was early in the fifteenth century; as in the year 1417 numerous
bands entered France from the north-east of Europe, and speedily
spread themselves over the greatest part of that country. Of these
wanderers a French author has left the following graphic
description: (16)

'On the 17th of April 1427, appeared in Paris twelve penitents of
Egypt, driven from thence by the Saracens; they brought in their
company one hundred and twenty persons; they took up their quarters
in La Chapelle, whither the people flocked in crowds to visit them.
They had their ears pierced, from which depended a ring of silver;
their hair was black and crispy, and their women were filthy to a
degree, and were sorceresses who told fortunes.'

Such were the people who, after traversing France and scaling the
sides of the Pyrenees, poured down in various bands upon the
sunburnt plains of Spain. Wherever they had appeared they had been
looked upon as a curse and a pestilence, and with much reason.
Either unwilling or unable to devote themselves to any laborious or
useful occupation, they came like flights of wasps to prey upon the
fruits which their more industrious fellow-beings amassed by the
toil of their hands and the sweat of their foreheads; the natural
result being, that wherever they arrived, their fellow-creatures
banded themselves against them. Terrible laws were enacted soon
after their appearance in France, calculated to put a stop to their
frauds and dishonest propensities; wherever their hordes were
found, they were attacked by the incensed rustics or by the armed
hand of justice, and those who were not massacred on the spot, or
could not escape by flight, were, without a shadow of a trial,
either hanged on the next tree, or sent to serve for life in the