Here's a post on the whole "kidnapped totally-not-a-gypsy girl" story.

[conuly]

Pretty sure I got the link off of Andrewdrucker, who has some nifty links.

The post pretty handily sums up what I've been thinking this whole time, and let me just say that I find it creepily racist that they keep on referring to this child as a "blond angel". Ew.

http://www.tuppenceworth.ie/blog/2013/10/23/folklore-as-childcare-policy/

Comments

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

People have never understood that there are blonde Romany. One of the reasons people kept thinking they'd found Elsie Paroubek (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elsie_Paroubek), back in 1911, was the presence of blonde children in Romany caravans. The newspapers kept playing up "the natural love of the wandering people for blue-eyed, flaxen-haired children." Police finally caught on that most of these actually were not kidnapped outsiders. In fact, the best known case of a verified kidnapped outsider was Lillian Wulff, who was dark.