[48] In no part of the world is the Gipsy life more in accordance with the general idea that the Gipsy is like Cain—a wanderer on the face of the earth—than in England; for there, the covered cart and the little tent are the houses of the Gipsy; and he seldom remains more than three days in the same place. So conducive is the climate of England to beauty, that nowhere else is the appearance of the race so prepossessing as in that country. Their complexion is dark, but not disagreeably so; their faces are oval, their features regular, their foreheads rather low, and their hands and feet small. The men are taller than the English peasantry, and far more active. They all speak the English language with fluency, and in their gait and demeanour are easy and graceful; in both respects standing in striking contrast with the peasantry, who, in speech, are slow and uncouth, and, in manner, dogged and brutal.—Borrow.—Ed.
[49] It does not follow, from what our author says about these two children, that they were stolen. I have seen some of the children of English Gipsies as fair as any Saxon. It sometimes happens that the flaxen hair of a Gipsy child will change into raven black before he reaches manhood.—Ed.
[50] It is but just to say that this family of Winters is, or at least was, the worst kind of English Gipsies. Their name is a by-word among the race in England. When they say, “It’s a winter morning,” they wish to express something very bad. It is difficult to get them to admit that the Winters belong to the tribe—Ed.
CHAPTER III.
SCOTTISH GIPSIES, DOWN TO THE YEAR 1715.
That the Gipsies were in Scotland in the year 1506 is certain, as appears by a letter of James IV, of Scotland, to the King of Denmark, in favour of Anthonius Gawino, Earl of Little Egypt, a Gipsy chief. But there is a tradition, recorded in Crawford’s Peerage, that a company of Gipsies, or Saracens, were committing depredations in Scotland before the death of James II, which took place in 1460, being forty-six years after the Gipsies were first observed on the continent of Europe, and it is, therefore, probable that these wanderers were encamped on Scottish ground before the year 1460, above mentioned. As I am not aware of Saracens ever having set foot in Scotland, England, or Ireland, I am disposed to think, if there is any truth in this tradition, it alludes to the Gipsies.[51] The story relates to the estate and family of McLellan of Bombie, in Galloway, and is as follows:
In the reign of James II, the Barony of Bombie was again recovered by the McLellans, (as the tradition goes,) after this manner: In the same reign, says our author of small credit, (Sir George McKenzie, in his baronage M.S.,) it happened that a company of Saracens or Gipsies, from Ireland,[52] infested the county of Galloway, whereupon the king intimated a proclamation, bearing, that whoever should disperse them, and bring in their captain, dead or alive, should have the Barony of Bombie for his reward. It chanced that a brave young gentleman, the laird of Bombie’s son, fortunated to kill the person for which the reward was promised, and he brought his head on the point of his sword to the king, and thereupon he was immediately seized in the Barony of Bombie; and to perpetuate the memory of that brave and remarkable action, he took for his crest a Moor’s head, and ‘Think on’ for his motto.[53]
As armorial bearings were generally assumed to commemorate facts and deeds of arms, it is likely that the crest of the McLellans is the head of a Gipsy chief. In the reign of James II, alluded to, we find “away putting of sorners, (forcible obtruders,) fancied fools, vagabonds, out-liers, masterful beggars, bairds, (strolling rhymers,) and such like runners about,” is more than once enforced by acts of parliament.[54]