Romanes

George Romanes, who owns a chain of local pharmacies in the Scottish borders, believes the new structure works better than the arrangements south of the border.

"The officers were provided with grander costumes supplied by Romanes and Paterson at the Scottish Tartan Warehouse in North Bridge."

In some ways, talking Romanes means having to be constantly inventive and alert, both in terms of creating words and also interpreting the new ones that get spun off the cuff and thrown into daily Traveller conversation.

The Gypsies called their language Romanes, an adverb meaning “like a rom”.

To rokker Romanes meant, simply, to talk like a Gypsy and not like a gorjer – a non-Gypsy.