Saffgfbhmj+jncbvxcxzcvbnm,bmnbvcnm,.,hgfdsdfghjk.

l,
mnbvcxghkll,kmjhgfkl/m/.,mnbvcckl.,mnbvjk,mnbvchj,..G

have lately published in the Newsletter of the Gypsy Lore Society, the announcement of a work
in progress–together with the author of the book herewith under discussion–related to the
discovery of a so far unknown Romanian-Romani vocabulary, the first of its kind, dated c.1860.
The editing of this vocabulary looks like an enterprise of the twentieth century, while the
twenty-first century should bring a reediting of such texts, together with critical evaluation
underlined by a century of progress in Romani studies. It is the case, for instance–and I should
not go far from our journal in finding a reference–that the first Spanish-Romani vocabulary is
from the eighteenth century, edited in 1921 by J.M. Hill and reedited with ample critical notes
by Ignasi-Xavier Adiego (1999).

The book under review, Cântece țigănești. Romané ghilea. Gypsy Songs, is a critical edition of
one manuscript from a larger collection of unedited materials from the Library of the Romanian
Academy, Bucharest. It is not even the edition of the whole manuscript BAR 3924, but only two
of three notebooks, written by the first Romanian scholar of Romani studies, Barbu
Constantinescu. The third notebook, as we learn from the editorial notes (p. LXXX), contains a
Romani-Romanian vocabulary with entries for 26 letters of the Romani language adapted to the
Romanian alphabet, which will be edited as a separate work. [End Page 150]

The collection of Barbu Constantinescu's manuscripts was known and partially used by
researchers in the field, who referred to it in their works: Popp-Şerboianu (1930), George Potra
(1939), Ion Chelcea (1944). A useful description of this collection is provided by Rotaru in the
article published in the current issue of the journal. However, none of these manuscripts has
been edited thus far, apart from BAR 3924, which has now been brought to light by Julieta
Rotaru.

The so far published work of Barbu Constantinescu on Romani folklore is a collection of 75

songs and 15 story tales (Barbu Constantinescu 1878) in Romani and Romanian translation, the
latter being translated in English by F.H. Groome (1899). This volume was never edited again
until 2000, when Gheorghe Sarău published a Romani version in an interpretative orthography,
and with many interventions on the text, without warning about the changes thus made. The
Romanian translation of Barbu Constantinescu was replaced with a poetic, but far-fetched
translation done by the editor. In 2005 a new edition of Barbu Constantinescu's 1878 collection
was published, with the aim of producing a text faithful to the original version, in Romani and
Romanian. To this, the editor, Mihaela Mudure, added her own English translation.

The volume under review brings to light 282 new songs, out of which only ten, in a slightly
different version, were in the published collection from 1878.

In the following, I shall compare the translations of the song LV from the 1878 collection,
translated by M. Mudure in 2002, with the song §165 translated by J. Rotaru in 2016. The text is
reproduced from Rotaru: ghilí lăiașisko/ patrinorî ș-o lalea/ ita, Devla, kukola/ Kol romnea kola
p<h>urea/ sî la trin șeya barea/ t<h>ai kam dav kol toveresa/ te p<h>agáu lakă / te ankalavau...
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