Saxons, or at the least Celts of the true breed,
are nothing better than gipsies—subjects of the
Lord of Little Egypt, and descendants of the
"mixed multitude" of the Exodus.  But, to
begin with, what this  "mixed multitude"  was
composed of, whether, according to one
"intelligent gipsy,"  it was made up of a cross
between the Arabs and the Egyptians, or whether
they were all simply slaves denationalised, like
the Jews, who took the opportunity of slipping
out of the house of bondage in company with
them, no one exactly knows.  Mr. Simson inclines
to the cross; at any rate, he believes that
the gipsies, or  "mixed multitude," parted from
Moses after the passage of the Red Sea, going
east through Arabia Petræa, along the Persian
Gulf, and through the Persian desert into
Hindustan, where they formed the gipsy caste, and
whence they came in the fifteenth century to
spread themselves, locust-like, over the face of
Europe.

According to Mr. Simson. the gipsy element
never dies; it is never absorbed by marriage
or apparent overlaying.  Once admitted into a
family, it dominates the rest: once a gipsy
always a gipsy, to the third and fourth, or
thirtieth and fortieth generation.  The mysterious
and subtle vitality of this gipsy element
is thus summed up:  "Some of my readers
may still ask, 'What is a gipsy, after all that
has been said upon the subject?  Since it is
not necessarily a question of colour of face, or
hair, or eyes, or of creed, or character, or of
any outward thing by which a human being can
be distinguished, what is it that constitutes a
gipsy?'  And I reply,  'Let them read this
work through, and thoroughly digest all its
principles, and they can feel what a gipsy is,
should they stumble upon one, it may be, in
their own sphere of life, and hear him or her
admit the fact, and speak unreservedly of it.
They will then feel their minds rubbing against
the gipsy mind, their spirits communing with
the gipsy spirit, and experience a peculiar
mental galvanic shock which they never felt
before.'  It is impossible to say where the
gipsy soul may not exist at the present day, for
there is this peculiarity about the tribe, as I
have said before, that it always remains gipsy,
cross it out to the last drop of original blood;
for where that drop goes, the gipsy soul
accompanies it."

If this is true, it is bewildering to picture
the secret honeycombing of society there must
be by means of these gipsy drops.  Indeed, the
right question would not be, "Who is a gipsy?"
but  "Who is not?"  For anything we may
know, the wife of our bosom and the friend of
our hearth may be equally gipsies in mufti;
gipsies concealing their language as if it were a
sin, but teaching it to their children as the most
sacred bequest they can make; gipsies with
long pedigrees, and quaint beliefs, and strange
traditions, and haunting desires after the
original tent and horn-spoon and child stealing,
and all the rest of it, all the time absolutely
unknown to us accepting them as honest
Britons devoid of guile or mystery.  Once
admit this base of secresy, and you may build
on it the most gigantic pyramid of marvel you
choose.

Bunyan, a tinker and the son of a tinker,
was therefore a gipsy, says Mr. Simson, all
tinkers (Scotticè, tinklers) being gipsies, as
are all thimble-riggers or thimble-men—the
craft coming originally from Egypt, and the
modern men being a superior class of gipsies;
while other gipsies are to be found living
decently as city workmen of all trades and classes,
from horse-dealers to innkeepers, from constables
to carpenters, gipsydom being as universal as it
is occult.  A Scottish "tinkler" told Mr. Simson
that he had wrought all his life in a shop with
fellow-tradesmen, and not one of them ever
discovered that he knew a gipsy word.  And they
make first-rate lady's maids, the mistress little
suspecting that her quick-handed, fair-haired,
blue-eyed Phillis calls herself in secret a
"managie " instead of a woman, and her mistress a
"raunie" instead of a lady.

The great family of the Falls at Dunbar—
merchant princes in their time—were merely
Faas with a difference; and the Faas were the
senior clan of Scottish gipsies, the famous John
Faw, or Faa, in the time of James the Fifth,
being known by the name and state of "Lord
and Earl of Little Egypt," and called gravely
"that peer" by McLaurin in his Criminal Trials;
by which means the gipsy soul has passed into
every family with which the Falls of Dunbar
became connected.  Notably into the Anstruther
family, into whose veins the beautiful Jenny
Fall, or Faa, shed the richer stream of gipsy
blood when she married Sir John Anstruther of
Elie.  This was so well known and so bitterly
resented at the time, that the rabble insulted
her at an election at which Sir John was candidate,
by singing before her  "Johnny Faa, the
gipsy laddie," who by his glamour bewitched the
Earl of Cassilis' lady, so that she left her home
and lawful lord, and was off and away with the
vagabond peer.  Jenny probably secretly imparted
to her sons and daughters a knowledge of the
gipsy tongue, which they, as probably, handed
down from generation to generation through
all the ramifications of the family tree; till it is
more than wonderful to think how many
descendants of Lady Anstruther now waltzing in
ordinary lace and tarlatane, or twisting their
moustaches at the Horse Guards, are imbued
with the gipsy soul, speaking gipsy among
themselves, and regarding with contempt all
who cannot boast a like descent from the Lord
and Earl of Little Egypt, or make out a claim
to be ab origine one of the "mixed multitude"
led by Moses through the Red Sea.

James the Filth of Scotland had once a
curious adventure with the gipsies.  Travelling
under the disguise of the gudeman of Ballangiegh,
but with the objects of Don Juan rather
than of Haroun-al-Raschid, he fell in with
a band of gipsies carousing in a cave near
Wemyss, in Fifeshire.  He entered and joined
in the fun; but, forgetting manners and prudence,