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 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 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 revenue officers he had defended a narrow bridge somewhere near Bamborough Castle, while his party made their escape, and had stood fighting singly with his cudgel, till it was cut down by the cutlasses of the officers to “twa nieves lang,” and till he finally got a cut across the arm which disabled him. When we asked him of the truth of this story, his grey eyes kindled up into a wild fire, and stretching out his two arms together, he shewed us, with a significant gesture, that one was still at least two inches longer than the other. Old Will Faa had risen into great importance through the writings of Sir Walter Scott. He told us that Sir Martin Archer Shee had been down to take his likeness. He was in daily request at the houses of the neighbouring nobility and gentry to catch trout for them, being intimately acquainted with all the streams of the country round, and all the arts of filling his creel out of them. Will, therefore, is sure to be found either by the side of one of the trout streams, or in the kitchen of some of the neighbouring halls, telling his exploits and drinking his toddy. His niece, who was absent with the tribe, was said to be the belle of the camp; a true gipsy beauty, dark and “weel fa’ured.”
Such is the present state of the gipsies of England and Scotland. Their numbers are evidently everywhere on the decrease; yet what do remain in England retain all their ancient characteristics. These characteristics have never been more accurately delineated than by Richard Howitt, in his poem of the “Gipsy King,” in the Metropolitan Magazine for June 1836. The groups proceeding to the coronation of their king are living.
Now come in groups the gipsy tribes,
From northern hills, from southern plains;
And many a panniered ass is swinging
The child that to itself is singing
Along the flowery lanes.
Stout men are loud in wrangling talk,
Where older tongues are gruff and tame;
Keen maiden laughter rings aloft,
Whilst many an undervoice is soft
From many a talking dame.
Their beaver hats are weather stained,—
The one black plume is sadly gay;
Their squalid brats are slung behind,
In cloaks that flutter to the wind,
Of scarlet, brown, and grey.
The king himself is distinguished by some touches that are the life itself, but which I never recollect seeing elsewhere introduced.
The slouching hat our hero wore,
The crown wherewith he king was crowned;
Wherein a pipe and a crow’s feather
Were stuck in fellowship together,
Was by a hundred winters browned.
His sceptre was a stout oak sapling,
Round which a snake well-carved was wreathed;
Cunning and strength that well bespoke,
Whilst from his frame, as from an oak,
“Deliberate valour breathed.”