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The Romas
For the attendance of the gypsies there are data from the 15th century but their crowd migration from the Balkans can be put by the 18th and 19th centuries. The Roma live in Romania, Hungary and Slovakia in the largest number. They spreaded in the country peregrinating to the Plains and Transdanubia. Many of them can be found at the eastern part of the country, in Szabolcs-Szatmár-Bereg, Hajdú-Bihar and Békés counties.
One of the most important characters of the Gipsies in Békés County was belonging to the poorer stratum, job and language self-definitions and group signification. There were trough-makers, cauldron-menders, horse merchants, mud-makers, plasterers, grass lime brushes and basket-makers, wooden equipment makers (kanalas, orsós) and the musician Gipsies. It is common in the latest decades that these gipsies give up their original jobs because they cannot sell their goods because of the changing in the way of lives. At the beginning they lived in the district of the settlements specially designated for them, however they moved to towns in larger and larger numbers trying to have jobs as unskilled or semi-skilled workers in other occupations.
There are large linguistic and traditional differences among the separated Gipsy groups. In Békés County Gipsies have the mother tongue of Hungarian, Romanian and Roma. Scientists consider the Hungarian Gipsies (romungro) the descendants of Carpathian and Walachian Gipsy groups who have already forgotten their original language. The groups that speak Romanian are defined as the Romanian Gipsies, Vlachs, the groups that speak the Walachian Gipsy language, are considered to have the mother tongue of Gipsy.
Different lifestyle, temperament, morality and disciplines describe Gipsies that can be explained with the former nomad way of life. However the cultural values of Gipsies are emphasized in the latest decades. They buy their goods and make the things that they are specialized on. This characterizes their wealth culture. The diversity of their folklore can be originated from their nomad way of life, because they adopted the elements from the culture of the nations they met. The items that were borrowed from peasant culture, they formed to their own taste, protected and gave traditions new sense. They practised the custom of singing Carols at Christmas (kolindálás) that is known from the Romanian Culture, they also aware of a vampire-like creature of Balkan origin, a whole circle of customs about mother’s milk and the magic ways of protection against mischievous forces. The best-known parts of the Gipsy culture are music, folk dances, folk poetry and the elements of their religion.
The integration of the ethnic group, self-separated or excluded from society, stopping the prejudice surrounding the Roma inhabitants is an important ethnic and social interest. Erdős Kamill, Gipsy-scientist in 1950s in Gyula, considered the protection of the ununique Gipsy culture that was described authentically with all the negativisms that he experienced and the rise of the undeveloped layers of the Gipsies as a duty. "All people should feel it natural to help Gipsies develop, raise and find their feet, this nation being hounded during centuries, living without almost all human conditions, suffering from racial prejudices."
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