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

Finn was first learned by Borrow in January, 1854, from his Irish guide Cronan, while travelling in Cornwall (Life, II, p. 86, and note). This fact shows that Murtagh and his tale are introduced here to exhibit the author’s discovery of the identity between the Finn of Ireland and the Eddaic tradition of Sigurd Fafnisbane (p. 281). For Sigurd in the Wilkina Saga is suckled by a hind (p. 120) and fostered by Mymmer Smed or Mimer the Smith (p. 121) whom he eventually slays (p. 124). In the Eddaic Lay of the serpent-killer we read: “Sigurd took the heart of Fafnir and broiled it on a spit. And when he judged that it was done, he touched it with his finger to ascertain if that were really the case. Having burned his finger in the act, he put it to his mouth, and no sooner had the heart’s blood of Fafnir come in contact with Sigurd’s tongue than he understood the speech of birds,” etc. Here we have the two sides verified, the Irish by Cronan, and the Scandian by the Edda. But Brooke’s Reliques, a favourite work of Borrow’s in his Norwich days, and which he cites in 1832 (Life, I, p. 146), give us certain other fragments of these Finnic fables, whereby we can trace the sources of the text before us. For example, after Jack Dale had stripped Murtagh of all his money he is observed to be sitting “in deep despondency, holding his thumb to his mouth” (p. 278). And a little farther on (p. 282) a verse is cited from “Conan the Bald.” Now all this is found in Miss Brooke, that is, the names and the ideas⁠—Conan the Bald (p. 106), Lochlin (p. 46), and Darmod Odeen (minus Taffy) and the verse with this note (p. 109):⁠—“This strange passage is explained by some lines in the Poem of Dubmac-Dighruibh, where Finn is reproached with deriving all his courage from chewing his thumb for prophetic information.” —⁠Knapp ↩

Dungarvon times of old: See Life, I, p. 46, and II, pp. 16⁠–⁠17. Cradock’s letter was dated, 18th August, 1849, and Mr. B.’s answer (I, p. 146) a little after. —⁠Knapp ↩

Siol Loughlin, read “Lochlin” (Irish): Literally “the seed of Norway,” i.e., the Danish or Norwegian race. Miss Brooke very properly says (p. 46): “Lochlin is the Gaelic (and Irish) name for Scandinavia in general;” but Borrow limits it to Denmark⁠—the Danish race. And a little below, “the Loughlin songs” are his Danish Ballads which he published the following year. —⁠Knapp ↩

Religious house: The story of Murtagh at the Irish College in Rome, and his subsequent wanderings in the South of France and in Spain, mask, as we have said elsewhere, the peregrinations of George Borrow in 1826⁠–⁠27. —⁠Knapp ↩

Tipperary. ↩

M’anam on Dioul: [God preserve] my soul from the devil! —⁠Knapp ↩

Raparees: Irish marauders, [in the time of] James II. See Life, I, p. 146, and Brooke’s Reliques, p. 205. The latter says that the word is from the Irish Réubóir Ri, plunderer, robber, freebooter of the king, from reubaim, I tear. —⁠Knapp ↩

Chiviter Vik: Cività Vecchia, the modern seaport of Rome, fifty miles distant. —⁠Knapp ↩

Army of the Faith: Spanish frontier corps of observation under Gen. Don Vicente Quesada, 1823⁠–⁠24. —⁠Knapp ↩

Prince Hilt: The Duke d’Angoulême, nephew of Louis XVIII, and son of the Count d’Artois (afterwards Charles X). D’Angoulême invaded Spain in 1823 with 100,000 Frenchmen, to restore Ferdinand VII to his absolute throne, against the Liberals of 1820⁠–⁠23. —⁠Knapp ↩

To ⸻, read Rome. —⁠Knapp ↩

Educated at ⸻, read Rome —⁠Knapp ↩

Direction of the east, read “south.” He could only have gone south from Horncastle to reach Boston (the “large town on the arm of the sea”) that day. The next he came to Spalding, some fifteen miles farther, where he met the recruiting serjeant, thence on to Norwich by Lynn Regis.

We must not forget that before Lavengro was begun, and fifteen years prior to the publication of The Romany Rye, that is, 26th December, 1842, Mr. Petulengro remarked to George Borrow at Oulton: “I suppose you have not forgot how, fifteen [seventeen] years ago, when you made horseshoes in the dingle by the side of the great north road, I lent you fifty guineas to purchase the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred.”414 Now, this is a very remarkable statement, and, taken in connection with the fact that so little is said about Horncastle in the book, it seems to me we are justified in proclaiming that Borrow was never in Horncastle at all. The interview with the Magyar and the syllabus of Hungarian history are clearly drawn from his experiences in Hungary and Transylvania in the year 1844, and hence are an anachronism here. It is a pity that the author did not adhere to the chronological facts of his life so strictly in The Romany Rye as he did in Lavengro. Truth and literature would have gained by it. And then that valedictory pledge,415 confirmed in the appendix, drawing a veil over the period of his travails, if not his travels, was an error of judgment which, in an autobiography will, we fear, not easily be condoned. —⁠Knapp ↩

Age of nineteen, read “twenty;” he was twenty-one less four months at his father’s death. —⁠Knapp ↩

Children of