Links thee unto all who share
In its pleasures or its care,
All who on their yearning breast
Lull the nursling to its rest,
And though poor and low thou art,
Makes thee sister in their heart.
Gipsy Mother! strangely fair,
God be with thee in thy care.
Newcastle upon Tyne,
October 3, 1840.
Our approach to Newcastle was in the evening. Lights from an encampment of gipsies, flickered and twinkled like the torch of the glow-worm, while here and there a spot of more sustained brilliance revealed preparations for their nightly repast. A few children, with wild elf-locks, glided about, and suddenly disappeared. Occasionally, among the young females, may be seen traces of comeliness, and of the grace that Nature teaches.
The number of this singular people is not great in England, though it is difficult correctly to compute it, from their roving and scarcely tangible modes of existence. The men are sometimes seen vigorously laboring, among the hay-makers and hop-gatherers, in the counties of Surrey and Kent.
Henry the Eighth, during whose reign the gipsies first appeared in Great Britain, enacted severe laws against them as vagrants, which were enforced by
