Rachel Senechal, age 11, of Westbrook, Maine, for  her question:

Where did the Gypsy people originate?

People who live to move from state to state may be called gypsies. This is because the Gypsy people like to wander from place to place, from country to country. In fact, the Gypsies of Europe do not even live in settled houses. Their homes are caravans and after a short visit they pack up their belongings and go on their wandering way. As a rule, they travel from one country fair to the next. Often they run the carousels, the shooting galleries and the side shows at the fair.

The Gypsies have wandered around Europe for ages. By the time people thought to ask they where they originated, they had forgotten. So there was nothing, to do but guess. People guessed they came from Egypt and called them Gypsies. Later, their history was investigated by serious researchers. These experts are pretty sure that the Gypsies came originally from the River Indus region of India. Their language still has traces of the Indian Sanskrit. No one knows why they wandered away ages ago from their original home or why they never found and settled in a new home.