human
and might sometimes be seen seated at their dinner on the sward, and passing about their wine, for all the world like gentlemen. Sir Walter Scott's father was once forced to accept the hospitality of a party of gipsies carousing on a moor, and found them supplied with
gpt
That rich and savory decoction known to the modern cuisine as _potage à la Meg Merrilies de Derncleugh_, is a soup of gipsy invention, composed of many kinds of game and poultry boiled together. Their style of cookery seems rather barbarous, but we must admit that it is admirably adapted to the wants of a rude and barbarous people, among whom ovens, spits, pots, and stew-pans are unknown and often unattainable luxuries. To cook a fowl, they wind a strong rope of straw tightly around the body of the bird, just as it has been killed, with its feathers on and its entrails untouched. It is then covered with hot peat ashes, and a slow fire is kept up around it till it is sufficiently done. When taken out, the half-burnt straw and feathers peel off like a shell, and those who have tasted the food thus prepared, say it is very palatable. One advantage the method certainly has: it affords a safe way of cooking a stolen fowl unperceived. Meat is roasted in a similar manner. The flesh is covered with a wrapping of rags, and then encased in well-wrought clay. Being now covered with hot ashes or turned before a fire, it stews in its own juices, which, being saved from escape by the clay, combine with the rags, Mr. Simson says, to form a thick sauce or gravy. A gipsy has a keen zest for this juicy dish; but we doubt whether most people would devour it with a very good appetite. Their favorite viand of all, however, can certainly not be relished outside of the tribe. This is a kind of mutton called _braxy_, being nothing less than the flesh of a sheep which has died of a certain disease. It has a _sharp_ flavor which tickles their palates amazingly. So fond of it are they, that Mr. Simson attributes the great number of gipsies in Tweed-dale partly to the abundance of sheep in that district, and the consequent plenty of braxy.
human
The flesh of a beast which God kills, say the gipsies,