patteran
nounEtymology From Romani patrin (“leaf”), perhaps specifically from an inflected form like Vlax Romani pateryánsa.
1
Any of several coded signs left along a road or on a non-Roma house by one Rom to another. The most common ones consist of crossed sprigs (usually of different trees or shrubs) indicating, for example, a direction travelled.
- Follow the Romany Patteran / Sheer to the Austral Light, / Where the besom of God is the wild South wind, / Sweeping the sea-floors white.1890, Rudyard Kipling, The Gipsy Trail, Boston: Alfred Bartlett, published 1909, verse 8:
- They began to come upon from time to time small cairns of rock by the roadside. They were signs in gypsy language, lost patterans.2006, Cormac McCarthy, The Road: