Are they gypsies?

[Redroger]

My tree contains a Nahuabaduyyale Ayres from Cambridgeshire in the 19th century.

[Kaypck]

My nan referred to herself as Romany.  She referred to everyone else who called themselves gypsies as didicoys.  Woe betide those who turned up on her doorstep to sell pegs, heather etc. and try and tell her fortune.  She told me she was a Lee, and proud of it, although when I came to do the family tree i found Daisy, Cox, Cooper and Hierons before I got back to the Lees.
My father used to speak of staying on the Romany site and making wax flowers.  My nan also picked hops in Kent.

[Redroger]

My understanding subject to more learned correction is that a diddicoi is a person of half Romany blood.

[Kaypck]

You could be right although that presents another puzzle.  My nan's father was Frederick Callaghan, from Irish descent.  I had thought that the Irish are travellers and not Romany.  If that is the case it would make her half Romany, but she was adamant that she was Romany through and through.  Can anybody shed any light on this.  Do Irish people consider themselves Romany or is it only the female side that counts?

[Mike in Cumbria]

It's not at all simple!

This is an interesting article.

http://www.historytoday.com/becky-taylor/britains-gypsy-travellers-people-outside

[cornishharbour]

I've just read this thread as I wonder whether my Browning ancestors from Kent were travellers. He was a Higgler, which I think is an itinerate hawker.

[Redroger]

I have a relative in Lincolnshire who was described as a higgler. In that county a higgler was a travelling hired ploughman.

[behindthefrogs]

A higgler had various meanings:

[1]A person who haggles or bargains. An itinerant peddler or dealer, similar to a cadger.
[2] A contract farm worker who owned his own horses and plough etc. and went from farm to farm  (South Lincolnshire)
[3] A wholesale purchaser of eggs poultry and dairy produce
[4] It was also used to mean a hangman or a breaker of stones
[5] In Covent Garden market: A dealer who buys his supplies of fruit with a view to selling what he buys at a profit to any buyer, either on that market or on any other; to wholesalers or to retailers.

[cornishharbour]

Thank you both so much for your responses - interesting and more to think about!