About twenty years ago I remember a much liked and respected colleague beginning a characteristically eloquent closing speech with the old rhyme:
My mother said
I never should
Play with gypsies
In the wood.
Nobody batted an eyebrow and the colleague went on to become a distinguished circuit judge.
He would never have dared to incorporate a rhyme about, let’s say Jews stealing children and drinking their blood, and to be fair to him nor would he have been inclined to do so. Belief in the blood libel, or even joking about it, at least in western Europe, is largely a thing of the past. Continue reading “Anti-gypsy prejudice is as repulsive as any other racism and much more respectable”