Clark wrote to ask about routine spanking among the traditional traveller community. He said that his grandmother was a gypsy and that when he was a boy she was very free with spanking threats to both his aunts and adult sisters. He was told that this was just her way and that when she was growing up this was the norm.
He was told that among some communities any unmarried adult woman could expect as spanking from any older female or any close male relative if she breached the strict social code.
There doesn’t seem to be much on this on the web, perhaps because caravan based people live off the grid. A traveller forum did reveal this snippet (edited from several comments).
Lula wrote:
We have a house now but we grew up on the road. I can tell you that those folks are strict about everything so you won’t see a Romany girl in thong, you just won’t.
Just before I got married, my sisters and several friends and cousins let our hair down and someone stole their father’s alcohol. We all ended up swimming naked in a gravel pit near the gathering.
As big as we were, and some of the women were well into their 20s, we all got a good whipping. The girl who took the booze was hauled in back of a trailer for a prolonged taste of her Da’s belt across her bare arse. Everyone heard it.
My eldest sister took down my cottons and gave me the spanking of my life around the back of the van. I wasn’t the only one who got it that night I can tell you.
Writing on Chross’s forum some years ago FatherJim had this to say:
They operate throughout the world in many countries, paying no attention to the laws and mores of that country. They are a “nation” of peoples that actually have no country.
They operate , in great deal, like the mafia, where there are loyalties and alliances and strange codes of honour. The oldest usually rules his family until a younger male opposes him and grabs the power, or the older male just gives it to his chosen successor.
Likewise, the women recognize the same hierarchy and it was not uncommon for even married women to submit to their Matriarch’s punishing hand. I remember reading about a gypsy woman in a mountain region in Italy getting a very public strapping from her Milfor a perceived slight. No one lifted a finger to save the poor young woman’s bared arse.
More importantly, Gypsy men take it as a badge of honour to have mistresses. The wives tolerate this indiscretion, but if the mistress flaunts the situation and embarrasses the wife, woe to the mistress’s sorry backside. She will probably be jumped by a group of angry women and whipped senseless. Theirs is a simple justice, swift and severe. In a lifestyle where movement is almost a constant, it is the only efficient way.
Female rivals, in this society, are handled in a similar fashion. Pride is a great part of a gypsy, and to remove one’s pride is a serious blow. Women rivals know this and capitalize by overpowering and thrashing a rival, like one would punish a naughty child. This loss of pride remains a secret, between the two, and the victor goes off with all the power, the vanquished lives with the fear of public embarrassment. Often there is only one way to undo the slight, that is to repay the embarrassment, but in public, and so it goes.
Finally, gypsy lifestyle is very much successful based on the fact that they keep to themselves and fly below the radar. Information about them is scarce as loyalty is so strong and few ever leave the gypsy lifestyle. So, most of their culture still remains shrouded in mystery, even today.
The second picture above was also taken from Chross, but that is all I could find.
