country villages," as they are called; and Dekker draws a picture of them, which closely corresponds with our experience of their modern descendants or representatives. I am sorry that his account is too long for transfer hither. "In "Witt's

Recreations," a long piece called "The gipsies occurs, which is curious, as it contains a good deal of phraseology evidently supposed by the writer to be peculiar to the class, but then, as now, common to all the mendicant fraternity. In Harman's time (1566) many of the terms were current among thieves and beggars, which are familiar to modern ears. Spelman's portrait of the gipsy fraternity in his time, which seems to have been taken ad vivum, is as follows: "Egyptiani. Errorum Impostorumque genus nequissimum in Continente ortum, sed ad Britannias nostras et Europam reliquam per: volans:-nigredine deformes, excocti sole, immundi veste, et usu rerum omnium foedi.-Foeminæ cum stratis et parvulis, jumento invehuntur. Literas circumferunt Principum, ut innoxius illis permittatur transitus.--Oriuntur quippe et in nostra et in omni Regione, spurci hujusmodi nebulones, qui sui similes in Gymnasium sceleris adsciscentes; vultum, cultum, moresque supradictos sibi inducunt. Linguam (ut exotici magis videantur) fictitiam blaterant, provinciasque vicatim pervagantes, auguriis et furtis, imposturis & technarum millibus plebeculam rodunt et illudunt, linguam, hanc Germani Rotwelch, quasi rubrum Wallicum, id est Barbarismum; Angli Canting nuncupant." In "The Character of a Quack Astrologer," 1673, sign. A 3 verso, our wise man, a gypsey of the upper form," is called " a three-penny prophet that undertakes the telling of other folks fortunes, meerly to supply the pinching necessities of his own." At sign. B 3 our cunning man is said to "begin with theft, and to help people to what they have lost, picks their pockets afresh; not a ring or spoon is nim'd away, but pays him twelvepence toll, and the ale-drapers' often-straying tankard yields him a constant revenue: for that purpose he maintains as strict a correspondence with gilts and lifters, as a mountebank with applauding midwives and recommending nurses and if at any time, to keep up his credit with the rabble, he discovers anything, 'tis done by the same occult Hermetic learning, heretofore profest by the renowned Mall-Cut-Purse." These used still, in Brand's time, to be called "Wise Men" in the villages of Durham and Northumberland. Gay, in his "Pastorals," speaking of a girl who is slighted by her lover, thus describes the gipsies :

to

a

In the North of England and Scotland they seem to have enjoyed some share of indulgence. Before the middle of the sixteenth century we meet with "" Letters Lord and Earl of Little Egypt, for assistof Defence and Concurrence to John Fall, ing him in the execution of Justice upon his Company, conform the Laws of Egypt, February 15th, 1540-1.' These are supposed to have been defiance of the State under Fall, as their gang of gypsies associated together in head or king, and these the articles of association for their internal government, mutual defence and security, the embroil'd and infirm state of the Scotish nation at that time not permitting them to repress or restrain a combination of vagrants, who had got above the laws, and erected themselves into a separate community as a set of banditti." There is a curious letter of the justices of Durham to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord President of the North, dated at Durham, Jan. 19, 1549-50, concerning the gipsies and Faws. A writ of Privy Seal, dated 1549, supports John Faw, Lord and Earl of Little Egypt, in the execution of justice on his company and folk, conform to the laws of Egypt, and in punishing certain persons there named, who rebelled against him, left him, robbed him, and refused to return home with him. James's subjects are commanded to assist in apand his adherents to return home. There prehending them, and in assisting Faw is a like writ in his favour from Mary Queen of Scots, 1553; and in 1554 he obtained a pardon for the murder of Nunan Small. So that it appears he had staid long in Scotland, and perhaps some time in England, and from him this kind of strolling people might receive the name of Faw Gang, which they still retain. "Privy Seal Book of Edinburgh," no. XIV. fol. 59, quoted in "Gent. Mag." for Oct. 1785. This document is noticed by Ellis in his first series of "Original Letters," 1825. Lodge's "Illust. of British History," vol. i. p. 135. Mr. Hampton has pointed out, in his most in

teresting "Origines Patricia," 1846, that, Johnny Faw, the familiar name for the old gipsy chiefs, was corrupted from Fowde or Faad, the Danish name for a governor, and the same writer mentions that, in the Acts of James VI. of Scotland, 1581, the term is used in the sense of bailiff.

in

In Scotland, in the eighteenth century, the gipsies appear to have been tolerably abundant. A person writing from Eaglesham, Co. Renfrew, about 1795, says: "There is no magistrate nearer than within four miles; and the place is oppressed with gangs of gipsies, commonly called tinkers or randy-beggars, because there is nobody to take the smallest account of them." Stat. Acc. ii., 124. There is a well-known Scotish song entitled " Johnny Faa, the Gypsie Laddie." An advertisement in the "Newcastle Courant," July 27, 1754, offers a reward for the apprehending of John Fall and Margaret his wife, William Fall and Jane, otherwise Ann his wife, &c. "commonly called or known by the name of Fawe," &c. Gipsies still continue to be called "Faws "" the North of England. Since the repeal of the Act against this people in 1788 they are said to have declined in numbers. In May, 1797, their settlement at Norwood was broken up, and they were treated as vagrants. The number of genuine gipsies in England is not large; but there are thousands of women fortune-tellers, who pretend to be gipsies, and affect to understand palmistry and divination. The gipsies are universally considered in the same light, i.e., of cheats and pilferers. Witness the definition of them in Ducange and the curious etchings of them by Callot. The engraver does not represent them in a more favourable light than the lexicographer, for, besides his inimitable delineations of their dissolute manner of living, he has accompanied his plates with verses, which are very far from celebrating their honesty. It appears from many preceding allusions that the modern artifices in practice among this class of persons date somewhat far back. We find in the old ballad of "The brave English Gipsey," that the still familiar trick of dyeing the face with walnut-juice was in vogue in the time of Charles I. :

"Our dye is not in vaine;
For we do dye in graine:

The walnut-tree supplies our lacke;
What was made faire, we can make
blacke."

The whole piece is curious, and worthy of perusal, as it shews that the gipsy has always led a pretty similar kind of existence in this country, employing the same

shifts, and known by the same characteristics. The ballad was an imitation of one written on the same plan under the title of "The Spanish Gipsy."

The late Dr. Diamond, of Twickenham, told me that when he was a boy, a gipsy chief died in his neighbourhood, and over the place of interment his followers laid a black coffin-shaped stone of peculiar appearance; and it was their practice every year to come and sit in a circle round the stone, as a mark of homage to the departed. So lately as September, 1894, in the Chapelry of Withernsea, in the East Riding of Yorkshire, after the death of "Fiddler Jack," his clothes and effects were burnt, to prevent any dispute among his relatives, who had to begin again, and buy their own belongings; and a second motive was that the widow might not be wooed for the sake of her property. Antiquary, November, 1894.

news

paper of the 19th Nov. 1903, seems barely The subjoined paragraph in a credible:-The effects of the Queen of the Boswell tribe of Gipsies, who died and was buried in Falkirk last week, have been destroyed at the gipsy encampment in accordance with a native custom of the tribe, which is invariably followed. The goods destroyed were of the value of £150, including five bags full of valuable costumes, a solid silver George III. tea set, antique china, silver teaspoons and forks. The caravan of the deceased, which cost £130, is also to be destroyed by fire.

In the present editor's boyhood there was a song in common use, of which he remembers one stanza:

Hark, hark, the dogs do bark;
The gipsies are coming to town;
Some in rags, and some in jags,
And some in velvet gown."

Twiss, in his "Travels," gives the following account of them in Spain: "They are very numerous about and in Murcia, Cordova, Cadiz, and Ronda. The race of these vagabonds is found in every part of Europe; the French call them Bohemiens, the Italians Zingari, the Germans Zigeunen, the Dutch Heydenen (Pagans), the Portuguese Siganos, and the Spaniards Gitanos, in Latin Cingari. Their language, which is peculiar to themselves, is everywhere so similar, that they undoubtedly are all derived from the same source. They began to appear in Europe in the 15th century, and are probably a mixture of Egyptians and Ethiopians. The men are all thieves, and the women libertines. They follow no certain trade, and have no fixed religion. They do not enter into the order of society, wherein they are only tolerated. It is supposed there are upwards of 40,000 of them in Spain, great

times clammy exhalations scattered in the air in small parts, which, in the night, by the resistance of the cold, are kindled, by cleaving to horse's ears and men's heades and shoulders, riding or walking; and that they cleave to hair or garments, it is by the same reason the dew cleaves to them, they being dry and attractive, and so more proper to receive them. Another kind of these flames are when the bodies of men and beasts are chafed and heated, they send forth a fat clammy sweat, which in like manner kindles, as is seen by sparkles of fire that fly about when a black horse is very hard curryed in the dark, or as the blue fire on the shells of oysters, caused by the nitrous salt. Livy also tells us of one Marius, a knight of Rome who, as he was making an oration to his soldiers in Spain with such vehemency as heated him, his head appeared to them all in a flame, though himself was not aware of it." Account of Storms, 1704, p. 79.

"Hagmena Hagmena.-The word is by some supposed of an antiquity prior to the introduction of the Christian Faith. On the Norman Hoquinanno Douce observes: "This comes nearer to our word, which was probably imported with the Normans. It was also by the French called Haguillennes and Haguimento, and I have likewise found it corrupted into Haguiren leux,' (and he refers to Carpentier, Menage, and other authorities). He says also: "I

am further informed that the words used upon this occasion are 'Hagmena, Hagmena, gives us cakes and cheese, and let us go away.' Cheese and oaten-cakes, which are called farls, are distributed on this occasion among the cryers." ." Subjoined is all that appears to have survived of the Yorkshire Hagmena Song:

"To-night it is the New Year's night, to-morrow is the day,

And we are come for our right and for

For the following lines, which the common people repeat upon this occasion, on New Year's Day, in some parts of France, I am indebted to M. Olivier:

"Aguilaneuf de céans

On le voit a sa fenêtre,
Avec son petit bonnet blanc,
Il dit qu'il sera le Maître,
Mettera le Pot au feu ;
Donnez nous, ma bonne dame,

Donnez nous Aguilaneuf."

A writer in the "Gentleman's Magazine" for July, 1790, tells us: "In Scotland, till very lately (if not in the present time), there was a custom of distributing sweet cakes and a particular kind of sugared bread, for several days before and after the New Year; and on the last night of the old year (peculiarly called Hagmenai), the visitors and company made a point of not separating till after the clock struck twelve, when they rose, and, mutually kissing, wished each other a happy New Year. Children and others, for several nights, went about from house to house as guisarts, that is, disguised, or in masquerade dresses, singing: "Rise up, good wife, and be no swier To deal your bread as long's your here, The time will come when you'll be dead, And neither want nor meal nor bread.' "Some of those masquerades had a fiddle, and, when admitted into a house, entertained the company with a dramatic dialogue, partly extempore."

We read in the "Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed" that "it is ordinary among some plebians in the South of Scotland, to go about from door to door upon New Year's Eve, crying Hagmena, a corrupted word from the Greek for holy month. John Dixon, holding forth against this custom once, in a sermon at Kelso, says: Sirs, do you know what Hagmane signifies? It is, the Devil be in the house! that's the meaning of its Hebrew original.'" Page 102. Comp. Tappy

Tousie.

The

Hair (i.) Customs.--The Countess of Dorset, Pembroke, and Montgomery, in her Day-Book, 1676, notes the visits of one Richard Goodgeon to Brougham Castle to cut her ladyship's hair. custom of wearing the hair down the back loose, and a coif between the crown and the head, seems to have been preserved for a long time, and to have been in vogue on the Continent. The Princess Catherine of Aragon is described as wearing her hair so arranged in the contemporary narrative of her journey to England, previously to her espousal to Prince Arthur, son of Henry VII., and her ladies-in-waiting appear to have followed the same