GIPSIES.
All hail! ye British Buccaneers!
Ye English Ishmaelites, all hail!
A jovial and marauding band,
Against the goodliest of the land
Ye go, and ye prevail.
Man’s cultured Eden casts ye forth,
Where’er ye list to wander wide,
Wild heaths and wilder glens to tread,
The spacious earth before you spread,
Your hearts your only guide.
The Gipsy King. By Richard Howitt.
The picture of the Rural Life of England must be wofully defective which should omit those singular and most picturesque squatters on heaths and in lanes, the Gipsies. They make part and parcel of the landscape scenery of England. They are an essential portion of our poetry and literature. They are moulded into our[166] memories, and all our associations of the country by the surprise of our first seeing them,—by the stories of their cunning, their petty larcenies, their fortune-tellings,—and by the writings of almost all our best poets and essayists. The poets being vividly impressed by anything picturesque, and partaking of some mystery and romance, universally talk of them with an unction of enjoyment. Romance writers have found them more profitable subjects than her Majesty does—Scott and Victor Hugo especially. But the first introduction to them, which most of us had in print, and to which the mind of every man of taste must instantly revert on seeing or hearing of them, is that most admirable and racy one in the Spectator,—that gipsy adventure of our truly beloved and honoured friend, Sir Roger de Coverley—that perfect model of an old English gentleman. Who does not think of this scene with a peculiar delight, especially since it has received so exquisite a representation from the pencil of Leslie? “As I was yesterday riding out in the fields with my friend Sir Roger, we saw at a little distance from us a troop of gipsies. Upon the first discovery of them, my friend was in some doubt whether he should not exert the Justice of the Peace upon a band of lawless vagrants; but not having his clerk with him, who is a necessary counsellor on these occasions, and fearing that his poultry might fare the worse for it, he let the thought drop, but at the same time gave me a particular account of the mischiefs they do in the country in stealing peoples’ goods, and spoiling their servants. If a stray piece of linen hangs upon a hedge, says Sir Roger, they are sure to have it; if the hog loses its way in the fields, it is ten to one but it becomes their prey. Our geese cannot live in peace for them.
“‘If a man prosecutes them with severity, his hen-roost is sure to pay for it. They generally straggle into this part of the country about this time of the year, and set the heads of our servant maids so agog for husbands, that we do not expect to have any business done as it should be while they are in the country. I have an honest dairymaid who crosses their hands with a piece of silver every summer, and never fails being promised the handsomest young fellow in the parish for her pains. Your friend the butler has been fool enough to be seduced by them; and though he is sure to lose a knife, a fork, or a spoon, every time his fortune is[167] told him, generally shuts himself up in the pantry with an old gipsy for above half an hour once a twelvemonth. Sweethearts are the things which they live upon, which they bestow very plentifully upon all those that apply themselves to them. You see now and then some handsome young jades amongst them,—the sluts have very often white teeth and black eyes.’
“Sir Roger observing that I listened with great attention to his account of a people who were so entirely new to me, told me that if I would, they should tell us our fortunes. As I was very well pleased with the knight’s proposal, we rid up and communicated our hands to them. A Cassandra of the race, after having examined my lines very diligently, told me that I loved a pretty maid in a corner; that I was a good woman’s man; with some other particulars which I do not think proper to relate. My friend Sir Roger alighted from his horse, and exposing his palm to two or three that stood by him, they crumpled it into all shapes, and diligently scanned every wrinkle that could be made in it; when one of them, who was older and more sunburnt than the rest, told him that he had a widow in his line of life. Upon which the knight cried, ‘go, go, you are an idle baggage,’ and at the same time smiled upon me. The gipsy, finding that he was not displeased in his heart, told him, after a further inquiry into his hand, that his true-love was constant, and that he should dream of her to-night. My old friend cried, ‘Pish,’ and bid her go on. The gipsy told him that he was a bachelor, but would not be so long; and that he was dearer to somebody than he thought. The knight still repeated that she was an idle baggage, and bid her go on. ‘Ah, master,’ says the gipsy, ‘that roguish leer of yours makes a woman’s heart ache. You have not that simper about the mouth for nothing.’ The uncouth gibberish with which all this was uttered, like the darkness of an oracle, made us the more attentive to it. To be short, the knight left the money with her that he had crossed the hand with, and got up again on his horse.
“As we were riding away, Sir Roger told me, that he knew several sensible people who believed these gipsies now and then foretold very strange things; and for half an hour together appeared more jocund than ordinary. In the height of his good humour, meeting a common beggar upon the road who was no[168] conjuror, as he went to relieve him, he found his pocket picked; that being a kind of palmistry at which this race of vermin are very dexterous.”
This is a perfect piece of gipsyism. Wordsworth, Cowper, Crabbe, and others of our poets, have given very graphic sketches of them; but in all these descriptions you have the same characteristics, those of a strange, vagabond, out-of-door, artful, and fortune-telling people. This was for a long time the only point of view in which they were regarded. That they were a thievish and uncivilizable race everybody knew, but what was their real origin, or what their real country, few cared to inquire. It, in fact, quite satisfied the public to consider them as what they pretended to be, Egyptians. In all the descriptions I have alluded to, no reference whatever is made to their origin. Addison alone hints that he could give some historical remarks on this idle people, but he does not think it worth while. But a more inquisitive age came. It began to strike the minds of intelligent men, as the love of the picturesque, the love of whatever was quiet, ancient, singular, or poetic in the features of the country grew into a strong public feeling, that there was something far more curious and mysterious about this people than merely met the eye. That they were a peculiar variety of the human species, and had hereditary causes, whether prejudices or traditions, which stamped them, as distinctly and as stubbornly, a separate portion of humanity as the Jews, became obvious enough. That which had been supposed a mere gibberish in their mouths, was found to be true Eastern language, and it was discovered that they not merely “infested all Europe,” as Addison remarked, but all the world. In every quarter of it they were found, exhibiting the same strange and unchangeable lineaments, manners, and habits; in Egypt, as separate from the Egyptians in speech and custom, as they are separate from the English in England. Great curiosity was now excited concerning them, and we get a glimpse, in the following verses of the Ettrick Shepherd, of the speculations which arose out of the consequent inquiries.
Hast thou not noted on the by-way side,
Where England’s loanings stretch unsoiled and wide,
Or by the brook that through the valley pours,
Where mimic waves play lightly through the flowers,[169]
A noisy crew far straggling through the glade,
Busied with trifles, or in slumber laid,
Their children lolling round them on the grass,
Or pestering with their sports the patient ass?
The wrinkled grandam there you may espy,
The ripe young maiden with her glossy eye;
Men in their prime—the striplings dark and dun,
Scathed by the storms, and freckled by the sun;
O mark them well when next the group you see,
In vacant barn, or resting on the lea;
They are the remnant of a race of old—
Spare not the trifle for your fortune told!
For there shalt thou behold with nature blent
A tint of mind in every lineament,
A mould of soul distinct, but hard to trace,
Unknown except to Israel’s wandering race;
For thence, as sages say, their line they drew—
O mark them well! the tales of old are true!
In these verses, which seem intended by Hogg as the commencement of a poem on the Gipsy history, he goes on to tell us that they were a tribe of Arabs that during the Crusades were induced to act as guides and allies of the Crusaders against Jerusalem, and were therefore compelled, on the retreat of the Christians, to flee too. It was not at all surprising that they should be regarded as the real descendants of Ishmael, for they have all the characteristics of his race,—an Eastern people, retaining all their features of mind or body in unchangeable fixedness—neither growing fairer in the temperate latitudes, nor darker in the sultry ones; perpetual wanderers and dwellers in tents; active, fond of horses, often herdsmen, artful, thievish, restrained by no principle but that of a cunning policy from laying hands on any man’s possessions; fond to enthusiasm of the chase after game, though obliged to follow it at midnight; as everlastingly isolated by their organic or moral conformation from the people amongst whom they dwell as the Jews themselves. The very prophecy seemed fulfilled in them, beyond what it could be in Araby itself, where they have been repeatedly subdued to the dominion of some conqueror, while this tribe seems in all countries to maintain its character as the genuine posterity of him who was to be a wild hunter in perpetual independence.
The Germans, however, who pursue every subject of curious[170] inquiry with the same searching perseverance, took up this Gipsy mystery; and the result of their researches, founded principally on their language, at present leads to the adoption of the theory that they are a Hindu tribe. For a full view of the subject, I must refer my readers to the works of Grellman and Buttner, who have pursued this inquiry with great learning and zeal, or to a very able summary in Malte Brun’s Geography: my limits will compel me to take a more rapid notice of it. The sum and substance of their case is this. They find occupation in some countries as smiths and tinkers; they mend broken plates, and sell wooden ware. A class of them in Moldavia and Wallachia lead a settled life, and gain a subsistence by working and searching for gold in the beds of rivers. Those in the Bannat of Hungary are horse-dealers, and are gradually obeying the enactments of Joseph II., by which they are compelled to cultivate the land; but the great majority in Europe abhor a permanent residence and stated hours of labour. The women abuse the credulity of the German and Polish peasants, who imagine that they cure their cattle by witchcraft, and predict fortunate events by inspecting the lineaments of the hand. It is lawful for the wives of the Tchinganes in Turkey to commit adultery with impunity. Many individuals of both sexes, particularly throughout Hungary, are passionately fond of music, the only science in which they have, as yet, attained any degree of perfection. They are the favourite minstrels of the country people: some have arrived at eminence in cathedrals and the choirs of princes. Their guitar is heard in the romantic woods of Spain; and many gipsies, less indolent than the indolent Spaniards, exercise in that country the trade of publicans. They follow willingly whatever occupations most men hate and condemn. In Hungary and Transylvania, they are the flayers of dead horses, and executioners of criminals; the mass of the nation is composed of thieves and mendicants. The total number of these savages in Europe has never been considered less than 300,000; Grellman says 700,000; of these, 150,000 are in Turkey; 70,000 in Wallachia and Moldavia; 40,000 in Hungary and Transylvania; the rest are scattered through Russia, Prussia, Poland, Germany, Jutland, Spain, and other countries. Persia and Egypt are infested with them. They have appeared in Spanish America.
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Who then are these people? Grellman and Buttner do not hesitate to pronounce them to be one of the low Indian castes, Soudras or Correvas, expelled from their country during one of its great revolutions, probably that of Tamerlane, about the year 1400. Their habits as tinkers, musicians, horse-dealers, etc. etc., already alluded to, are exactly in keeping with this supposition; but what is far stronger evidence is, that their language, formerly supposed to be the gibberish of thieves and pickpockets, is really Indostanée. In the tents of these wanderers is spoken the dialects of the Vedas, the Puranas, the Brachmans, and the Budahs. This, in different tribes, is in some degree dashed with words of Sclavonic, Persic, Permiac, Finnic, Wogoul, and Hungarian. The structure of the auxiliary verb is the same as others in the Indo-Pelasgic tongues, but the pronouns have a remarkable analogy with the Persic, and the declension of nouns with the Turkish. Pallas infers from their dialect that their ancient country was Moultan, and their origin the same as that of the Hindu merchants at present at Astrakhan. Bartolomeo believes they come from Guzerat, perhaps from the neighbourhood of Tatta, where a horde of pirates called Tchinganes still reside. Lastly, Richardson boasts of having found them among the Bazigurs, a wandering tribe of minstrels and dancers. No caste, however, bears so strong a resemblance to them as that of the Soudras, who have no fixed abodes, but live in tents, and sell baskets, mend kettles, and tell fortunes.
The names by which they have been, or are known in different countries are various. They call themselves Romi, Manusch, and Gadzi, each of these appellatives being connected with a different language—the Copt, the Sanscrit, and the Celtic. In Poland and Wallachia they are Zingani; in Italy and Hungary, Zingari; in Lithuania, Zigonas; Ziguene in Germany; Tchinganes in Turkey; the Atchinganes of the middle ages; in Spain they are Gitanos; in France, Bohemians, from their having passed out of Bohemia into that country. By the Persians they are called Sisech Hindou, or Black Indians. But the most ancient and general name is that of Sinte, or inhabitants of the banks of the Sinde, or Indus. The celebrated M. Hasse, has indeed proved that for the last 3000 years there have been in Europe wandering tribes bearing the name of Sigynes, or Sinte. He considers the modern gipsies as[172] the descendants of these ancient hordes. Herodotus points out the Sigynes on the north side of the Ister. Strabo describes a people called Siginii, inhabiting the Hyrcanian mountains near the Caspian sea. Pliny speaks of the Caucasian Singi, and of the Indian Sing?. Hesychius reconciles the opinions of the ancients, and calls the Sinde an Indian people. They were noted for their cowardice; for submitting to the lash of Scythian masters, the prostitution of their women, whose name became a term of reproach. Different branches of the same people were scattered through Macedonia, in which was a Sinti district, and in Lemnos, where the Sinties were the workmen of Vulcan.
It will now be sufficiently obvious to the reader what a singular, ancient, and mysterious people are these gipsies, that haunt our lanes and commons, and form so striking and poetical a feature in our country scenery. After all the zealous and learned researches into their history and origin, nothing appears yet established beyond the fact, that they are older than Herodotus, the most ancient of profane historians; that for more than 3000 years they have been wandering through the world as they do at present; and that their language exhibits incontestable evidence of an oriental origin. The ravages of Tamerlane may perhaps help to account for the circumstance of their pressing upon Western Europe in 1400 in such unusual numbers; but they were wanderers long before Tamerlane’s days. Were they enemies of Krishna? for they boast of having formerly rejected Christ. They pretend that they were once a happy people, under kings of their own; but their traditionary knowledge seems nearly extinct. Perhaps an increasing acquaintance with the East and Eastern literature may cast some light on the origin of this peculiar variety of the human race. In the mean time we may proceed to take a close view of them as they now appear in this kingdom. From the first moment of their attracting the public attention in this part of Europe, they have always exhibited the same artful character,—a character above the trammels of either superstition or religion. They have therefore adopted the most plausible pretences to effect their purposes; and for a long time triumphed over the credulity of the christian princes, at all times over that of the common people. Their first appearance in France, as related by Pasquin, is curious enough.[173] “On August 27th, 1427, came to Paris twelve penitents, Penanciers, as they called themselves, viz.: a duke, an earl, and ten men, all on horseback, and calling themselves good christians. They were of Lower Egypt, and gave out, that not long before, the christians had subdued their country, and obliged them to embrace christianity on pain of death. Those who were baptized were great lords in their own country, and had a king and queen there. Soon after their conversion, the Saracens overran the country, and obliged them to renounce christianity. When the emperor of Germany, the king of Poland, and the christian princes heard of this, they fell upon them, and obliged the whole of them, both great and small, to quit the country, and go to the Pope at Rome, who enjoined them seven years’ penance, to wander over the world without lying in a bed.
“They had been wandering five years when they came to Paris. First the principal people, and soon after the commonalty, about 100 or 120—reduced, according to their account, from 1000 or 1200, when they went from home; the rest, with their king and queen, being dead. They were lodged by the police at some distance from the city, at Chapel St. Denis.
“Nearly all of them had their ears bored, and wore two silver rings in each, which they said were esteemed ornaments in their country. The men were black; their hair curled; the women, remarkably black; their only clothes a large old duffle garment, tied over their shoulders with a cloth or cord, and under it a miserable rocket. In fact, they were the most poor, miserable creatures that ever had been seen in France; and, notwithstanding their poverty, there were amongst them women who, by looking into people’s hands, told their fortunes, and what was worse, they picked people’s pockets of their money, and got it into their own, by telling these things through art magic, etc.”
The subtlety of these modern Gibeonites cannot be sufficiently admired. They did not venture to alarm the country by coming at once in full strength into it, but sent a detachment, mounted on horseback as princes, to pave the way by their tale of sufferings; then came a larger troop, in true Gibeonitish condition, to excite the popular commiseration; and that being done, their numbers gradually increased; and under these and similar pretences, they[174] rambled over France for a whole century, when their real character being sufficiently obvious, and their numbers daily increasing, they were banished by proclamation. The same policy was pursued towards them in all the countries of Europe, if we except Hungary and Wallachia. In Spain, sentence of banishment being found ineffectual, in 1492 an edict of extermination was published; but they only slunk into the mountains and woods, and reappeared in a while as numerously as before. The order of banishment not succeeding in France, in 1561 all governors of cities were commanded to drive them away with fire and sword; and in 1612 a new order for their extermination came out. In 1572, they were expelled from the territories of Milan and Parma, as they had before been driven from the Venetian boundaries. In Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands, repeated enactments were made for their expulsion. In Germany, from 1500 to 1577, various similar decrees were promulgated against them. Under these laws they suffered incredible miseries. They were imprisoned; chased about like wild beasts, and put to death without mercy: but, as the European states did not act in concert, when they were driven from one they found an asylum in another; and whenever the storm blew over, they again gradually reappeared in their old haunts. The Empress Theresa, and afterwards the Emperor Joseph II., seem to have been the only sovereigns who set themselves in earnest to reclaim and civilize this singular people; and we have seen that in Hungary some of them are gradually submitting to the regulations made by these wise monarchs.
Their introduction to this kingdom, and their after-treatment were similar. At first they were received as princes and kings, and excited commiseration by the tale of their injuries. They had royal and parliamentary passes granted them, to go through the country seeking relief, as many of the parish records yet bear testimony. So late as 1647 there appears an entry in the constable’s accounts at Uttoxeter, in Staffordshire, of four shillings being given to forty-six Egyptians, travelling with a pass from parliament, to seek relief by the space of six months. But when this delusion was past, and it was seen that they had no intention of quitting the country, they became persecuted by justices of the peace and parish constables, as thieves and vagrants; and the rapid enclosures of waste lands[175] during the war, tended greatly to break up their haunts, and put them into great straits.
About twenty years ago John Hoyland, a minister of the Society of Friends, being struck with commiseration for their condition, began to inquire into their real character; and the researches of Grellman being made known to him, he visited their encampments in various places in Northamptonshire, Hainault Forest, and Norwood, near London. He also sought them out in their winter quarters in London; and the result of his inquiries satisfied him that the English gipsies were a genuine portion of the great tribe described by Grellman; that they possessed the same oriental language, specimens of which he has given in his history. Mr. Hoyland could not ascertain what were the actual numbers of these people in England. They had been stated in parliament to be not less than 30,000, but on what authority did not appear; but it was very evident that enclosures, and the severity of the magistrates, had reduced their numbers. Probably many of them had emigrated. Norwood used to be their great resort, but its enclosure had broken up that rendezvous, yet it nevertheless appeared, that considerable numbers wintered in London, and at the earliest approach of spring set out on their summer progress through various parts of the country, especially in the counties of Surrey, Bedford, Buckingham, Hereford, Monmouth, Somerset, Wilts, Southampton, Cambridge, and Huntingdon.
Subsequent inquiries have shewn that these people retire into other large towns in winter besides London, particularly Bristol. That in town their chief haunts are in Tottenham-court-road, Banbridge-street, Bolton-street, Church-lane, Battle-bridge, Tunbridge-street, Tothill-fields, and White-street. In Bristol, they are chiefly found in St. Philips, Newfoundland-street, Bedminster, and at the March and September fairs. About London, in April, May, and June, they get work in the market-gardens. In July and August they move into Sussex and Kent for harvest-work, where they continue. Through September, great numbers of them find employment in the hop districts of those counties, and of Surrey. They constantly encamp on the commons near London. On Wimbledon Common, at Christmas 1831, there were[176] no less than seventy of them. In the parks of Richmond, Greenwich, Windsor, and all the resorts of summer visitants from town, the gipsy women are to be found exercising their vocation of fortune-tellers. On this account many of them encamp about Blackheath, Woolwich-heath, Lordship-lane, near Deptford, and Plum-street, near Woolwich. The Archbishop’s Wall, near Canterbury; Staple and Wingham Well, near the same city, and Buckland, near Dover, and the New Forest, Hampshire, are great haunts; they also flock in great numbers to Ascot, Epsom, and other races.
Mr. Hoyland extended his researches to Scotland, and the most prompt assistance was offered him in his inquiries in that country. A circular was dispatched to the sheriff of every county, soliciting, through the medium of an official organ, all the intelligence which could be obtained on the subject. It was found that there were very few gipsies in Scotland at all. From thirteen counties the reports were—“No gipsies resident in them.” From most others the answer was, that they appeared there only as occasional passengers. The Border appeared to be their chief resort, and respecting those Sir Walter Scott, then plain Walter Scott, addressed a very characteristic letter to the author. His account of them tallies exactly with that he has given in his celebrated novels. He and Mr. Smith, the Baillie of Kelso, agree in describing them as a single colony at Yetholm, and one family removed thence to Kelso. This colony appears to have acquired a character more daring and impetuous than the gipsies of England; in fact, to have exhibited the true old Border spirit: probably partly from example and partly from intercourse with some of the Border families. Mr. Baillie Smith gives the following instance of this spirit:—“Between Yetholm and the Border farms in Northumberland, there were formerly, as in most border situations, some uncultivated lands, called the Plea Lands, or Debateable Lands, the pasturage of which was generally eaten up by the sorners and vagabonds on both sides of the marches. Many years ago, Lord Tankerville and some other of the English borderers, made their request to Sir David Bennet and the late Mr. Wauchope, of Niddry, that they would accompany them at a riding of the Plea Lands, who readily complied with their request. They were induced to this, as they understood that the gipsies had taken[177] offence, on the supposition that they might be circumscribed in their pasture for their shelties, and asses, which they had held a long time, partly by stealth and partly by violence. Both threats and entreaties were employed to keep them away; and at last Sir David obtained a promise from some of the heads of the gang, that none of them would shew their faces on the occasion.
“They, however, got upon the hills in the neighbourhood, whence they could see every thing that passed. At first they were very quiet, but when they saw the English Court-Book spread out on a cushion before the clerk, and apparently taken in a line of direction interfering with that which they considered to be their privileged ground, it was with great difficulty that the most moderate of them could restrain the rest from running down and taking vengeance even in sight of their own lord of the manor. They only abstained for a short time, and no sooner had Sir David and the other gentlemen taken leave of each other in the most polite and friendly manner, as border chiefs are wont to do, since border feuds ceased, and had departed to a sufficient distance, than the clan, armed with bludgeons and pitchforks, and such other hostile weapons as they could find, rushed down in a body, and before the chiefs on either side had reached their homes, there was neither English tenant, horse, cow, or sheep, left upon the premises.”
This account of their descent on the Plea Lands is like one of Sir Walter Scott’s own vivid sketches of border life; and the following anecdote, also related by Mr. Baillie Smith, shews how truly they had imbibed the border spirit of clanship. “When I first knew any thing about the colony, old Will Faa was their king, or leader, and had held the sovereignty for many years. Meeting at Kelso with Mr. Walter Scott, whose discriminating habits and just observations I had occasion to know from his youth, and at the same time seeing one of my Yetholm friends in the horse-market, I merely said to Mr. Scott, ‘Try to get before that man with the long drab coat; look at him on your return, and tell me whether you ever saw him, and what you think of him.’ He was so good as to indulge me; and rejoining me said without hesitation, ‘I never saw the man that I know of, but he is one of the gipsies of Yetholm that you told me of several years ago.’ I need scarcely say that he was perfectly right.
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“The descendants of Faa, now take the name of Fall, from the Messrs. Fall of Dunbar, who, they pride themselves in saying, are of the same stock and lineage. When old Will Faa was upwards of eighty years of age, he called on me at Kelso, in his way to Edinburgh, telling me that he was going to see the laird, the late Mr. Nisbett of Dirleton, as he understood that he was very unwell, and himself now being old, and not so stout as he had been, he wished to see him once more before he died. The old man set out by the nearest road, which was by no means his common practice. Next market-day some of the farmers informed me that they had been in Edinburgh, and seen Will Faa upon the bridge (the south bridge was not built then), that he was tossing about his old brown hat, and huzzaing with great vociferation, that he had seen the laird before he died. Indeed Will himself had no time to lose, for having set his face homewards, by the way of the sea-coast, to vary his route, as is the general custom with the gang, he only got the length of Coldingham when he was taken ill and died.”
No one can fail to recognise in these border gipsies the Faas and Gordons of Guy Mannering, the desperate clan of Meg Merrilies and Derncleugh. Scott, indeed, informs us that his prototype of Meg Merrilies was Jean Gordon, an inhabitant of Kirk-Yetholm in the Cheviot hills, adjoining to the English border. The Faas, of which family her mother was, were the lineal descendants of John Faa, who styled himself Lord and King of Little Egypt, and with a numerous retinue entered Scotland, in the reign of Queen Mary.
The difference between the English and Scotch gipsies was singularly exemplified in Jean Gordon’s own family. The English gipsies have generally had the policy to commit no capital offences; but Jean’s sons were all hanged one day. Scott, in the eighth chapter of Guy Mannering, says, their mixture with the Border people gave them a peculiar ferocity, quite alien to their original character. “They understood all out-of-door sports, especially otter-hunting, fishing, and finding game. They had the best and boldest terriers, and sometimes had good pointers for sale. In winter the women told fortunes, the men shewed tricks of legerdemain; and these accomplishments helped to wile away a weary or[179] stormy evening in the circle of the ‘farmer’s ha’.’ The wildness of their character, and the indomitable pride with which they despised all regular labour, commanded a certain awe, which was not diminished by the consideration that these strollers were a vindictive race, and were restrained by no check either of fear or conscience, from taking desperate vengeance upon those who had offended them. These tribes were, in short, the Parias of Scotland, living like wild Indians among European settlements; and like them, judged of rather by their own customs, habits, and opinions, than as if they had been members of the civilized part of the community. Some hordes of them yet remain, chiefly in such situations as afford a ready escape into a waste country, or into another jurisdiction. Nor are the features of their character much softened. Their numbers are, however, so greatly diminished, that instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by Fletcher of Saltoun, it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five hundred throughout all Scotland.”
Since writing so far, I have visited Kirk-Yetholm, and can testify to the correctness of these details. It was in June, 1836, that I was at this remarkable haunt of this singular class of gipsies. The tribe was then, according to their regular custom, encamping, probably far off on the heaths of Scotland, or in the green lanes of England; and their houses, to the number of about a score, stood along one side of the village, all tenantless, with closed shutters, and doors barricadoed with boards, or locked or nailed up. We asked to whom they belonged, and were told that they were the Trayvelers, Anglice, Traveller’s houses. They had a strange look of desertion amid the peopled village. Along the lane side leading to the neighbouring hills extended a strip of land, divided into as many allotments as there were houses, in which were growing their crops of corn and potatoes, left till their return to providence and the forbearance of their neighbours; and we were assured that the tribe would not make their appearance here till the crops were ready to house, when they would come and get them in, and then away again till the setting in of winter. We found the feud between them and the shepherds still kept up as hotly as ever, and likely to continue so, from the peculiar location of the land above spoken of, on which they claim to pasture their[180] horses. About a mile from the village lies a region of pastoral hills, most beautiful in their greenness and loftiness. They are covered from vale to summit with the softest and finest turf, and their loftiest steeps are dotted with flocks. In the very midst of these hills, loftier and more naked than the rest, rises the one which the gipsies and other inhabitants of Yetholm claim. Nothing could be more ingeniously contrived, if by contrivance it had been done, to effect a constant bickering between the shepherds and the Yetholmers. The gipsies of course drive their horses up to their own hill, and nothing is more natural than that seeing better pasture all around them, and no fence to prevent them, they should go down and enjoy it. It is equally natural that the shepherds should be on the look-out, and the moment they find the horses trespassing, should drive them out into the lane leading to the village, and close the gates behind them. This also is expected by the gipsies, and the moment the horses make their appearance at the village, they are driven back again to the hills. Here is perpetual food for resentment and hostility, and to such a height does it sometimes rise, that a gentleman of Kelso informed me that he has seen at Yetholm wool-fair such affrays between the gipsies and the shepherds as would outdo Donnybrook.
We found a Will Faa still the reputed king of the tribe. He was an old man, having none of the common features of the gipsy—his Border blood having done away with the black eyes and swarthy skin; but Will had all the propensities of the gipsy, except that of encamping; smuggling, fishing, and shooting appeared to have been the business of his life. We were told that in an affray with the reve............