Morning journal and courier., 1891-11-28

Wucio SipoiSs Iluo III WdSOuS llk6 pdldCtS and eat from plates of silver; while trust full gipsy children, tugging at my knees, have searched my scant pockets, climbed into my arms and fallen asleep-their in stinct as to the stranger proving, after all, the truest sesame to the gipsies' hearts at homes. It is always in this selfish, une- vangelical way that have known in all lands the outcast Romany race, and be- cause of it have not overmuch evil to re- cord of them.
 There are not all told-and this includes skulking city Romany, unknown in their town vacations as members of the gipsy race-upward of five thousand gipsies in Ireland, of whom barely one thousand follow the precarious but romantic life of the road. Irish Catholics, and particular ly the lowliest of the peasantry, without exception hold them in something like terrible detestation.
 Let gipsy gpae-wife or fortune teller once slip into an Irish cabin and begin any of her black art conjurings, the smoke of war will at once rise above that spot Calling on all the category of saints in one shrill and mighty breadth of appeal, the Irish mother will treat this gipsy cheat to such whirlwind of eviction as may be heard for half league away. The very matching would be pulled from tLe roof. if necessary, to speed and force the battle for the home against the grewsome wilss. And my gipsy friends the world over know this fact so well and bitterly that universally with their race Ireland is termed, in recognition of its barreness for their purposes, sallah lodlie, or the un- lucky and accursed territory.
 There is & marked difference in Scot land. In proportion to its population there are more gipsies in the land O cakes than in England. Scottish traditions and literature, especially the ballad poetry of Scotland, are full of gipsy countryside lore and superstitions which have been the outgrowth of very genial and close rela- tion between gipsies and Scottish peasan- try. Gipsy blood is known to course in the veins of many of the Scottish nobili- ty. These people actually secured the countenance, if not the favor, of James ". James V. entered into league with ''John Flaw, lord and earl of little Egypt,n in 1540, directing all in authority in his realm to compel the return to FAw's sub mission all those Egyptians who had re- belled against him, and that all officers should assist in detaining and punishing those people ''in conformity with his 1aws," so that, as the edict read, 'sthe said John have no cause of complaint in time coming"
 This Flaw, whose shrewdness stamped the genuine gipsy upon his character, was the progenitor of the many tribes of Faws, Faas or Falls, who, with the Bail lies, have been the most noted and numer- ous of Scottish gipsies, whose descendants I have found in respectable numbers and condition throughout the United States.
 The environs of Edinburgh and Glss- physique to their English brethren about London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool. In Tweeddale, Anandale and Nithsdals are many families of gipsies whose responsibility and individual means, although they lead a rowing life, would compare favorably with those of the small farmers of the same regions. The gipsies whom have met in Aberdeenshire and Perthshire not so well off, but are much liked and always welcomed among the peasantry.
 Within few years much good fortune, from pecuniary standpoint, has come to Scottish gipsies through the vast increase of summer visitors, American as we'll as English, to the highlands and islands of Scotland. They resort to the vicinity of Oban, Rothesay, 1nveraray, even across to the outer Hebrides, and are found in eve " romantic glen in the Trossachs and along the highland lakes. These are grad ually abandoning the life of the road for the greater and quicker profits of ''show" gipsies in summer, and during the winter seek lowly quarters in cities.
 The smallest and largest collection of gipsies I ever found in Scotland were, re- spectively, in the far north and at the very southern boundary. The first was discov- cred one early morning in July. I was coming with an eminent northern Presby- terian divine from grand Strathglass over the bleak moors. down through fairy Glen Urquhart, to Drumnadeochit by Loch Ness side. On one of the fern spread braes of little loch stood a solitary gipsy tent-the tiny woolen hood of the true Romany. Its flaps were skewered close. The inmates were asleep. It was the tiniest, snuggest home human eyes ever beheld. I could not but repeat aloud to my reverend companion some gipsy say ings, perhaps six thousand years old, such has: ''Firm as rounded hill are the tents of our people," ''Mv loves breasts are as hillocks of amber; as bright tents bur nished by the sum-" "Our tents are firm against the sand-wind" And, GAS still as the red stars sleep shall nestle our tents in the valleys" But, as the startled look in the dominies face merged into ineffable Scotch scorn, presently desisted.
 The largest aggregation of Scottish zip sies, now sadly dwindled, is at the border u. might be called house gipsies, as they oc- cupy matched cabins in Kirk Yetholm, the property of the Marquis of Tweeddale, held under the curious tenure of ''nine- teen times nineteen years" at . nominal rent. But 8 few families remain. Nearly all the old stock has died off or emigrated to America, though no longer ago than 1S47 they mustered from round about over five hundred souls and three hundred asses to escort the remains of their old king, canny "Wull (WilD Fsa" from Cold stream to the burying ground at Kirk Yet holm. It was here, too, that my late sensible gipsy woman that ever lived Queen Esther Faa, reigned so long, so wisely and so well.
 These Yetholm, as we'll as all other Scot. tish drom, or road, gipsies, chiefly subsist | by hawking earthen, tin and white iron ware, horn spoons, "scrubbers" and ''be- soms," the latter sort of willow broom, about the country. They travel as far into | England as Newcastle and Staffordshire for the earthenware. buying faulty pottery | cheaply, and selling the same at good profit. The remainder of their wares they | make in a rude way among themselves, the | women being quite as adept the men. | Some drive asses before their little carts, I put luOlo pOsScss lnO hoiuy oASlkAc oI Shetland pony. For their own shelter al night their carts are "whummel'd" or
 "whomeld," that is, turned upside down.
 Generally speaking, the gipsies of Eng. land are comfortable gipsies in proportion to the distance they make their haunts from the great centers of population.
 The same is measurably true of all other
 English lowly folk. The gipsy class,
 which also includes all manner of travel
 ing and tramping non-gipsy vagabonds
 the radical improvement of whose condi
 ton has become the heroic work of George
 Smith of Coalville, never pilgrim far from
 London, Bristol, Birmingham, Manchester
 and Liverpool. Their members sally out
 from these cities and forage around and
 around them in we'll defined circles, going
 and coming as they are prompted by i'm
 pulse or scourged by necessity. They art Bedouins of civilization, indeed. and theiI
 reformation or extirpation would prove l public good. My own observation and ex
 periences have been almost wholly among
 another and better class, and the latter
 is more like our American gipsies than any
 of the Romany in all foreign lands
 Probably the most idylic form of gipsy
 life yet remaining in England may bt
 found in Wales and the English Jade dis | trict of northern Lancashire, Westmore
 land and Cumberland. have been muci
 among the ''statesmen," or land owning
 peasantry of the latter region, as we'll a
 with the gipsies there. Perhaps I hay,
 questioned five hundred small farmers ana
 others as to the gipsies' status anon, | tbapn hava uavar aaouraI s1 aDoxra,