IT WAS 1636 and the authorities of Haddington were not sure what to do with the prisoners. They had languished in the town’s tollbooth for a month.

Families of men, women and children were crammed into the insanitary cells. Reports that some of their friends had been seen near the town made the magistrates fear that they may try to help the prisoners escape.

But what was troubling them more was the “burdensome” cost and inconvenience of incarcerating so many people. A decision on their fate was needed quickly.

The town authorities had followed the law by putting them in prison. In fact, the law was clear that they should all be executed.

But since there were women and children among them the Haddington authorities had hesitated to carry this out.

They needed guidance and instruction from the Privy Council, and so a rider was dispatched with a letter asking for instructions, and the prisoners had to wait to hear of their fate. What had these people done to be under sentence of death?

It was nothing they had done. Their crime was who they were. They were gypsies; just to be a gypsy was a capital offence.

It was Arthur of Whittinghehame who had apprehended the families. The scene of this raid is not recorded.

Was it a night raid, dragging women and children from their tents? Had they been families passing en route or camped nearby. Whole families were taken, but perhaps some escaped.

Those who fled were perhaps the ones later seen near Haddington, worried and concerned about the fate of those imprisoned. No resistance seems to have been offered, for if it had, the violence would have certainly been noted and used against them.

They were accused of no crime other than that of being gypsies. It was a Privy Council edict in 1603 which first declared the death penalty for being a gypsy in Scotland.

It was written into statue by an act in 1609.

The Act called on all “good subjects” to apprehend gypsies and for the local authorities to imprison them and “execute to death the said Egyptians, either men or women”. (Gypsies were originally called Egyptians as folk believed they originated from there).

And so these families were victims of a law that aimed to ethnically cleanse Scotland of gypsies. The Act was motivated by racist hatred and the only evidence needed to condemn someone to death was a Gypsy name, being known as a gypsy, or just associating with known gypsies.

When the reply from the Privy Council arrived it was brutally clear in its instructions.

It said there was a need to set an example to “the rest of that infamous byke”, thereby comparing gypsies to a nest of wasps or hornets.

It continued: “The lords of secret counsel ordains the sheriff of Haddington or his deputes to pronounce doom and sentence of death” upon the men, and the women without children; “the men to be hangit and the women to be drowned”.

The women with children were to be spared death, but were to be “scourgit threw the burgh of Haddington and burnt on the cheek”.

They would then be banished from Scotland. The Provost and bailies of Haddington were ordered to speedily carry out this sentence as stated. We can only assume these instructions were adhered to with little delay. If so, the executions will have been in public, and must have been a scene of horror, possibly witnessed by the friends and relatives.

They were not the first gypsy families to suffer this persecution. In fact a number of gypsy families living in the Roslin area of Midlothian had previously been rounded up in 1624. They had committed no crimes and kept a low profile. The Privy Council even complained that they were living “as if they were lawful subjects”. Their crime however, was to be “part of an outlawed race” and they were taken to Edinburgh’s Tolbooth. The men were hanged and the women and children were banished from Scotland forever under pain of death.

The aim of the persecution was to rid Scotland of Gypsies all together. So Gypsy families found themselves living like the wolf, hunted and in constant danger of capture. The Act of 1609 was only part of it. An even earlier edict had empowered the masters of salt pans and coal mines to capture and enslave gypsies and other “vagabonds” for servitude in the mines and salt pans.

Many miners and salt panners at that time would have been enslaved gypsies. In many ways, their experience of state persecution and social discrimination mirrored that of the MacGregors, a Highland clan who were proscribed at much the same time.

And like the MacGregors many gypsy families changed their names to avoid being identified.

Others felt forced to changed their lifestyle and hide their true identity, while some lived on the edge, with a constant risk of imprisonment or death. This was why there was a concentration of gypsy families close to the English border, as the laws were different in England.

The attempt to exterminate gypsies from Scotland failed, they survived despite the persecution.

But most of the misery and injustice caused remains unrecorded by history, although is not unforgotten by the gypsy community.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries gypsies often shared the road with other travellers, many from the Highlands or Ireland, creating a gypsy/traveller tradition with distinct cultural differences between them, but a shared “non-settled” lifestyle.

But even when the laws were no longer enforced, the social attitudes towards gypsies and then also travellers excluded them.

They were too different in the way they looked and dressed, and especially in the way they lived their lives. They had their own language and didn’t fit in. So I was told when I was wee.

I grew up with derogatory comments in the playground about ‘Tinks’ and ‘Gypos’. Such attitudes had been passed down by adults. Without knowing it I absorbed the idea that they were a people not to be trusted or liked. It was all self evident to me at the time because so many people were saying it.

The truth is, of course, no community is all good or all bad, and choosing to select something bad to justify a blanket prejudice of a people is racism and intolerance of difference. I was angry later that I had been taught to demonise a people I knew nothing about. I discovered their history, not just their persecution, but their cultural and economic contribution to our country. Gypsies and travellers are rightly proud of their traditions, and I believe they are not “other,” but an important part of Scottish life and culture.

It is sad that so many gypsy and traveller families, even today, hide their identity because of the discrimination they may face. And that discrimination still remains entrenched I think. I overheard a very loud “discussion” about gypsies on a bus last week in which derogatory terms were used to describe them.

It reminded me of things I was told when I was younger, and which I once believed to be true. It echoed the language used in the 1609 Act and made my spine shiver.

I didn’t challenge these comments, but I think I should have, constructively and politely. But to be honest I was afraid to.

I’m ashamed about that – silence is the ground on which intolerance and hatred can grow.