Wild Wales: The People, Language, & SceneryBorrow, George
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Wild Wales: The People, Language, & Scenery
Borrow, George
Borrow, George, 1803-1881 -- Travel -- Wales; Wales -- Description and travel
“After breakfast I shall start for Bangor,” said I.
“Do you propose to reach Bangor to-night, signore?”
“Yes,” said I.
“Walking, signore?”
“Yes,” said I; “I always walk in Wales.”
“Then you will have rather a long walk, signore, for Bangor is
thirty-four miles from here.”
I asked him if he was married.
“No, signore; but my brother in Liverpool is.”
“To an Italian?”
“No, signore; to a Welsh girl.”
“And I suppose,” said I, “you will follow his example by marrying one;
perhaps that good-looking girl the landlady’s daughter we were seated
with last night?”
“No, signore; I shall not follow my brother’s example. If ever I take a
wife she shall be of my own village, in Como, whither I hope to return,
as soon as I have picked up a few more pounds.”
“Whether the Austrians are driven away or not?” said I.
“Whether the Austrians are driven away or not—for to my mind there is no
country like Como, signore.”
I ordered breakfast; whilst taking it in the room above I saw through the
open window the Italian trudging forth on his journey, a huge box on his
back, and a weather-glass in his hand—looking the exact image of one of
those men his country people, whom forty years before I had known at N.
I thought of the course of time, sighed and felt a tear gather in my eye.
My breakfast concluded, I paid my bill, and after inquiring the way to
Bangor, and bidding adieu to the kind landlady and her daughter, set out
from Cerrig y Drudion. My course lay west, across a flat country,
bounded in the far distance by the mighty hills I had seen on the
preceding evening. After walking about a mile I overtook a man with a
game leg, that is a leg, which either by nature or accident not being so
long as its brother leg, had a patten attached to it, about five inches
high, to enable it to do duty with the other—he was a fellow with red
shock hair and very red features, and was dressed in ragged coat and
breeches, and a hat which had lost part of its crown, and all its rim, so
that even without a game leg he would have looked rather a queer figure.
In his hand he carried a fiddle.
“Good morning to you,” said I.
“A good marning to your hanner, a merry afternoon and a roaring joyous
evening—that is the worst luck I wish to ye.”
“Are you a native of these parts?” said I.
“Not exactly, your hanner—I am a native of the city of Dublin, or, what’s
all the same thing, of the village of Donnybrook which is close by it.”
“A celebrated place,” said I.
“Your hanner may say that; all the world has heard of Donnybrook, owing
to the humours of its fair. Many is the merry tune I have played to the
boys at that fair.”
“You are a professor of music, I suppose?”
“And not a very bad one as your hanner will say if you will allow me to
play you a tune.”
“Can you play ‘Croppies Lie Down’?”
“I cannot, your hanner; my fingers never learnt to play such a blackguard
tune; but if ye wish to hear ‘Croppies Get Up’ I can oblige ye.”
“You are a Roman Catholic, I suppose?”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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