s in one of the less known of Borrow's works:

"Some time before the commencement of the combat, three men, mounted on
wild-looking horses came dashing down the road in the direction of the
meadow, in the midst of which they presently showed themselves, their
horses clearing the deep ditches with wonderful alacrity. 'That's Gipsy
Will and his gang,' lisped a Hebrew pickpocket; 'we shall have another
fight.' The word gipsy was always sufficient to excite my curiosity, and
I looked attentively at the new-comers.

"I have seen gipsies of various lands, Russian, Hungarian, and Turkish;
and I have also seen the legitimate children of most countries of the
world; but I never saw, upon the whole, three more remarkable
individuals, as far as personal appearance was concerned, than the three
English gipsies who now presented themselves to my eyes on that spot.
Two of them had dismounted, and were holding their horses by the reins.
The tallest, and, at the first glance, the most (!) interesting of the
two, was almost a giant, for his height could not have been less than six
feet three. It is impossible for the imagination to conceive anything
more perfectly beautiful than were the features of this man, and the most
skilful sculptor of Greece might have taken them as his model for a hero
and a god. The forehead was exceedingly lofty, a rare thing in a gipsy;
the nose less Roman than Grecian, fine, yet delicate; the eyes large,
overhung with long drooping lashes, giving them almost a melancholy
expression; it was only when the lashes were elevated that the gipsy
glance was seen, if that can be called a glance which is a strange stare,
like nothing else in the world. His complexion was a beautiful olive;
and his teeth were of a brilliancy uncommon even among these people, who
have all fine teeth. He was dressed in a coarse waggoner's slop, which,
however, was unable to conceal altogether the proportions of his noble
and Herculean figure. He might be about twenty-eight. His companion and
his captain, Gipsy Will, was, I think, fifty, when he was hanged ten
years subsequently. I have still present before me his bushy black hair,
his black face, and his big black eyes, fixed and staring. His dress
consisted of a loose blue jockey coat, jockey boots and breeches; in his
hand was a huge jockey whip, and on his head (it struck me at the time
for its singularity) a broad-brimmed, high-peaked, Andalusian hat, or at
least one very m