Lavengro by George Borrow (read me a book txt) 📕

of the odes of the great Ab Gwilym, the pride and glory of Wales.’ ”

“How!” said Peter; “hast thou translated the works of the mighty Dafydd?”

“With notes critical, historical and explanatory.”

“Come with us, friend,” said Peter. “I cannot promise such a dinner as thou wishest, but neither pipe nor fiddle shall be wanting.”

“Come with us, young man,” said Winifred, “even as thou art, and the daughters of Wales shall bid thee welcome.”

“I will not go with you,” said I. “Dost thou see that man in the ford?”

“Who is staring at us so, and whose horse has not yet done drinking? Of course I see him.”

“I shall turn back with him. God bless you!”

“Go back with him not,” said Peter, “he is one of those whom I like not, one of the clibberty-clabber, as Master Ellis Wyn observes⁠—turn not with that man.”

“Go not back with him,” said Winifred. “If thou goest with that man, thou wilt soon forget all our profitable counsels; come with us.”

“I cannot; I have much to say to him. Kosko Divvus, Mr. Petulengro.”

“Kosko Divvus, Pal,” said Mr. Petulengro, riding through the water; “are you turning back?”

I turned back with Mr. Petulengro.

Peter came running after me: “One moment, young man, who and what are you?”

“I must answer in the words of Taliesin,” said I; “none can say with positiveness whether I be fish or flesh,198 least of all myself. God bless you both!”

“Take this,” said Peter; and he thrust his Welsh Bible199 into my hand.

LXXXI

So I turned back with Mr. Petulengro. We travelled for some time in silence; at last we fell into discourse. “You have been in Wales, Mr. Petulengro?”

“Ay, truly, brother.”

“What have you been doing there?”

“Assisting at a funeral.”

“At whose funeral?”

“Mrs. Hearne’s, brother.”

“Is she dead, then?”

“As a nail, brother.”

“How did she die?”

“By hanging, brother.”

“I am lost in astonishment,” said I; whereupon Mr. Petulengro, lifting his sinister leg over the neck of his steed, and adjusting himself sideways in the saddle, replied with great deliberation:⁠—

“Two days ago, I happened to be at a fair not very far from here; I was all alone by myself, for our party were upwards of forty miles off, when who should come up but a chap that I knew, a relation, or rather, a connection of mine⁠—one of those Hearnes. ‘Ar’n’t you going to the funeral?’ said he; and then, brother, there passed between him and me, in the way of questioning and answering, much the same as has just now passed between I and you; but when he mentioned hanging, I thought I could do no less than ask who hanged her, which you forgot to do. ‘Who hanged her?’ said I; and then the man told me that she had done it herself⁠—been her own hinjiri; and then I thought to myself what a sin and shame it would be if I did not go to the funeral, seeing that she was my own mother-in-law. I would have brought my wife, and, indeed, the whole of our party, but there was no time for that; they were too far off, and the dead was to be buried early the next morning, so I went with the man, and he led me into Wales, where his party had lately retired, and when there, through many wild and desolate places to their encampment, and there I found the Hearnes, and the dead body⁠—the last laid out on a mattress, in a tent, dressed Romaneskoenaes, in a red cloak and big bonnet of black beaver. I must say for the Hearnes that they took the matter very coolly: some were eating, others drinking, and some were talking about their small affairs; there was one, however, who did not take the matter so coolly, but took on enough for the whole family, sitting beside the dead woman, tearing her hair, and refusing to take either meat or drink; it was the child Leonora. I arrived at nightfall, and the burying was not to take place till the morning, which I was rather sorry for, as I am not very fond of them Hearnes, who are not very fond of anybody. They never asked me to eat or drink, notwithstanding I had married into the family; one of them, however, came up and offered to fight me for five shillings; had it not been for them, I should have come back as empty as I went⁠—he didn’t stand up five minutes. Brother, I passed the night as well as I could, beneath a tree, for the tents were full, and not over clean; I slept little, and had my eyes about me, for I knew the kind of people I was among.

“Early in the morning the funeral took place. The body was placed not in a coffin but on a bier, and carried not to a churchyard but to a deep dell close by; and there it was buried beneath a rock, dressed just as I have told you; and this was done by the bidding of Leonora, who had heard her bebee say that she wished to be buried, not in gorgious fashion, but like a Roman woman of the old blood, the kosko puro rati, brother. When it was over, and we had got back to the encampment, I prepared to be going. Before mounting my gry, however, I bethought me to ask what could have induced the dead woman to make away with herself, a thing so uncommon amongst Romanies; whereupon one squinted with his eyes, a second spirted saliver into the air, and a third said that he neither knew nor cared; she was a good riddance, having more than once been nearly the ruin of them all, from the quantity of brimstone she carried about her. One, however, I suppose, rather ashamed of the way in which they had treated me, said at last, that if I wanted to know all about