Sam Lee: 'There is a difference in the songs Gypsies sing'

Freda Black leans forward in her armchair, arches back her shoulders and sings a song about the boy Jesus being given a thrashing by his mother. As an 85-year-old mother-of-nine herself – now a great-grandmother too – Freda knows about such things, after living among her people, the Roma, on the road until the age of 30, thereafter in this house, "like a cage".The song tells a strange story: about the Christ child asking "Mary mild" if he might go out and "play at ball". Jesus meets

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