ed northern Poet, Walter Scott, who is Sheriff of
Selkirkshire, has in a very obliging manner communicated the following
statement:

"A set of people possessing the same erratic habits, and practising the
trade of tinkers, are well known in the Borders; and have often fallen
under the cognisance of the law. They are often called Gypsies, and pass
through the county annually in small bands, with their carts and asses.
The men are tinkers, poachers, and thieves upon a small scale. They also
sell crockery, deal in old rags, in eggs, in salt, in tobacco and such
trifles; and manufacture horn into spoons, I believe most of those who
come through Selkirkshire, reside, during winter, in the villages of
Sterncliff and Spittal, in Northumberland, and in that of Kirk Yetholm,
Roxburghshire.

"Mr. Smith, the respectable Baillie {94} of Kelso, can give the most
complete information concerning those who reside at Kirk Yetholm.
Formerly, I believe, they were much more desperate in their conduct than
at present. But some of the most atrocious families have been
extirpated, I allude particularly to the _Winters_, a Northumberland
clan, who I fancy are all buried by this time.

"Mr. Reddell, Justice of Peace for Roxburghshire, with my assistance and
concurrence, cleared this country of the last of them, about eight or
nine years ago. They were thorough desperadoes, of the worst class of
vagabonds. Those who now travel through this country, give offence
chiefly by poaching, and small thefts. They are divided into clans, the
principal names being Faa, Baillie, Young, Ruthven, and Gordon.

"All of them are perfectly ignorant of religion, nor do their children
receive any education. They marry and cohabit amongst each other, and
are held in a sort of horror by the common people.

"I do not conceive them to be the proper Oriental Egyptian race, at least
they are much intermingled with our own national out-laws and vagabonds.
They are said to keep up a communication with each other through
Scotland, and to have some internal government and regulation as to the
districts which each family travels.

"I cannot help again referring to Mr. Smith of Kelso, a gentleman who can
give the most accurate information respecting the habits of those
itinerants, as their winter-quarters of Yetholm, are upon an estate of
which he has long had the management."

It is very satisfactory to have received from an authority so respectably
as that of