These tribes were, in short, the pariahs of Scotland, living like wild Indians among European settlers, and, like them, judged of rather by their own customs, habits, and opinions, than as if they had been members of the civilised part of the community.

Some hordes of them yet remain, chiefly in such situations as afford a ready escape either into a waste country or into another Jurisdiction.

Nor are the features of their character much softened.

Their numbers, however, are so greatly diminished that, instead of one hundred thousand, as calculated by Fletcher, it would now perhaps be impossible to collect above five hundred throughout all Scotland.
A tribe of these itinerants, to whom Meg Merrilies appertained, had long been as stationary as their habits permitted in a glen upon the estate of Ellangowan.

They had there erected a few huts, which they denominated their 'city of refuge,' and where, when not absent on excursions, they harboured unmolested, as the crows that roosted in the old ash-trees around them.