Extract from the “Glasgow Weekly Mail,” Saturday, May 21, 1892.

GIPSY KING IN GLASGOW.

IN A TENT OF ISHMAEL.

Lord Rosebery’s statement last Friday, in the St. Andrew’s Halls, that there were 138,000 vagrants in Scotland, persons who did nothing but roam the country and admire the scenery, induced me to pay the Gipsy King, Mr. George, a visit. His Majesty, with family, are presently located in Glasgow, in Great Western road. I found Mr. Smith in his tent, a large and commodius structure, some eight feet in height, the frame of strong ash girders covered with a dark purple cloth. The place answering to the kitchen is near the entrance, and the family had just finished breakfast a few minutes before I put in an appearance. They do not sit on chairs at meals, but squat in tailor-like fashion on the floor, and in the same attitude that I have seen American Indians do in their wigwams. The members of the Smith family are dark-eyed and dark-haired. The women have the true Zingara beauty of face, olive-tinted forehead, sharp glittering eyes, and their black hair, that peculiar metallic hue which one sees on the wings of the dusky raven. The women are fond of jewellery, heavy earrings fall on their necks, and their small copper-coloured hands sparkle with rings. A collie bitch, a cat, and a canary were the only animals about the hut. No part of the show ground is kept so scrupulously clean as that allocated to the Gipsies.

Mr. Smith is a general type of the race—gentlemanly, intelligent, and courteous. In years he must be over sixty, but he is still as straight as a poplar, and wiry and muscular as a man of thirty, He has in his time been an extensive horse dealer, and for years made regular visits to Ireland. He has purchased hundreds of Irish horses and disposed of them in France and Germany.

“No, sir,” he said, with an imperial toss of the head, “I’m not one of Lord Rosebery’s 138,000 vagrants. I belong to a race whose history began in the twilight of the world, back in a time when lords and dukes were not dreamt of. I pay a regular license for my caravan, and when I am moving about over the country I pay, like other gypsies, for permission to pitch my tent, the same as I do here. There is no vagrancy in that. I am unable to say how many gypsies may be in Scotland and England. Scotch Tinklers—men and women who wander about making spoons, soldering pails, and skellets—are not gypsies. They are simply pariahs. There is not a drop of gypsy blood in their veins. The scotch tinker lived originally in a house, but abandoned it from various causes. They are a drunken, useless class of people, these tinkers, but persons will have them related somehow to us true gypsies. I claim to be the

“KING OF THE ENGLISH GYPSIES,”

and act for our people all over Great Britain. Take, for instance, that question before Parliament recently of the education of gipsy children. I was in the House of Commons and examined. Here you see letters from Justin M’Carthy, the President of the Local Government Board, and from a number of Members of Parliament. What are my views, you ask, on the education of gypsy children? Well, I have embodied my opinions in a memorial to the Government. Briefly, this is what I say. Every gipsy child should be educated, just as I have educated these children there, now men and women. There is no reason why our children should not be sent to school. Here, for instance, I will be settled altogether some six months. If I had children of school age, do you think it would be a hardship for me to be compelled to keep them at school? Certainly not. My opinion is this, that if a gypsy is located in a place for two days, for a week, a month or a year, he should be compelled to send his children to school. There would be no hardship in that. There is where the gypsy settles always a school in the neighbourhood. It is only in centres of population that we can live now. The old romantic days of pitching your tent in the forest and living on the fruits of the chase are gone for ever. We can only live, I repeat, where there is population, and where you have population you must have schools. Out of six days in the week, no matter how much a gypsy may travel, his child, if he were anxious to give it merely the rudiments of education, would at least have two and three days at school in the week. That is my view, and it seems to meet with the approval of the Local Government Board.

“A man named George Smith—no friend of mine—of Coalville, has been slandering and defaming our people for years. He has been making money out of books he has written about us. I have challenged him scores of times to prove his statements, but he has never had the courage to meet me. Amongst other things he says that we

BURY OUR DEAD ANY WAY

and anywhere. I took the trouble to explode this lie, and went to London to do it. I obtained from the directors of cemeteries in England and Scotland certificates as to our mode of burial. These certificates in every instance disproved Smith’s slanders, but he has not had the courage to withdraw them. Why, we have even here a burying ground, which has been procured from Sir Archibald Campbell. My sister is buried there, and she brought her son all the way from Galway, in Ireland, to be interred here. That does not look like neglecting our dead, does it? Then this man from Coalville says that we are filthier than the pigs. Does this little place of mine look like a pig-stye? The real gipsy, the dweller in tents, is cleaner than those who reside in houses. If a dog should lick any plate or vessel it is not afterwards used, but is destroyed or disposed of. Is that like the conduct of persons who, according to this man, are swinish in their habits?

“We call ourselves Protestants of the Church of England, and are christened, married, and buried at the church nearest to us. We have not joined a church in Glasgow yet, but in Edinburgh we went to Dr. Rankin’s.

“When a death takes place in the camp the corpse is laid out on the ground. The body is usually kept for a week, and during that time none of us go to sleep. A light is kept burning and we

EAT NO MEAT

until the grave closes over the departed. All that we take in the way of food is a cup of tea, or a bit of dry bread. We pay great reverence to our dead, more so than any other race on the face of the earth. There is a custom universal among our people, namely, of refraining from some usage or indulgence in honour of the departed. What I mean is this. Suppose the deceased was addicted to drink, it is common for the deceased’s brother to never taste liquor during the remainder of his life. That will do for an example. At our wakes no whisky is drunk, and a silence deep as the grave pervades the tents.

“There is nothing peculiar about our marriages. We just go to the minister, or else get a license. I must say that

THE SHERIFF’S LICENSE

is the most popular and the least expensive.

“Fifty years ago it was deemed an unheard of thing for a royal gipsy to marry a person of another race. In fact it was treason. To-day, among the genuine gipsies, it is nothing short of a crime. I have myself experienced the effects of this inter-marrying, and I tell you that it has not been satisfactory. One of my children has gone outside of our people. I make the statement, fearless of contradiction, that our people, in the aggregate, are the most moral that you can find. Search the

CRIMINAL RECORDS OF THE CENTURY

and you will not find an instance where a gipsy has stained his hands with human blood. He may have been hung for stealing a sheep or a horse, but not for committing a murder.

“About this fortune-telling, we believe that God Almighty has endowed our people with the faculty for foretelling events, and looking into the future. Strangers, of course, will laugh at that statement, but nevertheless, we maintain that it is correct. But fortune-telling is only a small part of the gipsy equipment. We do not attach much importance to it. We are of the dusky race, whose history began “on the dawn of the world.” John Bunyan was one of our people. Jesus Christ, the founder of Christianity, was a gipsy, and on Christmas Day we burn an ash tree in honour of Him, because He lived and died one of us.

“No sir, I’m not one of Lord Rosebery’s vagrants. If I am, then the Christ which Lord Rosebery professes to worship was also a vagrant. He too wandered wearily over the world, and was more homeless than the wild dove, which has a nest. Good morning.