The green grass is our softest bed, The sun our clock we call, The nightly sky hangs over head, Our curtains, house, and all. Tho' houseless while the wild winds blow, Our joys are uncontroll'd; We barefoot dance through Winter's snow, When others die with cold. Our maidens they are fond and free, And lasting are their charms; Brown as the berry on the tree, No sun their beauty harms: Their beauties are no garden blooms, That fade before they flower; Unshelter'd where the tempest comes, They smile in sun and shower. And they are wild as the woodland hare, That feeds on the evening lea; And what care we for ladies fair, Since ours are fond and free? False hearts hide in a lily skin, But ours are coarse and fond; No parson's fetters link us in,-- Our love's a stronger bond. Tho' wild woods are our house and home, 'T is a home of liberty; Free as the Summer clouds we roam, And merry boys we be. We dance and sing the year along, And loud our fiddles play; And no day goes without its song, While every month is May. The hare that haunts the fallow ground, And round the common feeds; The fox that tracks the woodland bounds, And in the thicket breeds; These are the neighbours where we dwell, And all the guests we see, That share and love the quiet well Of gipsy liberty. The elements are grown our friends, And leave our huts alone; The thunder-bolt, that shakes and rends The cotter's house of stone, Flies harmless by the blanket roof, Where the winds may burst and blow, For our camps, tho' thin, are tempest proof, We reck not rain and snow. May the lot we've met our lives befall, And nothing worse attend; So here's success to gipsies all, And every gipsy's friend. And while the ass that bears our camp Can find a common free, Around old England's heaths we'll tramp In gipsy liberty. PEGGY BAND O it was a lorn and a dismal night, And the storm beat loud and high; Not a friendly light to guide me right Was there shining in the sky, When a lonely hut my wanderings met, Lost in a foreign land, And I found the dearest friend as yet In my lovely Peggy Band. "O, father, here's a soldier lad, And weary he seems to be." "Then welcome in," the old man said, And she gave her seat to me. The fire she trimmed, and my clothes she dried With her own sweet lily hand, And o'er the soldier's lot she sighed, While I blest my Peggy Band. When I told the tale of my wandering years, And the nights unknown to sleep, She made excuse to hide her tears, And she stole away to weep. A pilgrim's blessing I seemed to share, As saints of the Holy Land, And I thought her a guardian angel there, Though he called her his Peggy Band.