[Vidocq, of the French secret police, thus writes of the Hungarian Gipsies, visiting the west of Europe: Raising my eyes towards a crowd in front of a menagerie, I perceived one of the false jockeys taking the purse of a fat glazier, whom we saw the next moment seeking for it in his pocket; the Bohemian then entered a jeweller’s shop, where were already two of the pretended Zealand peasants, and my companion assured me that he would not come out until he had pilfered some of the jewels that were shown to him. In every part of the fair where there was a crowd, I met some of the lodgers of the Duchess, (the inn kept by a Gipsy woman in which he had spent the previous night.)—Ed.]
[118] It is pretty certain that the Gipsies came from a warm country, for they have no words for frost or snow, as will be seen in my enquiry into the history of their language.
[119] Such interference with the Gipsies causes them much greater offence than if the informer was a principal in the transaction. To such people, their advice has always been: “Follow your nose, and let sleeping dogs lie.” The following anecdote will illustrate the way in which they have revenged themselves, under circumstances different from the above:
Old Will, of Phaup, at the head of Ettrick, was wont to shelter them for many years. They asked nothing but house-room, and grass for their horses; and, though they sometimes remained for several days, he could have left every chest and press about the house open, with the certainty that nothing would be missing; for, he said, “he aye ken’d fu’ weel that the toad wad keep his ain hole clean.” But it happened that he found one of the gang, through the trick of a neighbouring farmer, feeding six horses on the best piece of grass on his farm, which he was keeping for winter fodder. A desperate combat followed, and the Gipsy was thrashed to his heart’s content, and hunted out of the neighbourhood. A warfare of five years’ duration ensued between Will and the Gipsies. They nearly ruined him, and, at the end of that period, he was glad to make up matters with his old friends, and shelter them as formerly. He said he could have held his own with them, had it not been for their warlockry; for nothing could he keep from them—they once found his purse, though he had made his wife bury it in the garden.—Blackwood’s Magazine. It is the afterclap that keeps the people off the Gipsies, and secures for them a sort of toleration wherever they go.—Ed.
[120] If I am not mistaken, Col. Todd is of opinion that the Gipsies originally came from Cabool, in Afghanistan. I will here give a description of an Afghan dance, very like the Gipsy dance in Scotland. “The western Afghans are fond of a particular dance called Attum, or Ghoomboor, in which from fourteen to twenty people move, in strange attitudes, with shouting, clapping of hands, and snapping of fingers, in a circle, round a single person, who plays on an instrument in the centre.”—Fraser’s Library.
CHAPTER VI.
TWEED-DALE AND CLYDESDALE GIPSIES.
The county of Peebles, or Tweed-dale, appears to have been more frequented by the Gipsies than, perhaps, any other part of Scotland. So far back as the time of Henry Lord Darnley, when the Gipsies were countenanced by the government, we find, according to Buchanan, that this county was a favourite resort of banditti; so much so, that when Darnley took up his residence in Peebles, for the purpose of shunning the company of his wife, Queen Mary, he “found the place so cold, so infested with thieves, and so destitute of provisions, that he was driven from it, to avoid being fleeced and starved by rogues and beggars.” In the poems of Dr. Pennecuik, as well as in his history of Peebles-shire, published in the year 1715, the Gipsy bands are frequently taken notice of. But, notwithstanding the attachment which the tribe had for the romantic glens of Tweed-dale, no evidence exists of their ever having had a permanent habitation within the shire. They appear to have resorted to that pastoral district during only the months of spring, summer and autumn. Their partiality for this part of Scotland may be attributed to three reasons.