Today, they echo to the tramp of modern invading hordes, three million tourists a year, armed with cameras and guidebooks rather than pikes and broad swords.

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Museum curators have started adding select pieces of tramp art to their folk art collections, such as a pin cushion, comb box and crucifix acquired in 1986 by the Smithsonian's National Museum of American Art in Washington, D.

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The honest bookkeeper, the faithful wife, the earnest scholar get little of our attention compared to the embezzler, the tramp, the cheat.

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Wertkin, director of the Museum of American Folk Art in New York City, who is planning a 1999 sequel to his museum's 1975 tramp art exhibit.

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"Tramp art has a quirky and eccentric quality to it, a strangeness of form, " says Gerard C.

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The pair have now worked on five books together, including Walliams' latest book Mr Stink, about a girl who befriends a local tramp and hides him in her garden shed to stop him being driven out of town.

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Hikers travel from the shores of Lake Te Anau to the shores of Lake Manapouri via a full-day tramp along an exposed ridge, looking down on the park's namesake fiords.

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Mr Stink - about a smelly tramp - goes up against five other books in the seven to 14 category.

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It is hard for those who regularly lust after alpine scenery to contemplate, but the last two days - flat trekking through forest - are probably the tramp's highlight.

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Labour tweeters urged party members to be respectful - but the Respect MP George Galloway was in no mood for restraint, tweeting "Tramp the dirt down".

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