William Baillie was succeeded, in the chieftainship, by his son Matthew, who married the celebrated Mary Yowston or Yorkston, and became the leader of a powerful horde of Gipsies in the south of Scotland. He frequently visited the farms of my grandfather, about the year 1770. It appears that his courtship had been after the Tartar manner; for he used to say that the toughest battle he ever fought was that of taking, by force, his bride, then a very young girl, from her mother, at the hamlet of Drummelzier.[139] This Matthew Baillie had, by Mary Yorkston, a son, who was also named Matthew, and who married Margaret Campbell, and had by her a family of remarkably handsome and pretty daughters. Of this principal Gipsy family, I can trace, distinctly, six generations in descent, and have myself seen the great-great-great-grand-children of the celebrated William Baillie. Some of his descendants still travel the country, in the manner of their ancestors, and at this moment speak the Gipsy language with fluency. Some of them, however, are little better than common beggars. There were, at one period, a captain and a quarter-master in the army, belonging to the Baillie clan; and another was a country surgeon.
[139] The English Gipsies say that the old mode of getting a wife among the tribe was to _steal_ her. The intended bride was nothing loth, still it was necessary to steal her, while the tribe were on the watch to detect and prevent it.--ED.
Mary Yorkston, above mentioned, went under the appellations of "my lady," and "the duchess," and bore the title of queen, among her tribe. She presided at the celebration of their barbarous marriages, and assisted at their equally singular ceremonies of divorce. What the custom of this queen of the Gipsies was, when in full dress, in her youth, on gala days, cannot now be easily known; but the following is a description of her masculine figure, and _public_ travelling apparel, when advanced in years. It was taken from the mouth of an aged and very respectable gentleman, the late Mr. David Stoddart, at Bankhead, near Queensferry, who had often seen her in his youth: She was fully six feet in stature, stout made in her person, with very strongly-marked and harsh features; and had, altogether, a very imposing aspect and manner. She wore a large black beaver-hat, tied down over her ears with a handkerchief, knotted below her chin, in the Gipsy fashion. Her upper garment was a dark-blue short cloak, somewhat after the Spanish fashion, made of substantial woollen cloth, approaching to superfine in quality. The greater part of her other apparel was made of dark-blue camlet cloth, with petticoats so short that they scarcely reached to the calves of her well-set legs. [Indeed, all the females among the Baillies wore petticoats of the same length.] Her stockings were of dark-blue worsted, flowered and ornamented at the ankles with scarlet thread; and in her shoes she displayed large, massy, silver buckles. The whole of her habiliments were very substantial, with not a rag or rent to be seen about her person. [She was sometimes dressed in a green gown, trimmed with red ribbons.] Her outer petticoat was folded up round her haunches, for a lap, with a large pocket dangling at each side; and below her cloak she carried, between her shoulders, a small flat pack, or pad, which contained her most valuable articles. About her person she generally kept a large clasp-knife, with a long, broad blade, resembling a dagger or carving-knife; and carried in her hand a long pole or pike-staff, that reached about a foot above her head.