Part 26

Of the gentlemen I will say nothing except that they were very gentlemanly; but of the young ladies I will say that they were of the usual agreeable mixture. One was charming, another sweet, another was lively, another was delightful, another was pretty, another was pleasant, another was full of grace, and so on. Of course, each had her own peculiar special graces, figure, and colour of hair. Singing, playing, lively and interesting conversation whiled the evening hours away. Notwithstanding these enchanting proceedings, I did not feel happy. I tried hard to put a smile upon my face, but imagined I was not successful, for the company often had to try to “liven me up.” The trials and hardships of the day, and my work on the morrow, weighted me heavily with anxiety and sorrow.

I retired to my chamber pensive, sad, and cold. My bed was like ice, and all the clothes, rugs, &c., I had would not make me warm. The night was shiveringly cold, and my heart ached for the poor gipsies out in the snow. I dozed, winked, and blinked. I got out of bed again and again; and, to while away the long hours of the night, I jotted some of the following aphorisms down, by the side of the dying embers of a _little_ fire:—

Sunday-schools are God’s flower-beds, upon which He sends more gleams of sunshine and spring showers than upon the rest of the world. Some Sunday-school children are the little roses, pinks, mignonette, &c. There are other Sunday-school children very modest and very good, but with little show; these are the thyme, ladslove, &c. The naughty children are the sour and poisonous weeds.

When a Christian leaves the prospect hill for the marshes and swamps of despondency and gloom, he will soon discover—or ought to do—that he is in the neighbourhood of hellish fogs and mists, which will lead him into worse than the Roman’s “shepherd’s race,” maze, or labyrinth, and from thence to gloomy thoughts and hazy notions of God and His works.

Infidels are the rats of society, puddling and muddling the rippling streams of pure truth that run through our land.

Cold places of worship, with a shivering minister as doorkeeper, are the places to turn warm Christians into freezing saints.

A drunken Christian minister is a toppled-over guide-post with the bottom rotted off, owing to its having being set in too much water.

Hope is the second—love the first—greatest moral force in the world. When a man is down in the gutter it lifts him up; when he is in darkness it puts light in his face and fire in his eyes. It enters the breast of a child; it fills the heart, and is seen in every action of man; it is in the soul of kings, governs empires, and rules destinies; and it lifts human beings, populating all worlds, from earth and hell to heaven. Oh! bliss-inspiring hope!

Hope is the father of ambition and the earthly companion of the soul; they join together till they come to the edge of the river, whence the soul takes its flight into eternity, and hope becomes the life of the fame left behind, and ends with fame’s death.

Despair is the wastrel daughter of ambition forsaken by her father, and her mother, hope and pride. She drags all who touch her to poverty, ruin, degradation, misery, and death. When she creeps do you run.

Elevating natural parental love buds in time and blooms through eternity. It turns a mud cottage or gipsy wigwam into a palace, a desert into a garden, a waste into an earthly paradise. It causes the birds and variegated songsters to chirp and sing round your dwelling, the trees to laugh, the stones to shout, the cat to purr upon the hearth, and the children to kiss and fondle upon your knees. It sends whole families where love dwells off to bed in good humour, and causes the cock to crow early in the morning at your door, telling you that a DIVINER LOVE is about to enter your family circle with a fragrance excelling that of the rose, and its effects more lovely to behold than that of the lily.

The soil of earth is the brain of nature.

Children with good hearts and lovable dispositions, under the fostering care of a good, kind, Christian mother, will become God’s pretty little singing birds, to beautify and enliven His heavenly garden; while naughty, disobedient, bad children will become worse than rotten eggs, not even fit for manure.

As bells are placed upon the necks of leading wether sheep to give out a sound of danger and guidance, so in like manner is the word of God placed upon the necks of His ministers, to give out words of consolation, counsel, reproof, and warning, and woe be to those who give out an uncertain sound.

Gipsies, vagrants, tramps, and vagabonds are the corns and bunions of society.

Every kind, benevolent act of a Christian, full of love to God and man, is a cask of heavenly oil poured upon the troubled waters of life, and those who go down deep into human misery will find, by looking upward, as the oil of paradise swims upon the waves of woe, the beautiful light of heaven reflected upon their every movement to raise fallen humanity.

The love of God in the heart of man produces a smoothness upon the surface of his face and body that eases his way to heaven through the chilling billows of selfishness, deceit, and fraud.

A cruel retort from an ungrateful son opens a parent’s eyes to his sins and follies more than the advice of one hundred friends.

To mount the highest hill of God’s favour upon the alternate steps of prayer and good works, with faith as a handrail, is to see the indescribable beauties of heaven and the unsurpassed splendour of earth as no other mortal can; and by climbing higher still we can see more and more, till we find ourselves lost in love and wonder.

The transparent dewdrops of heaven to be seen, by the light of the bright morning sun, resting and twinkling into rainbow colours upon the flowers and blades of grass on the green, mossy carpet, are the lively, sweet, innocent little children whom God sends to cheer and beautify our path for awhile before He calls them to heaven by the absorbing rays of Divine love.

To a good man dark moments are the harbingers of bright days, and to a bad man light moments of excitement are the precursors of long, dark days of sorrow.

Love is the greatest moral force in the world. With the birth of a child it has a beginning, and it is the right hand companion of the soul; and with the death of the body it is transferred with its redeemed chief to paradise, to be the singing, joyful companion of the soul through endless ages and never-ending delights and pleasures.

Divine love is the celestial life of heaven dwelling in man’s breast, purifying his heart, enlivening his soul, transforming his affection to such an extent that he can sing in the midst of a burning, sandy, waterless, parching desert, “Oh! that will be joyful.” It transforms the black demon face of a gipsy, or a child of hell, into the lovable, smiling face of a child of God. Its possessor can jump ditches, bound over fences, and scale battlements as easily as if they were level green, mossy carpets. It makes life happy, and opens heaven to our view.

* * * * *

After I had passed through this ordeal, I tried pacing the room with no better results. Notwithstanding these things, I felt as the Rev. Richard Wilton felt when he penned the following lines for _Hand and Heart_, June, 1880:

“Sufferings are gifts, accept for my sake, And from earth’s sighs heaven’s music shall wake.”

Morning dawned and found me with wakeful eyes ready to receive it. After breakfast I began to prepare for my journey through deep snow which had fallen evenly upon the ground to the height of the stone walls. I found that the postman with his cart had begun to prepare for the journey, and he calculated that if all were straight it would take him five hours to “do the eight miles.” “Mine host” would not consent to this arrangement, and the next best thing was to hire a horse and trap. So through the deep snow we started. I had not got very far before my muffler was frozen and icicles hung round my beard like little diamonds. A few carts and waggons had been pulled over the snow in places by the farmers, and had left a few tracks. Notwithstanding these our old hunter was not long before he began to “puff and blow.” My gigman said, “I don’t know whether we shall be able to get through to Yetholm, but we will go as far as we can. We can but turn back if we can get no further.”

Our steed did not require pulling up to stop him. Of his own instinct he stopped pretty frequently. I said to the man, “Our horse seems to be short of ‘puff.’” “Yes,” said the gigman; “his wind is touched a little, but nothing to hurt. He will be all right if we can once pull through.” Sometimes we went into the ditches. How deep they were before the snow fell I don’t know. I should think some of them were pretty deep. Thanks to the Almighty, the bottom of our gig would not let us topple over. Many times I began to wonder where we should find a resting-place for the night. I said to my gigman as we went ploughing through the snow in one of the ditches, “In case we get stuck fast, what shall we do next?” “Well,” said the gigman, “we shall have to leave the trap behind and return to Kelso as best we can. We shall both have to get upon the horse’s back, and if he will not carry us we must take turn and turn about. It won’t do to stop on the road to perish.” I began to “pump” my gigman in order to know whether I was in the hands of one who understood his business. I wanted my fears settling upon this point.

I said, “How long have you been a coachman?” “Between twenty and thirty years,” he said. “And have you ever had a ‘spill’ or been stuck fast?” “I have only had one ‘pitch in’ and never a ‘spill.’” This news gave me confidence in my man, and on we kept ploughing away. A strong contrast presented itself to our view close to a cottage just off the roadside. There was a fine dark woman with a bright scarlet hood and cloak on her big body, doing something upon one of the hedges. It struck me that she was bird-liming, for the London markets, the poor linnets that choose to be caged rather than to perish.

The sights along the road were most lively, and I shall never forget it as long as the breath is in my body. The excitement “on the road,” the bubbling sympathy within my breast for the poor perishing rabbits, hares, partridges, and crows upon our path, the dangers of the way, and the magnificent grandeur of the scenery, were of such a nature as to cause me to forget the biting cold at work benumbing my nose, fingers, and toes. The Scotch firs in the dales and vales along our path and on the hillsides never appeared more grand and beautiful. They were artistically touched by the hand of God. The pure white lovely prismatic children of the clouds and cold boundless space had descended softly from heaven, as if loth to leave their pure abode for a resting-place in the mud; but before doing so they appeared anxious to adorn the trees of nature with the beauties of ethereal space, and in such a manner as to cause one’s heart to glow with gratitude towards God, the Giver of all good. The boughs were bent downwards, heavily laden with the angelic snowflakes; the whole trees presenting a spiral sight, leading your eyes and mind upwards toward heaven. At the extreme tips of the branches the snow had formed a kind of white clapperless bells. As I passed under the heavily-laden trees I felt that I should like to have helped them to bear their burden, and also to keep the prismatic children of the clouds and infinitude from settling into their dirty resting-places. Nature seemed to speak through the beautiful snow-adorned trees, and wintry-capped hills and covered valleys with a warm loving tenderness that I had never experienced before.

Upon the fences the snow had come softly and stealthily down, apparently as if in gentle wavelets, which presented the appearance of fold upon fold, overhanging waves upon waves in beautiful round and soft designs; and as I beheld it I felt for a few minutes that it would be a real pleasure, with joy and gladness running through my bones, and smiles forcing themselves upon my face, to roll, plunge, tumble, and fluster under its overhanging laps and waved folds, which seemed to speak invitingly, and with open arms, to those who cast a sympathetic glance at them. Never in this world did snow appear more to be like the downs of heaven than upon this occasion, notwithstanding the _biting_ cold day. On this journey the live things seemed to be dying, while the dead things seemed to be living.

We had now been on the road ploughing away over two hours among the snow, and still we were not at the end of our journey. We had had many escapes of a spill, with the consolation that we should not have been hurt, except in case the iron heels of our beast had come sharply in contact with our almost frost-bitten noses. As we topped the hills and neared Yetholm it was manifest that the rude hand of storm and tempest had been busily at work among the trees at some not very remote period. Hundreds had been uprooted, some of which were left to tell the tale. Not a public-house was to be seen on the way. There was a kind of cabin a little off the roadside, on which was stuck a piece of board, showing that tea, tobacco, coffee, and snuff were sold there. Among the hills in the distance Yetholm was observed. The thought that had run freely through my mind, that I might not reach Yetholm, had now vanished.

The veritable gipsy town was in sight, and our steed pricked up his ears and quickened his pace. The blood which had imperceptibly been freezing in my veins seemed to glow again. The use of my hands and feet seemed to be coming round, and into a public-house I stumbled at half past one to get a cup of tea, “a cheer up,” and thorough warming. After which I set out with my bag in one hand loaded with Testaments, supplied to me by a friend and the Christian Knowledge Society; picture cards, supplied to me by the Religious Tract Society; and _Our Boys and Girls_, supplied to me by the Wesleyan Sunday-School Union; while in the other hand I carried a quantity of oranges and tobacco, purchased from Mr. Laidlaw’s, a tradesman in the place. With this “stock-in-trade” for the big and little gipsies at Kirk Yetholm I started my tramp.

The nestling and nuzzling of the gipsy hypocrites beneath the walls of the church at Kirk Yetholm, when they first landed in this country and for centuries onward, is only in accord with their first appearance in many parts of England. There can be no doubt that when the gipsies came from the Continent they came as hypocritical, religious, popish pilgrims, and succeeded well for a time in inveigling themselves into the good graces and pockets of the well-to-do English men and women, so that many of them were able to dress in scarlet and gold till they were found out, as I have shown elsewhere.

Kirk Yetholm, the gipsy town, is about half a mile from Town Yetholm.

[Picture: Gipsy Winter quarters, Yetholm]

By the time I had arrived at the gipsy quarters, owing to my loads, the deep snow, and the slippery nature of the roads in some places, I was ready for a rest.

At the entrance to the village I met a number of little half-starved, dirty, ragged gipsy children, who, to say the least, would require a deal of “straightening up” before they were ready for angelic robes. One little fellow with fine lips, but a mouth almost extending from ear to ear, accosted me in such a manner as to satisfy me that I was, without doubt, in the land of gipsydom. With the exception of the fine old church and one or two houses, the whole presented a miserable appearance. The gipsy dwellings were one story high, and of a dirty dingy white.

Leydon’s opinion of the Yetholm gipsies in his day was not very high, for he says—

“On Yeta’s banks the vagrant gipsies place Their turf-built cots. A sunburnt swarthy race, From Nubian realms their tawny line they bring, And their brown chieftain vaunts the name of king. With loitering steps from town to town they pass, Their lazy dames rock’d on the panier’d ass, From pilfer’d roots or nauseous carrion fed, By hedgerows green they strew their leafy bed; While scarce the cloak of tawdry red conceals The fine-turned limbs which every breeze reveals. Their bright black eyes through silken lashes shine, Around their necks their raven tresses twine; But chilling damps and dews of night impair Its soft sleek gloss and tan the bosom bare. Adroit the lines of palmistry to trace, Her horded silver store they charm away, A pleasing debt for promised wealth to pay.”

Slater says in his Directory for 1882 that “Town Yetholm and Kirk Yetholm are both very humble in appearance, especially the latter, which is chiefly inhabited by gipsies, a race formerly remarkable for their disorderly lives and dangerous characters, and at this day distinguished by peculiarity of habits from the general body of the community.”

Dr. Baird says in his “Memoir of the Rev. John Baird,” written some twenty years ago, “A colony of gipsies which had long been settled at Kirk Yetholm had given rather an unenviable notoriety to the village, and rendered its name familiar to thousands in Scotland. The great majority of this wandering race were little better than heathens though born in a Christian land, and were notorious for poaching, thieving, and blackguardism.”

Most of the gipsy dwellings belong to a friend, the Marquis of Tweeddale, and he has of late years taken steps to improve their appearance. At the present time I am told the gipsy dwellings, so far as the outsides are concerned, show a great improvement. Sad to relate, the gipsy tenants have not improved one jot. Landlords may make gipsies’ and labourers’ houses—and it is right they should—healthy and habitable, but estate agents cannot purify the moral iniquity that dwells within. The schoolmaster, law, and the gospel are the agents for this reforming work.

I was told by Mr. Laidlaw that a gipsy named Mathew Blythe was the most respectable gipsy in Yetholm, and would give me any information; so to Mathew I made my way. I knocked at his door and was met with a shout—“Come in.” I did not stand knocking twice after this invitation, and went through the dingy, greasy passage—or “entrance hall”—to another door, which I opened, and there found a round-faced, grey-haired, good-looking, cobbling gipsy at work upon his “last.” The room seemed to serve for kitchen, scullery, parlour, dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom, closet, and workshop. For a minute or two he eyed me over from head to foot before asking me to sit down on a rickety old chair that stood by my side. I told him that I was come to look up the gipsies at Yetholm. I was met with a gruff reply, “There are no gipsies at Yetholm; they are all gone away, and I don’t know where they are gone to.” I said, “I am sorry for that, as I had brought some books, oranges, tobacco, pictures, and coppers for them.” And after a few words in Romany the old man turned up his face with a smile and said, “Well, to speak the truth, I am a gipsy, but my old woman is not. Sit you down.” I sat down and began my tale, and told him who I was and all about the object of my visit. At this the old man opened his eyes wider and wider and said, “Lord, bless you, me and my brother, who lives at Town Yetholm, were only talking about you yesterday, and saying how glad we should be to see you. Let’s shake hands.” He took hold of my hand and gave it a good grip and a squeeze, one that I shall not soon forget. I said, “I suppose you wanted to see me in order to give me a ‘good tanning,’ or else to make the place warm for me; for I have been told by a backwood gipsy writer at — that the gipsies in Scotland would make it hot for me if they once got hold of me; and this is one, among the many other reasons, why I am here to-day.” “Those,” said Mr. Blythe, “who told you that tale told you a lie. I don’t know any gipsy who would hurt your little finger. You have said some hard things about us, but they are true, or nearly so. Why should not our children be educated like other people’s children? Why should gipsy children not be allowed to sit on the same bench with the rest? They are the same flesh and blood, and God looks upon them the same as He does upon other children. In church and in school no one will come near to us, and what is the result? Why, there is not a gipsy in all the place—and there are between one and two hundred—except myself who goes to church on Sundays. The gipsies in Yetholm are worse off to-day than they ever were. Some are in receipt of parish relief.” This upsets the romantic tales of the gipsy writers who maintain that gipsies never receive parish relief. “A few of the children can read and write, but that is all. I learned to read and write a many years, thank God, and I also learnt to make and mend shoes.” I said, “What do the gipsies do and where do they wander, as they grow up?” “They,” said Mr. Blythe, “generally goes to town, or travels the country, and nobody knows where they end their days.” Mr. Blythe was some distant—“ninety-second cousin”—relation to the notorious dare-devil gipsy, Will Faa, who claimed to be a sort of a gipsy king, and on this account I wanted to have a few words about the gipsy kings of Scotland. “Well,” said Mr. Blythe, “you know better than I can tell you that there are no such beings as gipsy kings and queens. It is all bosh and nonsense, conjured up to get money on the cheap. The woman they call the gipsy queen does not live at Yetholm now, she has gone to live at Kelso. I could not tell you whereabouts she lives, but in some of the back streets.”

Mr. Blythe began to relate some of the gipsy tales; and how many kings’ lives the gipsies had saved, and a number of other things relating to gipsy life, into which I had not time to enter, as I wanted to be on the road again with my gigman before it was dark. The old man’s crippled foot prevented him making some visits with me to the other gipsies in the village, or, as he said, “I should have been only too glad to have done so. The poor things want somebody looking after them, I can assure you.” I emptied nearly the whole of the contents of my bags of books, pictures, tobacco, oranges, and a few coppers upon the gipsy cobbler’s bench, among the awls, nails, waxed-ends, &c., for him to distribute, as a _man_, among the gipsy children and old women in the village; and as a _man_, and with gipsy greetings and good wishes, trusting to Mr. Blythe’s honour, I left them, and they have, with God’s blessing, no doubt been distributed. After a few words of cheer and consolation and several shakes of the hands, which somehow brought out my weakness in tears, I bade Mr. Blythe, the grey-haired, open-faced gipsy, “good-bye,” maybe never to meet again on this side of Jordan. I felt as I stepped out of the door that I could have said with a blind writer in the _Church of England Magazine_—

“Though dark and dreary be my way, Thy light can turn my night to day.”

“Pensive I tread my sad and lonely road, Pain, gloom, and sorrow marked me for their prey.”