ABSTRACT
The title of this chapter is drawn from Thomas Harman’s A caueat or warening, for common cursetors vulgarely called vagabones.1 Harman’s habit of hyperbolical alliteration served to reinforce the negative aspects of the vagrant population, which he was supposedly documenting. As an early form of media, this sort of pamphlet literature, referred to as ‘rogue literature’ by historians, contributed to the construction of the stereotypical gypsy. Much of the genre dealt with vagabonds in general not gypsies specifically. However, there was a great deal of slippage between the two categories, which were never clearly separated, even in the eyes of the law. More importantly, statements made about the vagrant population in the rogue pamphlets were later attributed to gypsies. This reflected the general understanding that any indigent person could be or could become a gypsy. Rogue literature assisted in the metamorphosis from the concept of a fraternity of vagrants into an ethnic community of gypsies. The portrayal of the vagrant community as organised and hierarchical was transposed unto gypsies through a series of literary alterations, which are traced below.
