164 Notes and Sketches. 



burden and a curse upon us." He further hints that, 

 " for example and terror, three or four hundred of the 

 most notorious of those villains whom we call jockies 

 might be presented by the Government to the State -of 

 Venice, to serve in the gallies against the common 

 enemy of Christendom." A robust style of treatment 

 truly ; yet in Fletcher's scheme there was after all a germ 

 of the remedial idea ; and as much could hardly be said 

 of the prevailing notions among the local Magistrates of 

 the time, which extended no further than simply to 

 have sturdy beggars, " both old and young, men and 

 women," and such like people warned off their respec- 

 tive territories, " under pain of scourging." 



For a full century after Fletcher's time, vagrancy, if 

 somewhat mitigated in character, was not greatly re- 

 duced in respect of numbers ; and the scene described 

 as taking place in Poosie Nancy's continued to be 

 enacted, with variations, in many a similar howff : 



Ae nicbt at e'en a merry core 



O' randie gangrel bodies 

 In Poosie Nancy's held the splore, 

 To drink their orra duddies. 

 Wi' quaffin', an' laughin', 



They rantit an' they sang ; 

 Wi' jumpin', an' thumpin', 

 The vera girdle rang. 



The " Process against the Egiptians," tried and con- 

 demned to death at Banff, in 1700, affords certain 

 authentic glimpses of the style of life described by 

 Fletcher. Of the four accused persons who all were 

 sent to the gibbet, one has obtained a certain kind of 

 immortality, James M'Pherson, said to have been 

 the son of a highland gentleman by a gipsy mother, 

 who is traditionally credited with his share of the ideal 

 freebooter's chivalrous generosity, as also a measure of 

 skill in handling the violin ; and thus we are told 



He played a spring an' danced it roun' 

 Aneth the gallows tree ; 



