the manners and customs of the mysterious Rommany: thus, because they have been known to beg the carcass of a hog which they themselves have poisoned, it has been asserted that they prefer carrion which has perished of sickness to the meat of the shambles; and because they have been seen to make a ragout of boror (_snails_), and to roast a hotchiwitchu or hedgehog, it has been supposed that reptiles of every description form a part of their cuisine. It is high time to undeceive the Gentiles on these points. Know, then, O Gentile, whether thou be from the land of the Gorgios {82a} or the Busné {82b}, that the very Gypsies who consider a ragout of snails a delicious dish will not touch an eel, because it bears resemblance to a _snake_; and that those who will feast on a roasted hedgehog could be induced by no money to taste a squirrel, a delicious and wholesome species of game, living on the purest and most nutritious food which the fields and forests can supply. I myself, while living among the Roms of England, have been regarded almost in the light of a cannibal for cooking the latter animal and preferring it to hotchiwitchu barbecued, or ragout of boror. ‘You are but half Rommany, brother,’ they would say, ‘and you feed gorgiko-nes (_like a Gentile_), even as you talk. Tchachipen (_in truth_), if we did not know you to be of the Mecralliskoe rat (_royal blood_) of Pharaoh, we should be justified in driving you forth as a juggel-mush (_dog man_), one more fitted to keep company with wild beasts and Gorgios than gentle Rommanys.’ No person can read the present volume without perceiving, at a glance, that the Romas are in most points an anomalous people; in their morality there is much of anomaly, and certainly not less in their cuisine.