In 1862, between Borrow's two visits to Ireland, his "Wild Wales" was
published. It had been heralded by an advertisement in 1857, by the
publication of the "Sleeping Bard" in 1860, and by an article on "The
Welsh and their Literature" in the "Quarterly" for January, 1861. This
article quotes "an unpublished work called 'Wild Wales'" and "Mr.
Borrow's unpublished work, 'Celtic Bards, Chiefs and Kings.'" It opened
with a vivid story of the coming of Hu Gadarn and his Cymry to Britain:
"Hu and his people took possession of the best parts of the island,
either driving the few Gaels to other districts or admitting them to
their confederacy. As the country was in a very wild state, much
overgrown with forests in which bears and wolves wandered, and abounding
with deep stagnant pools, which were the haunts of the avanc or
crocodile, Hu forthwith set about clearing it of some of its horrors, and
making it more fit to be the abiding place of civilised beings. He made
his people cut down woods and forests, and destroy, as far as was
possible, wild beasts and crocodiles. He himself went to a gloomy pool,
the haunt of the king of the efync, baited a huge hook attached to a
cable, flung it into the pool, and when the monster had gorged the snare
drew him out by means of certain gigantic oxen, which he had tamed to the
plough, and burnt his horrid, wet, scaly carcass on a fire. He then
caused enclosures to be made, fields to be ploughed and sown, pleasant
wooden houses to be built, bees to be sheltered and encouraged, and
schools to be erected where song and music were taught. O a truly great
man was Hu Gadarn! though a warrior, he preferred the sickle and pruning
hook to the sword, and the sound of the song and lute to the hoarse blast
of the buffalo's horn:
"The mighty Hu with mead would pay
The bard for his melodious lay;
The Emperor of land and sea
And of all living things was he."
This probably represents Borrow's view of early history, simple, heroical
and clear, as it would have been had he been in command of it. The
article professed to be a review of Borrow's "Sleeping Bard," and was in
fact by Borrow himself. He had achieved the supreme honour of reviewing
his own work, and, as it fell out, he persuaded the public to buy every
copy. Very few were found to buy "Wild Wales," notwithstanding. The
first edition of a thousand copies lasted three years; the second, of
three thousand, lasted twenty-three years. Borrow was ridiculed for
informing his readers that he paid his bill at a Welsh inn, without
mentioning the amount. He was praised for having written "the first
clever book . . . in which an honest attempt is made to do justice to the
Welsh literature," for knowing far more than most educated Welshmen about
that literature, and for describing his travels and encounters "with much
of the freshness, humour and geniality of his earlier days," for writing
in fact "the best book about Wales ever published."
Certainly no later book which could be compared with it has been as good,
or nearly as good. As for its predecessors, the "Itinerary" and the
"Description" of Gerald of Wales, even setting aside the charm of
antiquity, make a book that is equal to "Wild Wales" for originality,
vivacity and truth. Of the antiquarian and picturesque travellers in the
late eighteenth century and early nineteenth none wrote anything that is
valuable except for some facts and some evidence of taste. Borrow
himself probably knew few or none of them, though he mentions Gerald.
There is no evidence that he knew the great nineteenth-century
collections of Welsh manuscripts and translations. He says nothing of
the "Mabinogion." He had apparently never heard of the pedestrian Iolo
Morganwg. He perhaps never saw Stephens' "Literature of the Kymry." His
knowledge was picked up anyhow and anywhere from Welsh texts and Lhuyd's
"Archaeologia," without system and with very little friendly discussion
or comparison. Wales, therefore, was to him as wonderful as Spain, and
equally uncharted. What he saw did not spoil the visionary image, and
his enthusiasm coupled with curiosity gives the book of his travels just
the continuous impulse which he never found for his Cornish, Manx, Irish
or Scottish notes. He was able to fill the book with sympathetic
observation and genial self-revelation.
The book is of course a tourist's book. Borrow went through the country
as a gentleman, running no risks, and having scarcely an object except to
see what was to be seen and to please himself. He got, as he probably
counted on getting, the consideration due to a gentleman who can pay his
way and meets only the humbler sort of people, publicans, farmers,
drovers, labourers, sextons, parish clerks, and men upon the road. He
seldom stayed more than a night or an hour or two anywhere. His
pictures, therefore, are the impressions of the moment, wrought up at
leisure. His few weeks in Wales made a book of the same size as an equal
number of years in Spain.
Sometimes he writes like a detached observer working from notes, and the
result has little value except in so far as it is a pure record of what
was to be seen at such and such a place in the year 1854. There are many
short passages apparently straight from his notes, dead and useless. The
description of Llangollen Fair, on August 21, is of this kind, but
superior, and I shall quote it entire:
"The day was dull with occasional showers. I went to see the fair about
noon. It was held in and near a little square in the south-east quarter
of the town, of which square the police-station is the principal feature
on the side of the west, and an inn, bearing the sign of the Grapes, on
the east. The fair was a little bustling fair, attended by plenty of
people from the country, and from the English border, and by some who
appeared to come from a greater distance than the border. A dense row of
carts extended from the police-station, half across the space. These
carts were filled with pigs, and had stout cord nettings drawn over them,
to prevent the animals escaping. By the sides of these carts the
principal business of the fair appeared to be going on--there stood the
owners, male and female, higgling with Llangollen men and women, who came
to buy. The pigs were all small, and the price given seemed to vary from
eighteen to twenty-five shillings. Those who bought pigs generally
carried them away in their arms; and then there was no little diversion;
dire was the screaming of the porkers, yet the purchaser invariably
appeared to know how to manage his bargain, keeping the left arm round
the body of the swine and with the right hand fast gripping the ear--some
few were led away by strings. There were some Welsh cattle, small of
course, and the purchasers of these seemed to be Englishmen, tall burly
fellows in general, far exceeding the Welsh in height and size.
"Much business in the cattle-line did not seem, however, to be going on.
Now and then a big fellow made an offer, and held out his hand for a
little Pictish grazier to give it a slap--a cattle bargain being
concluded by a slap of the hand--but the Welshman generally turned away,
with a half-resentful exclamation. There were a few horses and ponies in
a street leading into the fair from the south.
"I saw none sold, however. A tall athletic figure was striding amongst
them, evidently a jockey and a stranger, looking at them and occasionally
asking a slight question of one or another of their proprietors, but he
did not buy. He might in age be about eight-and-twenty, and about six
feet and three-quarters of an inch in height; in build he was perfection
itself--a better-built man I never saw. He wore a cap and a brown jockey
coat, trowsers, leggings, and highlows, and sported a single spur. He
had whiskers--all jockeys should have whiskers--but he had what I did not
like, and what no genuine jockey should have, a moustache, which looks
coxcombical and Frenchified--but most things have terribly changed since
I was young. Three or four hardy-looking fellows, policemen, were
gliding about in their blue coats and leather hats, holding their thin
walking-sticks behind them; conspicuous amongst whom was the leader, a
tall lathy North Briton with a keen eye and hard features. Now if I add
there was much gabbling of Welsh round about, and here and there some
slight sawing of English--that in the street leading from the north there
were some stalls of gingerbread and a table at which a queer-looking
being with a red Greek-looking cap on his head, sold rhubarb, herbs, and
phials containing the Lord knows what, and who spoke a low vulgar English
dialect,--I repeat, if I add this, I think I have said all that is
necessary about Llangollen Fair."
But this is a somewhat exceptional passage, and the same detachment is
rarely found except in his descriptions of scenery, which are short and
serve well enough to remind the reader of the great hills, the rapid
waters, the rocks, and the furnaces, chimneys and pits. Borrow certainly
does remind us of these things. In the first place he does so by a
hundred minute and scattered suggestions of the romantic and sublime, and
so general that only a pedant will object to the nightingales which he
heard singing in August near Bethesda. He gives us black mountains,
gloomy shadows, cascades falling into lakes, "singular-looking" rocks,
and mountain villages like one in Castile or La Mancha but for the trees,
mountains that made him exclaim: "I have had Heaven opened to me," moors
of a "wretched russet colour," "black gloomy narrow glens." He can also
be precise and connoisseur-like, as when he describes the cataract at
Llan Rhaiadr:
"What shall I liken it to? I scarcely know, unless to an immense skein
of silk agitated and disturbed by tempestuous blasts, or to the long tail
of a grey courser at furious speed. Through the profusion of long
silvery threads or hairs, or what looked such, I could here and there see
the black sides of the crag down which the Rhyadr precipitated itself
with something between a boom and a roar."
He is still more a connoisseur when he continues:
"I never saw water falling so gracefully, so much like thin beautiful
threads as here. Yet even this cataract has its blemish. What beautiful
object has not something which more or less mars its loveliness? There
is an ugly black bridge or semicircle of rock, about two feet in diameter
and about twenty feet high, which rises some little way below it, and
under which the water, after reaching the bottom, passes, which
intercepts the sight, and prevents it from taking in the whole fall at
once. This unsightly object has stood where it now stands since the day
of creation, and will probably remain there to the day of judgment. It
would be a desecration of nature to remove it by art, but no one could
regret if nature in one of her floods were to sweep it away."
But Borrow's temperamental method--where he undertakes to do more than
sketch his environment in the blurred large method corresponding to
ordinary passing impressions--is the rhetorical sublime of this mountain
lake between Festiniog and Bala:
"I sped towards it through gorse and heather, occasionally leaping a deep
drain. At last I reached it. It was a small lake. Wearied and panting,
I flung myself on its bank, and gazed upon it.
"There lay the lake in the low bottom, surrounded by the heathery
hillocks; there it lay quite still, the hot sun reflected upon its
surface, which shone like a polished blue shield. Near the shore it was
shallow, at least near that shore upon which I lay. But farther on, my
eye, practised in deciding upon the depths of waters, saw reason to
suppose that its depth was very great. As I gazed upon it my mind
indulged in strange musings. I thought of the afanc, a creature which
some have supposed to be the harmless and industrious beaver, others the
frightful and destructive crocodile. I wondered whether the afanc was
the crocodile or the beaver, and speedily had no doubt that the name was
originally applied to the crocodile.
"'O, who can doubt,' thought I, 'that the word was originally intended
for something monstrous and horrible? Is there not something horrible in
the look and sound of the word afanc, something connected with the
opening and shutting of immense jaws, and the swallowing of writhing
prey? Is not the word a fitting brother of the Arabic timsah, denoting
the dread horny lizard of the waters? Moreover, have we not the voice of
tradition that the afanc was something monstrous? Does it not say that
Hu the Mighty, the inventor of husbandry, who brought the Cumry from the
summer-country, drew the old afanc out of the lake of lakes with his four
gigantic oxen? Would he have had recourse to them to draw out the little
harmless beaver? O, surely not. Yet have I no doubt that, when the
crocodile had disappeared from the lands where the Cumric language was
spoken, the name afanc was applied to the beaver, probably his successor
in the pool; the beaver now called in Cumric Llostlydan, or the broad-
tailed, for tradition's voice is strong that the beaver has at one time
been called the afanc.' Then I wondered whether the pool before me had
been the haunt of the afanc, considered both as crocodile and beaver. I
saw no reason to suppose that it had not. 'If crocodiles,' thought I,
'ever existed in Britain, and who shall say they have not? seeing that
their remains have been discovered, why should they not have haunted this
pool? If beavers ever existed in Britain, and do not tradition and
Giraldus say that they have? why should they not have existed in this
pool?
"'At a time almost inconceivably remote, when the hills around were
covered with woods, through which the elk and the bison and the wild cow
strolled, when men were rare throughout the lands, and unlike in most
things to the present race--at such a period--and such a period there has
been--I can easily conceive that the afanc-crocodile haunted this pool,
and that when the elk or bison or wild cow came to drink of its waters,
the grim beast would occasionally rush forth, and seizing his bellowing
victim, would return with it to the deeps before me to luxuriate at his
ease upon its flesh. And at time less remote, when the crocodile was no
more, and though the woods still covered the hills, and wild cattle
strolled about, men were more numerous than before, and less unlike the
present race, I can easily conceive this lake to have been the haunt of
the afanc-beaver, that he here built cunningly his house of trees and
clay, and that to this lake the native would come with his net and his
spear to hunt the animal for his precious fur. Probably if the depths of
that pool were searched, relics of the crocodile and the beaver might be
found, along with other strange things connected with the periods in
which they respectively lived. Happy were I if for a brief space I could
become a Cingalese, that I might swim out far into that pool, dive down
into its deepest part, and endeavour to discover any strange things which
beneath its surface may lie.' Much in this guise rolled my thoughts as I
lay stretched on the margin of the lake."
In another place he tells a poor man that he believes in the sea-serpent,
and has a story of one seen in the very neighbourhood where he meets the
man. Immediately after the description of the lake there is a proof--one
of many--that he was writing straight from notes. Speaking of a rivulet,
he says: "It was crossed by two bridges, one immensely old and terribly
delapidated, the other old enough, but in better repair--_went and drank
under the oldest bridge of the two_." The book is large and strong
enough to stand many such infinitesimal blemishes.
Alongside of the sublime I will put what Borrow says he liked better. He
is standing on a bridge over the Ceiriog, just after visiting the house
of Huw Morus at Pont y Meibion:
"About a hundred yards distant was a small watermill, built over the
rivulet, the wheel going slowly, slowly round; large quantities of pigs,
the generality of them brindled, were either browsing on the banks, or
lying close to the sides, half immersed in the water; one immense white
hog, the monarch seemingly of the herd, was standing in the middle of the
current. Such was the scene which I saw from the bridge, a scene of
quiet rural life well suited to the brushes of two or three of the old
Dutch painters, or to those of men scarcely inferior to them in their own
style--Gainsborough, Moreland, and Crome. My mind for the last half-hour
had been in a highly-excited state; I had been repeating verses of old
Huw Morus, brought to my recollection by the sight of his dwelling-place;
they were ranting roaring verses, against the Roundheads. I admired the
vigour, but disliked the principles which they displayed; and admiration
on the one hand, and disapproval on the other, bred a commotion in my
mind like that raised on the sea when tide runs one way and wind blows
another. The quiet scene from the bridge, however, produced a sedative
effect on my mind, and when I resumed my journey I had forgotten Huw, his
verses, and all about Roundheads and Cavaliers."
But it must be said that if the book is on the whole a cheerful one, its
cheerfulness not only receives a foil from the rhetorical sublime, but is
a little misted by a melancholy note here and there. Thus he sees "a
melancholy ship" out on the sea near Holyhead. He qualifies russet twice
as "wretched" in describing a moor. He speaks of "strange-looking" hills
near Pont Erwyd, and again near the Devil's Bridge. His moods were
easily changed. He speaks of "wretched russet hills," with no birds
singing, but only "the lowing of a wretched bullock," and then of
beautiful hills that filled his veins with fresh life so that he walked
on merrily.
As for his people, it cannot be asserted that they are always alive
though they are often very Welsh. They are sketched, with dialogue and
description, after the manner of "The Bible in Spain," though being
nearer home they had to be more modest in their peculiarities. He
establishes Welsh enthusiasm, hospitality and suspiciousness, in a very
friendly manner. The poet-innkeeper is an excellent sketch of a mild but
by no means spiritless type. He is accompanied by a man with a bulging
shoe who drinks ale and continually ejaculates: "The greatest poet in the
world"; for example, when Borrow asks: "Then I have the honour to be
seated with a bard of Anglesey?" "Tut, tut," says the bard. Borrow
agrees with him that envy--which has kept him from the bardic chair--will
not always prevail:
"'Sir,' said the man in grey, 'I am delighted to hear you. Give me your
hand, your honourable hand. Sir, you have now felt the hand-grasp of a
Welshman, to say nothing of an Anglesey bard, and I have felt that of a
Briton, perhaps a bard, a brother, sir? O, when I first saw your face
out there in the dyffryn, I at once recognised in it that of a kindred
spirit, and I felt compelled to ask you to drink. Drink, sir! but how is
this? the jug is empty--how is this?--O, I see--my friend, sir, though an
excellent individual, is indiscreet, sir--very indiscreet. Landlord,
bring this moment another jug of ale.'
"'The greatest prydydd,' stuttered he of the bulged shoe--'the greatest
prydydd--Oh--'
"'Tut, tut,' said the man in grey.
"'I speak the truth and care for no one,' said he of the tattered hat. 'I
say the greatest prydydd. If any one wishes to gainsay me let him show
his face, and Myn Diawl--'
The landlord brought the ale, placed it on the table, and then stood as
if waiting for something.
"'I suppose you are waiting to be paid,' said I; 'what is your demand?'
"'Sixpence for this jug, and sixpence for the other,' said the landlord.
"I took out a shilling and said: 'It is but right that I should pay half
of the reckoning, and as the whole affair is merely a shilling matter I
should feel obliged in being permitted to pay the whole, so, landlord,
take the shilling and remember you are paid.' I then delivered the
shilling to the landlord, but had no sooner done so than the man in grey,
starting up in violent agitation, wrested the money from the other, and
flung it down on the table before me saying:--
"'No, no, that will never do. I invited you in here to drink, and now
you would pay for the liquor which I ordered. You English are free with
your money, but you are sometimes free with it at the expense of people's
feelings. I am a Welshman, and I know Englishmen consider all Welshmen
hogs. But we are not hogs, mind you! for we have little feelings which
hogs have not. Moreover, I would have you know that we have money,
though perhaps not so much as the Saxon.' Then putting his hand into his
pocket he pulled out a shilling, and giving it to the landlord, said in
Welsh: 'Now thou art paid, and mayst go thy ways till thou art again
called for. I do not know why thou didst stay after thou hadst put down
the ale. Thou didst know enough of me to know that thou didst run no
risk of not being paid.'
"'But,' said I, after the landlord had departed, 'I must insist on being
[? _paying_] my share. Did you not hear me say that I would give a quart
of ale to see a poet?'
"'A poet's face,' said the man in grey, 'should be common to all, even
like that of the sun. He is no true poet, who would keep his face from
the world.'
"'But,' said I, 'the sun frequently hides his head from the world, behind
a cloud.'
"'Not so,' said the man in grey. 'The sun does not hide his face, it is
the cloud that hides it. The sun is always glad enough to be seen, and
so is the poet. If both are occasionally hid, trust me it is no fault of
theirs. Bear that in mind; and now pray take up your money.'
"'That man is a gentleman,' thought I to myself, 'whether poet or not;
but I really believe him to be a poet; were he not he could hardly talk
in the manner I have just heard him.'
"The man in grey now filled my glass, his own and that of his companion.
The latter emptied his in a minute, not forgetting first to say 'the best
prydydd in all the world!' The man in grey was also not slow to empty
his own. The jug now passed rapidly between my two friends, for the poet
seemed determined to have his full share of the beverage. I allowed the
ale in my glass to remain untasted, and began to talk about the bards,
and to quote from their works. I soon found that the man in grey knew
quite as much of the old bards and their works as myself. In one
instance he convicted me of a mistake.
"I had quoted those remarkable lines in which an old bard, doubtless
seeing the Menai Bridge by means of second sight, says: 'I will pass to
the land of Mona notwithstanding the waters of Menai, without waiting for
the ebb'--and was feeling not a little proud of my erudition when the man
in grey, after looking at me for a moment fixedly, asked me the name of
the bard who composed them--'Sion Tudor,' I replied.
"'There you are wrong,' said the man in grey; 'his name was not Sion
Tudor, but Robert Vychan, in English, Little Bob. Sion Tudor wrote an
englyn on the Skerries whirlpool in the Menai; but it was Little Bob who
wrote the stanza in which the future bridge over the Menai is hinted at.'
"'You are right,' said I, 'you are right. Well, I am glad that all song
and learning are not dead in Ynis Fon.'
"'Dead,' said the man in grey, whose features began to be rather flushed,
'they are neither dead, nor ever will be. There are plenty of poets in
Anglesey. . . .'"
The whole sketch is in Borrow's liberal unqualified style, but keeping on
the right side of caricature. The combination of modesty, touchiness and
pride, without humour, is typical and happily caught.
The chief fault of his Welsh portraits, in fact, is his almost
invariable, and almost always unnecessary, exhibition of his own
superiority. He is nearly always the big clever gentleman catechizing
certain quaint little rustic foreigners. He met one old man with a
crabstick who told him his Welsh was almost as bad as his English, and a
drover who had the advantage of him in decided opinions and a sense of
superiority, and put him down as a pig-jobber; but these are exceptions.
He is not unkind, but on the other hand he forgets that as a rule his
size, his purse, and his remarkable appearance and qualities put his
casual hosts very much at a disadvantage, and he is thus led to
exaggerate what suspiciousness he observed.
His success is all the more wonderful when his position and his almost
total lack of condescension and concession are considered, but considered
they must be. When he met a Welsh clergyman who could talk about the
Welsh language, Huw Morus and ale, he said nothing about him except that
he was "a capital specimen of the Welsh country clergyman. His name was
Walter Jones." Too often he merely got answers to his questions, which
break up his pages in an agreeable manner, but do little more. In such
conversations we should fare ill indeed if one of the parties were not
Borrow, and even as it is, he can be tedious beyond the limits necessary
for truth. I will give an example:
"After a little time I entered into conversation with my guide. He had
not a word of English. 'Are you married?' said I.
"'In truth I am, sir.'
"'What family have you?'
"'I have a daughter.'
"'Where do you live?'
"'At the house of the Rhyadr.'
"'I suppose you live there as servant?'
"'No, sir, I live there as master.'
"'Is the good woman I saw there your wife?'
"'In truth, sir, she is.'
"'And the young girl I saw your daughter?'
"'Yes, sir, she is my daughter.'
"'And how came the good woman not to tell me you were her husband?'
"'I suppose, sir, you did not ask who I was, and she thought you did not
care to know.' . . ."
To multiply instances might cease to be amusing. It may have been
Borrow's right way of getting what he wanted, though it sounds like a
Charity Organization inquisitor. As to the effectiveness of setting down
every step of the process instead of the result, there can hardly be two
opinions, unless the reader prefers an impression of the wandering
inquisitive gentleman to one of the people questioned. Probably these
barren dialogues may be set down to indolence or to the too facile
adoption of a trick. They are too casual and slight to be exact, and on
the other hand they are too literal to give a direct impression.
Luckily he diversified such conversation with stories of poets and
robbers, gleaned from his books or from wayside company. The best of
this company was naturally not the humble homekeeping publican or
cottager, but the man or woman of the roads, Gypsy or Irish. The
vagabond Irish, for example, give him early in the book an effective
contrast to the more quiet Welsh; his guide tells how they gave him a
terrible fright:
"I had been across the Berwyn to carry home a piece of weaving work to a
person who employs me. It was night as I returned, and when I was about
half-way down the hill, at a place which is called Allt Paddy, because
the Gwyddelod are in the habit of taking up their quarters there, I came
upon a gang of them, who had come there and camped and lighted their
fire, whilst I was on the other side of the hill. There were nearly
twenty of them, men and women, and amongst the rest was a man standing
naked in a tub of water with two women stroking him down with clouts. He
was a large fierce-looking fellow, and his body, on which the flame of
the fire glittered, was nearly covered with red hair. I never saw such a
sight. As I passed they glared at me and talked violently in their Paddy
Gwyddel, but did not offer to molest me. I hastened down the hill, and
right glad I was when I found myself safe and sound at my house in
Llangollen, with my money in my pocket, for I had several shillings
there, which the man across the hill had paid me for the work which I had
done."
The best man in the book is the Irish fiddler, with a shock of red hair,
a hat that had lost part of its crown and all its rim, and a game leg.
This Irishman in the early part of the book and the Irishwoman at the end
are characters that Borrow could put his own blood into. He has done so
in a manner equal to anything in the same kind in his earlier books. I
shall quote the whole interview with the man. It is an admirable piece
of imagination. If any man thinks it anything else, let him spend ten
years in taking down conversations in trains and taverns and ten years in
writing them up, and should he have anything as good as this to show, he
has a most rare talent:
"'Good morning to you,' said I.
"'A good marning to your hanner, a merry afternoon, and a roaring joyous
evening--that is the worst luck I wish to ye.'
"'Are you a native of these parts?' said I.
"'Not exactly, your hanner--I am a native of the city of Dublin, or,
what's all the same thing, of the village of Donnybrook which is close by
it.'
"'A celebrated place,' said I.
"'Your hanner may say that; all the world has heard of Donnybrook, owing
to the humours of its fair. Many is the merry tune I have played to the
boys at that fair.'
"'You are a professor of music, I suppose?'
"'And not a very bad one as your hanner will say if you will allow me to
play you a tune.'
"'Can you play "Croppies Lie Down"?'
"'I cannot, your hanner; my fingers never learnt to play such a
blackguard tune; but if ye wish to hear "Croppies Get Up" I can oblige
ye.'
"'You are a Roman Catholic, I suppose?'
"'I am not, your hanner--I am a Catholic to the backbone, just like my
father before me. Come, your hanner, shall I play ye "Croppies Get Up"?'
"'No,' said I; 'It's a tune that doesn't please my ears. If, however,
you choose to play "Croppies Lie Down," I'll give you a shilling.'
"'Your hanner will give me a shilling?'
"'Yes,' said I, 'if you play "Croppies Lie Down": but you know you cannot
play it, your fingers never learned the tune.'
"'They never did, your hanner; but they have heard it played of ould by
the blackguard Orange fiddlers of Dublin on the first of July, when the
Protestant boys used to walk round Willie's statue on College Green--so
if your hanner gives me the shilling they may perhaps bring out something
like it.'
"'Very good,' said I; 'begin!'
"'But, your hanner, what shall we do for the words? Though my fingers
may remember the tune, my tongue does not remember the words--that is
unless . . .'
"'I give another shilling,' said I; 'but never mind you the words; I know
the words, and will repeat them.'
"'And your hanner will give me a shilling?'
"'If you play the tune,' said I.
"'Hanner bright, your hanner?'
"'Honour bright,' said I.
"Thereupon the fiddler, taking his bow and shouldering his fiddle, struck
up in first-rate style the glorious tune, which I had so often heard with
rapture in the days of my boyhood in the barrack yard of Clonmel; whilst
I walking by his side as he stumped along, caused the welkin to resound
with the words, which were the delight of the young gentlemen of the
Protestant academy of that beautiful old town.
"'I never heard those words before,' said the fiddler, after I had
finished the first stanza.
"'Get on with you,' said I.
"'Regular Orange words!' said the fiddler, on my finishing the second
stanza.
"'Do you choose to get on?' said I.
"'More blackguard Orange words I never heard!' cried the fiddler, on my
coming to the conclusion of the third stanza. 'Divil a bit farther will
I play; at any rate till I get the shilling.'
"'Here it is for you,' said I; 'the song is ended and of course the
tune.'
"'Thank your hanner,' said the fiddler, taking the money, 'your hanner
has kept your word with me, which is more than I thought your hanner
would. And now, your hanner, let me ask you why did your hanner wish for
that tune, which is not only a blackguard one, but quite out of date; and
where did your hanner get the words?'
"'I used to hear the tune in my boyish days,' said I, 'and wished to hear
it again, for though you call it a blackguard tune, it is the sweetest
and most noble air that Ireland, the land of music, has ever produced. As
for the words, never mind where I got them; they are violent enough, but
not half so violent as the words of some of the songs made against the
Irish Protestants by the priests.'
"'Your hanner is an Orange man, I see. Well, your hanner, the Orange is
now in the kennel, and the Croppies have it all their own way.'
"'And perhaps,' said I, 'before I die, the Orange will be out of the
kennel and the Croppies in, even as they were in my young days.'
"'Who knows, your hanner? and who knows that I may not play the ould tune
round Willie's image in College Green, even as I used some twenty-seven
years ago?'
"'O then you have been an Orange fiddler?'
"'I have, your hanner. And now as your hanner has behaved like a
gentleman to me I will tell ye all my history. I was born in the city of
Dublin, that is in the village of Donnybrook, as I tould your hanner
before. It was to the trade of bricklaying I was bred, and bricklaying I
followed till at last, getting my leg smashed, not by falling off the
ladder, but by a row in the fair, I was obliged to give it up, for how
could I run up the ladder with a patten on my foot, which they put on to
make my broken leg as long as the other. Well, your hanner; being
obliged to give up my bricklaying, I took to fiddling, to which I had
always a natural inclination, and played about the streets, and at fairs,
and wakes, and weddings. At length some Orange men getting acquainted
with me, and liking my style of playing, invited me to their lodge, where
they gave me to drink, and tould me that if I would change my religion
and join them, and play their tunes, they would make it answer my
purpose. Well, your hanner, without much stickling I gave up my Popery,
joined the Orange lodge, learned the Orange tunes, and became a regular
Protestant boy, and truly the Orange men kept their word, and made it
answer my purpose. O the meat and drink I got, and the money I made by
playing at the Orange lodges and before the processions when the Orange
men paraded the streets with their Orange colours. And O, what a day for
me was the glorious first of July when with my whole body covered with
Orange ribbons I fiddled "Croppies Lie Down"--"Boyne Water," and the
"Protestant Boys" before the procession which walked round Willie's
figure on horseback in College Green, the man and horse all ablaze with
Orange colours. But nothing lasts under the sun, as your hanner knows;
Orangeism began to go down; the Government scowled at it, and at last
passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the
first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the
Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond
and dwindle, and I with them, for there was scarcely any demand for
Orange tunes. Then Dan O'Connell arose with his emancipation and repale
cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were
Papist processions and mobs, which made me afraid to stir out, lest
knowing me for an Orange fiddler, they should break my head, as the boys
broke my leg at Donnybrook fair. At length some of the repalers and
emancipators knowing that I was a first-rate hand at fiddling came to me,
and tould me, that if I would give over playing "Croppies Lie Down" and
other Orange tunes, and would play "Croppies Get Up," and what not, and
become a Catholic and a repaler, and an emancipator, they would make a
man of me--so as my Orange trade was gone, and I was half-starved, I
consinted, not however till they had introduced me to Daniel O'Connell,
who called me a credit to my country, and the Irish Horpheus, and
promised me a sovereign if I would consint to join the cause, as he
called it. Well, your hanner, I joined with the cause and became a
Papist, I mane a Catholic once more, and went at the head of processions,
covered all over with green ribbons, playing "Croppies Get Up," "Granny
Whale," and the like. But, your hanner; though I went the whole hog with
the repalers and emancipators, they did not make their words good by
making a man of me. Scant and sparing were they in the mate and drink,
and yet more sparing in the money, and Daniel O'Connell never gave me the
sovereign which he promised me. No, your hanner, though I played
"Croppies Get Up," till my fingers ached, as I stumped before him and his
mobs and processions, he never gave me the sovereign: unlike your hanner
who gave me the shilling ye promised me for playing "Croppies Lie Down,"
Daniel O'Connell never gave me the sovereign he promised me for playing
"Croppies Get Up." Och, your hanner, I often wished the ould Orange days
were back again. However as I could do no better I continued going the
whole hog with the emancipators and repalers and Dan O'Connell; I went
the whole animal with them till they had got emancipation; and I went the
whole animal with them till they nearly got repale--when all of a sudden
they let the whole thing drop--Dan and his party having frighted the
Government out of its seven senses, and gotten all they thought they
could get, in money and places, which was all they wanted, let the whole
hullabaloo drop, and of course myself, who formed part of it. I went to
those who had persuaded me to give up my Orange tunes, and to play Papist
ones, begging them to give me work; but they tould me very civilly that
they had no farther occasion for my services. I went to Daniel O'Connell
reminding him of the sovereign he had promised me, and offering if he
gave it me to play "Croppies Get Up" under the nose of the
lord-lieutenant himself; but he tould me that he had not time to attend
to me, and when I persisted, bade me go to the Divil and shake myself.
Well, your hanner, seeing no prospect for myself in my own country, and
having incurred some little debts, for which I feared to be arrested, I
came over to England and Wales, where with little content and
satisfaction I have passed seven years.'
"'Well,' said I, 'thank you for your history--farewell.'
"'Stap, your hanner; does your hanner think that the Orange will ever be
out of the kennel, and that the Orange boys will ever walk round the
brass man and horse in College Green as they did of ould?'
"'Who knows?' said I. 'But suppose all that were to happen, what would
it signify to you?'
"'Why then Divil in my patten if I would not go back to Donnybrook and
Dublin, hoist the Orange cockade, and become as good an Orange boy as
ever.'
"'What,' said I, 'and give up Popery for the second time?'
"'I would, your hanner; and why not? for in spite of what I have heard
Father Toban say, I am by no means certain that all Protestants will be
damned.'
"'Farewell,' said I.
"'Farewell, your hanner, and long life and prosperity to you! God bless
your hanner and your Orange face. Ah, the Orange boys are the boys for
keeping faith. They never served me as Dan O'Connell and his dirty gang
of repalers and emancipators did. Farewell, your hanner, once more; and
here's another scratch of the illigant tune your hanner is so fond of, to
cheer up your hanner's ears upon your way.'
"And long after I had left him I could hear him playing on his fiddle in
first-rate style the beautiful tune of 'Down, down, Croppies Lie Down.'"