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.’