Her demeanour now instantly undergoes a change. Hitherto she has been pouring forth a lying and wild harangue without much flurry or agitation of manner. Her speech, it is true, has been rapid, but her voice has never been raised to a very high key; but she now stamps on the ground, and placing her hands on her hips, she moves quickly to the right and left, advancing and retreating in a sidelong direction. Her glances become more fierce and fiery, and her coarse hair stands erect on her head, stiff as the prickles of the hedgehog; and now she commences clapping her hands, and uttering words of an unknown tongue, to a strange and uncouth tune. The tawny bantling seems inspired with the same fiend, and, foaming at the mouth, utters wild sounds, in imitation of its dam. Still more rapid become the sidelong movements of the Gitána. Movement! she springs, she bounds, and at every bound she is a yard above the ground. She no longer bears the child in her bosom; she plucks it from thence, and fiercely brandishes it aloft, till at last, with a yell she tosses it high into the air, like a ball, and then, with neck and head thrown back, receives it, as it falls, on her hands and breast, extracting a cry from the terrified beholders. Is it possible she can be singing? Yes, in the wildest style of her people; and here is a snatch of the song, in the language of Roma, which she occasionally screams— ‘En los sastos de yesque plai me diquélo, Doscusañas de sonacai terélo,— Corojai diquélo abillar, Y ne asislo chapescar, chapescar.’ ‘On the top of a mountain I stand, With a crown of red gold in my hand,— Wild Moors came trooping o’er the lea, O how from their fury shall I flee, flee, flee? O how from their fury shall I flee?’ Such was the Gitána in the days of Ferdinand and Isabella, and much the same is she now in the days of Isabel and Christina. [Picture: A Song of Egypt]