[25a] So spelt by Borrow, but the correct Portuguese form is Dom.
[25b] Rabbits were so numerous in the south of the Peninsula in Carthaginian and Roman times, that they are even said to have given their name (Phœn. “Pahan”) to Hispania. Strabo certainly speaks of their number, and of the mode of destroying them with ferrets, and the rabbit is one of the commonest of the early devices of Spain (see Burke’s History of Spain, chap. ii.).
[28] May 26, 1834.
[29] The ballad of Svend Vonved, translated from the original Danish, was included by Borrow in his collection of Romantic Ballads, a thin demy 8vo volume of 187 pages—now very rare—published by John Taylor in 1826. The lines there read as follows:—
“A wild swine sat on his shoulders broad,
Upon his bosom a black bear snor’d.”
The original ballad may be found in the Kjæmpe Viser, and was translated into German by Grimm, who expressed the greatest admiration for the poem. Svend in Danish means “swain” or “youth,” and it is characteristic of Borrow’s mystification of proper names that he should, by a quasi-translation and archaic spelling, give the title of the Danish ballad the appearance of an actual English surname.
[33a] The Spanish Seo = a cathedral.
[33b] Serra is the Portuguese form of the Spanish Sierra = a saw.
[35] The barbarous seaman’s English transliteration of Setubal, the town of Tubal, a word which perpetuates one of the most ancient legends of Spanish antiquity (see Genesis x. 2, and Burke’s History of Spain, chap. i.).
[38] 1554–1578 (see note on p. 8).