him. They thought 'naething of what the like of
Greenside, or Burnville, or Viewforth might do, that were strangers in
the country; but Ellangowan! that had been a name amang them since the
Mirk Monanday, and lang before--HIM to be grinding the puir at that rate!
They ca'd his grandfather the Wicked Laird; but, though he was whiles
fractious aneuch, when he got into roving company and had ta'en the drap
drink, he would have scorned to gang on at this gate. Na, na, the muckle
chumlay in the Auld Place reeked like a killogie in his time, and there
were as mony puir folk riving at the banes in the court, and about the
door, as there were gentles in the ha'. And the leddy, on ilka Christmas
night as it came round, gae twelve siller pennies to ilka puir body
about, in honour of the twelve apostles like. They were fond to ca' it
papistrie; but I think our great folk might take a lesson frae the
papists whiles. They gie another sort o' help to puir folk than just
dinging down a saxpence in the brod on the Sabbath, and kilting, and
scourging, and drumming them a' the sax days o' the week besides.'

Such was the gossip over the good twopenny in every ale-house within
three or four miles of Ellangowan, that being about the diameter of the
orbit in which our friend Godfrey Bertram, Esq., J. P., must be
considered as the principal luminary. Still greater scope was given to
evil tongues by the removal of a colony of gipsies, with one of whom our
reader is somewhat acquainted, and who had for a great many years enjoyed
their chief settlement upon the estate of Ellangowan.

CHAPTER VII
Come, princes of the ragged regiment,
You of the blood! PRIGS, my most upright lord,
And these, what name or title e'er they bear,
JARKMAN, or PATRICO, CRANKE or CLAPPER-DUDGEON,
PRATER or ABRAM-MAN--I speak of all.

Beggar's Bush.

Although the character of those gipsy tribes which formerly inundated
most of the nations of Europe, and which in some degree still subsist
among them as a distinct people, is generally understood, the reader will
pardon my saying a few words respecting their situation in Scotland.

It is well known that the gipsies were at an early period acknowledged as
a separate and independent race by one of the Scottish monarchs, and that
they were less favourably distinguished by a subsequent law, which
rendered the character of gipsy equal in the judicial balance to that of
commo