24

HEADING NORTH

Let’s you and I share a wee bit of history from the Border country now, folks.

The Border country, what a historic place. Kings and Queens with mighty armies came through it to conquer the North or to hide in Scotia’s mountains. But what about the inhabitants who lived there, those hardy Borderers? If ever a phrase had meaning for them, then this is it: passing through. If the south was at war with Scotland, they were the ones who first took the brunt of an incoming army fresh for a kill. And if the shoe was on the other foot, then again the Border saw the sword of the Highlander before the English did. Yes a ‘stuck-in-the-middle folk’ I’ll say. Perhaps that is why the lads are bigger and stronger than the rest of us. Good at the rugby too, they recently informed me.

My kin also have found a home in this lovely part of Scotland. From as far back as the sixteenth century gypsies have settled here.

They were a colourful people, and like other nations had their monarchs. I was brought up on tales of the ‘Lord of Little Egypt’, who was known to people in general simply as Johnny Faa, but to his own folks he was a blue-blooded king. Historians of gypsy culture tell me it is nigh on impossible to track the Faa succession, because so many ended on the gallows or were sent away on prison ships, but there are folks today who claim they are descended from the King and can show a legal and true genealogy.

The village of Kirk Yetholm became a settlement for gypsies around the year 1690. Faas intermarried with Youngs, Blythes, Gordons and Rutherfords amongst others.

Queens and Kings continued to be crowned but the last I know of was Charles Faa Blythe Rutherford, born in 1825 and crowned in 1898 in his seventy-third year. His reign was a short one because he died in 1902. And like all the other monarchs Scotland has crowned, he was not followed by issue or otherwise. My old Granny Riley, who hailed from Ayrshire, told me many times about the ‘wee broon-skinned King wha had richt green een’. She claimed her mother, maiden name Annie O’Connor, told her the real monarch should have been a woman by the name of Esther. However I have no proof to set before you on this one, reader.

My father claims to be descended from royal gypsy lineage, and the way he used to demand half a cup of fresh cream mashed into his chappit tatties, I don’t doubt it. And another thing, I wonder why Granny called him Charles?

Saying our goodbyes to the Boswells, we set off in the early morning heading north. For a while we meandered into this bay and that inlet, and gently followed the contours of Scotland’s west coast. Some days we were blown inside out, while others brought a gentle warm gulf breeze that sent woolly jumpers to the back of the drawers. One thing we found a great asset was the endless heap of driftwood strung out along beaches to fuel our campfires. I, for one, found not having to carry heavy piles of wood from bramble-floored forests a treat, leaving me more free time to beachcomb. As I mentioned in my last book this pastime of mine was more like an obsession that could fill my whole day. One day, I believed, a treasure would reveal itself to me and I would be rich; until then I’d gather scrap metal to fill a tattie bag. The scrap-metal man for all my humping and heaving would pay me two to three pounds sterling. (As a little lassie I dreamt that I’d be the richest scrappy in Scotland, with a fleet of lorries emblazoned with Her Majesty’s coat-of-arms on the doors.) However it wasn’t the filling of that bag that was the main thing, rather the freedom of wandering hour upon hour along a deserted beach, throwing sea-shells at screeching gulls and pushing bare feet into green and brown kelp. Finding caves and imagining a wild pirate instantly stealing my heart and whisking me off to find treasures of the mind. Then Mammy’s whistle to tell me that the dishes needed washing would dash all my daydreams.

I missed sharing those latter years on the road with my cousins. They’d long since left the old ways, settling into houses. My young sisters were pestering our parents to find a house as well. Not me, though, I was a tinker, gypsy, vagabond, road tramp, gad-about. Every day found me stretching it out to milk the life for all it was worth. However, it pains me greatly to say the worth of travellers was being whittled down; soon my sisters would have their wish and I, though I little knew it, was seeing the demise of Scotland’s true travelling folk.

We’ll come to that another time, my friend, because for now I’ll share a tale with you about a funeral, and by all that’s holy, what a burial it was.