[76f] Patteran, or Patrin; a gypsy method of indicating by means of grass, leaves, or a mark in the dust to those behind the direction taken by the main body.
[76g] The Gypsies of Spain, page 31.
[77a] If he went abroad, he certainly did so without obtaining a passport from the Foreign Office. The only passports issued to him between the years 1825–1840 were:
27th July 1833, to St Petersburg;
2nd November 1836 and 20th December 1838, to Spain,
as far as the F. O. Registers show.
[77b] Dr Knapp takes Borrow’s statement, made 29th March 1839, “I have been three times imprisoned and once on the point of being shot,” as indicating that he was imprisoned at Pamplona in 1826. The imprisonments were September 1837, Finisterre; May 1838, Madrid; and another unknown. The occasion on which he was nearly shot, which may be assumed to be connected with one of the imprisonments (otherwise he was more than “once nearly shot”), was at Finisterre, when he, with his guide, was seized as a Carlist spy “by the fishermen of the place, who determined at first on shooting us.” (Letter to Rev. A. Brandram, 15th September 1837.)
[78] The incident is given in Lavengro under date of 1818, when Marshland Shales was fifteen years old. It was not, however, until 1827 that he appeared at the Norwich Horse Fair and was put up for auction. “Such a horse as this we shall never see again; a pity that he is so old,” was the opinion of those who lifted their hats as a token of respect.
[79] This and subsequent letters from Borrow to Sir John Bowring not specially acknowledged have been courteously placed at the writer’s disposal by Mr Wilfred J. Bowring, Sir John Bowring’s grandson.
[81] In The Monthly Review, March 1830, there appeared among the literary announcements a paragraph to the same effect.