The Border Romanichal
Alastair M. Redpath
Scottish Border Romanichal Travellers, some of whom still proudly bear the exonym Border Gypsies, are a unique recognised group of ‘traivellin fowk’ under the broader umbrella of the Romani community.
The terms ‘gypsy’ and ‘traveller’ are difficult to define in Scotland, however, as each does not constitute a single homogenous group but encompasses a wide range of peoples with diverse histories, cultures and beliefs, including: Highland Travellers, Romani Lowland Travellers, Irish Travellers, Central and Eastern European Roma etc.
There are also Traveller groups which are regarded by the Scottish Government as cultural rather than ethnic, such as New Age Travellers, occupational show people or funfair operators, and waterway Travellers.
Take the word ‘gypsy’ as a starting point, which derives from the entirely false historical notion that the Romani originated in Egypt. It is now widely considered to be a slur, a comment by outsiders on the supposed darker skin and eye colour of incoming traivellin fowk to Europe. So, while the World Romani Congress and similar organisations decry the term, the Romanichal in Kirk Yetholm and other Border towns used it fondly to describe and refer to themselves.
For those reasons then, I’ll be using several descriptors interchangeably. Romanichal, for clarity, means “fellow” member of the Romani, which in turn comes from the Sanskrit word ‘doma’ meaning a member of the Dom caste of travelling musicians and dancers.
Think of it like this: the Scottish Borders is a unique melting pot of towns, villages and settlements, each with their own distinct dialect, traditions, and fierce sense of independence, but equally with a shared history and common linguistic roots. So are the Romani – a nation without borders.
A bygone photo of Hawick Gypsies, exact location unknown [Andrew Rae]Central to the Romanichal is the Romanipen – a shared philosophy, set of laws and desire to follow them; an awareness of belonging to the wider Roma community. Family and familial descent take precedence, with strong value placed on looking after one another.
Most Border Romanichal were self-employed and followed centuries-old traditions involving purity taboos. An old superstition locally, for instance, was that it was considered unlucky to have an unbaptised child in the house. Dead birds were also cooked in a particular way – never using pot, pan, spit or oven – instead being plastered with clay, unplucked, and slow cooked on piles of hot ashes.
They were skilled horse riders, crafters, cooks, menders and more, with a rich tradition of song and spoken word. But how did they end up settling in the rolling hills of the Borders?
A Lowland Traveller encampment, painting by David Payne [Annan Museum]The Romani are thought to have migrated from the modern Indian state of Rajasthan, northwest to the Punjab region, around 250 BCE. Their subsequent westward migration, possibly in waves, began in 500 CE, initially through Persia, and onwards into Europe by the early 14th century.
The first recorded Scottish reference to traivellin fowk dates to 1505, during the reign of James IV, when an entry in the book of the Lord High Treasurer records a payment “to Peter Ker, of four shillings to go to the king at Hunthall, to get letters subscribed to the King of Rowmais.”
A year later the king acknowledged Anthony Gawin as the “Earl of Little Egypt” in a letter which implored the Danish king to give his company safe passage through Denmark. James IV was killed at Flodden, plans inevitably changed, and the Romani were given leave to remain by his son, James V. This coincided with the Egyptians Act of 1530, in England, requiring those already living there to leave within 16 days under the threat of confiscation of property, imprisonment or deportation.
James V purportedly granted John Faa and his son authority to police and punish his subjects, establishing the tradition of gypsy kings and queens of Kirk Yetholm. For reasons of brevity, I’ll be largely omitting the Kirk Yetholm Gypsies from this overview, as their history is well covered within the book of the same name by Vic Tokely.
Other Romani families with shared Anglo-Scottish roots began to settle in the Borders region from the 16th century onwards.
The original Gypsy Palace in Kirk Yetholm, by the artist John Proctor [Yetholm History Society]
Charles II, the last Gypsy king of Kirk Yetholm [public domain]
Coronation of King Charles Faa Blyth Rutherford [Gypsy Palace]
Queen Esther Faa Blyth, c.1860-1870 [Gypsy Palace]Some Travellers were thereafter accused of theft and other misdemeanours, so James V introduced legislation to outlaw Romani in Scotland – but again death got in the way. There was an order made in 1573 that all “vagabound and counterfaitit people calland thame selffis Egiptianis” would be banished from the Borders. For the next four decades, though, the community roamed Scotland freely until an act of James VI, in 1579, stated that any person found to be a gypsy was to be nailed to a tree by their ears and have them cut off!
Travellers in the south of Scotland briefly enjoyed the protection of the Roslyn family and made an encampment within Roslyn Castle grounds. However, the Scottish parliament then passed the ‘Act regarding the Egyptians’, in 1609, which made it law to condemn, detain and execute Travellers if they were known or reputed to be ethnically Roma.
In 1611, for example, Moyses Fa, David Fa, Robert Fa, and John Fa (alias Willie Fa), were executed on the Burghmuir in Edinburgh for “being Egyptians” and having remained in Scotland.
The Border Romanichal thereafter did a number of things to save their lives, falling in with the local inhabitants’ way of life, changing their appearance, intermarrying, and moving to areas where they could easily take refuge. The Borders was an ideal location, after all, to escape to England should laws change in their favour.
In 1624, Captain John Faa and his kinsmen were hanged in Edinburgh, with others banished abroad. Continued persecution led many Border Romanichal to adopt more recognisably Scottish surnames such as Young, Douglas, Baillie, Ruthven, Shaw, Tait, and Gordon. Faa itself was often gentrified to Fall.
The Ashkirk session ordained in 1643 that “no person shall reset any Egyptians, and if they insist on staying, then to come and tell the minister, and he, with the assistance of the gentlemen that he shall choose, shall go and out them out of the parish.” The adjacent kirkyard contains the headstone of an unfortunate Romanichal boy who was hanged for stealing a duck.
Once several generations settled here, like the Border Reivers of auld, it was not uncommon for families to feud and form rivalries. At Romanno Bridge, north-west of Peebles, in either 1667 or 1677 (the years are often confused), the Faas of Yetholm and the Shaws from Dumfriesshire had a muckle fight resulting in a number of Faas being slain. The subsequent trial at Edinburgh saw several perpetrators hanged in the Grassmarket.
In 1704, 11 men were found guilty of being “Egyptians” in Jedburgh and were transported to America, while a woman was scourged through the town and then nailed to a post by her ear for half an hour.
For the Border Romanichal to simply exist was enough to persecute them. It was no way of living.
Sometime around 1730 according to Vic Tokely, or 1745 according to a Hawick contemporary historian, Robert Wilson, two parties of Romani pitched their tents at the Common Haugh in preparation for the Winter Fair, busy mending bellows, clouting cauldrons, and drinking whisky.
A dispute arose between two men regarding property rights conferred by a frail sister, promised to both men. The two “tribes” from Lochmaben and Yetholm soon took umbrage with their evolving argument and “male and female savages mingled with equal valour and ferocity” in the fray of the battle. The magistrates and constables broke up the fight but two men later died from their cuts and wounds.
In the spring of 1772 or 1773 (sources vary), there was a feud between two rival groups of Romani camped on “Hawick Green” which spilled over into a full blown battle on a “narrow bridge spanning the River Teviot at Hawick” – Teviot Brig, built in 1741.
On one side was the Kennedy family from Lochmaben, led by Alexander Kennedy, “an intrepid, stalwart and intelligent Romany”, head of his clan, and his wife Jean Ruthven.
Kennedy’s father-in-law was Little Wull Ruthven, nicknamed the ‘Earl of Hell’, who was described by the author John Buchan as being “the strongest and langest man frae the Forth to Berwick.” Wull once led a band of “blaggard tinklers” to a fight in the Moss of Biggar, where Buchan states Ruthven had “sworn to fecht [the authorities] till there’s no a bailie left to keep up the name.”
Indeed, his nickname may have originated from the Scots word ‘yerl’ for a devilish, wild or lawless character. He was additionally noted as wearing distinctive “red-stripit breeks”, his band of armed Travellers carrying “lang scythe-sticks”.
Muckle Wull Ruthven and other family members – women and children among them – joined on the side of the Kennedys in Hawick.
At the opposite end of the fray, originating from Kirk Yetholm, were Auld Rob Tait, ably assisted by his kinsmen Jacob and young Rob, and three sons-in-law, with Tait’s wife Jean Gordon; other women and youth forming the rearguard.
They carried bludgeons and cudgels but some Taits armed themselves with cutlasses and serrated metal blades attached to sticks. A large gathering of townsfolk bore witness to the ensuing battle.
Steel clashed with stick and some hits found their target in a gruesome way. Jean Ruthven, who was pregnant at the time, suffered several cuts to the chest but refused to leave her husband’s side. Little Wull was grievously wounded and had to withdraw from battle to tend to his injuries.
As numbers dwindled, Kennedy was left on his tod to continue the fight and, anticipating victory, the Taits attacked en masse. However, Alexander managed to disarm two men and bludgeoned another to the ground, breaking his weapon in the process. Sympathetic Teries threw him some cutlasses which prolonged the battle; a surprise blow to the head from Jean Gordon even failed to down him, albeit left Alexander briefly stunned.
“Constables and messengers” soon arrived to break up the battle, and the Taits, without exception, were all arrested and marched to prison. Since nobody was slain, however, they found themselves at liberty shortly thereafter. Blood stains on the bridge served as a reminder not to meddle with kith or kin.
The feud between the two families continued for several decades until, in 1819, they engaged in a further battle at Yarrowford. Alexander Kennedy, a grandson of the one present at Hawick, wrung the neck of William Irving with such force that his face turned the opposite way on his shoulders, killing him instantly. The culprit swiftly evaded justice, assisted by family, and a bounty of £100 was placed on his head.
After eventually being betrayed by a Romanichal and handed over to (future Sir) Walter Scott, Sheriff of Selkirkshire, Alexander remarkably evaded the gallows thanks to a doctor’s report which stated that the victim may have died from apoplexy! He was instead charged with culpable homicide and transported to Botany Bay for 14 years, eventually returning to Jedburgh to make a living selling baskets.
Another feud began in c.1824 when Old Will of Phaup – grandfather of James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd – brutally whipped a Romanichal and set free his horses. For years prior he had given the Travellers shelter at Potburn but on this occasion Will asked the Kennedys to turn their horses over the water to the Phaup ground.
The next morning, he found ‘Ellick’ Kennedy was grazing six horses on Coombdean, the best grass on the farm, which was being prepared for winter fodder. A desperate combat ensued and Will lashed Ellick, set free the cuddies and chased the family out of the area. Warfare of five years’ duration followed, nearly ruining Will, until a formal truce was arranged and auld grazing habits resumed.
The Gypsy Palace in Kirk Yetholm, now holiday accommodation [Gypsy Palace]Although these types of stories are the ones to have stuck down the generations, the vast majority of Border Romanichal were law-abiding people.
Major John Rutherfurd of Edgerston, for instance, who represented Roxburghshire in parliament from 1734-41, was a descendant of the Faa family of Kirk Yetholm, and was known to them as “Johnne Faa”. Robert Faa was a master of Kelso Masonic Lodge in 1702, while the Falls family of Dunbar left Yetholm as Faas in the early 1700s and recorded their Romani lineage in needlework.
These early families would travel in groups throughout the summer months, mending and hawking hand-made goods around the countryside. Many Romanichal made use of debateable lands or plea lands that were uncultivated or where ownership was disputed, taking peats, pasture and tillage. At night the whole family sleep under a tent, the covering of which was generally woollen cloth; the same cloths that covered their cart during the day. Others would seek out barns.
They were known locally by outdated words like ‘tinklers’ for mending pots and other utensils, ‘horners’ for making and selling horned spoons, and ‘muggers’ or ‘potters’ for sculpting mugs and other earthenware, in addition to trading in baskets, jewellery, and ponies/nags. Women did the lion’s share of the selling. The men were occupied by hunting, poaching and trapping. Children tended to accompany the females, or collect decayed wood for fuel.
The Romanichal were undoubtedly skilled horse riders, needing only a halter and no saddle or bridle. They rode to fairs at St Boswells and Earlston, St James Fair in Kelso, and also further afield to the tryst at Hawick.
Victorian-era families applied to the local clergy for baptisms and a good education. Few adults attended church but encouraged their children to instead attend Sunday school.
By the 1840s, the children of Kirk Yetholm Gypsies were staying behind during the summer, boarded out in the village and attending Scotland’s first Ragged School. This had been set up the Rev. John Baird who believed Kirk Yetholm to be the “residence of the largest colony [of Gypsies] in Scotland.”
The Education (Scotland) Act of 1872 made education for all children between the ages of 5 and 13 mandatory, necessitating a change of lifestyle and settlement for most of the remaining Romanichal. Children caught not attending school could be taken away by the authorities. And although the Vagrancy Acts of 1824 and 1838 originally applied only to England and Wales, Section 4 – which punished “every person wandering abroad and lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon” – was extended to Scotland by the Prevention of Crimes Act 1871.
It spelled the beginning of the end for the Border Romanichal.
In December 1919, the United Free Church in Hawick and Newcastleton appeared to think showpeople were by then more prevalent than “travelling tinkers of auld”. The church tasked itself with the welfare of the GRT (Gypsy/Romani/Traveller) community over the harsh winter months.
In the wake of the Romani Holocaust of the Second World War (one conservative estimate states that 250,000 GRT people, from a total population of 1.5 million across Europe, were kille), several GRT families came to the Hawick area as part of a programme to house displaced persons forced from their own countries, being lodged in former internment camps at Bonchester and Wilton.
Dues and site fees have been collected from Travellers on Hawick’s Common Haugh for well over a century, if not longer, with the money benefitting the wider community through the Hawick Common Good Fund. The “wanderin cless” were more often to be found in lodging houses than tents during their stays in the 1950s.
The Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1960 stated that no occupier of land shall cause or permit the land to be used as a caravan site unless they are a licence holder. It also enables local councils to make an order prohibiting the stationing of caravans on common land, or a town or village green. The act singularly prevented Travellers using the vast majority of their traditional stopping places, leaving the GRT community in limbo for eight years.
The Caravan Sites Act 1968 required local authorities to provide sites for Travellers if there was a demonstrated need. This was resisted by many councils, who would claim that there were no Romani living in their areas. The result was that insufficient pitches were provided, leading to a situation whereby holders of a pitch could no longer travel for fear of losing it.
A subsequent crisis led to the formation of the British Gypsy Council to fight for the rights of GRT people in Britain.
The first World Romani Congress was held near London in 1971, partially funded by the World Council of Churches and the government of India. There a traditional green and blue flag embellished with a red, sixteen-spoked chakra, was reaffirmed as the national emblem of the Romani people.
In 1977, Borders Regional Council, reacting to complaints from residents about the inferred behaviour of Travellers, introduced a parking ban at the Haugh which had a detrimental effect on local trade. In December that year a joint report was published into the provision of pitches for Travellers by the district councils, including a permanent winter site in Hawick or Selkirk – as well as a pilot for the St Boswells Fair.
Plans by Roxburgh District Council to create permanent pitches at Crowbyres, Hawick, were derailed over a four-year period in 1982-86 by opposition from local residents – with legal arguments reaching all the way up the political ladder to the Secretary of State for Scotland. Temporary provision was instead granted at Lower Mansfield. Across the Borders, the government mandated 61 pitches minimum.
In 1983, a Scottish Office survey revealed there were sixty GRT families living in Hawick.
As of 1988, Gypsies were given protection under the Race Relations Act 1976, something not afforded to Scottish Travellers or Border Romanichal until 2008. Over a hundred pieces of related legislation were subsequently brought together, along with all of the GRT community (aside from New Age Travellers), under the protective umbrella of the Equality Act 2010.
By 1993, there were only eight GRT families living at Coldstream amidst a clear message that Travellers were not welcome in Roxburghshire.
At the turn of the millennium, Scottish Borders Council (SBC) abandoned plans for a £350,000 custom-built caravan site in Hawick, despite being offered £342,000 funding from the Scottish Executive. By that time the National Council of Gypsies reckoned there were 1,000 travelling people on the road in Scotland. A GRT site at Galashiels was closed down in 2007-08.
In 2019, SBC set about providing a single site of ten pitches at Victoria Park, Selkirk, which became as a designated government site during the Covid-19 lockdown, following which residents were asked to move on to Innerleithen and elsewhere. However, this fraught situation led to unauthorised encampments in several Border locations.
At the time of the belated 2021 census, there were 4,212 people within the GRT community in Scotland, although the true number is estimated anywhere between 15,000 and 20,000 people.
SBC have since developed a ‘good neighbour code’ to balance the needs of traivellin fowk with the communities where they take up temporary or settled residence, and they also employ a Gypsy/Traveller Liaison Officer.
Tweedside Caravan Park in Innerleithen is now the designated GRT site in the Borders, with 9 pitches and related amenities which abide by the Scottish Social Housing Charter.
My Great-Uncle Teddy McGurk, far left, was a travelling boxer and showman following his departure from Hawick [McGurk family]One of the richest legacies of the Border Romanichal was the introduction of their distinct language, a mixture of Scots and Northern Angloromani called the Border Cant, into everyday English. It was somewhat of a concealed language, as the Romanichal exhibited an extraordinary degree of caution and reluctance to admit they had a tongue of their own; a situation brought about by centuries of persecution.
Some of their better known words include: ‘besom’, a sweeping brush or unpleasant woman; ‘char’, for tea; ‘cleek’, to walk arm in arm; ‘deek’, a peep or concealed look; ‘kip’, for bed; ‘paggart’ and ‘puggle’, extremely tired or exhausted; and ‘radge’, a crazy or irrational person.
Others have since fallen out of use, like: ‘anonst’ or unknown; ‘bari’, meaning good, smart or beautiful; ‘burker’, an intruder, originating from the crimes of William Burke; ‘cannyways’, cautiously; ‘chore’, to steal; ‘mowdit’ as in buried, also ‘mowdie’ for mole; ‘neddie’, a turnip; ‘pawnee’, water, especially when used in cooking; and ‘peerie’, for a foot or feet.
Take also the common east of Scotland word ‘gadgie’, a word used to describe a man, which derives from Cant ‘gadjo’ (masculine) and ‘gadji’ (feminine) for someone not of Romani ethnicity or someone who has chosen to leave the community. The origins of the word live on through the Bari Gadgi (best boy) and Bari Manushi (best girl), principals of the annual Yetholm Festival Week.
Many descendants of the Border Romanichal still live locally. Further afield, Kirk Yetholm’s Andrew Blyth moved to America in 1801. Among his direct descendants is William Jefferson Blythe III, better known to you and I as Bill Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States (Clinton being his step-father’s surname). And who better to embody the wandering, adventurous spirit of the Border Romanichal than one of their own number, Hawick’s Sir Chay Blyth – the first person in history to successfully sail the world westwards.
Teddy and Ethel with their travelling stall [McGurk family]
Ethel and Teddy, pictured with Pheasant Boswell ahint their travelling caravan[McGurk family]
Bibliography
The History, Traditions, Myths and Legends of the Roma Gypsy, Cathay Birch [online]
Gypsy, Roma and Traveller History Month (2022), Steven Robb [online]
A Hawick Word Book (2024 ed.), Professor Douglas Scott [online]
A Sketch of the History of Hawick (1825), Robert Wilson
Hawick Archaeological Society Transactions (1907, 1916, 1919, 1977), John A. Fairley, George Watson, A.V. Tokely
The Kirk Yetholm Gypsies (2004), A.V. Tokely
A Dictionary of the Languages of Scottish Travellers (2013), Pauline Cairns Speitel
Alastair M. Redpath is a proud care-experienced father of two, historian, journalist, and published author from the town of Hawick in the Scottish Borders. In addition to founding Project Hawick and its spin-off groups Project Glasgow, Project Dunfermline and Project Barrmill, Ali is currently vice-president of Hawick Archaeological Society. In recent times he has been busy researching the history of the Scottish Border Romanichal Travellers.
Post-pandemic, Ali discovered two twigs from the same branch of his family tree with Romani blossoming. A great-uncle, Teddy McGurk, left home aged 13 to join a travelling show troupe. He married Dora Boswell, a fortune-teller of true Romani ethnicity, while her parents Joshua and Pheasant Boswell were show-people whose ancestry can be traced back to Hertfordshire in the early 1600s. Descendants of Teddy have settled in Shettleston, Glasgow.
A great-auntie, Isabella Entwistle (Teddy 's half-sister), was the product of a fling between a “Romany Gypsy” who worked as a postie in Hawick and around the Borders, and Ali's great-granny Sophia Entwistle. The mystery man used the alias Louis Jackson, was born in Latvia in the 1880s, and was of Eastern European Roma origins.