Which youth and passion ruffle may no more!
How different all our views, our hopes, and fears,
From those we knew on that auspicious day
We took the name we bear—the greatest name
The world e'er listed.—Kingdoms may decay,
And Empires totter, change succeed to change,
But here no change presents—uncoped with still
Stands our immortal Shakespeare—he whose birth
This day we celebrate.—O! be this day
For ever sacred to his memory—
And long may we, my Brethren, though divided
To the four winds of heaven, meet again,
Happy and free, on this returning day.
And when the spare and silvery locks of age
Wave o'er the wrinkled brow and faded eye,
Memento of a change that is to be;
May we survey this day and all behind
Without regret, and to the future look
With calm composure and unshaken hope.
No 5, Devon Street, May 1817.
NOTICES CONCERNING THE SCOTTISH GYPSIES.
(Continued from page 58.)
"On Yeta's banks the vagrant gypsies place
Their turf-built cots; a sun-burnt swarthy race!
From Nubian realms their tawny line they bring,
And their brown chieftain vaunts the name of king:
With loitering steps from town to town they pass,
Their lazy dames rocked on the panniered ass,
From pilfered roots, or nauseous carrion, fed,
By hedge-rows green they strew the leafy bed,
While scarce the cloak of tawdry red conceals
The fine-turned limbs, which every breeze reveals:
Their bright black eyes thro' silken lashes shine,
Around their necks their raven tresses twine;
But chilling damps, and dews of night, impair
Its soft sleek gloss, and tan the bosom bare.
Adroit the lines of palmistry to trace,
Or read the damsel's wishes in her face,
Her hoarded silver store they charm away,
A pleasing debt, for promised wealth to pay.
But, in the lonely barn, from towns remote,
The pipe and bladder opes its screaking throat,
To aid the revels of the noisy rout,
Who wanton dance, or push the cups about:
Then for their paramours the maddening brawl,
Shrill, fierce, and frantic, echoes round the hall.
No glimmering light to rage supplies a mark,
Save the red firebrand, hissing through the dark;
And oft the beams of morn, the peasants say,
The blood-stained turf, and new-formed graves, display.
Fell race, unworthy of the Scotian name!
Your brutal deeds your barbarous line proclaim;
With dreadful Gallas linked in kindred bands,
The locust brood of Ethiopia's sands,
Whose frantic shouts the thunder blue defy,
And launch their arrows at the glowing sky.
In barbarous pomp, they glut the inhuman feast
With dismal viands man abhors to taste;
And grimly smile, when red the goblets shine,
When mantles red the shell but not with wine!"
The village of Kirk-Yetholm, in Roxburghshire, has long been remarkable as a favourite haunt of the Scottish Gypsies; and it still continues, in the present day, to be their most important settlement, and the head-quarters of their principal clans. The original causes of this preference may be readily traced to its local situation, which afforded peculiar facilities for the indulgence of their roaming and predatory habits, and for the evasion of legal restraints and penalties. Though remote from the principal public roads, they obtained, from this station, a ready access to the neighbouring districts of both kingdoms, by various wild and unfrequented by-paths, little known since the days of the border forays, except to themselves and a few cattle-drovers. The hills and waters, also, teemed with game and fish, and the upland farms and hamlets required a constant supply of tinkering, crockery, and horn spoons, and abounded with good cheer,—while magistrates and constables, and country-towns, were 'few and far between.—All these were advantages of no trivial nature to the vagrant community, and they seem, accordingly, to have been neither overlooked nor left unimproved by the colonists of Kirk-Yetholm.
The village itself lies quite embosomed among the Cheviot hills, and besides its claims to celebrity as the modern metropolis of the "Lordis of Littil Egipt," it is not undeserving of some notice, also, on account of the
