Morning journal and courier., 1889-09-28

banished. This law was ratified in 1899, and another statute passed in 1897 that they be, on conviction, made slaves for life. In sixteen hundred another act enforcing all previous statutes bearing on their regulation and punishment, and severely condeming the negligence of justices and commissioners in not putting previous laws against them into execution, was passed; and in 1903 the privy council ordered the whole race to leave the kingdom by a certain date on penalty of death. This order was in 1909 made per petual law; but it appears that, if these the gipsies themselves, they were eHectually voided by the synpathy and assistance ex- tended them by the different powerful Scot- tish clans, some of which were allied to the wanderers by marriage or secret and still more influential ties, which the government at that period very loosely controlled.
 But the history of Scottish gipsies after the beginning of the seventeenth century Is not marked by striking episodes save in a few instances, and those of a local nature and interest, where the Romany people were persecuted and punished much the same as all vagabonds coming under the surveillance of Scottish justice. The most that can be said of them is that they were gipsies. Royal edicts and parliamentary statutes, whatever their severity, operated about the same as edicts and statutes would have ope- rated against foxes. A special furry of ex
 cited vigilance and gipsy prejudice would from time to time cause renewed persecu- tion, which only drove the gipsies into their hiding places, where, still like foxes, they propagated the more rapidly, and after quiet had returned they came to the surface again, more daring gipsies and more of them. Per haps some poor lame fox of gipsy would occasionally get caught and be clubbed to death by the butt end of cruel Scotch law, as though there had been mighty conquest; but that was all. They never failed to thrive under persecution in all European countries to almost as great degree as they have prospered under conditions of absolute free dom In America.
 The most noted gipsies of Scotland were Anthonius Gawino, previously referred to, the Bailyows, afterwards the Bsillies, from whom the many families of American gipsy Baileys are descended, and old John Faw, progenitor of all the gipsy Flaws, Faas and Falls of Scotland and America. Many mem- bers of the Faa family have attained wealth and political preferment in Scotland. The once wealthy Falls, merchants of Dunbar, are gipsies. One of the Falls became colonel in the British army. Another served term in Parliament. Hosts have been and are un- der sherIfs and bailifs. Lady Anstruther, wife of the late Sir John Anstruther, of Ellie, was Jenny Faa, gipsy woman of great wit and beauty. These Falls or Fass, of Dun- bar, are also connected by marriage with the great banking family of Coutts, widely known in America through the frequent so- cial intelligence concerning the noted Baron. ess Burdette-Coutts. While the celebrated poem, "The GIpsie Lsddie," commemorates the abduction by the gipsy king, John Faa,
 in 1643, of Lady Casillis, wife of the Earl of Casillis, "a sullen and ill-tempered man,
 more given to theology than ilka day good ness," who was absent on deputation to ratify the solemn league and covenant of
 that year at Westminster. Sir Walter Scott
 created his great character of 'Meg Mer- rifles" out of Jean Gordon, gipsy woman
 of this very Yetholm; and have broken
 bread with her descendants here as well as
 during my wandering among the gipsies in
 America. Scott himself said of Jean Cor
 don: "She had a great sway among her tribe. She was quite Meg Merrilies, and
 possessed the savage virtue of fidelity in the
 same perfection"
 "Light down, light down, our ain Gorgio farther tine day, an friends houses sac near!" was the greeting I got az, riding through the crooked street of Kirk Y etholm, having come horseback over the Cheviots | from Jedburg, halted at gipsy cottage and | inquired if an inn could anywhere be found | in the hamlets. In an instant l was fairly 1 pulled from my horse, hugged by dozen
 
 | of women and spae-wives old, and kissed l roundly and soundly by seven-I remember l the exact numberi-of as handsome gipsy l lasses one would wish to see. My horse was led to byre and fed and groomed, and I was conducted to the largest and best con- l at little window overlooking the street; for ! my fame among gipsies as friend of the gipsies for over quarter of century in America had preceded me; and had no more than arrived in Glasgow when informa- 1 tion of my visit had been secretly sent them. This was no slight honor, as I afterwards l learned 1t was the 'fthrone" on which had sat ! all the gipsy kings and queens of Yetholm ! from old Will Faa to Queen Esther Blyth- 1 Fas. the last to claim regal title here, and | whose remains lie in the tiny gipsy burial l place just above the town.
 | The room was at once filled with gipsies tc ! the number of thirty or forty. I had three l letters to deliver from their gipsy relatives ! in America. These were turned over to me 1 to be read aloud; and then for four mortal | hours never knew, and never again will 1 find, even should attain fame among those | who are not gipsies, so enthralled an audi l ence. And venture to say, though I had ! part in 1t, no stranger or weirder scene fol artist could bs found. Stalwart men with chins in hand eyed me from under their bushy brows like some bandit band intent
 on wondrous plans of expedition. Women of immense stature, with heads awry as If to catch every syllable uttered, leaned between \ and over their husbands, with kindling eyes often blazing with excitement as the for tunes of their American brethren were re- counted. Haggish spae-wives, with bare6 | breasts like boards and half-open mouths ex. posing occasional remaining tushes, weavee
 back and forth, their trembling crooning ! now and then reaching shrill ecstasy of ex. kG1Su 0Il onr1lc { ! warmed with the mesmeric power of tht
 common interest. Great hulks of youths
 with open-eyed wonder looked and listened | Blooming lasses with arms across their moth
 CTS shoulders, and yet with the ever win
 some restlessness of girlhood, stole glancei
 at the stranger and seemed to look beyont
 him with yearning eyes to his land wher
 gipsies rode in wagons like palaces and at from plates of silver. While dirty chauvie
 tugged about my knees, climbed into m
 arms, sesrohed my seanf pockets, and on ! wee thing finally fell asleep trustfully acros my shoulder, with one of its little hand
 clinched stoutly within my own not ove
 long hair. And somehow that mite of
 being of an outcast race made me feel yer ! tender to these Yetholm nomads. Soon
 ! supper good enough for any hungry man wa ! provided, and then, wondrous honorI sfte
 another seige of questioning I was put t ! rest in the bed of the dead queen, Esthe
 Faa-Blyth. It was wild night and storm one, and the old hag's saying that Yetholr
 ''is sac mingle- -mangls that one might thinl it was either built on dark nicht or sow on windy onei" kept whispering to me Ii wild threnodies as the gusts rustled amon the rattling thatches all that grewsome night ,t But pipsydom in Kirk Yetholm is sadl waning. In my three days visit in Tinker Row 1t was all made clear why Scottish an English writers of a sentimental turn COT l tinue to lament the extinction of these pie ; | turesaue folk throughout Great Britain ! Gipsies are not becoming extinct. Thei
 field of operations has changed. From eve ! ry European country every emigrant ship fo the past one hundred years has conveyed on
 or more to our own country, until, as hay previously pointed out in American journals } we to day possess gipsy population of ove li million souls. Here in Scotland those sti leading nomad life are to be found chief in Linlithgowshire, Fife and Sterlingshire |. in Tweeddale and Clydesdale, and here 6 Yetholm. All sorts of trades and vocation have drawn them from their wandering lift , ] Those still living upon the road have pos lively abandoned petty theft and depreda , tion and are become the peddlars and tinker of the countryside thoroughfares. They al socially on higher plane. But their dimir ution here is startling. Only this year the l have among themselves taken 8 sort of cen ! sus. They find there are not above thre thousand gipsies all told in Scotland. Her at Yetholm in 1847 they mustered froI } roundabout over five hundred souls an three hundred asses to escort the remains c their old king, tcanny Wull Faa," froI