y six--exactly the same as in your story
of the stars."

"It's queer," resumed my Gipsy, after a pause, "how they always tells
these here stories by Sevens. Were you ever on Salisbury Plain?"

"No!"

"There are great stones there--_bori bars_--and many a night I've slept
there in the moonlight, in the open air, when I was a boy, and listened
to my father tellin' me about the Baker. For there's seven great
stories, and they say that hundreds of years ago a baker used to come
with loaves of bread, and waste it all a tryin' to make seven loaves
remain at the same place, one on each stone. But one all'us fell off,
and to this here day he's never yet been able to get all seven on the
seven stones."

I think that my Gipsy told this story in connection with that of the
Whistlers, because he was under the impression that it also was of
Scriptural origin. It is, however, really curious that the Gipsy term
for an owlet is the _Maromengro's Chavi_, or Baker's Daughter, and that
they are all familiar with the monkish legend which declares that Jesus,
in a baker's shop, once asked for bread. The mistress was about to give
him a large cake, when her daughter declared it was too much, and
diminished the gift by one half.

"He nothing said,
But by the fire laid down the bread,
When lo, as when a blossom blows--
To a vast loaf the manchet rose;
In angry wonder, standing by,
The girl sent forth a wild, rude cry,
And, feathering fast into a fowl,
Flew to the woods a wailing owl."

According to Eilert Sundt, who devoted his life to studying the _Fanten
and Tataren_, or vagabonds and Gipsies of Sweden and Norway, there is a
horrible and ghastly semblance among them of something like a religion,
current in Scandinavia. Once a year, by night, the Gipsies of that
country assemble for the purpose of un-baptizing all of their children
whom they have, during the year, suffered to be baptized for the sake of
gifts, by the Gorgios. On this occasion, amid wild orgies, they worship
a small idol, which is preserved until the next meeting with the greatest
secresy and care by their captain. I must declare that this story seems
very doubtful to me.

I have devoted this chapter to illustrating from different points the
fact that there lives in England a race which has given its impress to a
vast proportion of our vagabond population, and which is more curious and
more radically distinct in all its charact