d danced a round
Beneath the gallows tree!

OLD SONG

[The Bohemians: In... Guy Mannering the reader will find some remarks
on the gipsies as they are found in Scotland. Their first appearance in
Europe took place in the beginning of the fifteenth century. The account
given by these singular people was, that it was appointed to them, as
a penance, to travel for a certain number of years. Their appearance,
however, and manners, strongly contradicted the allegation that they
travelled from any religious motive. Their dress and accoutrements were
at once showy and squalid; those who acted as captains and leaders of
any horde,... were arrayed in dresses of the most showy colours, such
as scarlet or light green; were well mounted; assumed the title of dukes
and counts, and affected considerable consequence. The rest of the tribe
were most miserable in their diet and apparel, fed without hesitation
on animals which had died of disease, and were clad in filthy and scanty
rags.... Their complexion was positively Eastern, approaching to that of
the Hindoos. Their manners were as depraved as their appearance was poor
and beggarly. The men were in general thieves, and the women of the most
abandoned character. The few arts which they studied with success were
of a slight and idle, though ingenious description. They practised
working in iron, but never upon any great scale. Many were good
sportsmen, good musicians.... But their ingenuity never ascended into
industry.... Their pretensions to read fortunes, by palmistry and by
astrology, acquired them sometimes respect, but oftener drew them under
suspicion as sorcerers; the universal accusation that they augmented
their horde by stealing children, subjected them to doubt and
execration.... The pretension set up by these wanderers, of being
pilgrims in the act of penance, although it... in many instances
obtained them protection from the governments of the countries through
which they travelled, was afterwards totally disbelieved, and they
were considered as incorrigible rogues and vagrants.... A curious and
accurate account of their arrival in France is quoted by Pasquier "On
August 27th, 1427, came to Paris twelve penitents,... viz. a duke,
an earl, and ten men, all on horseback, and calling themselves good
Christians. They were of Lower Egypt, and gave out that, not long
before, the Christians had subdued their country, and obliged them
to embrace Christianity on pai