Francis Hindes Groome

Francis Hindes Groome (30 August 1851 – 24 January 1902), nicknamed the “Tarno Rye”, was a writer and foremost commentator of his time on the Romani people, their language, life, history, customs, beliefs, and lore.

He was the son of Robert Hindes Groome, Archdeacon of Suffolk.

Life

Groome was born at his father's rectory in Monk Soham, Suffolk, on 30 August 1851. He was educated at Ipswich School, where his lifelong interest in Romanies was sparked, and continued at Oxford University. He left Oxford without taking a degree, spent some time at the University of Göttingen, in Germany, and then for six years lived with Romani at home and abroad. He married a woman of Romani blood, Esmeralda Locke, in 1876 and settled down to regular literary work in Edinburgh.

Groome contributed generously and on a variety of subjects to such publications as the Encyclopædia Britannica, the Dictionary of National Biography, Blackwood's Magazine, the Athenaeum, Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, The Bookman, Chambers' Biographical Dictionary, the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (in six volumes), and as joint editor, with his father and poet Edward Fitzgerald, of "Suffolk Notes and Queries" for the Ipswich Journal.

His article on 'Gipsies', in the ninth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica, made him known to the world as a "gypsyologist". In 1899 he published his most significant book for folklorists, Gypsy Folk-Tales. These well-annotated collections are a significant addition to the comparative study of the world's folktales. He also co-edited the first three volumes of Gypsy Lore Society's Journal, and wrote nineteen brief articles and collections of folktales for it.