The Speckled Band: Vagabonds

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

The Speckled Band

Title: Vagabonds

Author: tweedisgood

Rating: G

I heard the gossip, aye, and had the story read to me from the Strand.

Still, I judge as I find, and Doctor Roylott never had his gamekeeper shoot at us just for showing our faces; never looked on our women as whores; shared my fire and my pipe as if I were a human being and not an animal.

Comments

[thesmallhobbit.livejournal.com]

Great alternative perspective

[wild-huntress.livejournal.com]

Oooh... I like this very very much! Excellent job.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Thanks. A lot of my 60s tend to the tangential, but hey.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Thanks. Roylott clearly is off his trolley for most of this story, but I just wondered what he saw in the gypsies, and what they saw in him.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

he was certainly more generous to wandering folk than most people - and especially some in Norwood!

great entry (as usual)

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Very nice! Truth be told, the gypsies (and how the unproven suspicions against them are as good as never true) are a point of interest to me. It's good to see a slightly shifted point of view.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Thanks. I've been reading an interesting book about gypsy travellers in the 19th century...

[hisietari.livejournal.com]

Now, you can't start a sentence like that and leave me without title and author(s). ;P

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

David Mayall, "Gypsy Travellers in 19th century society" Cambridge University Press, 1988.

[shadowycat.livejournal.com]

Conan Doyle does use gypsies as red herrings a lot. A sign of his times, I guess. This rings very true.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

there is a wonderful Rathbone radio episode 'A Romany Rye' which attempts (in a bizarre way) to correct this.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Link please?

"good companionship and a strong right arm"

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bk62B6le0g0

took me a while to remember the actual title - but you'll understand my mistake when you listen to the story.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

I read somewhere that Doyle had a bit of a romanticising streak about gypsies, but that as someone who cared fundamentally about justice it wasn't just fantasy projection.

Thanks.

[wytchcroft.livejournal.com]

That certainly sounds in character for ACD :)

Sunday, May 20, 2012

[livejournal.livejournal.com]

User bwblack referenced to your post from Sunday, May 20, 2012 (http://holmesian-news.livejournal.com/209896.html) saying: [...] by (G | ACD) The Speckled Band: Vagabonds [...]

[spacemutineer.livejournal.com]

Oh YES. This is awesome. It's a perspective that we never get to see from, and it really puts Roylott, otherwise a despicable creature, in a much different light. Perhaps he should have left the life he hated and joined them. Maybe things could have been different for everyone.

[tweedisgood.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I wondered that too - he was obviously completely out of sorts with the world, he might have done better leaving it behind.