MR. BORROW ON THE GIPSIES. 



These Scotch Gipsies seem to have 

 ruffled Mr. Sorrow's feathers con- 

 siderably. He calls them a " hard, 

 sullen, cautious set," whom he could 

 not pump ; yet he gives them credit 

 for good manners, for he says that 

 as he " went down the hill, there 

 was none of the shouting and laugh- 

 ter which generally follow a discom- 

 fited party" (p. 328). They were 

 doubtless glad to see him leave the 

 village, after causing the flight of 

 the queen from it. 



There is a good deal to be said 

 in regard to Mr. Sorrow's visit to 

 Yetholm. He arrived there "late 

 in the afternoon, at the commence- 

 ment of August, in the year 1866." 

 The first woman he spoke to took 

 leave of him " to boil water for her 

 tea ;" and the next one he saluted 

 with, "A fine evening." By the 

 time he was " presented " to the 

 queen it was probably seven o'clock, 

 and ten when he left her ; and if we 

 allow an hour for general conversa- 

 tion, we would have two hours for 

 the Gipsy language, one half of 

 which was in all probability taken 

 up by Mr. Borrow himself.* How, 

 then, did he arrive at the conclusion 

 that the " sum total of her vocabu- 

 lary barely amounted to three hun- 

 dred words ?" If she had given 

 him them, one after the other, so 

 that he could count them, she would 

 have yielded him five words per min- 

 ute. But she evidently did not do 

 that, the conversation apparently 

 taking a different turn. His esti- 

 mate of her language, so far as the 

 number of her words was concerned, 

 was doubtless a vague conjecture. 

 He certainly furnishes no data to 



way of speaking is very common with 

 mixed Gipsies, in their intercourse with 

 others that are outside of their fraternity, 

 and have no sympathy with them. Mr. 

 Borrow says nothing of the relation of 

 the son and grandson of Thomas Herne 

 to the Gipsy tribe generally. 



* Mr. Borrow would have been lucky 

 had his interview with the Gipsy lasted 

 three hours. 



enable us to take his view of the 

 question. 



No sooner had Mr. Borrow enter- 

 ed the village than he was watched 

 and approached. " Come to see the 

 Gipsy town, sir ? " said the first 

 woman, before she had been spoken 

 to. " Does your honour know who 

 once lived in that house ? . . That 

 man, your honour, was old Will 

 Faa." The other woman, who was 

 a Gipsy, and related to the queen, 

 and " had her eye on his honour for 

 some time past expecting to be 

 asked about the queen, for scarcely 

 anybody comes to Yetholm but goes 

 to see the queen " looked up when 

 addressed, and asked, " Come to see 

 the town ? . . . and I suppose come 

 to see the Gipsies, too ? " with a half 

 smile. ' " Many gentle folks from 

 England come to see the Gipsy 

 queen of Yetholm. Follow me, sir." 

 The first woman said that the queen 

 was "led about the town once a year, 

 mounted on a cuddy [donkey], with 

 a tin crown on her head, with much 

 shouting, and with many a barbaric 

 ceremony ; . . . and some go so far 

 as to say that they merely crowned 

 her queen in hopes of bringing grist 

 to the Gipsy mill" (p. 310). The 

 "calling" of the queen (whose name, 

 I believe, is Esther Blythe) is, there- 

 fore, to make herself agreeable ; al- 

 though it could, perhaps, be said of 

 her, that she is like a cat's paw all 

 velvet, or all claw. " She came to- 

 wards me with much smiling, smirk- 

 ing, and nodding, as if I had kriown 

 her for three-score years" (p. 314). 

 But when he addressed her in Gipsy, 

 she exclaimed, in an angry tone, 

 " Why do you talk to me in that 

 manner, and in that gibberish ? I 

 don't understand a word of it " (p. 

 315). And then she said to him : 

 " You pretend to understand the Gip- 

 sy language : if I find you do not, I 

 will hold no further discourse with 

 you ; and the sooner you take your- 

 self off the better. If I find you do, 

 I will talk with you as long as you 

 like " (p. 316). " Now, I have but 



