sale. In winter the women told fortunes, the men showed tricks of
legerdemain; and these accomplishments often helped to while away
a weary or stormy evening in the circle of the 'farmer's ha'.' The
wildness of their character, and the indomitable pride with which
they despised all regular labour, commanded a certain awe, which
was not diminished by the consideration that these strollers were
a vindictive race, and were restrained by no check, either of fear
or conscience, from taking desperate vengeance upon those who had
offended them. These tribes were, in short, the pariahs of
Scotland, living like wild Indians among European settlers, and,
like them, judged of rather by their own customs, habits, and
opinions, than as if they had been members of the civilised part
of the community. Some hordes of them yet remain, chiefly in such
situations as afford a ready escape either into a waste country or
into another Jurisdiction. Nor are the features of their character
much softened. Their numbers, however, are so greatly diminished
that, instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by Fletcher,
it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five hundred
throughout all Scotland.

A tribe of these itinerants, to whom Meg Merrilies appertained,
had long been as stationary as their habits permitted in a glen
upon the estate of Ellangowan. They had there erected a few huts,
which they denominated their 'city of refuge,' and where, when not
absent on excursions, they harboured unmolested, as the crows that
roosted in the old ash-trees around them. They had been such long
occupants that they were considered in some degree as proprietors
of the wretched shealings which they inhabited. This protection
they were said anciently to have repaid by service to the Laird in
war, or more frequently, by infesting or plundering the lands of