"May be so," said the first speaker; "but though I should be loath to see the foot-ball, or any other innocent game which keeps up a manly spirit, put down, yet I do trust that the brutal practice of cock-fighting will be abolished, not only on the Borders, but throughout every country which professes the name of Christian; and I rejoice that the practice is falling into disrepute. But, although my hairs are not yet honoured with the silver tints of age, I am old enough to remember, that, when a boy at school on the Scottish side of the Border, at every Fastren's E'en which you have spoken of, every schoolboy was expected to provide a cock for the battle, or main, and the teacher or his deputy presided as umpire. The same practice prevailed on the southern Border. It is a very old, savage amusement, even in this country; and perhaps the preceptors of youth, in former days, considered it classical, and that it would instil into their pupils sentiments of emulation; inasmuch as the practice is said to have taken rise from Themistocles perceiving two cocks tearing at and fighting with each other, while marching his army against the Persians, when he called upon his soldiers to observe them, and remarked that they neither fought for territory, defence of country, nor for glory, but they fought because the one would not yield to, or be defeated by, the other; and he desired his soldiers to take a moral lesson from the barn-door fowls. Cock-fighting thus became among the heathen Greeks a political precept and a religious observance--and the _Christian_ inhabitants of Britain, disregarding the _religious and political moral_, kept up the practice, adding to it more disgusting barbarity, for _their amusement_. "Coom," said a third, who, from his tongue, appeared to be a thorough Northumbrian, "we wur talking about Rothbury, but you are goin' to give us a regular sarmin on cock-fighting. Let's hae none o' that. You was saying what clever chaps had been born here--but none o' ye mentioned Jamie Allan, the gipsy and Northumberland piper, who was born here as weel as the best o' them. But I hae heard that Rothbury, as weel as Yetholm and Tweedmouth Moor, was a great resort for the Faa or gipsy gangs in former times. Now, I understand that thae folk were a sort o' bastard Egyptians; and though I am nae scholar, it strikes me forcibly that the meaning o' the word _gipsies_ is just _Egypts_, or _Gypties_--a contraction and corruption o' _Gyptian_!" "Gipsies," said he who spoke of Rumney and Brown, and abused the practice of cock-fighting, "still do in some degree, and formerly did in great numbers, infest this county; and I will tell you a story concerning them."