[12a] The gypsies “have a double nomenclature, each tribe or family having a public and private name, one by which they are known to the Gentiles, and another to themselves alone . . . There are only two names of trades which have been adopted by English gypsies as proper names, Cooper and Smith: these names are expressed in the English gypsy dialect by Vardo-mescro and Petulengro (Romano Lavo-Lil, page 185). Thus the Smiths are known among themselves as the Petulengros. Petul, a horse shoe, and engro a “masculine affix used in the formation of figurative names.” Thus Boshomengro (a fiddler) comes from Bosh a fiddle, Cooromengro (a soldier, a pugilist) from Coor = to fight.
[12b] The Rev. Wentworth Webster heard narrated at a provincial Bible Society’s meeting that when Borrow first called at Earl Street “he said that he had been stolen by gypsies in his boyhood, had passed several years with them, but had been recognised at a fair in Norfolk and brought home to his family by his uncle.” There is, however, nothing to confirm this story.
[13a] Lavengro, page 164.
[13b] The prisoners occupied much of their time in straw-plait making; but the quality of their work was so much superior to that of the English that it was forbidden, and consequently destroyed when found.
[13c] Lavengro, page 45.
[14] David Haggart, born 24th June 1801, was an instinctive criminal, who, at Leith Races, in 1813, enlisted, whilst drunk, as a drummer in the West Norfolks. Eventually he obtained his discharge and continued on his career of crime and prison-breaking, among other things murdering a policeman and a gaoler, until, on 18th July 1821, he was hanged at Edinburgh.
[15a] Lavengro, page 138.
[15b] John Crome (1768–1821), landscape painter. Apprenticed 1783 as sign-painter; introduced into Norwich the art of graining; founded the Norwich School of Painting; first exhibited at the Royal Academy 1806.
[17] Borrow was always a magnificent horseman. “Vaya! how you ride! It is dangerous to be in your way!” said the Archbishop of Toledo to him years later. In The Bible in Spain he wrote that he had “been accustomed from . . . childhood to ride without a saddle.” The Rev. Wentworth Webster states that in Madrid “he used to ride with a Russian skin for a saddle and without stirrups.”
[20] Letter from “A School-fellow of Lavengro” in The Britannia, 26th April 1851.