Across a Continent: R. A. Scott Macfie (1868 - 1935) and the Bulgarian Gypsies
Across a Continent: R. A. Scott Macfie (1868 - 1935) and the Bulgarian Gypsies

Summary/Abstract: This paper will begin with an autobiographical note: my discovery of Macfie’s book With Gypsies in Bulgaria (1916) among some papers belonging to my grandfather, which came to me after my mother’s death. It will take the form of a detective story, as I try to uncover information about Macfie’s life, and what led him to study the gypsies of Bulgaria. In 1907 two colleagues persuaded Macfie to revive the (British) Gypsy Lore Society which had been inactive for the previous 14 years. For the next thirty years or so Macfie became the inspiration and driving force behind the high level of research work published in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society. He remained Secretary and Editor of the Journal until 1914, and continued much of the editing work for many years afterwards. In the summer of 1913 Macfie travelled through Bulgaria in the company of a band of Gypsy horse-dealers and subsequently wrote an account of this adventure for the Gypsy Lore Society entitled .With Gypsies in Bulgaria. He volunteered for the British Army in 1914 (aged 48), and probably wrote up the book while serving during 1914-6. My concern will be to think about the issues of neighbours and barriers in this text. On the one hand, Macfie travelled across Europe to explore and understand Gypsy life, feeling himself very much at home among the gypsies of whom he writes passionately. On the other hand, he actively disliked the Bulgarians, and the text contains repeated statements to the effect that Bulgaria had been better off when under Turkish/Ottoman rule. So I shall be looking at signs of identification and disidentification in Macfie’s accounts of the people he lives among (who are neighbours, and who he puts up barriers against); and also considering my own relation to Macfie. To try to illuminate this theme, I shall also look at some of Macfie’s papers, which are in the libraries of the Imperial War Museum (London) and the University of Liverpool.

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