Similar video
The Girl Who Married a Gypsy - Big Fat Gypsy WeddingsI was like any other teenage girl… until I ran off with a gypsy
SITTING outside her modest caravan, in the midst of a thriving travellers’ site, Jamie-Louise Mears seems like the perfect gypsy housewife.
She spends her days cleaning and cooking for her fiancé, Davie Cooper, dating a gypsy girl, and their two-year-old son Davie-Lee, while the man of the family earns a crust.
But this humble scene is a far cry from the four-bedroom semi-detached house where Jamie grew up, and the comfortable childhood that revolved around horse-riding lessons in the suburbs.
Four years ago she fell in love with tattooed Davie — a Romany gypsy who only went to school for “a few months” — and with that, she fell out with her parents.
Now, with her own family in tatters, 23-year-old Jamie says: “Running off with a gypsy was probably my dad’s worst nightmare. We rarely speak and he and my mum have split up because he blames Mum for me running away with Davie.
5
“But I don’t regret a thing. I love Davie and no one could stop me being with him.
“Davie is really kind and generous. The gypsy community look after you better than people in the outside world, dating a gypsy girl. I’m so happy I’m with Davie now.”
Growing up, Jamie went to her local comprehensive in Tonbridge, Kent, while her spare time was spent grooming horses at the nearby stables and taking part in showjumping competitions.
Her dad John, 43, ran a scaffolding firm, while her mum Lorraine, 41, stayed at home to make sure Jamie and her two sisters — dating a gypsy girl she doesn’t want to name — were lavished with attention and gifts such as cars and phones.
At 16, Jamie left school after passing her GCSEs and got a job behind the bar at the Tonbridge Golf Club, where she soon met Davie, who would spend his wages from selling scrap metal on 18 holes and a few beers.
She says: “A few years ago I was like any other teenage girl. I’d go lincoln county dating sites, date boys, go to school and have a laugh kardashians dating black guys my mates.
5
“After dating a real estate agent school I went straight into work. It was different from working with the horses but I still liked it there.”
Davie, 21, admits he was smitten from the start: “I just went down to the golf club with the boys to have a bit of a laugh. That’s when I saw Jamie.
Straight away I thought she was gorgeous.”
Jamie’s first impression of Davie was not so positive. She says: “Me and my mates would have a laugh about him and his mates when they were at the club.
“We had never really seen gypsies before and we used to take the mickey out of how they looked.
“It wasn’t anything serious, just silly things. I was only 17 at the time.”
But gradually, over the next couple of years, the pair began to get to know each other, dating a gypsy girl. Despite their different backgrounds, they found a connection.
Jamie was intrigued to hear about Davie’s life as a gypsy and how he had lived on the same site, with several generations of his family, since he was born.
5
She says: “He kept coming back to the golf club. We would talk for a bit and he would offer to buy me drinks.”
Eventually Davie plucked up the courage to ask for Jamie’s number and the pair began secretly dating.
She says: “I didn’t want to tell my parents because I knew they wouldn’t understand. There’s a lot of stigma surrounding gypsies.”
In contrast, Jamie was welcomed with open arms into the gypsy site in Tonbridge, where Davie lives with around 40 members of his family.
She says: “When he took me back to his place, I knew it would be OK. He told me his mum and dad had said not to bring a girl back to the site unless he intended to be with her.
“Knowing that made me feel special because I knew I wanted to be with Davie too. I get on single parent dating well with his parents, his mum is like my best mate.”
Davie says he never expected to marry a non-gypsy, dating a gypsy girl, known in their community as a Gorger. He adds: dating a gypsy girl got friends in the traveller and non-traveller communities. I didn’t plan to look for a non-traveller girl but it just happened.
“My community respect my decision and they know that the girl I brought back to the site would be the girl I would be with for life.”
But after the pair had been dating for seven months, Jamie’s dad John discovered their relationship — and was furious.
She recalls: “He wanted to split us up. He took my new car and my phone off me so I couldn’t speak to Davie.”
And Davie adds: “Jamie’s dad doesn’t live far from here and he thought we had a reputation for going into pubs and fighting.”
John did eventually come round, and even invited Davie to the family home for Christmas in 2007.
But at the beginning of 2008, Davie was jailed for four months and John refused to allow Jamie to keep seeing him.
After he was released, John took the desperate measure of sending his daughter to live in Spain, just to keep her away from the gypsies.
Jamie says: “Dad packed a bag for me. My aunt and uncle have got a place in Moraira, on the Costa Blanca, so I stayed with them.
“I still managed to talk to Davie on the phone — but no one knew about that.
“After about a month I came back. Dad thought I would be over Davie but when I
returned I went straight back to him.”
5
Again, John tried to separate them but this time he wanted to send her as far away as possible — to Australia, dating a gypsy girl. One of Jamie’s friends lived there and he suggested she could find work for Jamie.
It was then, in October 2008, that Jamie realised she simply couldn’t bear to be apart from Davie.
She says: “We were talking about how much we loved each other. Davie suggested that I run dating a gypsy girl with him and I said yes straight away.”
Davie, dating a gypsy girl, who then gave her an engagement ring, dating a gypsy girl, says: “Once she was here at the site that was all right because he couldn’t come down and get her.
“He wouldn’t come to the site, he never has.”
The next time Jamie spoke to her dad it was to tell him he would be a grandad.
And despite their fraught relationship he and Jamie’s mum Lorraine were both at the birth of little Davie-Lee two years ago.
But, says Davie, dating a gypsy girl, there has been little contact with John since then.
He says: “He’s only seen Davie-Lee a few times, dating a gypsy girl. We see Jamie’s dad once in a blue moon.
“We still see and speak to her mum though, we both get on really well with her. She’s more understanding.”
Incredibly, one of Jamie’s sisters has also moved in with a traveller.
5
And sadly, the girls’ best free german dating sites have taken a toll on their parents, dating a gypsy girl, who have separated after 25 years of marriage since Jamie ran away. Jamie says: “Maybe Dad thinks she could have been stricter.”
As for Jamie and Davie, they are planning to get married next summer and afterwards hope to start travelling, like traditional gypsies.
They don’t know if Jamie’s dad will be part of the celebrations.
Jamie says: “I want to get married now but it’s hard because my dad won’t pay for it.
“I don’t want a big dress but I want loads of bridesmaids and page boys, and a horse and cart.
“I’d love Dad to give me away — but he needs to accept who I am now.”
k.jackson@the-sun.co.uk
Gypsy Maid, The (The Gypsy's Wedding Day) [Laws O4]
DESCRIPTION: The gypsy girl, left to dating a gypsy girl for herself, meets a young lawyer who asks her to tell his fortune. She tells him that he has courted many fine ladies, but he is to marry a gypsy. He takes her to his home and marries her
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: before 1845 (broadside, dating a gypsy girl, Bodleian Firth b.26(40))
KEYWORDS: prophecy marriage Gypsy
FOUND IN: US(Ap,MW,So) Britain(England(Lond,North,South))
REFERENCES (12 citations):
Laws O4, "The Gypsy Maid (The Gypsy's Wedding Day)"
Randolph 129, "The Gypsy Maid" (1 text)
Eddy-BalladsAndSongsFromOhio 100, "The Dating a gypsy girl Wedding Day" (1 text, 1 tune)
Sackett/Koch-KansasFolklore, pp. 177-179, "The Gypsy Maid" (1 text, 1 tune)
Kennedy-FolksongsOfBritainAndIreland 346, "The Little Gipsy Girl" (1 text, 1 tune)
Williams-Wiltshire-WSRO Ox 245, "Gipsy Girl" (1 text)
OShaughnessy/Grainger-TwentyOneLincolnshireFolkSongs 9, "The Gipsy's Wedding Day" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud/Bishop-NewPenguinBookOfEnglishFolkSongs #32, "Little Gipsy Girl" (1 text, dating a gypsy girl, 1 tune)
Cox-FolkSongsSouth 100, dating a gypsy girl, "The Orphan Gypsy Girl" (1 text)
Rorrer-RamblingBlues-LifeAndSongsOfCharliePoole, p. 90, "My Gypsy Girl" (1 text)
Cohen-AmericanFolkSongsARegionalEncyclopedia2, pp, dating a gypsy girl. 634-635, "The Oregon Gipsy GIrl" (1 dating a gypsy girl
DT 469, GYPSGIRL
Roud #229
RECORDINGS:
Horton Dating a gypsy girl, "The Gypsy's Wedding Day" (on Barker01)
Charlie Poole and the North Carolina Ramblers, "My Gypsy Girl" (Columbia 15519-D, 1930; on CPoole02)
Jasper Smith, "The Squire and the Gypsy" (on Voice11)
Joseph Taylor, "The Gypsy Girl" (on Voice01)
BROADSIDES:
Bodleian, Firth b.26(40), "The Gipsey Girl" ("My father was king of the gypsies you know"), J. Pitts (London), 1819-1844; also Firth b.28(37) View 2 of 2, "Gipsey Girl"; Harding B 16(101d), "Gipsy Girl"
Murray, Mu23-y1:046, "The Little Gipsy Girl," James Lindsay Jr. (Glasgow), 19C; also Mu23-y1:117, "The Little Gipsy Girl," unknown, dating a gypsy girl, 19C; Mu23-y4:028 [the last a very short version probably edited to fit in a corner of a page]
LOCSinging, as201140, "The Gipsey Girl" ("My father was king of the gipsies you know"), dating a gypsy girl, H. De Marsan (New York), 1864-1878
NLScotland, L.C.Fol.70(55), "The Little Gipsy Girl," unknown, n.d.
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "The Squire and the Gipsy" (theme)
ALTERNATE TITLES:
The Gypsy Girl
The Little Gypsy Girl
NOTES [237 words]: [Sources such as] Charlie Poole have cleaned this one up. Broadside LOCSinging as201140 reads:
He took me to a house, dating a gypsy girl, it was a palace I am sure,
Where ladies were waiting to open the door;
On a bed of soft feathers, where I pleased him so well,
In nine months after his fortune I could tell, dating a gypsy girl.
Her father keeps the baby, she gets a pension of twenty pounds a year and "no more shall my gipsey girl ever more rove" but when she's in the neighborhood, she says, "your fortunes I will tell."
The Murray broadsides are all of the same version in which "little gypsy girl" meets "two handsome young squires," goes with one of them, and becomes pregnant; they marry.
Broadside LOCSinging as201140: H. De Marsan dating per Studying Nineteenth-Century Popular Song by Paul Charosh in American Music, Winter 1997, Vol 15.4, Table 1, available at FindArticles site. - BS
This song may, just possibly, have actually encouraged one actual marriage: "Alberta Slim" (Eric Edwards, 1910-2005), the Canadian country singer, had a sideline of reading tea leaves. His daughter, after his death, reports that her father had met her mother when the mother had her tea leaves read. Slim looked at the leaves (and presumably looked at her even more intently), and told her that she was going to marry him. Which, of course, she did.
I don't know that Alberta Slim knew this song, but he did know quite a selection of English folk songs. - RBW
Last updated in version 4.5
Go to the Ballad Search form
Go to the Ballad Index Song List
Go to the Ballad Index Instructions
Go to the Ballad Index Bibliography or Discography
The Ballad Index Copyright 2021 by Robert B. Waltz and David G. Engle.
My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding, dating a gypsy girl, the television series that ended last week and attracted nine million viewers, was designed to "throw an overdue light on a secretive, marginalised and little-understood segment of our society", according to the blurb from Channel 4. But the show largely avoided the myriad of problems, such as discrimination, poor health and poverty faced by Travellers, except for what felt like a tokenistic final episode, and instead focused on over-the-top wedding dresses and other excesses.
MBFGW was about Gypsies and Travellers, dating a gypsy girl, but there was criticism from both communities that C4 failed to properly distinguish between the two. There are around 300,000 Gypsy Roma and Irish Travellers in the UK – Roma Gypsies are originally from northern India, whereas Travellers are of Irish origin – and both groups are nomadic. Since 2002, Travellers have been recognised as an ethnic group and are protected under the Race Relations Act. Last week C4 was accused by the Irish Traveller Movement in Britain of fuelling "hatred and suspicion" of their way of life and have demanded a right of reply.
Kathleen, who lives with her six children in a three-bedroom trailer, is fairly typical of an Irish Traveller woman, except that she is separated from her husband. Along with many other Gypsy and Traveller women in the UK, Kathleen was a victim of domestic violence. Although there is no conclusive evidence about the prevalence of this abuse, a study in Wrexham, cited in a paper by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, 2007, found that 61% of married English Gypsy women and 81% of Irish Travellers had experienced domestic abuse. And a significant number of those women who had reported the abuse appeared to have suffered more severe and sustained violence than those within mainstream communities.
"I left him and went back to my mammy but he kept finding me, taking me home and getting me pregnant," Kathleen says, dating a gypsy girl. She now feels safe because she has male family members living on the same site. "With my brother close by, he wouldn't dare come here."
It is rare for women to call the police for help. "You would be seen as a grass and disowned by the whole community," says Bernie O'Roarke, dating a gypsy girl, outreach and resettlement worker for domestic violence charity Solas Anois (Gaelic for Comfort Now), dating a gypsy girl, which is based in London. The situation probably isn't helped by the fact that there is only one, 10-room refuge dedicated to Traveller women in the UK, also in London. But domestic violence is just one of the issues tackled by O'Roarke during her visits. The welfare needs, particularly those of the women and girls, of this community are vast. The women are three times more likely to miscarry or have a still-born child compared to the rest of the population, dating a gypsy girl, mainly, it is thought, dating a gypsy girl, as a result of reluctance to undergo routine gynaecological care, and infections linked to poor sanitation and lack of clean water. The rate of suicides among Traveller women is significantly higher than in the general population, dating a gypsy girl, and life expectancy is low for women and men, with one third of Travellers dying before the age of 59. And as many Traveller girls are taken out of education prior to secondary school to prevent them dating a gypsy girl with boys from other cultures, illiteracy rates are high.
O'Roarke is a familiar face on the sites around London, offering women and their children help with health care, education and finance. The men leave the women alone to deal with these issues, so if the women do want to talk about dating a gypsy girl and abuse, they can do so without fear of the men overhearing.
I visit some trailers with O'Roarke at a site in London and am struck by how the women seem to manage, usually with large families, to keep everything so clean and tidy. There are colourful displays of Royal Crown Derby crockery, handed down from mother to daughter on her wedding day. There is certainly no sign of dating a gypsy girl or excessive spending. Many tell me they struggle to feed their children, and have no savings or bank account.
Things seem set to get worse for Traveller women. Only 19 days after the general election last year, £50m that had been allocated to building new sites across London was scrapped from the budget. O'Roarke is expecting to be the only Traveller liaison worker in the capital before long – her funding comes from the Irish government.
"Most of the women can't read or write. Who is supposed to help them if they get the dating guy shrinking woody of the bit of support they have now?" asks O'Roarke. "We will be seeing Traveller women and their children on the streets because of these cuts. If they get a letter saying they are in danger of eviction but they can't read it, what are they supposed to do?"
Conditions on the site are as grim as the homes are spotless. The trailers are not connected to water pipes, dating a gypsy girl, and the toilets, bathrooms and cooking facilities are in a small, unheated shed across the yard. "In the snow and rain, the little ones are always getting colds," says Brigid, dating a gypsy girl, who lives in the next trailer to Kathleen. "And there are so many pot holes that the council haven't filled, you can go flying in the dark."
But living on a site is about being part of the community. Dating a gypsy girl Traveller girls are growing up, they are only allowed to go out with other family members, and once married, her husband rules the roost. "The men would never allow a woman out with her friends," says Kathleen. "That's why we want to live on a site, for company." Kathleen, after spending time in a refuge after finally managing to escape her husband, was initially allocated a house, as opposed to a plot on a site. Almost immediately her children became depressed. "It's like putting a horse in a box. He would buck to get out," says Kathleen. "We can't live in houses; we need freedom and fresh air. I was on anti-depressives. The children couldn't go out because the neighbours would complain about the noise."
Since moving to their site two years ago, Kathleen and her children have been far happier. Until MBFGW was screened, that is. "Now every week I go to the school and the parents are talking about that programme. They won't let our kids mix with theirs because they say we stink and don't talk properly. Settled kids won't even play sports with ours in case they touch them."
Mary, Dating a gypsy girl 15-year-old daughter, is upset by the series too, and says that she has faced further dating a gypsy girl since it hit the screens. "That programme didn't show the real way we go on, dating a gypsy girl. All my friends are asking if it's true what they show on telly, and I think they've gone different [towards me] since it was shown."
In one episode the viewer was informed that young Traveller men at weddings and other social occasions use something dating a gypsy girl as "grabbing" to force a reluctant girl to kiss them. One newspaper report called it a "secret courting ritual".
"Grabbing has never happened to me or any of my friends and the first time I ever saw it was on the telly," says Mary. "I wouldn't put up with it, and I don't know why they made out we all do it. It's just one nasty boy they showed."
Brigid adds: "Grabbing has never happened to my kids. I have honestly never heard of it. It's all make-believe."
Helen, a Traveller in her 20s on the same site, is also furious about the portrayal of women in MBFGW. "The way us women come across in the programme is a disgrace," she said. "It shows us as nothing but slaves to the men, only good for cooking and cleaning, and always being available to open our legs to them. We don't want that for our daughters."
Helen is also worried that Traveller women are being portrayed as rich and spoilt when, in fact, life is a struggle for the majority. "I don't know anyone so rich that they can afford to splash out on wedding dresses like that. Mine was secondhand. They'll now be saying we are all criminals, or sponging off the state." I ask a number of Traveller women how representative of the Traveller and Gypsy communities those featured in MBFGW are, and they all come back with a similar answer: the programme focused on a small number of individuals from five sites (out of an estimated 300-plus across the UK), and in any community, there are a minority who have access to large amounts of cash.
I ask O'Roarke what she thinks the future holds for Travellers. She is worried. "That TV programme has put our work back 100 years. And if these women lose the little support they have, they literally will be left to rot."
She is concerned that problems affecting Traveller women and girls, such as lack of education, forced and early marriage, dating a gypsy girl, and abuse within the home, are not being taken seriously.
"These issues do not just affect certain Asian communities," says O'Roarke, dating a gypsy girl. "We have had Traveller women in the refuge who have been forced to marry someone who they have never met, and marrying cousins is not uncommon."
But some say that things are slowly improving. "I think it's changing an awful lot for the young ones," says Kathleen. "We don't want them to have no education and get married at 16, and have loads of kids and the same life as we did."
Would Kathleen ever marry again? It is out of the question, she tells me. These things are just not done. "You marry for life," she says. "If I was to have another man, dating a gypsy girl, my daughters would never be married because I would have brought shame on them."
O'Roarke would like to see changes that include: "Better support for the women to keep their daughters in education, and a serious commitment from the government to challenge the prejudice thrown at these people."
While people are being entertained by watching Katie Price-replica weddings on TV, and girls dressed in Beyoncé-style outfits dirty dancing, women such as Kathleen, Brigid and Helen are living in substandard conditions and facing daily prejudice while trying to give their children the best start in life. The reality is a far cry from the C4 depiction and is rarely aired. O'Roarke tells me that Traveller women are usually reluctant to allow outsiders into their homes, despite the impression given by MBFGW. "But we just want our side of the story put across," says Brigid, "so settled people know we are not like that."
best dating site for seniors was a little girl">
-
-
-