I jumped into the trap, put on a warm muffler, and jolted and jogged for some two hours to my lodgings, passing some gipsy poachers on the way, and watching the growing moon in the heavens facing me, which seemed to speak words of consolation showing unmistakably that all was not darkness in the temporary Arctic cold regions in the world of gipsydom.
In Kelso I found out that one of the _princes_ of gipsydom had been in jail nearly a score of times; in fact, one of the magistrates told me that he himself had sent one of the gipsy vagabonds to jail something like half a dozen times during the last two years. As a rule, when his “_highness_” was not in jail, he was employed scraping the streets, scavenging, or getting a penny in other ways. In the train I was told that one of the _queens_ of gipsydom indulged in language which would not be a sufficient passport to heaven, and was at the present time to outside observers a poor, miserable old woman, with one foot in the grave, a standing lie to the advantages, blessings, and beauties of an uncivilized, demoralizing, wandering vagabond’s life.
[Picture: Esther Faa Blythe—a Scotch gipsy queen]
A portrait of one of the self-crowned Scottish gipsy queens, Esther Faa Blythe, is here given. The old woman is eighty-five years of age, and has an eye to business. She is sharp, and can adapt herself to all circumstances. With the saints she becomes heavenly, and so on, almost through the whole of the lights, shades, and phases of social life.
There are numbers of “gipsy kings” and “queens” in the country—aye, almost in every county; at any rate those who are simple enough to believe in them say so. One gipsy queen not long ago used to dress in dashing, gaudy silks, and sit in “a chair of state” in her van, and the Londoners paid their threepennies to see her from time to time. She now lives a “retired life,” upon her gains, at Maidenhead.
The best gipsy queen I know of is the good Christian woman, Mrs. Simpson—formerly a Lee—at Notting Hill, who has become a devoted, good Christian woman, and tries to do all the good she can as she passes up and down the world. Her Bible contains her “state records,” which are the guide of her life. For twenty years she did a “roaring trade” by telling fortunes to simpletons and big babies out of the Bible—upside-down at times—of which she could not tell a letter. Since she has been a _gipsy Christian queen_ she has learnt to read some parts of the blessed book. My plan, if followed out thoroughly in all its details, will make all our gipsies “kings” and “queens.” It is surprising that there are people in the world silly enough even at this late day to believe in such beings as the “gipsy kings” and “queens” of backwood romance.