{209} The peacock and turkey are called lady-birds in Rommany, because, as a Gipsy told me, “they spread out their clothes, and hold up their heads and look fine, and walk proud, like great ladies.”  I have heard a swan called a pauno rani chillico—­a white lady-bird.

{210} To make skewers is a common employment among the poorer English Gipsies.

{213} This rhyme and metre (such as they are) were purely accidental with my narrator; but as they occurred verb. et lit., I set them down.

{218} This story is well known to most “travellers.”  It is also true, the “hero” being a pash-and-pash, or half-blood Rommany chal, whose name was told to me.

{219} The reader will find in Lord Lytton’s “Harold” mention of an Anglo-Saxon superstition very similar to that embodied in the story of the Seven Whistlers.  This story is, however, entirely Gipsy.

{221a} This, which is a common story among the English Gipsies, and told exactly in the words here given, is implicitly believed in by them.  Unfortunately, the terrible legends, but too well authenticated, of the persecutions to which their ancestors were subjected, render it very probable that it may have occurred as narrated.  When Gipsies were hung and transported merely for being Gipsies, it is not unlikely that a persecution to death may have originated in even such a trifle as the alleged theft of a dish-clout.

{221b} Although they bear it with remarkable apparent indifference, Gipsies are in reality extremely susceptible to being looked at or laughed at.

{235} This story was told me in a Gipsy tent near Brighton, and afterwards repeated by one of the auditors while I transcribed it.