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 common and habitual
thief, and prescribed his punishment accordingly. Notwithstanding
the severity of this and other statutes, the fraternity prospered
amid the distresses of the country, and received large accessions
from among those whom famine, oppression, or the sword of war had
deprived of the ordinary means of subsistence. They lost in a
great measure by this intermixture the national character of