I was advised by Sir Walter Scott, as mentioned in the Introduction, to "get the same words from different individuals; and, to verify the collection, to set down the names of the persons by whom they were communicated;" which I have done. For this reason, the words now furnished will appear as the confessions of so many individuals, rather than a vocabulary drawn up in the manner in which such is usually done; and which will be more satisfactory to the general reader, as well as the philologist, than if I had presented the words by themselves, without any positive or circumstantial evidence of their genuineness. To the general reader, as distinguished from the philologist, the anecdotes connected with the collection may prove interesting, if the words themselves have no attraction for him; while they will satisfy the latter, as far as they go, as to the existence of a language which has almost always been denied, yet which is known, at the present day, to a greater number of the population of the country than could at first have been imagined; this part of it having been drawn from a variety of individuals, at different and widely-separated times and places. On this account, I hope that the minuteness of the details of the present enquiry may not appear tedious, but, on the contrary, interesting, to my readers generally; inasmuch as the present collection is the first, as far as I know, of the Scottish Gipsy language that has ever been made; although the people themselves have lived amongst us for three hundred and fifty years, and talked it every hour of the day, but hardly ever in the hearing of the other inhabitants, excepting, occasionally, a word of it now and then, to disguise their discourse from those around them; which, on being questioned, they have always passed off for _cant_, to prevent the law taking hold of them, and punishing them for being Gipsies. These details will also show that our Scottish Tinklers, or Gipsies, are sprung from the common stock from which are descended those that are to be found in the other parts of Europe, as well as those that are scattered over the world generally; what secrecy they observe in all matters relative to their affairs; what an extraordinary degree of reluctance and fear they evince in answering questions tending to develop their history; and, consequently, how difficult it is to learn anything satisfactory about them.[194] [194] It would be well for the reader to consider what a _Gipsy is_, irrespective of the _language which he speaks_; for the _race_ comes _before_ the _speech_ which it uses. That will be done fully in my Disquisition on the Gipsies. The language, considered in itself, however interesting it may be, is a secondary consideration; it may ultimately disappear, while the people who now speak it will remain.--ED.