ABSTRACT
Tradition has it that James MacPherson was the son of a Highland gentleman and a’beautiful gypsy woman’. During his lifetime, he achieved considerable notoriety as the leader of a gang of cattle-lifters operating in the province of Moray. On 7 November 1700, MacPherson, two men named Brown and a Gordon, were brought before the Sheriff of Banffshire, charged with being ‘Egyptian rogues and vagabonds, of keeping the markets in their ordinary manner of thieving and purse-cutting, also being guilty of masterful bangstrie [violence against a person or property] and oppression’. Part of the evidence against them was that ‘they spoke a peculiar gypsy language and spent their nights in dancing, singing and debauchery’.
