ABSTRACT
By creating legends around the stereotypes and rhetorically celebrating economic cunning, the Gypsies cultivated an ethic that inverted prevailing non-Gypsy ideas about labor and the creation of value. Many Magyars believed that there was an epidemic of “Gypsy criminality” in Hungary, and some police forces even had special departments devoted to “Gypsy crime.” In Harangos, Gypsies often talked about how “stupid” or “foolish” the gazos were and ways that the “cunning” Gypsies outwitted them. Gypsies liked to spend much of their time when they were not at work for wages dealing with peasants and trying to gain an advantage over them in various trades. In the context of romani butji, the horse market was just one moment in a continual effort to profit from the non-Gypsies; but more than any other aspect of Gypsy work, it was these trades that were rhetorically elaborated and celebrated.
