He will now tell them what it is not--a
sister or an immediate daughter of the Sanscrit, which Romany is.
"Ay, but the Scotch are"--foxes, foxes, nothing else than foxes,
even like the gypsies--the difference between the gypsy and Scotch
fox being that the first is wild, with a mighty brush, the other a
sneak with a gilt collar and without a tail.
A Charlie o'er the water person attempts to be witty, because the
writer has said that perhaps a certain old Edinburgh High-School
porter, of the name of Boee, was perhaps of the same blood as a
certain Bui, a Northern Kemp who distinguished himself at the
battle of Horinger Bay. A pretty matter, forsooth, to excite the
ridicule of a Scotchman! Why, is there a beggar or trumpery fellow
in Scotland, who does not pretend to be somebody, or related to
somebody? Is not every Scotchman descended from some king, kemp,
or cow-stealer of old, by his own account at least? Why, the
writer would even go so far as to bet a trifle that the poor
creature, who ridicules Boee's supposed ancestry, has one of his
own, at least as grand and as apocryphal as old Boee's of the High
School.
The same Charlie o'er the water person is mightily indignant that
Lavengro should have spoken disrespectfully of William Wallace;
Lavengro, when he speaks of that personage, being a child of about
ten years old, and repeating merely what he had heard.
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