Isopel Berners: The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825Borrow, George
General
Isopel Berners: The History of certain doings in a Staffordshire Dingle, July, 1825
Borrow, George
England -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
It is significant that upon his return from the dream that followed this
reverie, the would-be colonist blew upon the embers and filled and heated
the kettle, that he might be able to welcome Isopel with a cup of the
beverage that she loved. It was the newly awakened Benedick brushing his
hat in the morning; but unhappily his conversion was not so complete as
Benedick's. Love-making and Armenian do not go together, and in the
colloquy that ensued, Belle could not feel assured that the man who
proposed to conjugate the verb "to love" in Armenian, was master of his
intentions in plain English. It was even so. The man of tongues lacked
speech wherewith to make manifest his passion; the vocabulary of the word-
master was insufficient to convince the workhouse girl of one of the
plainest meanings a man can well have. From the banter of the man of
learning the queen of the dingle sought refuge in a precipitate flight.
Almost simultaneously the word-master, albeit with reluctance, decided
that it was high time to give over his "mocking and scoffing." When he
returned with this resolve to the dingle, Isopel Berners had quitted it,
never to return.
Yet ever and anon that splendid and pathetic figure will cross the sky
line of his mental vision--and of ours. "Then the image of Isopel
Berners came into my mind," and the thought "how I had lost her for ever,
and how happy I might have been with her in the New World."
DWELLERS IN THE DINGLE,
AND SOME OTHERS.
MEN.
LAVENGRO, _the autobiographer_, _scholar and philologist_ (Lavengro=_word-
master_); _known among the road-faring folk as the Romany rye_, _or young
squire turned gypsy_.
JASPER PETULENGRO, _a Romany kral or tribal chief_, _horse-dealer and
blacksmith_ (petulengro=_lord of the horseshoe_). "_The Gypsy_."
FRASER, _a popish emissary or propagandist_, _known as the_ "_man in
black_." "_The Priest_."
TAWNO CHIKNO, _the little one_, _so called on account of his immense
size_; _the_ "_Antinous of the dusky people_;" _a great horseman and_
JASPER'S _brother-in-law_.
SYLVESTER, _another brother-in-law_, _an ill-conditioned fellow_, "_the
Lazarus of the Romany tribe_."
BLACK _or_ BLAZING JOHN BOSVILLE (_Anselo Herne_), "_the flaming tinman_"
_a_ "_half-in-half_" _itinerant tinker and bruiser_.
CATCHPOLE, _the landlord of a small inn_, _two miles from the Dingle_,
_and not far from Willenhall in Staffordshire_.
MR. HUNTER, _a radical_, _who wears a snuff-coloured coat and frequents
the inn above named_.
_A postilion_, _whose headquarters are The Swan_, _Stafford_.
WOMEN.
ISOPEL _or_ BELLE BERNERS, _the beauteous queen of the Dingle_.
GREY MOLL, _wife of_ BOSVILLE, _the flying tinker_.
_A niece of the landlord of the inn_.
_The three daughters of Mrs. Herne_:--
PAKOMOVNA, (MRS.) PETULENGRO,
MIKAILIA, (MRS.) CHIKNO.
URSULA, _widow of_ LAUNCELOT LOVELL, _who subsequently marries_
SYLVESTER.
ANIMALS.
AMBROL (_in gypsy_=_a pear_), LAVENGRO'S _little gry or pony_.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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