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What may be called the grand Metropolitan Gypsyry is on the Surrey side of the Thames. Near the borders of Wandsworth and Battersea, about a quarter of a mile from the river, is an open piece of ground which may measure about two acres. To the south is a hill, at the foot of which is a railway, and it is skirted on the north by the Wandsworth and Battersea Road. This place is what the Gypsies call a kekkeno mushes puv, a no man's ground; a place which has either no proprietor, or which the proprietor, for some reason, makes no use of for the present. The houses in the neighbourhood are mean and squalid, and are principally inhabited by artisans of the lowest description. This spot, during a considerable portion of the year, is the principal place of residence of the Metropolitan Gypsies, and of other people whose manner of life more or less resembles theirs. During the summer and autumn the little plain, for such it is, is quite deserted, except that now and then a wretched tent or two may be seen upon it, belonging to some tinker family, who have put up there for a few hours on their way through the metropolis; for the Gypsies are absent during summer, some at fairs and races, the men with their cocoa-nuts and the women busy at fortune-telling, or at suburban places of pleasure - the former with their donkeys for the young cockneys to ride upon, and the latter as usual dukkering and hokkering, and the other travellers, as they are called, roaming about the country following their particular avocations, whilst in the autumn the greater part of them all are away in Kent, getting money by picking hops. As soon, however, as the rains, the precursors of winter, descend, the place begins to be occupied, and about a week or two before Christmas it is almost crammed with the tents and caravans of the wanderers; and then it is a place well worthy to be explored, notwithstanding the inconvenience of being up to one's ankles in mud, and the rather appalling risk of being bitten by the Gypsy and travelling dogs tied to the tents and caravans, in whose teeth there is always venom and sometimes that which can bring on the water-horror, for which no European knows a remedy. The following is an attempt to describe the odd people and things to be met with here; the true Gypsies, and what to them pertaineth, being of course noticed first.

On this plain there may be some fifteen or twenty Gypsy tents and caravans. Some of the tents are large, as indeed it is highly necessary that they should be, being inhabited by large families - a man and his wife, a grandmother a sister or two and half a dozen children, being, occasionally found in one; some of them are very small, belonging to poor old females who have lost their husbands, and whose families have separated themselves from them, and allow them to shift for themselves. During the day the men are generally busy at their several avocations, chinning the cost, that is, cutting the stick for skewers, making pegs for linen-lines, kipsimengring or basket-making, tinkering or braziering; the children are playing about, or begging halfpence by the road of passengers; whilst the women are strolling about, either in London or the neighbourhood, engaged in fortune-telling or swindling. Of the trades of the men, the one by far the most practised is chinning the cost, and as they sit at the door of the tents, cutting and whittling away, they occasionally sweeten their toil by raising their voices and singing the Gypsy stanza in which the art is mentioned, and which for terseness and expressiveness is quite equal to anything in the whole circle of Gentile poetry:

Can you rokra Romany?
Can you play the bosh?
Can you jal adrey the staripen?
Can you chin the cost?

Can you speak the Roman tongue?
Can you play the fiddle?
Can you eat the prison-loaf?
Can you cut and whittle?

These Gypsies are of various tribes, but chiefly Purruns, Chumomescroes and Vardomescroes, or Lees, Boswells and Coopers, and Lees being by far the most numerous. The men are well made, active fellows, somewhat below the middle height. Their complexions are dark, and their eyes are full of intelligence; their habiliments are rather ragged. The women are mostly wild-looking creatures, some poorly clad, others exhibiting not a little strange finery. There are some truly singular beings amongst those women, which is more than can be said with respect to the men, who are much on a level, and amongst whom there is none whom it is possible to bring prominently out, and about whom much can be said. The women, as has been already observed, are generally out during the day, being engaged in their avocations abroad. There is a very small tent about the middle of the place; it belongs to a lone female, whom one frequently meets wandering about Wandsworth or Battersea, seeking an opportunity to dukker some credulous servant-girl. It is hard that she should have to do so, as she is more than seventy-five years of age, but if she did not she would probably starve. She is very short of statue, being little more than five feet and an inch high, but she is wonderfully strongly built. Her head is very large, and seems to have been placed at once upon her shoulders without any interposition of neck. Her face is broad, with a good-humoured expression upon it, and in general with very little vivacity; at times, however, it lights up, and then all the Gypsy beams forth. Old as she is, her hair, which is very long, is as black as the plumage of a crow, and she walks sturdily, though with not much elasticity, on her short, thick legs, and, if requested, would take up the heaviest man in Wandsworth or Battersea and walk away with him. She is, upon the whole, the oddest Gypsy woman ever seen; see her once and you will never forget her. Who is she? you ask. Who is she? Why, Mrs. Cooper, the wife of Jack Cooper, the fighting Gypsy, once the terror of all the Light Weights of the English Ring; who knocked West Country Dick to pieces, and killed Paddy O'Leary, the fighting pot-boy, Jack Randall's pet. Ah, it would have been well for Jack if he had always stuck to his true, lawful Romany wife, whom at one time he was very fond of, and whom he used to dress in silks and satins, and best scarlet cloth, purchased with the money gained in his fair, gallant battles in the Ring! But he did not stick to her, deserting her for a painted Jezebel, to support whom he sold his battles, by doing which he lost his friends and backers; then took from his poor wife all he had given her, and even plundered her of her own property, down to the very blankets which she lay upon; and who finally was so infatuated with love for his paramour that he bore the blame of a crime which she had committed, and in which he had no share, suffering ignominy and transportation in order to save her. Better had he never deserted his tatchie romadie, his own true Charlotte, who, when all deserted him, the painted Jezebel being the first to do so, stood by him, supporting him with money in prison, and feeing counsel on his trial from the scanty proceeds of her dukkering. All that happened many years ago; Jack's term of transportation, a lengthy one, has long, long been expired, but he has not come back, though every year since the expiration of his servitude he has written her a letter, or caused one to be written to her, to say that he is coming, that he is coming; so that she is always expecting him, and is at all times willing, as she says, to re-invest him with all the privileges of a husband, and to beg and dukker to support him if necessary. A true wife she has been to him, a tatchie romadie, and has never taken up with any man since he left her, though many have been the tempting offers that she has had, connubial offers, notwithstanding the oddity of her appearance. Only one wish she has now in this world, the wish that he may return; but her wish, it is to be feared, is a vain one, for Jack lingers and lingers in the Sonnakye Tem, golden Australia, teaching, it is said, the young Australians to box, tempted by certain shining nuggets, the produce of the golden region. It is pleasant, though there is something mournful in it, to visit Mrs. Cooper after nightfall, to sit with her in her little tent after she has taken her cup of tea, and is warming her tired limbs at her little coke fire, and hear her talk of old times and things: how Jack courted her 'neath the trees of Loughton Forest, and how, when tired of courting, they would get up and box, and how he occasionally gave her a black eye, and how she invariably flung him at a close; and how they were lawfully married at church, and what a nice man the clergyman was, and what funny things he said both before and after he had united them; how stoutly West Country Dick contended against Jack, though always losing; how in Jack's battle with Paddy O'Leary the Irishman's head in the last round was truly frightful, not a feature being distinguishable, and one of his ears hanging down by a bit of skin; how Jack vanquished Hardy Scroggins, whom Jack Randall himself never dared fight. Then, again, her anecdotes of Alec Reed, cool, swift-hitting Alec, who was always smiling, and whose father was a Scotchman, his mother an Irishwoman, and who was born in Guernsey; and of Oliver, old Tom Oliver, who seconded Jack in all his winning battles, and after whom he named his son, his only child, Oliver, begotten of her in lawful wedlock, a good and affectionate son enough, but unable to assist her, on account of his numerous family. Farewell, Mrs. Cooper, true old Charlotte! here's a little bit of silver for you, and a little bit of a gillie to sing:

Charlotta is my nav,
I am a puro Purrun;
My romado was Jack,
The couring Vardomescro.
He muk'd me for a lubbeny,
Who chor'd a rawnie's kissi;
He penn'd 'twas he who lell'd it,
And so was bitched pawdel.

Old Charlotte I am called,
Of Lee I am a daughter;
I married Fighting Jack,
The famous Gypsy Cooper.
He left me for a harlot,
Who pick'd a lady's pocket;
He bore the blame to save her,
And so was sent to Bot'ny.

Just within the bounds of the plain, and close by the road, may occasionally be seen a small caravan of rather a neat appearance. It comes and goes suddenly, and is seldom seen there for more than three days at a time. It belongs to a Gypsy female who, like Mrs. Cooper, is a remarkable person, but is widely different from Mrs. Cooper in many respects. Mrs. Cooper certainly does not represent the beau ideal of a Gypsy female, this does - a dark, mysterious, beautiful, terrible creature! She is considerably above the middle height, powerfully but gracefully made, and about thirty-seven years of age. Her face is oval, and of a dark olive. The nose is Grecian, the cheek-bones rather high; the eyes somewhat sunk, but of a lustrous black; the mouth small, and the teeth exactly like ivory. Upon the whole the face is exceedingly beautiful, but the expression is evil - evil to a degree. Who she is no one exactly knows, nor what is her name, nor whether she is single woman, wife, or widow. Some say she is a foreign Gypsy, others from Scotland, but she is neither - her accent is genuine English. What strikes one as most singular is the power she possesses of appearing in various characters - all Romany ones it is true, but so different as seemingly to require three distinct females of the race to represent them: sometimes she is the staid, quiet, respectable Gypsy; sometimes the forward and impudent; at others the awful and sublime. Occasionally you may see her walking the streets dressed in a black silk gown, with a black silk bonnet on her head; over her left arm is flung a small carpet, a sample of the merchandise which is in her caravan, which is close at hand, driven by a brown boy; her address to her customers is highly polite; the tones of her voice are musical, though somewhat deep. At Fairlop, on the first Friday of July, in the evening, she may be found near the Bald-faced Hind, dressed in a red cloak and a large beaver; her appearance is bold and reckless - she is dukkering low tradesmen and servant girls behind the trees at sixpence a head, or is bandying with the voice of a raven slang and obscenity with country boors, or with the blackguard butcher-boys who throng in from Whitechapel and Shoreditch to the Gypsy Fair. At Goodwood, a few weeks after, you may see her in a beautiful half-riding dress, her hair fantastically plaited and adorned with pearls, standing beside the carriage of a Countess, telling the fortune of her ladyship with the voice and look of a pythoness. She is a thing of incongruities; an incomprehensible being! nobody can make her out; the writer himself has tried to make her out but could not, though he has spoken to her in his deepest Romany. It is true there is a certain old Gypsy, a friend of his, who thinks he has made her out. "Brother," said he one day, "why you should be always going after that woman I can't conceive, unless indeed you have lost your wits. If you go after her for her Romany you will find yourself in the wrong box: she may have a crumb or two of Romany, but for every crumb that she has I am quite sure you have a quartern loaf. Then as for her beauty, of which it is true she has plenty, and for which half a dozen Gorgios that I knows of are running mad, it's of no use going after her for that, for her beauty she keeps for her own use and that of her master the Devil; not but that she will sell it - she's sold it a dozen times to my certain knowledge - but what's the use of buying a thing, when the fool who buys it never gets it, never has the 'joyment of it, brother? She is kek tatcho, and that's what I like least in her; there's no trusting her, neither Gorgio nor Romano can trust her: she sells her truppos to a Rye-gorgio for five bars, and when she has got them, and the Gorgio, as he has a right to do, begins to kelna lasa, she laughs and asks him if he knows whom he has to deal with; then if he lels bonnek of lati, as he is quite justified in doing, she whips out a churi, and swears if he doesn't leave off she will stick it in his gorlo. Oh! she's an evil mare, a wafodu grasni, though a handsome one, and I never looks at her, brother, without saying to myself the old words:

"Rinkeno mui and wafodu zee
Kitzi's the cheeros we dicks cattanē."
A beautiful face and a black wicked mind
Often, full often together we find.

Some more particular account than what has been already given of the habitations of these Wandsworth Gypsies, and likewise of their way of life, will perhaps not be unacceptable here.

To begin with the tents. They are oblong in shape and of very simple construction, whether small or great. Sticks or rods, called in the Gypsy language ranior, between four and five feet in length, and croming or bending towards the top, are stuck in the ground at about twenty inches from each other, a rod or two being omitted in that part where the entrance is intended to be. The cromes or bends serve as supporters of a roof, and those of the side rods which stand over against one another are generally tied together by strings. These rods are covered over with coarse brown cloths, pinned or skewered together; those at the bottom being fastened to the ground by pegs. Around the tent is generally a slight embankment, about two or three inches high, or a little trench about the same depth, to prevent water from running into the tent in time of rain. Such is the tent, which would be exactly like the Indian wigwam but for the cloth which forms the covering: the Indians in lieu of cloth using bark, which they carry about with them in all their migrations, though they leave the sticks standing in the ground.

The furniture is scanty. Like the Arabs, the Gypsies have neither chairs nor tables, but sit cross-legged, a posture which is perfectly easy to them, though insufferable to a Gorgio, unless he happens to be a tailor. When they eat, the ground serves them for a board, though they occasionally spread a cloth upon it. Singularly enough, though they have neither chairs nor tables, they have words for both. Of pots, pans, plates, and trenchers, they have a tolerable quantity. Each grown-up person has a churi, or knife, with which to cut food. Eating-forks they have none, and for an eating-fork they have no word, the term pasengri signifying a straw- or pitch-fork. Spoons are used by them generally of horn, and are called royis. They have but two culinary articles, the kekkauvi and pirry, kettle and boiler, which are generally of copper, to which, however, may perhaps be added the kekkauviskey saster, or kettle-iron, by which the kettle and boiler are hung over the fire. As a fireplace they have a large iron pan on three legs, with holes or eyes in the sides, in order that the heat of the fire may be cast around. Instead of coals they use coke, which emits no flame and little smoke, and casts a considerable heat. Every tent has a pail or two, and perhaps a small cask or barrel, the proper name for which is bedra, though it is generally called pāni-mengri, or thing for water. At the farther end of the tent is a mattress, with a green cloth, or perhaps a sheet spread upon it, forming a kind of couch, on which visitors are generally asked to sit down:- Av adrey, Romany Rye, av adrey ta besh aley pawdle odoy! Come in, Gypsy gentleman (said a polite Gypsy one day to the writer); come in and sit down over yonder! They have a box or two in which they stow away their breakable articles and whatever things they set any particular value upon. Some of them have small feather-beds, and they are generally tolerably well provided with blankets.

The caravans are not numerous, and have only been used of late years by any of the English Gypsy race. The caravan called by the Gypsies keir vardo, or waggon-house, is on four wheels, and is drawn by a horse or perhaps a couple of donkeys. It is about twelve feet long by six broad and six high. At the farther end are a couple of transverse berths, one above the other, like those in the cabin of a ship; and a little way from these is a curtain hanging by rings from an iron rod running across, which, when drawn, forms a partition. On either side is a small glazed window. The most remarkable object is a stove just inside the door, on the left hand, with a metal chimney which goes through the roof. This stove, the Gypsy term for which is bo, casts, when lighted, a great heat, and in some cases is made in a very handsome fashion. Some caravans have mirrors against the sides, and exhibit other indications of an aiming at luxury, though in general they are dirty, squalid places, quite as much as or perhaps more than the tents, which seem to be the proper and congenial homes of the Gypsies.

The mode of life of these people may be briefly described. They have two regular meals - breakfast and supper. The breakfast consists of tea, generally of the best quality, bread, butter, and cheese; the supper, of tea and a stew. In spring time they occasionally make a kind of tea or soup of the tender leaves of a certain description of nettle. This preparation, which they call dandrimengreskie zimmen, or the broth of the stinging-thing, is highly relished by them. They get up early, and go to bed betimes. After breakfast the men sit down to chin the cost, to mend chairs or make baskets; the women go forth to hok and dukker, and the children to beg, or to go with the donkeys to lanes and commons to watch them, whilst they try to fill their poor bellies with grass and thistles. These children sometimes bring home hotchiwitches, or hedgehogs, the flesh of which is very sweet and tender, and which their mothers are adepts at cooking.

The Gypsies, as has been already observed, are not the sole occupiers of Wandsworth grounds. Strange, wild guests are to be found there, who, without being Gypsies, have much of Gypsyism in their habits, and who far exceed the Gypsies in number. To pass them by without notice would be unpardonable. They may be divided into three classes: Chorodies, Kora-mengre, and Hindity-mengre. Something about each:-

The Chorodies are the legitimate descendants of the rogues and outcasts who roamed about England long before its soil was trodden by a Gypsy foot. They are a truly detestable set of beings; both men and women being ferocious in their appearance, and in their conversation horrible and disgusting. They have coarse, vulgar features, and hair which puts one wonderfully in mind of refuse flax, or the material of which mops are composed. Their complexions, when not obscured with grime, are rather fair than dark, evidencing that their origin is low, swinish Saxon, and not gentle Romany. Their language is the frowsiest English, interlarded with cant expressions and a few words of bastard Romany. They live in the vilest tents, with the exception of two or three families, who have their abode in broken and filthy caravans. They have none of the comforts and elegancies of the Gypsies. They are utterly destitute of civility and good manners, and are generally squalid in their dress, though the women sometimes exhibit not a little dirty tawdriness. The trades of the men are tinkering and basket-making, and some few "peel the stick." The women go about with the articles made by their husbands, or rather partners, and sometimes do a little in the fortune-telling line - pretty prophetesses! The fellows will occasionally knock a man down in the dark, and rob him; the women will steal anything they can conveniently lay their hands on. Singular as it may seem to those not deeply acquainted with human nature, these wretches are not without a kind of pride. "We are no Gypsies - not we! no, nor Irish either. We are English, and decent folks - none of your rubbish!" The Gypsies hold them, and with reason, in supreme contempt, and it is from them that they got their name of Chorodies, not a little applicable to them. Choredo, in Gypsy, signifies a poor, miserable person, and differs very little in sound from two words, one Sanscrit and the other Hebrew, both signifying, like the Gypsy term, something low, mean, and contemptible.

Kora-mengre are the lowest of those hawkers who go about the country villages and the streets of London, with caravans hung about with various common articles, such as mats, brooms, mops, tin pans and kettles. These low hawkers seem to be of much the same origin as the Chorodies, and are almost equally brutal and repulsive in their manners. The name Kora-mengre is Gypsy, and signifies fellows who cry out and shout, from their practice of shouting out the names of their goods. The word kora, or karra, is by no means bad Hebrew: kora, in the Holy Language, signifies he cried out, called, or proclaimed: and a partridge is called in Hebrew kora, from its continually crying out to its young, when leading them about to feed. Koran, the name of the sacred book of the Mahomedans, is of the same root.

Lastly come the Hindity-mengre, or Filthy People. This term has been bestowed upon the vagrant Irish by the Gypsies, from the dirty ways attributed to them, though it is a question whether the lowest Irish are a bit more dirty in their ways than the English Chorodies, or indeed so much, and are certainly immeasurably superior to them in many respects. There are not many of them here, seldom more than two families, and sometimes, even during the winter, not a single Irish tent or cart is to be seen. The trade they ostensibly drive is tinkering, repairing old kettles, and making little pots and pans of tin. The one, however, on which they principally depend, is not tinkering, but one far more lucrative, and requiring more cleverness and dexterity; they make false rings, like the Gypsy smiths, the fashiono vangustengre of old, and whilst speaking Celtic to one whom they deem their countryman, have no hesitation in acknowledging themselves to be "Cairdean droich oir," workers of false gold. The rings are principally made out of old brass buttons; those worn by old Chelsea pensioners being considered the very best for the purpose. Many an ancient Corporal Trim, alter having spent all his money at the public-house, and only become three-parts boozy, has been induced by the Hindity-mengro to sell all his buttons at the rate of three-halfpence a-piece, in order to have wherewithal to make himself thoroughly royal. Each of these Hindity-mengre has his blow-pipe, and some of them can execute their work in a style little inferior to that of a first-rate working goldsmith. The rings, after being made, are rubbed with a certain stuff out of a phial, which gives them all the appearance of gold. This appearance, however, does not long endure, for after having been worn two or three months, the ring loses its false appearance entirely, and any one can see that it is worthless metal. A good many of these rings are disposed of at good prices by the Hindity women, the wives of these false-gold workers, to servant girls and the wives of small shopkeepers, and not a few, at a lower rate, to certain gentry who get their livelihood by the honourable profession of ring-dropping.

What is ring-dropping?

Ring-dropping is this. A gentleman overtakes you as you are walking in some quiet street, passes by you, and at the distance of some fifteen yards stops, and stooping down, seemingly picks up something, which he inspects, and then uttering a "Dear me!" he turns to you, and says, "Sir, we have been fortunate to-day. See! I have picked up this valuable!" He then shows you a small case, in which is a large ring, seemingly of the finest gold, with a little label attached to it, on which is marked £2 15s. "Now, sir," he continues, "I said we were fortunate, because as we were close to each other, I consider you as much entitled to gain by this windfall as myself. I'll tell you how it shall be: the price of the ring, which was probably dropped by some goldsmith's man, is, as you see, two pound fifteen; however, as I am in a hurry, you shall only give me a quid, a pound, and then the valuable shall be all your own; it shall indeed, sir!" And then he stares you in the face. Such is ring-dropping, to which many silly but greedy individuals, fall victims; giving a pound for a fine-looking ring, which, however, with its scarlet case - for the case is always of a scarlet colour - is not worth sixpence. The best thing you can do in such a case is to put your thumb to your nose, flattening your hand and sticking out your fingers far apart, moving on at the same time, or to utter the cabalistic word "hookey"; in either case the ring-dropper will at once drop astern, with a half-stifled curse, for he knows that he has to do with "no flat," and that you are "awake to his little game." Doing so is much better than moving rapidly on, and affecting to take no notice of him, for then he will infallibly follow you to the end of the street, offering you the ring on more reasonable terms at every step, perhaps concluding at last, as a ring-dropper once did to the writer, "I'll tell you what, sir; as I am in a hurry, and rather hard up, you shall have the valuable for a bull, for a crown; you shall indeed, sir, so help me - "

Three of the most famous of the Hindity smiths have been immortalised by the Gypsies in the following bit of verse:

Mickie, Huwie and Larry,
Trin Hindity-mengre fashiono vangust-engre.

Mickie, Huwie and Larry bold,
Three Irish brothers, as I am told,
Who make false rings, that pass for gold.

Of these fashiono-vangust brothers, the most remarkable is Mike - Old Mike, as he is generally called. He was born in the county Kerry, and educated at a hedge-school, where he learned to read and write English, after a fashion, and acquired the seventeen letters of the Irish alphabet, each of which is named after a particular tree. Leaving school he was apprenticed to a blacksmith, from whom he ran away, and enlisted into the service of that illustrious monarch, George the Third, some of whose battles he had the honour of fighting in the Peninsula and France. Discharged from the army at the Peace, with the noble donation of thirty shillings, or one month's pay, he returned to Ireland, took to himself a wife, and commenced tinker. Becoming dissatisfied with his native soil he passed over to England, and settling for some time at "Brummagem," took lessons from certain cunning smiths in the art of making fashiono vangusties. The next forty years of his life he spent in wandering about Britain, attended by his faithful partner, who not only disposed of his tin articles and false rings, but also bore him seventeen children, all of whom are alive, somewhere or other, and thriving too, one of them indeed having attained to the dignity of American senator. Some of his adventures, during his wanderings, were in the highest degree extraordinary. Of late years he has chiefly resided in the vicinity of London, spending his winters at Wandsworth, and his summers on the Flats, near Epping Forest; in one or the other of which places you may see Old Mike on a Sunday evening, provided the weather is tolerably fine, seated near his little caravan, with his wife by his side - not the wife who bore him the seventeen children, who has been dead for some years, but his second wife, a nice, elderly Irish ban from the county of Cork, who can tell fortunes, say her prayers in Irish, and is nearly as good a hand at selling her lord and master's tin articles and false rings as her predecessor. Lucky for Mike that he got such a second partner! and luckier still that at his age of seventy-nine he retains all his faculties, and is able to work for his daily bread, with at least the skill and cunning of his two brothers, both of whom are much younger men than himself, whose adventures have been somewhat similar to his own, and who, singularly enough, have come to live near him in his latter days. Both these brothers are highly remarkable men. Huwie is the most civil-spoken person in or about London, and Larry a man of the most terrible tongue, and perhaps the most desperate fighter ever seen; always willing to attack half a dozen men, if necessary, and afraid of no one in the world, save one - Mike, old Mike, who can tame him in his fiercest moods by merely holding up his finger. Oh, a truly remarkable man is old Mike! and a pleasure and an advantage it is to any one of a philosophical mind to be acquainted with him, and to listen to him. He is much more than a fashiono-vangust-engro. Amongst other things he is a theologian - Irish theologian - and quite competent to fill the chair of theology at the University of Maynooth. He can tell you a great many things connected with a certain person, which, with all your research, you would never find in Scripture. He can tell you how the Saviour, when hanging on the cross, became athirst, and told St. Peter, who stood at the foot of it, to fetch Him a cup of water from a dirty puddle in the neighbourhood, and how St. Peter - however, better not relate the legend, though a highly curious one. Then he can repeat to you blessed verses, as he calls them, by dozens; not of David, but of one quite as good, as he will tell you, namely, Timothy O'Sullivan; and who, you will say, was Timothy O'Sullivan? Why, Ty Gaelach, to be sure. And who was Ty Gaelach? An Irish peasant-poet of the last century, who wrote spiritual songs, some of them by no means bad ones, and who was called Gaelach, or Gael, from his abhorrence of the English race and of the English language, of which he scarcely understood a word. Then is Ty Irish for Timothy? Why, no! though very stupidly supposed to be so. Ty is Teague, which is neither Greek nor Irish, but a glorious old Northern name, carried into Ireland by the brave old heathen Danes. Ty or Teague is the same as Tycho. Ty or Teague Gaelach is as much as to say Tycho Gaelach; and Tycho Brahe is as much as to say Teague Brahe.