* * * * *
The transcript enables us to make a correction in the Itinerary as given in the Life. Borrow is there said to have walked, on Sept. 3rd, from Lampeter to Builth. This should read “Lampeter to Llanddewi Brefi.” Where he slept on the night of Sept. 4th we are unfortunately left to conjecture, for it is just here that Dr. Knapp was overcome by the difficulties of transcription and by want of access to large-scale maps, as he admits in his letter. We may, however, hazard a guess that, unless Borrow got hopelessly out of his way, he slept on the 4th at Abergwessin, about half-way between Llanddewi Brefi and Builth. On the 5th he reached Builth, and on the 6th he accomplished a matter of twenty-eight miles from Builth to Mortimer’s Cross (alluded to in chap. 36 of Wild Wales)—not a bad day for a man of fifty-four! Beyond this point, however, all we know is that on the 17th he was at Shrewsbury, and on Oct. 5th at Leighton, Uppington and Donnington (all in the neighbourhood of the county town) looking up traces of Goronwy Owen.
And so we leave him. Some day, perhaps, some enthusiast will publish a transcript of the remainder of Borrow’s Note Book of 1857, and also, perhaps, that of 1867, when we may have a further opportunity of following still more closely the tracks of Lavengro across the heart of wildest Wales.
Footnotes.
[160a] “Life, Writings, and Correspondence of George Borrow”, by W. I. Knapp, 1899, vol. ii, pp. 184–5.
[160b] Shortly before his death, Dr. Knapp, in a letter (27 Aug. 1908) to the Secretary of the Gypsy Lore Society, thus alluded to this correspondence:—“I have just sent off a bulky parcel that cost me three weeks to write, containing the transcription of one of Borrow’s Note Books of 1857.” See Journal, Gypsy Lore Soc., New Series, vol. ii, (Jan. 1909), p. 196.
[162] Life; vol. ii, p. 381,
[163a] It is difficult to locate the Inn at Laugharne, but from the numerous enquiries we made, it is possible it was the house kept by a Mrs. Brown, and still known as Brown’s Hotel.
[163b] The bridge and wooded dell. The latter divides the town into two halves.
[163c] Plashett.