Footnote 62: Before dismissing this subject of fairies, I shall slightly advert to the strange blending which took place of Grecian and Teutonic fables. “We find,” says Sir Walter Scott, “the elves accordingly arrayed in the costume of Greece and Rome, and the fairy queen and her attendants transformed into Diana and her nymphs, and invested with their attributes and appropriate insignia.” Mercury was also named by Harsenet, in the year 1602, the prince of the fairies. Footnote 63: “He would chafe exceedingly,” says Scot, “if the maid or good wife of the house, having compassion of his nakedness, laid ani cloths for him besides his messe of white bread and milke, which was his standing fee. For in that case he saith, what have we here? Hempton hamten, here will I never more tread nor stampen.” Footnote 64: Bellus speaks with contempt of this petty instance of malevolence to the human race: “stones are thrown down from the air,” he remarks, “which do no harm, the devils having little strength, and being mere scarecrows.” So much for the origin of meteoric stones. Footnote 65: See Hibbert’s Philosophy of Apparitions. Footnote 66: Grellman’s History of the Gipsies. Footnote 67: Grellman’s opinion seems extremely plausible, that they are of the lowest class of Indians, called _suders_, and that they left India when Timur Bag ravaged that country in 1408 and 1409, putting to death immense numbers of all ranks of people. Footnote 68: Mr. Marsden first made inquiries among the English Gipsies concerning their language.—_Vide_ Archæologia, vol. ii. p. 382–386. Mr. Coxe communicated a vocabulary of words used by those of Hungary.—See the same vol. of the Archæologia, p. 387. Vocabularies of the German Gipsies may be seen in Grellman’s Book. Any person wishing to be convinced of this similarity of language, and being possessed of a vocabulary of words used in Hindostan, may be satisfied of its truth by conversing with the first Gipsey he meets. Footnote 69: Margaret Finch, a celebrated modern adventuress, was buried October 24, 1740, at Beckenham, in Kent. This remarkable person lived to the age of 109 years. She was one of the people called Gipsies, and had the title of their queen. After travelling over various parts of the kingdom, during the greater part of a century, she settled at Norwood, a place notorious for vagrants of this description, whither her great age and the fame of her fortune-telling, attracted numerous visitors. From a habit of sitting on the ground, with her chin resting on her knees, the sinews at length became so contracted, that she could not rise from that posture. After her death they were obliged to inclose her body in a deep square box. Her funeral was attended by two mourning coaches, a sermon was preached on the occasion; and a great concourse of people attended the ceremony.