Borrow himself says that he could remember no time when the mere mention of the name of gipsy did not awaken within him feelings hard to be described. He could not account for it, but some of the Romanies, he remarks, “to whom I have stated this circumstance have accounted for it on the supposition that the soul which at present animates my body has at some former period tenanted that of one of their people, for many among them are believers in metempsychosis and, like the followers of Bouddha, imagine that their souls by passing through an infinite number of bodies, attain at length sufficient purity to be admitted to a state of perfect rest and quietude, which is the only idea of heaven they can form.” The Norwich Castle Hill provided Borrow with many opportunities of observing the habits of the East Anglian Romanies, who, in his day, attended in considerable numbers the horse sales and fairs that were held in the old city. Thither would come the Smiths or Petulengros, Bosviles, Grays and Pinfolds; and often, when they left the Hill, he would accompany them to their camps on Mousehold Heath and to neighbouring fairs and markets. Their daring horsemanship fascinated him, while the strange tongue they employed amongst themselves when bargaining with the farmers and dealers, aroused in him a curiosity that could only be satisfied by a closer acquaintance with its form and meaning. Many of the _chals_ and _chis_ to be met with in “Lavengro” and “The Romany Rye” were transferred to the pages of those works from the East Anglian heaths and fairsteads. It was on a heath not far from his Suffolk home that he introduced the Jew of Fez to Jasper Petulengro in order that he might refute the theory entertained by one of his critics that the Romanies were nothing less than the descendants of the two lost tribes of Israel.