The pocket George Borrow : $b passages chosen from the works of George BorrowBorrow, George
General
The pocket George Borrow : $b passages chosen from the works of George Borrow
Borrow, George
Authors, English -- 19th century; Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Selections
about many more of the same time and of the same principles. They might
be deluded about Republicanism, as Algernon Sidney was, and as Brutus
was, but they were as honest and brave as either Brutus or Sidney, and as
willing to die for their principles. But the Radicals who succeeded them
were beings of a very different description; they jobbed and traded in
Republicanism, and either parted with it, or at the present day are eager
to part with it, for a consideration.
* * * * *
'Does your honour remember anything about Durham city?'
'Oh yes! I remember a good deal about it.'
'Then, your honour, pray tell us what you remember about it--pray do!
perhaps it will do me good.'
'Well then, I remember that it was a fine old city standing on a hill
with a river running under it, and that it had a fine old church, one of
the finest in the whole of Britain; likewise a fine old castle; and last,
not least, a capital old inn, where I got a capital dinner off roast
Durham beef, and a capital glass of ale, which I believe was the cause of
my being ever after fond of ale.'
* * * * *
I was the last of the file, but I now rushed past John Jones, who was
before me, and next to the old lady, and sure enough there was the chair,
in the wall, of him who was called in his day, and still is called by the
mountaineers of Wales, though his body has been below the earth in the
quiet churchyard one hundred and forty years, Eos Ceiriog, the
Nightingale of Ceiriog, the sweet caroller Huw Morus, the enthusiastic
partizan of Charles and the Church of England, and the never-tiring
lampooner of Oliver and the Independents. There it was, a kind of hollow
in the stone wall, in the hen ffordd, fronting to the west, just above
the gorge at the bottom of which murmurs the brook Ceiriog, there it was,
something like a half barrel chair in a garden, a mouldering stone slab
forming the seat, and a large slate stone, the back, on which were cut
these letters--
H. M. B.
signifying Huw Morus Bard.
'Sit down in the chair, Gwr Boneddig,' said John Jones, 'you have taken
trouble enough to get to it.'
'Do, gentleman,' said the old lady; 'but first let me wipe it with my
apron, for it is very wet and dirty.'
'Let it be,' said I; then taking off my hat I stood uncovered before the
chair, and said in the best Welsh I could command, 'Shade of Huw Morus,
supposing your shade haunts the place which you loved so well when
alive--a Saxon, one of the seed of the Coiling Serpent, has come to this
place to pay that respect to true genius, the Dawn Duw, which he is ever
ready to pay. He read the songs of the Nightingale of Ceiriog in the
most distant part of Lloegr, when he was a brown-haired boy, and now that
he is a grey-haired man he is come to say in this place that they
frequently made his eyes overflow with tears of rapture.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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