moor,
Made musical with many a soaring lark,
Have we not held brisk commune with him there,
While Lavengro, then towering by your side,
With rose complexion and bright silvery hair,
Would stop amid his swift and lounging stride
To tell the legends of the fading race--.
As at the summons of his piercing glance,
Its story peopling his brown eyes and face,
While you called up that pendant of romance
To Petulengro with his boxing glory
Your Amazonian Sinfi's noble story?'

Now that so many of the griengroes (horse-dealers), who form the
aristocracy of the Romany race, have left England for America, it is
natural enough that to some readers of _Aylwin_ and _The
Coming of Love_ my pictures of Romany life seem a little
idealised. The _Times_, in a kindly notice of _The Coming of
Love_, said that the kind of Gypsies there depicted are a very
interesting people, 'unless the author has flattered them unduly.'
Those who best knew the Gypsy women of that period will be the first
to aver that I have not flattered them unduly. But I have fully
discussed this matter, and given a somewhat elaborate account of
Sinfi Lovell and Rhona Boswell, in the introduction to the fifth
edition of _The Coming of Love: Rhona Boswell's Story._

CONTENTS

CHAP.

1. THE CYMRIC CHILD
2. THE MOONLIGHT CROSS OF THE GNOSTICS
3. WINIFRED'S DUKKERIPEN
4. THE LEADER OF THE AYLWINIANS
5. HAROUN-AL-RASCHID THE PAINTER
6. THE SONG OF Y WYDDFA
7. SINFI'S DUKKERIPEN
8. ISIS AS HUMOURIST
9. THE PALACE OF NIN-KI-GAL
10. BEHIND THE VEIL
11. THE IRONY OF HEAVEN
12. THE REVOLVING CAGE OF CIRCUMSTANCE
13. THE MAGIC OF SNOWDON
14. SINFI'S COUP DE THEATRE
15. THE DAUGHTER OF SNOWDON'S STORY
16. D'ARCY'S LETTER
17. THE TWO DUKKERIPENS
18. THE WALK TO LLANBERIS
APPENDICES

AYLWIN

THE RENASCENCE OF WONDER

I

THE CYMRIC CHILD

I

'Those who in childhood have had solitary communings with the sea
know the sea's prophecy. They know that there is a deeper sympathy
between the sea and the soul of man than other people dream of. They
know that the water seems nearer akin than the land to the spiritual
world, inasmuch as it is one and indivisible, and has motion, and
answers to the mysterious call of the winds, and is the writing
tablet of the moon and stars. When a child who, born beside the sea,
and beloved by the sea, feels suddenly, as he gaze