When Borrow had almost finished "The Romany Rye" he went on a visit to
his cousins in Cornwall. The story of his saving a man's life in a
stormy sea had reached them, and they sent him an invitation, which he
accepted at Christmas time in 1853. He stayed for a fortnight with a
cousin's married daughter, Mrs. Anne Taylor, at Penquite Farm, near
Liskeard, and then several days again after a fortnight spent on a walk
to Land's End and back. In his last week he walked to Tintagel and
Pentire. He was welcomed with hospitality and admiration. He in turn
seems to have been pleased and at his ease, though he only understood
half of what was said. Those who remember his visit speak of his tears
in the house where his father was born, of his sitting in the centre of a
group telling stories of his travels and singing a Gypsy song, of his
singing foreign songs all day out of doors, of his fit of melancholy
cured by Scotch and Irish airs played on the piano, of his violent
opinions on sherry and "Uncle Tom's Cabin," of his protesting against
some sign of gentility by using a filthy rag as a pocket handkerchief,
and that in a conspicuous manner, of his being vain and not proud, of his
telling the children stories, of one child crying out at sight of him:
"That _is_ a man!" He made his mark by unusual ways and by intellectual
superiority to his rustic cousins. He rode about with one of his
cousin's grandchildren. He walked hither and thither alone, doing as
much as twenty-five miles a day with the help of "Look out, look out,
Svend Vonved," which he sang in the last dark stretches of road. Mr.
Walling was "told that he roamed the Caradons in all weathers without a
hat, in search of sport and specimens, antiquities and dialects," but I
should think the "specimens" were for the table. He talked to the men by
the wayside or dived into the slums of Liskeard for disreputable
characters. He visited remarkable and famous places, and was delighted
with "Druidic" remains and tales of fairies.
Thus Borrow made "fifty quarto pages" of notes, says Knapp, about people,
places, dialect, and folk lore. Some of the notes are mere shorthand;
some are rapid gossipy jottings; and they include; a verse translation of
a Cornish tale.
A book on Cornwall, to have grown out of these notes, was advertised; but
it was never written. Perhaps he found it hard to vivify or integrate
his notes. In any case there could hardly have been any backbone to the
book, and it would have been tourist's work, however good. He was not a
man who wrote about everything; the impulse was lacking and he went on
with the furious Appendix to "The Romany Rye."
In 1854 he paid a much longer visit to Wales. He took his wife and
daughter as far as Llangollen, which he used as a centre during August.
Then he had ten days walking through Corwen, Cerrig-y-Drudion, Capel
Curig, Bangor, Anglesey, Snowdon, Beth Gelert, Festiniog, and Bala. After
three weeks more at Llangollen, he had his boots soled and his umbrella
mended, bought a leather satchel with a lock and key, and put in it a
white linen shirt, a pair of worsted stockings, a razor, and a prayer
book, and with twenty pounds in his pocket and his umbrella grasped in
the middle, set out on a tour of three weeks. He travelled through the
whole length of Wales, by Llangarmon, Sycharth, Bala, Machynlleth,
Devil's Bridge, Plinlimmon, Pont Rhyd Fendigaid, Strata Florida,
Tregaron, Lampeter, Pumpsaint, Llandovery, Llangadog, Gwynfe, Gutter Fawr
(Brynamman), Swansea, Neath, Merthyr, Caerphilly, Newport, and Chepstow.
He had loved the Welsh bards and Wales from his boyhood up, and these
three months kept him occupied and happy. When at Llangollen he walked
during the day, and in the evening showed his wife and stepdaughter a
view, if he had found one. His wife reported to his mother that she had
reason to praise God for his condition.
Borrow was happy at seeing the places mentioned by the bards and the
houses where some of them were born. "Oh, the wild hills of Wales," he
exclaimed, "the land of old renown and of wonder, the land of Arthur and
Merlin!" These were the very tones of his Spanish enthusiasm nearly
twenty years ago. He travelled probably without maps, and with no
general knowledge of the country or of what had been written of it, so
that he did not know how to spell Manorbier or recognise it as the
birthplace of Gerald of Wales. He remembered his youth, when he
translated the bards, with complacent melancholy. He sunned himself in
the admiration of his inferiors, talking at great length on subjects with
which he was acquainted and repeating his own execrable verse
translations. "Nice man"--"civil man"--"clever man . . . has been
everywhere," the people said. In the South, too, he had the supreme good
fortune to meet Captain Bosvile for the first time for thirty years, and
not being recognised, said, "I am the chap what certain folks calls the
Romany Rye." Bejiggered if the Captain had not been thinking it was he,
and goes on to ask after that "fine young woman and a vartuous" that he
used to keep company with, and Borrow in his turn asked after
Jasper--"Lord!" was the answer, "you can't think what grand folks he and
his wife have become of late years, and all along of a trumpery lil which
somebody has written about them." He also met an Italian whose friends
he had last seen at Norwich, one whom he had found at Corunna. It is no
wonder that it seemed to him he had always had "the health of an
elephant," and could walk thirty-four miles a day, and the last mile in
ten minutes. He took his chance for a night's lodging, content to have
someone else's bed, but going to the best inn where he had a choice, as
at Haverfordwest.
He was very much moved by the adventure. "I have a wonderful deal to say
if I once begin; I have been everywhere," he said to the old man at
Gutter Fawr. He gave the shepherd advice about his sheep. "I am in the
habit," he said to the landlord at Pont Erwyd, "of talking about
everything, being versed in all matters, do you see, or affecting to be
so, which comes much to the same thing." Even in the company of his
stepdaughter--as they were not in Hyde Park--he sang in Welsh at the top
of his voice. The miller's hospitality in Mona brought tears to his
eyes; so did his own verse translation of the "Ode to Sycharth," because
it made him think "how much more happy, innocent and holy I was in the
days of my boyhood when I translated Iolo's ode than I am at the present
time." He kissed the silver cup at Llanddewi Brefi and the tombstone of
Huw Morus at Llan Silin. When the chair of Huw Morus was wiped and he
was about to sit down in it, he uncovered and said in his best Welsh:
"'Shade of Huw Morus, supposing your shade haunts the place which you
loved so well when alive--a Saxon, one of the seed of the Coiling
Serpent, has come to this place to pay that respect to true genius, the
Dawn Duw, which he is ever ready to pay. He read the songs of the
Nightingale of Ceiriog in the most distant part of Lloegr, when he was a
brown-haired boy, and now that he is a grey-haired man he is come to say
in this place that they frequently made his eyes overflow with tears of
rapture.'
"I then sat down in the chair, and commenced repeating verses of Huw
Morus. All which I did in the presence of the stout old lady, the short,
buxom, and bare-armed damsel, and of John Jones, the Calvinistic weaver
of Llangollen, all of whom listened patiently and approvingly though the
rain was pouring down upon them, and the branches of the trees and the
tops of the tall nettles, agitated by the gusts from the mountain
hollows, were beating in their faces, for enthusiasm is never scoffed at
by the noble, simple-minded, genuine Welsh, whatever treatment it may
receive from the coarse-hearted, sensual, selfish Saxon."
Unless we count the inn at Cemmaes, where he took vengeance on the
suspicious people by using his note-book in an obvious manner, "now
skewing at an object, now leering at an individual," he was only once
thoroughly put out, and that was at Beth Gelert by a Scotchman: which
suggests a great deal of amiability, on one side, considering that
Borrow's Welsh was book-Welsh, execrably pronounced.
He filled four books with notes, says Knapp, who has printed from them
some parts which Borrow did not use, including the Orange words of
"Croppies lie down," and Borrow's translation of "the best ghost story in
the world," by Lope de Vega. The book founded on these Welsh notes was
advertised in 1857, but not published until 1862.
In the September after his Welsh holiday, 1855, Borrow took his wife and
daughter to the Isle of Man, deposited them at Douglas, and travelled
over the island for seven weeks, with intervals at Douglas. He took
notes that make ninety-six quarto pages in Knapp's copy. He was to have
founded a book on them, entitled, "Wanderings in Quest of Manx
Literature." Knapp quotes an introduction which was written. This and
the notes show him collecting in manuscript or _viva voce_ the _carvals_
or carols then in circulation among the Manx; and he had the good fortune
to receive two volumes of them as gifts. Some he translated during his
visit. He went about questioning people concerning the carvals and a
Manx poet, named George Killey. He read a Manx prayer-book to the poet's
daughter at Kirk Onchan, and asked her a score of questions. He
convinced one woman that he was "of the old Manx." Finding a Manxman who
spoke French and thought it the better language, he made the statement
that "Manx or something like it was spoken in France more than a thousand
years before French." He copied Runic inscriptions, and took down
several fairy tales and a Manx version of the story of "Finn McCoyle" and
the Scotch giant. He went to visit a descendant of the ballad hero,
Mollie Charane. When he wished to know the size of some old skeletons he
inquired if the bones were as large as those of modern ones. As he met
people to compliment him on his Manx, so he did on his walking. Knapp
speaks of a "terrible journey" over the mountain from Ramsay to Braddan
and Douglas in October, but does not make any quotation relating to it.
In his opinion the notes "seldom present any matter of general interest
save to the islanders of Man and the student of Runic inscriptions."
Enough, however, is quoted to show that Borrow was delighted with the
country and the people, finding plenty to satisfy his curiosity in
languages and customs. But he was irritable, and committed to paper some
sarcastic remarks about Sir John Bowring and Lord Raglan, "the secret
friend" of Russia; while the advancement of an enemy and the death of a
cousin caused him to reflect: "William Borrow, the wonderful inventor,
dead, and Leicester Curzon . . . a colonel. Pretty justice!" In 1862,
in the pages of "Once a Week," he published two of his Manx translations,
the ballads--"Brown William" and "Mollie Charane." In August and
September, 1857, Borrow was walking again in Wales, covering four hundred
miles, as he told John Murray, and once, at least, between Builth and
Mortimer's Cross, making twenty-eight miles in a day. His route was
through Laugharne, Saundersfoot, Tenby, Pembroke, Milford and Milford
Haven, Stainton, Johnston, Haverfordwest, St. Davids, Fishguard, Newport,
Cardigan, Llechryd, Cilgerran, Cenarth, Newcastle Emlyn, Lampeter,
Llanddewi Brefi, Builth, Presteign, Mortimer's Cross, and so to
Shrewsbury, and to Uppington, where Goronwy Owen was curate in the middle
of the eighteenth century. Knapp transcribed part of Borrow's journal
for Messrs. T. C. Cantrill and J. Pringle, remarking that the rubbed
pencil writing took him eight days to decipher. With the annotations of
Messrs. Cantrill and Pringle it was printed in "Y Cymmrodor," {270a} the
journal of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion. I will quote one
day's entries, with the annotations, which are the fruit of the most
patient devotion:
"Haverfordwest--little river--bridge; {270b} steep ascent {270c}--sounds
of music--young fellows playing--steep descent--strange town--Castle Inn.
H.W. in Welsh Hool-fordd.
"[August] 27th, Thursday.--Burning day as usual. Breakfasted on tea,
eggs, and soup. Went up to the Castle. St. Mary's
Church--river--bridge--toll--The two bridge keepers--River Dun Cledi
{270d}--runs into Milford Haven--exceedingly deep in some parts--would
swallow up the largest ship ever built {270e}--people in general dislike
and despise the Welsh.
"Started for St. David's. Course S.W. {270f}After walking about 2 m.
crossed Pelkham Bridge {271a}--it separates St. Martin's from Camrwyn
{271b} parish, as a woman told me who was carrying a pipkin in which were
some potatoes in water but not boiled. In her other hand she had a dried
herring. She said she had lived in the parish all her life and could
speak no Welsh, but that there were some people within it who could speak
it. Rested against a shady bank, {271c} very thirsty and my hurt foot
very sore. She told me that the mountains to the N. were called by
various names. One the [Clo---?] mountain. {271d}
"The old inn {271e}--the blind woman. {271f} Arrival of the odd-looking
man and the two women I had passed on the road. The collier [on] {271g}
the ass gives me the real history of Bosvile. Written in Roche Castle, a
kind of oblong tower built on the rock--there is a rock within it, a huge
crag standing towards the East in what was perhaps once a door. It
turned out to be a chapel. {271h}
"The castle is call'd in Welsh Castel y Garn, a translation of Roche. The
girl and water--B---? (Nanny) Dallas. {272a} Dialogue with the Baptist
{272b} who was mending the roads.
"Splendid view of sea--isolated rocks to the South. Sir las {272c}
headlands stretching S. Descent to the shore. New Gall Bridge. {272d}
The collier's wife. Jemmy Remaunt {272e} was the name of man on the ass.
Her own husband goes to work by the shore. The ascent round the hill.
Distant view of Roche Castle. The Welshers, the little village
{272f}--all looking down on the valley appropriately called Y Cwm.
Dialogue with tall man Merddyn? {272g}--The Dim o Clywed."
Not much of this second tour can be shown to have been used in "Wild
Wales," where he alludes to it in the ninety-third chapter, saying that
he "long subsequently" found some of the wildest solitudes and most
romantic scenery among the mountains about Tregaron; but the collier may
have given him the suggestion for the encounter with Bosvile in the
ninety-eighth chapter. The spelling points to Borrow's ignorance of the
relation of pronunciation and orthography.
In 1858 Borrow's mother died at Oulton and was buried in Oulton
churchyard. During October and November in that year, partly to take his
mind from his bereavement, he was walking in the Scottish Highlands and
Islands. His note-book contains "nothing of general interest," says
Knapp, except an imperfect outline of the journey, showing that he was at
Oban, Tobermory, the Mull of Cantire, Glasgow, Perth, Aberdeen,
Inverness, Dingwall, Tain, Dornoch, Helmsdale, Wick, John o'Groats,
Thurso, Stromness, Kirkwall, and Lerwick.
In 1860, after taking a house at 20, Hereford Square, West Brompton, he
and his wife and stepdaughter went to Dublin, and himself walked to
Connemara and the Giant's Causeway. His wife thought this journey "full
of adventure and interest," but he left no record of it. They were again
in Ireland in 1866, Miss Clarke having lately married a Dr. MacOubrey, of
Belfast. Borrow himself crossed over to Stranraer and had a month's
walking in Scotland, to Glen Luce, Castle Douglas, Dumfries, Ecclefechan,
Carlisle, Gilnochie, Hawick, Jedburgh, Yetholm, Kelso, Melrose,
Coldstream, Berwick, and Edinburgh. He talked to the people, admired the
scenery, bathed, and enjoyed his meals. He left the briefest of
journals, but afterwards, in "Romano Lavo-Lil," published an account of
the "Gypsy toon" of Kirk Yetholm and how he was introduced to the Gypsy
Queen. He dropped his umbrella and flung his arms three times up into
the air and asked her in Romany what her name was, and if she was a
mumper or a true Gypsy. She asked him what was the meaning of this
"gibberish," but he describes how gradually he made her declare herself,
and how she examined him in Gypsy and at last offered him a chair, and
entered into "deep discourse" about Gypsy matters. He talked as he did
to such people, saying "Whoy, I calls that a juggal," etc. He found
fault with her Romany, which was thin and mixed with Gaelic and cant
words. She told him that he reminded her of her grandfather, Will Faa,
"being a tall, lusty man like himself, and having a skellying look with
the left eye, just like him." He displayed his knowledge of the affairs
of the tribe, both in her country and in England. She told him that she
had never heard so much Romany before. She promised to receive him next
day, but was out when he called. He found her at St. George's Fair, near
Roxburgh Castle, and she pointed him out several other Gypsies, but as
she assured him they knew not a word of Romany and would only be uncivil
to him, he left them to "pay his respects at the tomb of Walter Scott, a
man with whose principles he had no sympathy, but for whose genius he had
always entertained the most intense admiration."
In 1868 he took an autumn walk through Sussex and Hampshire while his
wife was at Bognor. In the next year his wife died, after being
afflicted for some time by troubles connected with her property, by
dropsy, valvular disease of the heart, and "hysteria." Borrow was
melancholy and irritable, but apparently did not go for another walk in
Scotland as was suggested for a cure; nor ever again did he get far
afield on foot.