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

I had better never have done any such a thing, for suddenly the priest and all his parishioners set upon me and bate me, and took from me all I had, and cast me out of the village more dead than alive. Och! it’s a bad village that; and if I had known what it was I would have avoided it, or run straight through it, though I saw all the card-playing in the world going on in it. There is a proverb about it, as I was afterwards told, old as the time of the Moors, which holds good to the present day⁠—it is, that in Torre Lodones there are twenty-four housekeepers, and twenty-five thieves, maning that all the people are thaives, and the clergyman to boot, who is not reckoned a housekeeper; and troth I found the clergyman the greatest thaif of the lot. After being cast out of that village I travelled for nearly a month, subsisting by begging tolerably well, for though most of the Spanish are thaives, they are rather charitable; but though charitable thaives they do not like their own being taken from them without leave being asked, as I found to my cost; for on my entering a garden near Seville, without leave, to take an orange, the labourer came running up and struck me to the ground with a hatchet, giving me a big wound in the arm. I fainted with loss of blood, and on reviving I found myself in a hospital at Seville, to which the labourer and the people of the village had taken me. I should have died of starvation in that hospital had not some English people heard of me and come to see me; they tended me with food till I was cured, and then paid my passage on board a ship to London, to which place the ship carried me.

“And now I was in London with five shillings in my pocket⁠—all I had in the world⁠—and that did not last for long; and when it was gone I begged in the streets, but I did not get much by that, except a month’s hard labour in the correction-house; and when I came out I knew not what to do, but thought I would take a walk in the country, for it was springtime, and the weather was fine, so I took a walk about seven miles from London, and came to a place where a great fair was being held; and there I begged, but got nothing but a halfpenny, and was thinking of going farther when I saw a man with a table, like that of mine, playing with thimbles, as you saw me. I looked at the play, and saw him win money, and run away, and hunted by constables more than once. I kept following the man, and at last entered into conversation with him; and learning from him that he was in want of a companion to help him, I offered to help him if he would pay me; he looked at me from top to toe, and did not wish at first to have anything to do with me, as he said my appearance was against me. ’Faith, Shorsha, he had better have looked at home, for his appearance was not much in his favour: he looked very much like a Jew, Shorsha. However, he at last agreed to take me to be his companion or bonnet as he called it; and I was to keep a lookout, and let him know when constables were coming, and to spake a good word for him occasionally, whilst he was chating folks with his thimbles and his pea. So I became his bonnet, and assisted him in the fair, and in many other fairs beside; but I did not like my occupation much, or rather my master, who, though not a big man, was a big thaif, and an unkind one, for do all I could I could never give him pleasure; and he was continually calling me fool and bogtrotter, and twitting me because I could not learn his thaives’ Latin, and discourse with him in it, and comparing me with another acquaintance, or bit of a pal of his, whom he said he had parted with in the fair, and of whom he was fond of saying all kinds of wonderful things, amongst others, that he knew the grammar of all tongues. At last, wearied with being twitted by him with not being able to learn his thaives’ Greek, I proposed that I should teach him Irish, that we should spake it together when we had anything to say in secret. To that he consented willingly; but, och! a purty hand he made with Irish, ’faith, not much better than did I with his thaives’ Hebrew. Then my turn came, and I twitted him nicely with dullness, and compared him with a pal that I had in ould Ireland, in Dungarvon times of yore, to whom I teached Irish, telling him that he was the broth of a boy, and not only knew the grammar of all human tongues, but the dialects of the snakes besides; in fact, I tould him all about your own swate sell; Shorsha, and many a dispute and quarrel had we together about our pals, which was the cleverest fellow, his or mine.

“Well, after having been wid him about two months, I quitted him without noise, taking away one of his tables, and some peas and thimbles; and that I did with a safe conscience, for he paid me nothing, and was not over free with the meat and the drink, though I must say of him that he was a clever fellow, and perfect master of his trade, by which he made a power of money, and bating his not being able to learn Irish, and a certain Jewish lisp which he had, a great master of his