The Romany Rye: a sequel to "Lavengro"Borrow, George
General
The Romany Rye: a sequel to "Lavengro"
Borrow, George
Adventure stories; England -- Fiction; Romanies -- Fiction
France, who was his cousin, was sending an army to help him, under the
command of his own son, whom the English called Prince Hilt, because when
he was told that he was appointed to the command, he clapped his hand on
the hilt of his sword. So I enlisted into the regiment of the Faith,
which was made up of Spaniards, many of them priests who had run out of
Spain, and broken Germans, and foot-foundered Irish, like myself. It was
said to be a blackguard regiment, that same regiment of the Faith; but,
'faith, I saw nothing blackguardly going on in it, for ye would hardly
reckon card-playing and dominoes, and pitch and toss blackguardly, and I
saw nothing else going on in it. There was one thing in it which I
disliked--the priests drawing their Spanish knives occasionally, when
they lost their money. After we had been some time at Pau, the Army of
the Faith was sent across the mountains into Spain, as the vanguard of
the French; and no sooner did the Spaniards see the Faith than they made
a dash at it, and the Faith ran away, myself along with it, and got
behind the French army, which told it to keep there, and the Faith did
so, and followed the French army, which soon scattered the Spaniards, and
in the end placed the king on his throne again. When the war was over
the Faith was disbanded; some of the foreigners, however, amongst whom I
was one, were put into a Guard regiment, and there I continued for more
than a year.
"One day, being at a place called the Escurial, I took stock, as the
tradesmen say, and found I possessed the sum of eighty dollars, won by
playing at cards; for though I could not play so well with the foreign
cards as with the pack ye gave me, Shorsha, I had yet contrived to win
money from the priests and soldiers of the Faith. Finding myself
possessed of such a capital I determined to leave the service, and to
make the best of my way to Ireland; so I deserted, but coming in an evil
hour to a place they calls Torre Lodones, I found the priest playing at
cards with his parishioners. The sight of the cards made me stop, and
then, fool like, notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wish
to play, so not being able to speak their language I made signs to them
to let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so I
sat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners, and in a
little time had won plenty of their money, but 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
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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