QUEEN OF THE GIPSIES

Greymouth Evening Star, 12 August 1933, Page 10

QUEEN OF THE GIPSIES

WANDERERS’. TALES. A gipsy queen has died in Kent and been buried with tribal pageantry. She is not likely to find a successor, and her passing may mark another stage in the absorption of the gipsies in the common population of the country. The wonder is that they have kept their caste so long. They have moved among the peoples of England and Scotland for more than four hundred years with little contact, content to be outcasts, says a writer in the “Manchester Guardian.” There was a strolling band of them in Cheshire at Easter attached' to a travelling fair. It was easy to pick out the gipsies from the ruck of the swarthy, fair folk by their finely-turned limbs, the brilliance of their eyes, and the whiteness of their teeth. I spoke to a man who leant gracefully against the side of-a caravan watching others demolish tlie stalls of the side-shows. His voice was soft and' had music in it.

Tho gipsies were no longer pure, lie said. The Romany blood was being dulled by mixture with the blood of Gazi (strangers). He could remember as a boy going round Northumberland with his father’s caravan, which was stacked with brooms and baskets for his mother to sell while his father and he mended pots and pans at the cottage doors. Some times, he admitted, he was sent to clear a farmer’s outhouse of eggs. Now there was no living to be had as a pedlar or a tinker. He had been with the fair folk for ten years, and they found it bard enough to make a profit on their shews. In the towns no one came near them, and in the country there was no money to spare. I asked if he knew Yetholm, the gipsy capital on the Border, and his lace brightened. The Faas and the Blythes had lived there. H<> himself was descended from Ihe Blythes on his mother’s side. The Faas and the Blythes were once to all the “horners, muggers, and tinkers” in the North of England and the South of Scotland what the Boswell family was to the gipsies of Kent —hereditary sovereigns who ruled by the divine right of the quick brain and the strong arm. The Faas claimed to be in direct, descent from the Pharaohs of Egypt, and long clung to the title of

"Lords anti Earles of Littel Egipt," uliicli was recognised in a charter granted to them in 1510 by James V. cf Scotland. .

1 etholm, which is a tiny village in the valley of Bowmont, at the foot of the Cheviots, on the Scottish side, was their capital. It. -was conveniently close Io the Border, and from it there was secret access to the'"'lonely and almost, impenetrable h’ills by waj-fc which only the fraternity knew. There is little to be seen of the ancient pride of state to-day. Those who go to Yetliolm hoping to see the gleam of camp tires and dark-feat tired men moving to and fro, to.smell the cooking of unlawful suppers in the air. and to ueai the accents of strange tongue will be disappointed. The only relics of the gipsies’ long residence there are a number of low-roofed cottages ai tanged iiregularly round a. green where they used to live, and' a. cottage, apart, from the rest, with one window' and one 'door, which was “the palace ” Yet for two hundred years this was the headquarters of a ru.de and vigorous community. Here, having won protection from one David Bennet,

laird of the district., in 1695, the gipsies lived their careless, merry, passionate lives, working in metal, and horn, Ashing the neighbouring burns, dealing in horses, coming and going constantly with their tents slung over the backs of asses, on errands best known to themselves, down to the first decade of the present century.

“MEG MERRILIES.” The most famous member of the Faa family was Jean Gordon, whom Scott has immortalised as “Meg Merrilies.” This woman was an Amazon who ruled her unruly tribe with a hand of iron. She died in 1746 at the hands of the rabble of Carlisle, who ducked her to death for her Jacobite leanings. So long as she could get her head above water she cried: “Charlie yet! Charlie yet!” Her granddaughter Madge was the recognised hed of the clan in Scott’s boyhood. The first Yetholm gypsy to claim a wider dominion was “Gleeneckit Wull” Faa, who. claimed to be the lineal descendant of the first Earl of Little Egypt. Wull was publicly acknowledged as king of the whole tribe of gypsies in the North of England, and his son, Wull Faa 11., succeeded ihim, though not until a bloody battle ■had been fought on Yetholm Green _ with a pretender. Wull the Second was a pugilist, a violinist, and a » smuggler. As much as £20,000 worth li of whisky is reckoned to have been ( sold into England in one year of his ! reign. Wull played for seventy years I in the annual football match at Yet- t holm on Fasten E’en —Shrove Tues- 2 day. The whole male population join- I ed in the game, which lasted all day, ) and the feasting all night. Ij Wull died at the age of ninety-six H in 1847, and his nephew Charles, a < student and a friend of Scott’s, sue- H ceeded him. Charles reigned' for four- |l teen years, and his daughter Esther S was queen from 1861 to 1883. Old | people living near Yetholm still recall 3 the old lady in her scarlet robe —part 4 of the royal insignia—smoking her fl cutty pipe. She had a fiery temper and | r. sharp tongu,e. By the time of her ffl death the gypsies in Yetholm were II fast losing their distinctive habits. The a Irish hawkers had driven them from Ig the road; the county police Acts had (I forbidden encamping. But their great- 9 est enemy was the School Board offi- |j cor. Il

As late as IS9S, after a. long interregnum, the monarchy was restored in the person of Charles Faa-Blythe, son of Esther, an old hawker who came from prison to the throne. The coronation was an amusing travesty of the ceremonies at Westminster. The “hereditary archbishop” placed a brass crown studded with imitation jewels on the old man’s head, and proclaimed him king, “challenge who dare.” Three cheers were given and the “chancellor” thanked the “loyal subjects” for the honour they had conferred on “his majesty.” Charles did not live to enjoy his dignity for long, and' when the prince of the royal line nearest in blood was asked to succeed him the cautious man declared he would rather stay as ho was —the driver of a traction engine.