Gypsy Folk Tales

Gypsy Folk-Tales is a book by Francis Hindes Groome, first published in 1899. It collects seventy-six traditional Romani stories gathered from English, Welsh and several East-European Romani groups and is presented with a long, scholarly introduction and comparative notes. Groome arranges the tales by region and genre — Turkish, Roumanian, Bukowina, Transylvanian, Slovak/Moravian/Bohemian, Polish, English, Welsh and Scottish material — offering both the narratives themselves and commentary that places them in the wider context of Indo-European folklore and oral tradition. Readable and richly anecdotal, the volume sits at the intersection of antiquarian curiosity and early folkloristics: the stories range from animal-centered fables and trickster episodes to wonder-tales and moral parables, and Groome’s notes attempt to trace parallels across Europe and beyond. For readers and researchers interested in Romani folklore, traditional Gypsy legends, and comparative folktale studies, this work remains a substantial 19th-century source — both a primary collection of Romani oral material and an example of the period’s methods of folklore preservation and comparative analysis.