alling them either 'the King,' 'Queen,'
'Prince,' or 'Princess.' It is true also that there are vast numbers of
the Gipsies who, with a chuckle, tongue in cheek, wink of the eye, side
grin and a sneer, say they have these important personages amongst them;
and if any little extra stir is being made at a fair-time in the country
lanes, in the neighbourhood of straw-yards, they will be sure to tell
them that either the 'king,' 'queen,' or some member of the 'royal
family' is being married or visiting them; and nothing pleases the poor,
ignorant Gipsies better than to get the bystanders, with mouths open, to
believe their tales and lies. I should think that there is scarcely a
county in England but what a Gipsy king's or queen's wedding has not
taken place there within the last twenty years. There was one in
Bedfordshire not long since; another at Epping Forest; and the last I
heard of this wonderful airy being was that he had taken up his
head-quarters at the Royal Hotel, Liverpool, and a carriage with eight
wheels and six piebald horses had been presented to him as a wedding
present from the Gipsies. Gipsy 'kings,' 'queens,' and 'princes,' their
marriages and deaths, are innumerable among the 'royal family.' It is
equally believing in moonshine and air-bubbles to believe that the
Gipsies never speak of their dead. There is a beautiful headstone put in
a little churchyard about two and a half miles from Barnet in memory of
the Brinkly family, and it is carefully looked after by members of the
family; one of the Lees has a tombstone erected to his memory in Hanwell
Cemetery; and such silly nonsense is put out by the cunning, crafty
Gipsies as 'dazzlers,' to enable them more readily to practise the art of
lying and deception upon their gullible listeners. Then again, with
reference to the Gipsies having a religion of their own. There is not a
word of truth in this imaginative notion prevalent in the minds or some
who have been trying to study their habits. Excepting the language of
some of the old-fashioned real Gipsies, and a few other little
peculiarities, any one studying the real hard facts of a Gipsy's life
with reference to the amount of ignorance, and everything that is bad
among them, will come to the conclusion that there is much among them to
compare very unfavourably with the most neglected in our back streets and
slums. Of course, there are some good among them, as with other
'ragamuffin' ramblers. The