Candlemas to Lammas 
burden. The Hindustani kistie, for a chest, is also among 
them. Gipsies, however, when talking to strangers, are 
very reserved, and avoid as a rule using Romany words ; 
and if by any chance a word or term should escape, they 
do not like being questioned on the subject by a Gorgio. 
The earliest notice about the gipsies in Scotland is a curious 
old letter of King James TV., dated 1506, recommending 
Anthonius Gawino, Earl of Little Egypt, to the King of 
Denmark, as the gipsy chief was about to visit Denmark ; 
while King James V. made a treaty of friendship with 
‘John Faw, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt.’ But, as 
might be expected, the gipsies did not long retain Court 
favour. Among many different small ways of gaining their 
livelihood, the gipsies used to make the horn spoons once 
so commonly used, and were in consequence called 
Horners. Horn spoons tipped with silver are sold as 
Scottish souvenirs in Edinburgh at the present day. 
“ ‘Wull’ Faa I. died at Coldingham, leaving twenty-four 
children. His subjects carried his body back to Kirk 
Yetholm in state, with a mighty escort of donkeys, and 
buried him near his ‘ Palace 5 in the Cheviots. The 
succession of his son William was disputed by a man who 
was known by the unpleasing nickname of the ‘ Earl of 
Hell,’ but this usurper was defeated in a battle on Yetholm 
Green, and Wull Faa II.’s authority successfully established. 
During his reign the tribe lived chiefly by smuggling, which 
pursuit they found very profitable, like their brethren in 
£ Guy Mannering.’ ‘Wull’ Faa II. died in 1847, at 
nearly a hundred years of age, and was succeeded by his 
brother-in-law Charles Faa Blyth. Charles was well known 
to Sir Walter Scott. His reign was a short one, and when 
he died his son David declined the sovereignty, so the 
daughter of Charles I., the late Queen Esther, who had 
married a Rutherford, succeeded her father. The title has 
remained in abeyance since her death, which occurred some 
years ago, till it was revived last week by the coronation of 
her son, an old man of seventy, as Charles II. The new 
king and his wife have kept an inn at Yetholm since Queen 
89 
