planning here, well 20 years later, still no planning, BUT we got a letter last week offering to buy the land so that a major housing developer could put 20 houses on the site, HHMM prejudice ? oh no just business, and how many of you want a gypsy living next door, daily we face prejudice and even on tv the PC brigade allow the calling of names directed at us, watch the top gear reruns where they take a caravan on the road, listen for the number of times james may calls us "pikeies" etc, No folks the life of a gypsy has never been easy and never will, we know it , what can we do nothing.
Back to the song we tend to "own" the land we are stopping on, not literally but as we are there at that point of time all we roam on is ours, then when we leave its only remembered as a good stopping place or a bad one, so he could have been the lord at that time,
the times that the song relates to are long gone, but we all tend to put todays thought on old writings,