I took a stroll through the place to eye the gipsy dwellings over, and by the time I had got to the bridge homeward, a number of poor half-starved gipsy children had gathered round me. I had not gone far before I met some bigger gipsies “working home” for the night. I thought I would have five minutes’ chat in the snow with a little old gipsy woman named Sanderson, who had accosted me in the usual gipsy fashion, viz., a curtsy and “Your honour, sir.” I pulled up and deposited my bags in the snow. At this the old woman began to smile; she no doubt thought that she had succeeded in her first step to draw something from me. She was not long in perceiving that I was not a Scotchman, and took pains to tell me her name, and that she was an English gipsy from the neighbourhood of Newcastle. It occurred to me that I would just for once try the old woman’s volubility of thanks, and accordingly I dipped into my bag for an orange; this brought the old woman almost upon her knees with a “Thank yer honour;” each “thanks” was accompanied by low curtsies. I next pulled out a picture card; this she put to her breast and said, “Lord bless yer honour.” I gave her another card, for which she responded with upturned eyes, “May the Lord bless you, my dear good gentleman.” I next gave her some coppers; she again turned up her eyes toward heaven and said with a smile, “May you never want a friend in the world.” I next gave her some tobacco, to which she responded, “May the dear Lord thank you a thousand times.” I ran through all the varieties I had, without exhausting her stock of thanks. I began to think that I must “give it up.” I believe Nisbets, Sunday School Union, Hodder and Stoughton, Partridge, Religious Tract Society, Christian Knowledge Society, and all the wide world-known first class publishing houses in Paternoster Row—and over London there are many of them—would not produce variety of picture books enough to exhaust the different kind of thanks the old gipsy woman had in store; at any rate she would have a curtsy for the last and one to spare for the next gift. I had a Testament in my bag, and as a last present I thought I would give it to her. The old woman took it out of my hand as a hungry starving child takes a piece of bread, with more eagerness than she had shown over either the money or the tobacco, and clasped it to her breast and called out with tears in her eyes in an attitude of prayer, “May the dear Lord Jesus bless you, my dear good gentleman, so long as you shall live, and may you never want a friend.” Tears and curtsies came again pretty freely, I shook hands with the old gipsy, and we parted. The rimy moisture on my spectacles, and the hastiness of my movements prevented me testing the old gipsy woman’s tears, to see whether they were genuine or not. I rather think they were; at any rate it is more pleasant to human nature to have smiles than frowns, even if they come from the devil.
I jumped into the trap, put on a warm muffler, and jolted and jogged for some two hours to my lodgings, passing some gipsy poachers on the way, and watching the growing moon in the heavens facing me, which seemed to speak words of consolation showing unmistakably that all was not darkness in the temporary Arctic cold regions in the world of gipsydom.
In Kelso I found out that one of the princes of gipsydom had been in jail nearly a score of times; in fact, one of the magistrates told me that he himself had sent one of the gipsy vagabonds to jail something like half a dozen times during the last two years. As a rule, when his “highness” was not in jail, he was employed scraping the streets, scavenging, or getting a penny in other ways. In the train I was told that one of the queens of gipsydom indulged in language which would not be a sufficient passport to heaven, and was at the present time to outside observers a poor, miserable old woman, with one foot in the grave, a standing lie to the advantages, blessings, and beauties of an uncivilized, demoralizing, wandering vagabond’s life.
A portrait of one of the self-crowned Scottish gipsy queens, Esther Faa Blythe, is here given. The old woman is eighty-five years of age, and has an eye to business. She is sharp, and can adapt herself to all circumstances. With the saints she becomes heavenly, and so on, almost through the whole of the lights, shades, and phases of social life.
There are numbers of “gipsy kings” and “queens” in the country—aye, almost in every county; at any rate those who are simple enough to believe in them say so. One gipsy queen not long ago used to dress in dashing, gaudy silks, and sit in “a chair of state” in her van, and the Londoners paid their threepennies to see her from time to time. She now lives a “retired life,” upon her gains, at Maidenhead.
The best gipsy queen I know of is the good Christian woman, Mrs. Simpson—formerly a Lee—at Notting Hill, who has become a devoted, good Christian woman, and tries to do all the good she can as she passes up and down the world. Her Bible contains her “state records,” which are the guide of her life. For twenty years she did a “roaring trade” by telling fortunes to simpletons and big babies out of the Bible—upside-down at times—of which she could not tell a letter. Since she has been a gipsy Christian queen she has learnt to read some parts of the blessed book. My plan, if followed out thoroughly in all its details, will make all our gipsies “kings” and “queens.” It is surprising that there are people in the world silly enough even at this late day to believe in such beings as the “gipsy kings” and “queens” of backwood romance.
To come back to Yetholm. The aches, pains, and wild visions of the night carried me almost over the wide, wide world, and had it not been for the power of Divine love and the rays of heavenly light I cannot tell where I might have got to ere this.
“The rougher the way, the shorter the stay,”
said Wesley. I paid my bill, and started homeward, and at St. Boswell’s station I made the acquaintance of Thomas Webster, Esq., and his two sweet, interesting little sons, Masters Thomas Scott Cliff and Harold Colin, of Oxenden Towers, Dunse. In the train we sat together, and chatted and whiled away time almost imperceptibly for several hours as we journeyed southward. At Hillfield we separated. He and his sons travelled westward, and I kept speeding along southward and homeward, I think a wiser man; certainly I know more of the gipsies in Scotland and at Yetholm than I ever knew before. I find, among other things, that there are a number of gipsies living among the rocks on the northern coasts of Scotland, more like wild animals than human beings, and as shaggy as winter-coated goats.