Growing up naked.

              And when I do say here “growing up naked” then I do mean exactly that. I never thought anything odd about going naked all the time for most of the year – nearly – until I was about five old when gohja folks made remarks about the fact that us kids was naked but even then I just could not care, as we never cared much what other, especially gohjas, did say. I loved – and so did all my brothers, cousins and such – to run round naked. We were not forced to go naked but our parents just did not bother putting any clothes on us so to us it was natural for us not to wear clothes. Clothes also were not in great supply with us being a Gypsy family on the road as it was and because of the fact that in both my mother’s and my father’s traditions children, especially boys, go naked from the day they are born, at least during the seasons when the weather is not too cold, until they reach puberty. So none of us boys therefore ever wore much in the way of clothes – if at all – from early spring to late fall and we would, in all seasons, and even during the cold months we would sleep in wagon or tent naked, often three or four to a bed. Besides the traditions of our tribes of boys going nude our parents’ other reasons were that it would strengthen our bodies and our resistance to infections and also it saved on washing and mending clothes. I remember my mom and dad explaining to outsiders at times that: “it’s easier to wash then chave them to wash them’s clothes”. Us kids certainly enjoyed not having to be too careful as to whether we got ourselves dirty when playing or doing chores or such.

We were, especially the boys of our clan, literally raised naked. When encamped and not going amongst the village folks (and even then little ones up to about ten years of age would go naked into the village with the older kids or an adult, often in order to mang, that is to say, to beg) we spent most of the time in the altogether wearing only our “one-button suit”. No one scolded us all the time to not soil our clothes too much.

It was and still is common amongst certain Gypsy tribes in Europe (and elsewhere), such as the Kale in Spain for example, for children, especially the boys, to go naked for much of the time. In Spain, in Guadaix, the city of caves, Gitano boys up to about fourteen can be seen going about in the nude all the time virtually.

But back to myself.

Because of the fact that us boys grew up naked our camps were always full of visiting village boys coming in secret to “play with us”, knowing that they would not be turned away in most cases and that they could, as soon as they got there, divest themselves of their clothes and run about just like us. What they did tell they moms when they got home with scratches from brambles and thorns I really do not know but would dearly love to know. Most of them came back again and again so even if they got a telling off they still wanted the freedom. But we Gypsy kids did not just play in the nude; we lived in the nude. We went hunting rabbits and gathering firewood in the same attire we were going swimming in, we rode the horses and climbed trees like that and, when moving on again, in most cases we also walked besides the wagons like that. We must have looked a sight when going about entirely naked but for a little leather bag, or one made from some other kind of materials such as canvas or burlap, across our shoulders that held our slingshot and knife and other accruements for the hunt and the knife-sharpening trade we boys all engaged in. In the countryside where I grew up very few people if any seemed to ever take much notice of the fact that we were in the nude wandering about. All too soon the day arrived, however, when, because puberty had struck, we “forcibly” graduated to wearing clothes. Oh, how we hated it.

I have to say that our parents were not nudists or naturists in that they sure did not go undressed though on occasions we did see our Mom without and our Dad certainly as he slept, like all the men in our clan, in the raw. Nakedness, however, for us kids, and here most especially the boys, was the accepted and definite norm and something, so we were told and taught, to do with our ancient Culture.

Many a road in various counties of this country we boys walked completely naked and without a care in the world of what the gohjas thought about it and in the real rural districts we definitely roamed free and naked all over the place.

I know some people will now ask “you gamboled about naked all day every day and you slept naked, often four boys to a bed at time, did you never…? Sure we did and it was more that just touching as well. But so what? The same would have happened if we’d been forced to wear clothes during the days and nightshirts in bed. It was fun to be simply naked and more fun still to play around with each other and our parents and elders did not disapprove. All of us – brothers, cousins, nephews, etc. – lived like that until we were about age twelve to fourteen.

I recall also a time when I was older and had a seasonal job as a fell warden in the Lake District when I had my little cousin Kore, then age seven, live with me and him wanting just to be naked all the time. We lived in a remote cottage on the fells and when at home I too would go naked. The little one would come with me on patrols walking by my side in the nude and proud of the fact that he was naked. He would have given anyone saying anything about him being rude to be naked the two fingers for sure.

Veshengro

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