The difference between the English and Scotch gipsies was singularly exemplified in Jean Gordon’s own family. The English gipsies have generally had the policy to commit no capital offences; but Jean’s sons were all hanged one day. Scott, in the eighth chapter of Guy Mannering, says, their mixture with the Border people gave them a peculiar ferocity, quite alien to their original character. “They understood all out-of-door sports, especially otter-hunting, fishing, and finding game. They had the best and boldest terriers, and sometimes had good pointers for sale. In winter the women told fortunes, the men shewed tricks of legerdemain; and these accomplishments helped to wile away a weary or stormy evening in the circle of the ‘farmer’s ha’.’ The wildness of their character, and the indomitable pride with which they despised all regular labour, commanded a certain awe, which was not diminished by the consideration that these strollers were a vindictive race, and were restrained by no check either of fear or conscience, from taking desperate vengeance upon those who had offended them. These tribes were, in short, the _Parias_ of Scotland, living like wild Indians among European settlements; and like them, judged of rather by their own customs, habits, and opinions, than as if they had been members of the civilized part of the community. Some hordes of them yet remain, chiefly in such situations as afford a ready escape into a waste country, or into another jurisdiction. Nor are the features of their character much softened. Their numbers are, however, so greatly diminished, that instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by Fletcher of Saltoun, it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five hundred throughout all Scotland.”