Guy Mannering.

GUY MANNERING. 105
CHAPTER VII.
Come, princes of the ragged regiment,
You of the blood! Prigg, my most upright lord,
And these, what name or title e'er they bear,
Jarkman, or Patrico, Craicke or Clapper-ddlgeon,
Frater 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
tie 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 Egyptians,
and became a mingled race, having all the idleness and