FREDERICK S. ARNOLD. 93 



their leader ; but, to offset the case, it may be added that 

 this letter acted as a passport to get them out of Scot- 

 land into Denmark, and perhaps King James thought he 

 could do no harm by giving them that sort of recogni- 

 *tion. Even so in olden time, Shankal, Maharajah of 

 Hindoostan, sent Behram Gour, the wild-ass king of 

 Persia, all the low caste musicians and strolling singers 

 he could rake out of his dominions as a present to that 

 monarch, who wanted to hear some Gypsy music. 



The true practices of the race, however, soon came to 

 light. James V enacted that whenever three Gypsies 

 were found together one of the three was instantly to be 

 seized and hanged or shot by any loyal citizen who chose 

 to take the law into his hands. But such laws were un- 

 able to expel them and, in the years after James's death, 

 Simson, himself a Scotchman, has admitted that things 

 were so upset in Scotland and there was so much robbery 

 and brigandage on a large scale that the petty roguery of 

 the Romany Glials was not noticed in the general con- 

 fusion. Scotch Gypsies have prospered in days since, 

 though James VI and James VII enforced laws against 

 them, and very lately Kirk Yetholm in the Cheviot Hills 

 was almost entirely a Gypsy town. The Scotch Gypsies 

 do not speak the language with any purity, half of the 

 words given by Simson being not Gypsy at all but thieves' 

 cant or slang of the roads (but then it has to be admit- 

 ted Simson was a very injudicious collector). 



I never, myself, had the pleasure of studying any 

 Scotch Gypsies, though there are some in the United 

 States. A gang of them, named Williamson, once 

 camped near Poughkeepsie. I met one of their men in 

 town at the time. He was dressed in ragged clothes, 

 didn't look like a Gypsy very much, and had only one 

 touch of the roads, that was a bright red handkerchief 

 about his neck. I accosted him in Romany but he 

 didn't understand it, called it cant, and said he talked 



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