“No dark Jeddart prison e’er closed upon him,
The last lord of Egypt ne’er wore gyve on limb.
Though his grey locks were crownless, the light of his eye
Was kingly—his bearing majestic and high.
Though his hand held no sceptre, the stranger can tell
That the full bowl of welcome became it as well;
The fisher or rambler, by river or brae,
Ne’er from old Willie’s hallan went empty away.
“In the old house of Yetholm we’ve sat at the board,
The guest, highly honoured, of Egypt’s old lord,
And mark’d his eye glisten as oft as he told
Of his feats on the Border, his prowess of old.
It is meet, when that dark eye in death hath grown dim,
That we sing a last strain in remembrance of him.
The fame of the Gipsy hath faded away
With the breath from the brave heart of gallant Will Faa.”
[156] This long standing feud between the Baillies and the Faas is notorious. In paying a visit to a family of English Gipsies in the United States, the head of the family said to me: “You must really excuse us to-day. It’s the Faas and Baillies over again; it will be all I can do to keep them from coming to blows.” The noise inside of the house was frightful. There had been a “difficulty” between two families in consequence of some gossip about one of the parties before marriage, which the families were sifting to the bottom.
The Faas and their partisans, on reading this work, will not overwell relish the prominence given to the Baillie clan.—Ed.
[157] “He will be pleased to learn that there is, in the house of Provost Whyte, of Kirkaldy, a piece of needle-work, or tapestry, on which is depicted, by the hands of Mrs. Fall, the principal events in the life of the founder of her family, from the day the Gipsy child came to Dunbar in its mother’s creel, until the same Gipsy child had become, by its own honourable exertions, the head of the first mercantile establishment then existing in Scotland.” [This seems to be an extract from a letter. The authority has been omitted in the MS.—Ed.]
[158] “There are,” says a correspondent, “several gentlemen in this town and neighbourhood who have heard declare, that the Falls themselves had often acknowledged to them their descent from the Gipsy Faas. I am told by an old Berwickshire gentlemen, who had the account from his mother, that the Falls, on their departure from Yetholm, stopped some little time at a country village-hamlet called Hume, in Berwickshire, where they had some female relations; and after a few days spent there, they set out for Dunbar, taking their female friends along with them.
“Latterly, the late Robert and Charles Fall, who were cousins, kept separate establishments. Robert possessed the dwelling house now occupied by Lord Lauderdale; and Charles possessed one at the shore, (now the custom-house.) built on the spot where some old houses formerly stood, and was called ‘Lousy Law.’ It was in these old cot-houses that the Falls first took up their residence on coming to Dunbar. It appears the mother of the first of the Falls who came to Dunbar was a woman of much spirit and great activity. Old William Faa, the chief of the Gipsies at Yetholm, when in Lothian, never failed to visit the Dunbar family, as his relations. The Dunbar Falls were connected, by marriage, with the Anstruthers, Footies, of Balgonie, Coutts, now bankers, and with Collector Whyte, of the customs, at Kirkaldy, and Collector Melville, of the customs, at Dunbar.”
[159] Speaking of a gentlemen in his autobiography, Dr. Alexander Carlyle, in 1744. says: “He had the celebrated Jenny Fall, (afterwards Lady Anstruther,) a coquette and a beauty, for months together in the house with him; and as his person and manners drew the marked attention of the ladies, he derived considerable improvement from the constant intercourse with this young lady and her companions, for she was lively and clever, no less than beautiful.”—Ed.
[160] I beg the reader to take particular notice of this circumstance. A Scotch rabble is the lowest and meanest of all rabbles, at such work as this. In their eyes, it was unpardonable that Lady Anstruther, or “Jenny Faa,” should have been of Gipsy origin; but it would have horrified them, had they known the meaning of her ladyship “being of Gipsy origin,” and that she doubtless “chattered Gipsy,” like others of her tribe.—Ed.