Kirk Yetholm is a picturesque village mendacity solely a mile to the west of the Scottish-English border. Right this moment it’s often called the tip of the Pennine Approach stroll, however in 1898 it attracted nationwide press protection when an aged man was topped King of the Scottish Gypsies. His palace, the survivor of two former rival Royal residences within the village, can nonetheless be seen at the moment.
So who was this King of the Gypsies, and why did this small Borders village have two palaces?
The village of Kirk Yetholm.
The Gypsy Royal Household
A contemporary authoritative historical past of the Scottish Gypsies is but to be written. Nevertheless, many legends and tales about their origins and exploits have been handed down by way of oral historical past.
The primary official recognition of a Scottish Gypsy chief was in 1506. King James IV acknowledged Anthony Gawin because the “Earl of Little Egypt” in a letter which implored the King of Denmark to provide Anthony and his firm secure passage by way of Denmark.
“Little Egypt” was not a spot, however a folks. Egypt was the supposed ancestral homeland of the Romani folks, and the derivation of the phrase ‘Gypsy’. Right this moment, ‘Gypsy’ is usually seen as offensive. Nevertheless, there are a number of Romani teams in Europe and Britain who’ve claimed this phrase and use it with delight. I’ve used the phrase Gypsy on this weblog as a result of that is how the group in Kirk Yetholm referred to themselves.
By 1540 management handed to the Faa household. James V granted John Faa and his son authority to police and punish their ‘topics’. It was with this laws that the custom of the Gypsy Kings and Queens was affirmed.
From Energy to Persecution
Nevertheless, any tolerance from the established monarchy was short-lived. King James VI & I accepted an ‘Act anent the Egyptians’ promising loss of life for any of the Gypsy race present in Scotland after 1 August 1609.
In 1624 Captain John Faa and his kinsmen had been hanged in Edinburgh with others banished overseas. Alongside official sanctions, feuds between rival Gypsy clans led to but extra bloodshed.
Continued persecution led many Border Gypsies to intermarry and undertake extra recognisably Scottish surnames similar to Younger, Douglas, Baillie, Ruthven, Shaw, Tait and Gordon. Faa itself was usually gentrified to Fall.
Residing near the border allowed for a straightforward escape into England.
Making a house in Kirk Yetholm
The early 18th century discovered a number of of the Gypsy clans settled in Kirk Yetholm. There are conflicting tales of how they acquired beneficial leases by the landowner, Sir William Bennet of Grubett. One story tells of how they had been granted the land after a Gypsy saved William’s life within the Siege of Namur in 1695, now in present-day Belgium.
It was on this land that cottages had been constructed, together with the Royal Palaces. The Palaces themselves weren’t bigger or extra grand than their neighbours. As a substitute, their standing was bestowed upon them by their regal residents.
By the early nineteenth century there have been over 100 Gypsies resident at Kirk Yetholm in winter. Households would journey in teams all through the summer time months, mending and hawking hand-made items across the countryside. They might dwell off the land in barns and beneath canvas. Many turned ‘muggers’ or potters, promoting earthenware, usually bought cheaply from producers.
This photograph, taken round 1906 exhibits a Gypsy household camped in Galloway. © Whithorn Photographic Group. Licensed by way of Scran.
The Kings and Queens
Let’s check out the dynasty of Gypsy Kings and Queens who made a base for themselves in Kirk Yetholm.
Patrick Faa
The primary Gypsy King and Queen recorded at Kirk Yetholm had been Patrick Faa and his spouse Jean Gordon. Their reign spanned the 1730s and 40s. It’s stated that Sir Walter Scott based mostly his character Meg Merrilies in ‘Man Mannering’ on Jean.
In accordance with a horrific account by George Eyre-Todd in his 1915 textual content ‘Byways of the Scottish Borders: A Pedestrian Pilgrimage’, Patrick was “whipped by way of Jedburgh, stood for half-an-hour on the cross together with his ear nailed to a publish, had each ears lower off, and was lastly transported to the American plantations.”
It’s stated that Jean Gordon was drowned by an area mob in Carlisle’s River Eden in 1746 for expressing her sturdy Jacobite views.
King William I (c1700-c1784)
By the mid-18th century, William Faa, often called Glee’d-neckit Will, was acknowledged as King. Married 3 times in his lengthy life, at the very least sixteen of his reputed twenty-four youngsters are recorded in Kirk Yetholm’s parish registers, a boon for genealogists as many gypsies shunned the church – or vice versa.
King William II (1755-1847)
Will Faa II succeeded his father and spent most of his life within the village, with a spell as a pub landlord. A eager footballer, he boasted he had by no means spent an evening in jail. This was a declare his successors had been unable to make.
By the point of Scotland’s first census in 1841, the 85 yr outdated widower ‘William Fall’ was the one Faa within the village, and after his loss of life with out heirs, on 9 October 1847 aged 92, the crown handed to his brother-in-law.
King Charles I (c1775-1861)
Charles Blyth got here from a Yorkshire household that had settled in Kirk Yetholm. In 1796 he had married Will’s youngest sister, Esther Fall, born in 1774. On the finish of October 1847, when he was topped amongst scenes of ‘boisterous mirth’, Charles was a widower in his early seventies.
Though extensively revered, Charles was jailed after which banished from Roxburgh for 3 years for burglary and assault within the 1820s.
Charles lived simply lengthy sufficient to be recorded within the 1861 census. It locations him within the ‘Royal Cottage’ together with his single daughter Ellen (c1814-1893). Charles died that yr on 19 August aged 86.
Queen Esther I (c1801-1883)
After the loss of life of Charles I, his eldest son David Blyth (1796-1883) waived his rights, a call he later regretted. As a substitute, he nominated his youthful sister Ellen, nicknamed ‘Nell Blackbeard’. Though Ellen occupied the palace containing her father’s darkish oak throne, she was efficiently challenged by her elder sister Esther Faa Rutherford (c1801-1883) who had rushed again to Kirk Yetholm from her Coldstream dwelling.
Within the 1820s Esther had been banished along with her father, and husband John Rutherford, often called ‘Jethart Jock’.
Queen Esther © courtesy of the Yetholm Historical past Society.
Esther and Jock had many scrapes with the legislation. For Jock, the ultimate straw was a responsible verdict for burglary and theft in 1847. Sentenced to 7 years transportation, he died on a Thames jail hulk the next yr.
In the meantime, Esther was in hassle herself. In September 1847 she was jailed for 4 months for assaulting her neighbour in Kirk Yetholm ‘with a rolling pin upon the top and again, kicking her alongside the passage and putting her on the face along with her fists’, inflicting ‘an effusion of blood and harm’. Such unregal behaviour was glossed over in later, kinder, descriptions of Esther.
Like her father, the widowed Queen spent a lot of her later life in poverty. Within the early Eighties she left the palace to lodge along with her daughter in Kelso. After her loss of life on 12 July 1883, there was a well-attended funeral again within the village.
The Interregnum (1883-1898)
From 1883 to 1898 there was no Monarch within the Palace, an interregnum for those who like. Regardless of goodwill in the direction of their Royalty there was nonetheless an excessive amount of anger and animosity to the Gypsies’ unconventional lifestyle.
The Trespass (Scotland) Act of 1865 had made it unlawful for an individual to camp on personal property with out the prior consent and permission of the proprietor. This successfully outlawed Gypsy Traveller tradition. Later, the 1895 Scottish Traveller Report made offensive and stunning suggestions in its goal to fight nomadism in Scotland. This included strategies of ‘extirpation’ (extermination) and deportation to the colonies. Such attitudes nonetheless linger and have had lengthy lasting impacts on traveller communities.
By the tip of the century the Faas had been lengthy gone, and lots of the outdated Gypsy households had both left or intermarried with the native inhabitants, different travellers or latest Irish immigrants. Solely round three dozen Gypsies nonetheless remained in Kirk Yetholm. Those that remained had been quick changing into a curiosity relatively than a risk. With an eye fixed on advantages to the vacationer commerce, there was a flurry of curiosity find a brand new Gypsy monarch.
The Final King, Charles II (c1827-1902)
Certainly one of Esther’s youthful sons, the ‘seldom sober’ Robert, was judged unsuitable to develop into the subsequent King of the Gypsies. However fortunately, Charles Rutherford, Esther’s eldest son had just lately returned to the village to run a poor boarding home together with his spouse Margaret Stewart. Regardless of being round 70 he was persuaded to develop into King.
On 30 Could 1898, regardless of a last-minute protest on behalf of the aforementioned David Blyth’s son, he was topped. A shiny new brass crown was made for the event, changing the outdated tin crown of his mom and grandfather. In step with custom, Charles II was topped by the city’s blacksmith. For the aim of the ceremony the blacksmiths had been jokingly known as the Archbishop of Yetholm, parodying the Archbishop of Canterbury’s position within the coronations of the monarchy of the UK. He signed his identify, with issue, as Charles Faa Blyth.
© Scottish Life Archive. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.
The extensively reported coronation had a pageant ambiance with speeches, pageantry and a bunch of elaborate employed costumes. It ticked all of the bins as a vacationer attraction, bringing 1000’s of native dignitaries and well-wishers to the village, if few Gypsies.
Coronation Day on Whit Monday at Yetholm, Roxburghshire, 1898 © Nationwide Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.
Charles moved into the refurbished Palace with its new brick porch. He died there, in his chair, on 21 April 1902 on the age of 77. His loss of life certificates names him as Charles Faa Blyth Rutherford and his career as ‘Gypsy King’. His quickly forgotten widow died over a decade later in Kelso Union Poorhouse.
Charles Faa Blythe © courtesy of the Yetholm Historical past Society.
The Gypsy Palaces
Ellen and Ester’s dispute over the royal succession after the loss of life of their father, Charles I, led to a ‘rival’ palace being established within the village within the 1860s.
The unique Gypsy palace, by artist John Proctor, who married a lady from Yetholm in July 1861. © courtesy of the Yetholm Historical past Society.
The unique palace was a one-storey whitewashed cottage on the east facet of the triangular village inexperienced. Alongside many village homes it had a thatched roof, clay ground and open fireside. Ellen lived right here till the Eighties, however quickly after the roof collapsed. Right this moment, Burnsyde Home, which was inbuilt 1895, occupies the positioning of the unique Gypsy Palace.
Burnsyde Home © HES (Buildings of the Scottish Countryside Assortment).
The New Palace
Ellen refused to vacate the Previous Palace, so Queen Esther moved right into a home throughout the highway on Tinklers Row. This home nonetheless survives at the moment, though much-changed. The identify of the highway (now thought of an offensive time period) has lengthy since been modified.
The brand new Gypsy Palace © Nationwide Museums Scotland. Licensor www.scran.ac.uk.
Within the 1860s it was a one-roomed dwelling, maybe a thatched outbuilding behind the row, proven on the primary OS Map of 1858. Over time it was modernised with a pantile, then slate roof, receiving a crowstepped brick porch in 1898. In more moderen occasions a further attic storey has been added.
Over time many curious guests and well-wishers visited the 2 palaces. Charles I used to be visited by Sir Walter Scott and Esther was known as upon by the Romany professional George Borrow.
The Finish of an Period
Regardless of renewed curiosity and a seek for appropriate candidates amongst the Rutherford clan within the Nineteen Thirties, Charles II stays Kirk Yetholm’s final topped Gypsy Monarch.
Banner picture credit score: composite picture © courtesy of the Yetholm Historical past Society.
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