[24] The French Prisoners of Norman Cross: A Tale, by the Rev. Arthur Brown, Rector of Catfield, Norfolk. London: Hodder Brothers, 18 New Bridge Street, E.C., 1895. Mr. Brown remarks that there were sixteen casernes, whereas Borrow says in Lavengro that there were five or six. 'They looked,' he says, 'from outside exactly like a vast congeries of large, high carpenter's shops, with roofs of glaring red tiles, and surrounded by wooden palisades, very lofty and of prodigious strength.'
[25] The Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society teaches me that the name should be spelt Pétulengro.
[26] See In Gipsy Tents by Francis Hindes Groome, p. 17. The late Queen herself writes (More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands, Smith, Elder and Co., 1884, p. 370), under the date Monday, August 26th: 'At half-past three started with Beatrice, Leopold, and the Duchess in the landau and four, the Duke, Lady Ely, General Ponsonby, and Mr. Yorke going in the second carriage, and Lord Haddington riding the whole way. We drove through the west part of Dunbar, which was very full, and where we were literally pelted with small nosegays, till the carriage was full of them; then for some distance past the village of Belhaven, Knockindale Hill (Knockenhair Park), where were stationed in their best attire the queen of the gypsies, an oldish woman with a yellow handkerchief on her head, and a youngish, very dark, and truly gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl, and another woman. The queen is a thorough gypsy, with a scarlet cloak and a yellow handkerchief around her head. Men in red hunting-coats, all very dark, and all standing on a platform here, bowed and waved their handkerchiefs. George Smith told Mr. Myers that "the queen" was Sanspirella, that the "gypsy-like woman in velvet and a red shawl" was Bidi, and the other woman Delaia. The men were Ambrose, Tommy, and Alfred.'
[27] I am indebted to an admirable article by Thomas William Thompson in the Journal of the Gypsy Lore Society, New Series, vol. iii, No, 3, January 1910, for information concerning the later life of Jasper Pétulengro.
[28] Phrenological Observations on the Cerebral Development of David Haggart, who was lately executed at Edinburgh for murder, and whose life has since been published. By George Combe, Esq. Edinburgh: W. and C. Tait, 1821.
[29] The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alias John Morison, alias Barney McCone, alias John McColgan, alias Daniel O'Brien, alias The Switcher, written by himself while under sentence of death. Edinburgh: Printed for W. and C. Tait by James Ballantyne and Co., 1821.
In the British Museum Library there is a copy with an autograph note by Lord Cockburn on the fly-leaf, which runs as follows:
'This youngster was my client when he was tried and convicted. He was a great villain. His life is almost all lies, and its chief curiosity consists in the strange spirit of lying, the indulgence of which formed his chief pleasure to the very last. The manuscript poem and picture of himself (bound up at the end of the Life) were truly composed and written by him. Being an enormous miscreant the phrenologists got hold of him, and made the notorious facts of his character into evidence of the truth of their system. He affected some decent poetry just before he was hanged, and therefore the Saints took up his memory and wrote monodies on him. His piety and the composition of the lies in this book broke out at the same time. H. C.'
[30] Although Captain Borrow was never as ignorant as one or two of Borrow's biographers, who call the Irish language 'Erse.'
[31] The Bible in Spain, ch. xx.