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1817.]

an Asiatic people should have resided four hundred years in the heart of Europe, subject to its civilized polity and commingled with its varied population, and yet have retained almost unaltered their distinct oriental character, customs, and language, is a phenomenon so singular as only to be equalled, perhaps, by the unaccountable indifference with which, till very lately, this remarkable fact appears to have been regarded. Men of letters, while eagerly investigating the customs of Otaheite or Kamschatka, and losing their tempers in endless disputes about Gothic and Celtic antiquities, have witnessed with apathy and contempt the striking spectacle of a Gypsey camp,—pitched, perhaps, amidst the mouldering entrenchments of their favourite Picts and Romans. The rest of the community, familiar from infancy with the general character and appearance of these vagrant hordes, have probably never regarded them with any deeper interest than what springs from the recollected terrors of a nursery tale, or the finer associations of poetical and picturesque description. It may, indeed, be reckoned as one of the many remarkable circumstances in the history of this singular race, that the best and almost the only accounts of them that have hitherto appeared in this country, are to be found in works of fiction. Disregarded by philosophers and literati,—the strange, picturesque, and sometimes terrific features of the gypsey character, have afforded to our poets and novelists a favourite subject for delineation; and they have executed the task so well, that we have little more to ask of the historian, than merely to extend the canvass, and to affix the stamp of authenticity to the striking representations which they have furnished. In presenting to the public the following desultory notices, we are very far from any thoughts of aspiring to this grave office—nor indeed is it our province. Our duty is rather to collect and store up (if we may so express it,) the raw materials of literature—to gather into our repository scattered facts, hints, and observations,—which more elaborate and learned authors may afterwards work up into the dignified tissue of history or science. With this idea, and with the hope of affording to general readers something both of information and amusement on a subject so curious and so indistinctly known, we have collected some particulars respecting the Gypsies in Scotland, both from public records and popular tradition; and, in order to render the picture more complete, we shall introduce these by a rapid view of their earlier history—reserving to a future occasion our observations on their present state, and on the mysterious subject of their national language and origin.

That this wandering people attracted considerable attention on their first arrival in Christendom in the beginning of the fifteenth century, is sufficiently evident, both from the notices of contemporary authors, and from the various edicts respecting them still existing in the archives of every state in Europe. Their first appearance and pretensions were indeed somewhat imposing. They entered Hungary and Bohemia from the east, travelling in numerous hordes, under leaders who assumed the titles of Kings, Dukes, Counts, or Lords of Lesser Egypt, and they gave themselves out for Christian Pilgrims, who had been expelled from that country by the Saracens for their adherence to the true religion. However doubt-