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.
CHAPTER XXIX—“WILD WALES”
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