“I was very much impressed at this fair with the extensive and unsuspected amount of Romany existent in our rural population . . . There were many men in the common room, mostly well dressed, and decent even if doubtful looking. I observed that several used Romany words in casual conversation. I came to the conclusion at last that all who were present knew something of it” (p. 140). And of eleven kinds of people that were at the fair, he said that “there is always a leaven and a suspicion of Gipsiness. If there be no descent, there is affinity by marriage, familiarity, knowledge of words and ways, sweethearting and trafficking, so that they know the children of the Rom as the house-world does not know them, and they in some sort belong together” (p. 140). In my Disquisition on the Gipsies I said:— “In Scotland the prejudice towards the name of Gipsy might be safely allowed to drop, were it only for this reason, that the race has got so much mixed up with the native blood, and even with good families of the country, as to be, in plain language, a jumble, a pretty kettle of fish, indeed” (p. 427). Mr. Leland continues:— “No novelist, no writer whatever, has as yet _clearly_ explained the curious fact that our entire nomadic population, excepting tramps, is not, as we thought in our childhood, composed of English people like ourselves. It is leavened with direct Indian blood; it has, more or less modified, a peculiar _morale_.” “It is a muddle, perhaps, and a puzzle; I doubt if anybody quite understands it” (p. 140).