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In Steven Knight's crime series Peaky Blinders, the Shelby brothers are of Irish-Romani gypsy descent, and they are referred to by the umbrella term 'gypsy.'
In the series, Tommy Shelby had connections with gypsy heritage as his paternal aunt Polly was the daughter of Gypsy Princess, Birdie Boswell. She had an intuitive and unique vision, and even had the power to tell the future by reading tea leaves. Despite his nihilistic outlook, Tommy frequently sought Polly’s guidance on curses and superstitions throughout Peaky Blinders.
More on this in our story.
Exploring the Shelby family's gypsy heritage in Peaky Blinders
After World War I, many families (like the Shelbys) settled in permanent establishments. Tommy Shelby, who also embraced this lifestyle change, partly still followed his gypsy roots.
While Tommy Shelby accepted this lifestyle change in Peaky Blinders, he honoured and even feared his gypsy superstitions, myths, and curses. The show opens with Tommy taking his Monaghan Boy (his horse in the races) to seek a blessing by performing a ritual by a Chinese girl. Throughout the show, Tommy and the other characters engaged heavily in gypsy myths and curses.
All about Grace's cursed sapphire
Fans of Peaky Blinders will recall the iconic green sapphire pendant Tommy gifted his new wife after their wedding, and how it became the reason for her death. The sapphire was a gift from fugitive Russian aristocrat Grand Duke Leon Petrovich Romanov to Tommy, for the murder of Soviet Union refugee Anton Kaledin. However, Leon was treacherous, as revealed by his niece, Grand Duchess Tatiana Petrovna. Tommy also learned that Leon's sapphire, which now adorned Grace's neck, was cursed by a gypsy.
While a concerned Tommy rushed to take out the cursed sapphire from his wife's neck, it was too late, and she was fatally shot by one of Luca Changretta's men. The curse had done its deed, but Tommy blamed himself for Grace's death throughout Peaky Blinders.
The cursed sapphire found its way to Tommy's daughter in Peaky Blinders
Grace's death in Peaky Blinders Season 3 was a turning point in Tommy's story, and he grew more and more restless with each passing day. While the gypsy curse had worked, it continued to haunt Tommy in his dreams and hallucinations. That was when he finally decided to visit Bethany Boswell, a wise old woman of Romani descent who still followed the nomadic lifestyle. Tommy visited her in her wagon because he wanted to confirm that the sapphire was indeed cursed and that Grace's death was not entirely his fault. After warning Tommy to take care of his health, Madame Boswell confirmed:
“It is cursed. I feel its curse burning through my hand.”
With this, she rid Tommy of the curse and kept the sapphire for herself. However, proving that a gypsy curse never leaves the family, it found its way into Tommy's life again and plagued his and Lizzie's daughter, Ruby. In the final season of Peaky Blinders, Ruby fell prey to the curse and had hallucinations about a green-eyed man. In these trance-like episodes, Ruby also uttered these gypsy words repeatedly, "tickna mora o'beng!"
These ominous gypsy words made Tommy restless and threatened, and he even started talking to a deceased Aunt Polly, announcing that the curse had found him again. Eventually, Ruby fell sick, and that is when Tommy visited John's widow, Esme Lee (another gypsy descendant).
Esme filled in the blanks on Ruby's curse and revealed that Madame Boswell gave the cursed sapphire to her sister, who in turn gave it to her seven-year-old daughter, Connie. Connie caught a bad cold and died that same night. As Esme and Tommy visited Connie's grave in Peaky Blinders Season 6, she suspected that Connie's mother laid the curse on Tommy's daughter as payback, which worked as Ruby also died after falling ill with consumption.
In an interview exclusively with Digital Spy, Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight confirmed that Ruby's fever dream words tickna mora o'beng loosely translates to 'devil' in English.
"It's difficult to translate from the Romani, but it means 'devil'. It means a bit more than that, but yeah. So it's not good. It's not a good thing," he said.
This, the outlet suggests, could be associated with Oswald Mosley and Fascism. Notably, the actor playing Mosley (Sam Claflin) has green eyes.
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The thematic continuity of the gypsy curse and myth in Tommy's life in Peaky Blinders is symbolic that while the Birmingham leader had long abandoned his nomadic roots, the Irish-Romani heritage did not leave him. Knight intricately weaved gypsy heritage and myth throughout the narrative, making his series more culturally rich.
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