TWELVE
The postmen of Europe
Around the year 1417 there appeared from Germany a travelling group of people who were described at the time as being ‘uncouth, black, dirty and barbarous’, 1 and who very soon after acquired a reputation for thieving and cheating. The women and children travelled in carts, and they had among them a count and a few well-dressed knights, who carried letters of safe conduct from the Emperor Sigismund of Rome, King of Hungary and Bohemia. To those who challenged them, they explained that they were engaged on a pilgrimage of expiation for some act of apostasy.2
Writing 100 years later, the German diplomat and theologian Albert Krantz observed of these same people, in his book Saxonia, that they had no country and travelled through the land. ‘They live like dogs and have no religion, although they allow themselves to be baptised into the Christian faith. They live without care and gather unto themselves also other vagrants, men and women. Their old women practise fortune-telling, and whilst they are telling men of their future, they pick their pockets.’
Quite how or when the gypsies first appeared to set up a camp in Roslin Glen is not recorded, although attempts are sometimes made to link their Catholic origins with the Knights Templar, which seems unlikely since a gap of 200 years separates them. Another theory is that it was they, and not the Templars, who robbed King Solomon’s Temple. Or perhaps they were the fugitive and dissolute descendants of the Templar Knights themselves, under another guise? Similarly, it is not at all clear why they should have come to be so widely known in Scotland, and elsewhere, as ‘Egyptians’, or ‘Pharaoh’s People’. This name was supplanted in Scotland later by that of ‘tinker’, but this naturally derives from the metalwork with which they became so closely associated.
In France they were known as ‘Bohemians’; in Germany, ‘Tartars’ or ‘Heydens’, meaning ‘Heathen’, and some of them were said to have originated from India. Byzantine history describes them as soothsayers, magicians and serpent charmers; another source claims that they were the descendants of the outcast Biblical goldsmith Samer, who created the Golden Calf.3 The Egyptian connection, however, appears to have come from the mouths of the gypsies themselves, who, when asked where they had come from, would reply that it was from a country of their own called Little Egypt. This sounds not dissimilar to the old Scottish legend of the Lost Tribe of Dan, who travelled from Israel across Europe to Portugal and the Basque Country, and ultimately Ireland and Scotland.
The first recorded reference to ‘Egyptians’ in Scotland appears to be in 1492, in the reign of James IV, but it is more than probable that such people had been appearing on a seasonal basis in May and June for centuries before. More to the point, to begin with, such travelling people were seen as useful since in return for the protection of a great lord, such as Prince William, not to mention the king himself, they could be coerced into acting as messengers and spies. James IV, that most enlightened of Scottish kings, certainly saw the benefits of retaining them. He was fascinated by their knowledge of horses and herbal medicine.
An entry in the accounts book of Scotland’s Lord High Treasurer records a payment of 4 shillings to a Peter Ker for attending the king at Hunthall, and receiving letters subscribed to the ‘King of Rowmais’. Two days after, a payment of 20 pounds was made at the king’s command to the messenger of the ‘King of Rowmais’. We do not know the detail, but clearly James made frequent use of their services as postmen and odd-job men. Substantial payments to the ‘Egyptianis’ are on record, and the king was not averse to recommending their services to others. On 5 July 1506, for example, Anthonius Gawino, described as ‘The Earl of Little Egypt’, received letters commending him to the king of Denmark, to which country he was about to sail. In this way, the gypsy encampment at Rosslyn Castle rapidly became an intelligence headquarters covering the different countries of mainland Europe.
James V was equally well disposed towards these seasonal visitors at a time when they were being increasingly persecuted throughout mainland Europe. In February 1540, he signed a writ granting protection to ‘our lovit Johnnie Faa, Lord and Erle of Littil Egipt’. The same Johnnie Faa was also granted powers to administer justice upon his people ‘conforme to the laws of Egypt’. In 1553, this protection of the ‘Gypsy King’ was renewed during the minority of Mary, Queen of Scots. Amid the Stanks of Rosslyn, on the wooded shores of river or loch, the gypsies and their encampment enjoyed seclusion, plentiful supplies of water and, under the patronage of a great lord, adequate supplies of provisions in return for their ‘Tinker’ services and the information that they had accumulated on their travels far and wide.
Such was the affection he felt towards them that Sir William St Clair, made Lord Justice General of Scotland in 1559, permitted them to use two towers on his estate, one called ‘Robin Hood’, the other, ‘Little John’. From here they enacted plays based on forty popular ballads surrounding the gallant, but in all probability fictitious, English outlaw Robin Hood. This confirms that these were travelling players, as they would have brought their plays north from England. In mediaeval Scotland, everyone looked forward to the arrival of the Egyptians. That Roslin Glen should have become a summer sanctuary for these wandering folk is entirely appropriate as they headed north with the warmer weather and retreated south with the cold. Roslin Glen was secluded and they were left to their own devices amid the folds of the woodland. You can feel their long-ago presence even now.
For at least four generations, from Prince William to Sir William, and probably before, the St Clairs and the seasonal ‘Egyptians’ coexisted in harmony, but as Calvinism strengthened its grip on Scotland, the tolerances of a powerful Roman Catholic family became an easy target. In a profoundly orthodox society, the colourful excesses of these travelling people were increasingly being frowned upon and this led, in 1571, to an Act of Stringency that included ‘all hangers-on – bards, minstrels and vagabond scholars’. Over the next thirty-three years, following the English and French example, the legal penalties imposed upon gypsies brought to trial increased dramatically. Hanging, drowning and deportation became the norm.
In 1579, an Act of Parliament refers to them as ‘the idle peopil calling themselves Egyptians’ and recommended that any person found to be a gypsy should be nailed to a tree by the ears, and thereafter have the said ears cut off. The same punishment was soon extended to sorcerers, vagabonds and common thieves. This Act also made it an offence to harbour or give shelter to gypsies and it was not unusual for them to be arrested on sight and hanged from the nearest gallows. Which poses more questions than it gives answers, given that Sir William St Clair was still Lord Chief Justice of Scotland and continued to allow the so-called Egyptians to pitch their camp upon his lands in Roslin Glen. Perhaps he thought it best to turn a blind eye to what was going on in the Protestant judiciary, believing that he, and those under his protection, would get away with it so long as they kept the peace. Only the immediate local community knew of the gypsies’ presence, and, like Sir William, harboured no ill against them.
Alas, it was only a matter of time before their cover was revealed and St Clair was commanded to ‘pass, search, seek, hunt, follow and pursue the vagabonds’ and remove them to the Tolbooth in Edinburgh. He did the best he could. Although an order ofexecution was issued on several of those taken prisoner, only one was hanged; the remainder were deported. In 1603 the Scottish Privy Council issued an order for the entire race to leave Scotland and never to return, on pain of death. The full severity of Protestant zeal was thus brought to bear upon the people of an outcast race. Thereafter, no mention is made of the ‘Egyptians’ in Roslin Glen. Not until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were tinkers and travelling people seen once more upon the green.