In 1862, between Borrow’s two visits to Ireland, his “Wild Wales” was published. It had been heralded by an advertisement in 1857, by the publication of the “Sleeping Bard” in 1860, and by an article on “The Welsh and their Literature” in the “Quarterly” for January, 1861. This article quotes “an unpublished work called ‘Wild Wales’” and “Mr. Borrow’s unpublished work, ‘Celtic Bards, Chiefs and Kings.’” It opened with a vivid story of the coming of Hu Gadarn and his Cymry to Britain:

“Hu and his people took possession of the best parts of the island, either driving the few Gaels to other districts or admitting them to their confederacy. As the country was in a very wild state, much overgrown with forests in which bears and wolves wandered, and abounding with deep stagnant pools, which were the haunts of the avanc or crocodile, Hu forthwith set about clearing it of some of its horrors, and making it more fit to be the abiding place of civilised beings. He made his people cut down woods and forests, and destroy, as far as was possible, wild beasts and crocodiles. He himself went to a gloomy pool, the haunt of the king of the efync, baited a huge hook attached to a cable, flung it into the pool, and when the monster had gorged the snare drew him out by means of certain gigantic oxen, which he had tamed to the plough, and burnt his horrid, wet, scaly carcass on a fire. He then caused enclosures to be made, fields to be ploughed and sown, pleasant wooden houses to be built, bees to be sheltered and encouraged, and schools to be erected where song and music were taught. O a truly great man was Hu Gadarn! though a warrior, he preferred the sickle and pruning hook to the sword, and the sound of the song and lute to the hoarse blast of the buffalo’s horn:

“The mighty Hu with mead would pay
The bard for his melodious lay;
The Emperor of land and sea
And of all living things was he.”

This probably represents Borrow’s view of early history, simple, heroical and clear, as it would have been had he been in command of it. The article professed to be a review of Borrow’s “Sleeping Bard,” and was in fact by Borrow himself. He had achieved the supreme honour of reviewing his own work, and, as it fell out, he persuaded the public to buy every copy. Very few were found to buy “Wild Wales,” notwithstanding. The first edition of a thousand copies lasted three years; the second, of three thousand, lasted twenty-three years. Borrow was ridiculed for informing his readers that he paid his bill at a Welsh inn, without mentioning the amount. He was praised for having written “the first clever book . . . in which an honest attempt is made to do justice to the Welsh literature,” for knowing far more than most educated Welshmen about that literature, and for describing his travels and encounters “with much of the freshness, humour and geniality of his earlier days,” for writing in fact “the best book about Wales ever published.”

Certainly no later book which could be compared with it has been as good, or nearly as good. As for its predecessors, the “Itinerary” and the “Description” of Gerald of Wales, even setting aside the charm of antiquity, make a book that is equal to “Wild Wales” for originality, vivacity and truth. Of the antiquarian and picturesque travellers in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth none wrote anything that is valuable except for some facts and some evidence of taste. Borrow himself probably knew few or none of them, though he mentions Gerald. There is no evidence that he knew the great nineteenth-century collections of Welsh manuscripts and translations. He says nothing of the “Mabinogion.” He had apparently never heard of the pedestrian Iolo Morganwg. He perhaps never saw Stephens’ “Literature of the Kymry.” His knowledge was picked up anyhow and anywhere from Welsh texts and Lhuyd’s “ArchÆologia,” without system and with very little friendly discussion or comparison. Wales, therefore, was to him as wonderful as Spain, and equally uncharted. What he saw did not spoil the visionary image, and his enthusiasm coupled with curiosity gives the book of his travels just the continuous impulse which he never found for his Cornish, Manx, Irish or Scottish notes. He was able to fill the book with sympathetic observation and genial self-revelation.

The book is of course a tourist’s book. Borrow went through the country as a gentleman, running no risks, and having scarcely an object except to see what was to be seen and to please himself. He got, as he probably counted on getting, the consideration due to a gentleman who can pay his way and meets only the humbler sort of people, publicans, farmers, drovers, labourers, sextons, parish clerks, and men upon the road. He seldom stayed more than a night or an hour or two anywhere. His pictures, therefore, are the impressions of the moment, wrought up at leisure. His few weeks in Wales made a book of the same size as an equal number of years in Spain.

Sometimes he writes like a detached observer working from notes, and the result has little value except in so far as it is a pure record of what was to be seen at such and such a place in the year 1854. There are many short passages apparently straight from his notes, dead and useless. The description of Llangollen Fair, on August 21, is of this kind, but superior, and I shall quote it entire:

“The day was dull with occasional showers. I went to see the fair about noon. It was held in and near a little square in the south-east quarter of the town, of which square the police-station is the principal feature on the side of the west, and an inn, bearing the sign of the Grapes, on the east. The fair was a little bustling fair, attended by plenty of people from the country, and from the English border, and by some who appeared to come from a greater distance than the border. A dense row of carts extended from the police-station, half across the space. These carts were filled with pigs, and had stout cord nettings drawn over them, to prevent the animals escaping. By the sides of these carts the principal business of the fair appeared to be going on—there stood the owners, male and female, higgling with Llangollen men and women, who came to buy. The pigs were all small, and the price given seemed to vary from eighteen to twenty-five shillings. Those who bought pigs generally carried them away in their arms; and then there was no little diversion; dire was the screaming of the porkers, yet the purchaser invariably appeared to know how to manage his bargain, keeping the left arm round the body of the swine and with the right hand fast gripping the ear—some few were led away by strings. There were some Welsh cattle, small of course, and the purchasers of these seemed to be Englishmen, tall burly fellows in general, far exceeding the Welsh in height and size.

“Much business in the cattle-line did not seem, however, to be going on. Now and then a big fellow made an offer, and held out his hand for a little Pictish grazier to give it a slap—a cattle bargain being concluded by a slap of the hand—but the Welshman generally turned away, with a half-resentful exclamation. There were a few horses and ponies in a street leading into the fair from the south.

“I saw none sold, however. A tall athletic figure was striding amongst them, evidently a jockey and a stranger, looking at them and occasionally asking a slight question of one or another of their proprietors, but he did not buy. He might in age be about eight-and-twenty, and about six feet and three-quarters of an inch in height; in build he was perfection itself—a better-built man I never saw. He wore a cap and a brown jockey coat, trowsers, leggings, and highlows, and sported a single spur. He had whiskers—all jockeys should have whiskers—but he had what I did not like, and what no genuine jockey should have, a moustache, which looks coxcombical and Frenchified—but most things have terribly changed since I was young. Three or four hardy-looking fellows, policemen, were gliding about in their blue coats and leather hats, holding their thin walking-sticks behind them; conspicuous amongst whom was the leader, a tall lathy North Briton with a keen eye and hard features. Now if I add there was much gabbling of Welsh round about, and here and there some slight sawing of English—that in the street leading from the north there were some stalls of gingerbread and a table at which a queer-looking being with a red Greek-looking cap on his head, sold rhubarb, herbs, and phials containing the Lord knows what, and who spoke a low vulgar English dialect,—I repeat, if I add this, I think I have said all that is necessary about Llangollen Fair.”

But this is a somewhat exceptional passage, and the same detachment is rarely found except in his descriptions of scenery, which are short and serve well enough to remind the reader of the great hills, the rapid waters, the rocks, and the furnaces, chimneys and pits. Borrow certainly does remind us of these things. In the first place he does so by a hundred minute and scattered suggestions of the romantic and sublime, and so general that only a pedant will object to the nightingales which he heard singing in August near Bethesda. He gives us black mountains, gloomy shadows, cascades falling into lakes, “singular-looking” rocks, and mountain villages like one in Castile or La Mancha but for the trees, mountains that made him exclaim: “I have had Heaven opened to me,” moors of a “wretched russet colour,” “black gloomy narrow glens.” He can also be precise and connoisseur-like, as when he describes the cataract at Llan Rhaiadr:

“What shall I liken it to? I scarcely know, unless to an immense skein of silk agitated and disturbed by tempestuous blasts, or to the long tail of a grey courser at furious speed. Through the profusion of long silvery threads or hairs, or what looked such, I could here and there see the black sides of the crag down which the Rhyadr precipitated itself with something between a boom and a roar.”

He is still more a connoisseur when he continues:

“I never saw water falling so gracefully, so much like thin beautiful threads as here. Yet even this cataract has its blemish. What beautiful object has not something which more or less mars its loveliness? There is an ugly black bridge or semicircle of rock, about two feet in diameter and about twenty feet high, which rises some little way below it, and under which the water, after reaching the bottom, passes, which intercepts the sight, and prevents it from taking in the whole fall at once. This unsightly object has stood where it now stands since the day of creation, and will probably remain there to the day of judgment. It would be a desecration of nature to remove it by art, but no one could regret if nature in one of her floods were to sweep it away.”

But Borrow’s temperamental method—where he undertakes to do more than sketch his environment in the blurred large method corresponding to ordinary passing impressions—is the rhetorical sublime of this mountain lake between Festiniog and Bala:

“I sped towards it through gorse and heather, occasionally leaping a deep drain. At last I reached it. It was a small lake. Wearied and panting, I flung myself on its bank, and gazed upon it.

“There lay the lake in the low bottom, surrounded by the heathery hillocks; there it lay quite still, the hot sun reflected upon its surface, which shone like a polished blue shield. Near the shore it was shallow, at least near that shore upon which I lay. But farther on, my eye, practised in deciding upon the depths of waters, saw reason to suppose that its depth was very great. As I gazed upon it my mind indulged in strange musings. I thought of the afanc, a creature which some have supposed to be the harmless and industrious beaver, others the frightful and destructive crocodile. I wondered whether the afanc was the crocodile or the beaver, and speedily had no doubt that the name was originally applied to the crocodile.

“‘O, who can doubt,’ thought I, ‘that the word was originally intended for something monstrous and horrible? Is there not something horrible in the look and sound of the word afanc, something connected with the opening and shutting of immense jaws, and the swallowing of writhing prey? Is not the word a fitting brother of the Arabic timsah, denoting the dread horny lizard of the waters? Moreover, have we not the voice of tradition that the afanc was something monstrous? Does it not say that Hu the Mighty, the inventor of husbandry, who brought the Cumry from the summer-country, drew the old afanc out of the lake of lakes with his four gigantic oxen? Would he have had recourse to them to draw out the little harmless beaver? O, surely not. Yet have I no doubt that, when the crocodile had disappeared from the lands where the Cumric language was spoken, the name afanc was applied to the beaver, probably his successor in the pool; the beaver now called in Cumric Llostlydan, or the broad-tailed, for tradition’s voice is strong that the beaver has at one time been called the afanc.’ Then I wondered whether the pool before me had been the haunt of the afanc, considered both as crocodile and beaver. I saw no reason to suppose that it had not. ‘If crocodiles,’ thought I, ‘ever existed in Britain, and who shall say they have not? seeing that their remains have been discovered, why should they not have haunted this pool? If beavers ever existed in Britain, and do not tradition and Giraldus say that they have? why should they not have existed in this pool?

“‘At a time almost inconceivably remote, when the hills around were covered with woods, through which the elk and the bison and the wild cow strolled, when men were rare throughout the lands, and unlike in most things to the present race—at such a period—and such a period there has been—I can easily conceive that the afanc-crocodile haunted this pool, and that when the elk or bison or wild cow came to drink of its waters, the grim beast would occasionally rush forth, and seizing his bellowing victim, would return with it to the deeps before me to luxuriate at his ease upon its flesh. And at time less remote, when the crocodile was no more, and though the woods still covered the hills, and wild cattle strolled about, men were more numerous than before, and less unlike the present race, I can easily conceive this lake to have been the haunt of the afanc-beaver, that he here built cunningly his house of trees and clay, and that to this lake the native would come with his net and his spear to hunt the animal for his precious fur. Probably if the depths of that pool were searched, relics of the crocodile and the beaver might be found, along with other strange things connected with the periods in which they respectively lived. Happy were I if for a brief space I could become a Cingalese, that I might swim out far into that pool, dive down into its deepest part, and endeavour to discover any strange things which beneath its surface may lie.’ Much in this guise rolled my thoughts as I lay stretched on the margin of the lake.”

In another place he tells a poor man that he believes in the sea-serpent, and has a story of one seen in the very neighbourhood where he meets the man. Immediately after the description of the lake there is a proof—one of many—that he was writing straight from notes. Speaking of a rivulet, he says: “It was crossed by two bridges, one immensely old and terribly delapidated, the other old enough, but in better repair—went and drank under the oldest bridge of the two.” The book is large and strong enough to stand many such infinitesimal blemishes.

Alongside of the sublime I will put what Borrow says he liked better. He is standing on a bridge over the Ceiriog, just after visiting the house of Huw Morus at Pont y Meibion:

“About a hundred yards distant was a small watermill, built over the rivulet, the wheel going slowly, slowly round; large quantities of pigs, the generality of them brindled, were either browsing on the banks, or lying close to the sides, half immersed in the water; one immense white hog, the monarch seemingly of the herd, was standing in the middle of the current. Such was the scene which I saw from the bridge, a scene of quiet rural life well suited to the brushes of two or three of the old Dutch painters, or to those of men scarcely inferior to them in their own style—Gainsborough, Moreland, and Crome. My mind for the last half-hour had been in a highly-excited state; I had been repeating verses of old Huw Morus, brought to my recollection by the sight of his dwelling-place; they were ranting roaring verses, against the Roundheads. I admired the vigour, but disliked the principles which they displayed; and admiration on the one hand, and disapproval on the other, bred a commotion in my mind like that raised on the sea when tide runs one way and wind blows another. The quiet scene from the bridge, however, produced a sedative effect on my mind, and when I resumed my journey I had forgotten Huw, his verses, and all about Roundheads and Cavaliers.”

But it must be said that if the book is on the whole a cheerful one, its cheerfulness not only receives a foil from the rhetorical sublime, but is a little misted by a melancholy note here and there. Thus he sees “a melancholy ship” out on the sea near Holyhead. He qualifies russet twice as “wretched” in describing a moor. He speaks of “strange-looking” hills near Pont Erwyd, and again near the Devil’s Bridge. His moods were easily changed. He speaks of “wretched russet hills,” with no birds singing, but only “the lowing of a wretched bullock,” and then of beautiful hills that filled his veins with fresh life so that he walked on merrily.

As for his people, it cannot be asserted that they are always alive though they are often very Welsh. They are sketched, with dialogue and description, after the manner of “The Bible in Spain,” though being nearer home they had to be more modest in their peculiarities. He establishes Welsh enthusiasm, hospitality and suspiciousness, in a very friendly manner. The poet-innkeeper is an excellent sketch of a mild but by no means spiritless type. He is accompanied by a man with a bulging shoe who drinks ale and continually ejaculates: “The greatest poet in the world”; for example, when Borrow asks: “Then I have the honour to be seated with a bard of Anglesey?” “Tut, tut,” says the bard. Borrow agrees with him that envy—which has kept him from the bardic chair—will not always prevail:

“‘Sir,’ said the man in grey, ‘I am delighted to hear you. Give me your hand, your honourable hand. Sir, you have now felt the hand-grasp of a Welshman, to say nothing of an Anglesey bard, and I have felt that of a Briton, perhaps a bard, a brother, sir? O, when I first saw your face out there in the dyffryn, I at once recognised in it that of a kindred spirit, and I felt compelled to ask you to drink. Drink, sir! but how is this? the jug is empty—how is this?—O, I see—my friend, sir, though an excellent individual, is indiscreet, sir—very indiscreet. Landlord, bring this moment another jug of ale.’

“‘The greatest prydydd,’ stuttered he of the bulged shoe—‘the greatest prydydd—Oh—’

“‘Tut, tut,’ said the man in grey.

“‘I speak the truth and care for no one,’ said he of the tattered hat. ‘I say the greatest prydydd. If any one wishes to gainsay me let him show his face, and Myn Diawl—’

The landlord brought the ale, placed it on the table, and then stood as if waiting for something.

“‘I suppose you are waiting to be paid,’ said I; ‘what is your demand?’

“‘Sixpence for this jug, and sixpence for the other,’ said the landlord.

“I took out a shilling and said: ‘It is but right that I should pay half of the reckoning, and as the whole affair is merely a shilling matter I should feel obliged in being permitted to pay the whole, so, landlord, take the shilling and remember you are paid.’ I then delivered the shilling to the landlord, but had no sooner done so than the man in grey, starting up in violent agitation, wrested the money from the other, and flung it down on the table before me saying:—

“‘No, no, that will never do. I invited you in here to drink, and now you would pay for the liquor which I ordered. You English are free with your money, but you are sometimes free with it at the expense of people’s feelings. I am a Welshman, and I know Englishmen consider all Welshmen hogs. But we are not hogs, mind you! for we have little feelings which hogs have not. Moreover, I would have you know that we have money, though perhaps not so much as the Saxon.’ Then putting his hand into his pocket he pulled out a shilling, and giving it to the landlord, said in Welsh: ‘Now thou art paid, and mayst go thy ways till thou art again called for. I do not know why thou didst stay after thou hadst put down the ale. Thou didst know enough of me to know that thou didst run no risk of not being paid.’

“‘But,’ said I, after the landlord had departed, ‘I must insist on being [? paying] my share. Did you not hear me say that I would give a quart of ale to see a poet?’

“‘A poet’s face,’ said the man in grey, ‘should be common to all, even like that of the sun. He is no true poet, who would keep his face from the world.’

“‘But,’ said I, ‘the sun frequently hides his head from the world, behind a cloud.’

“‘Not so,’ said the man in grey. ‘The sun does not hide his face, it is the cloud that hides it. The sun is always glad enough to be seen, and so is the poet. If both are occasionally hid, trust me it is no fault of theirs. Bear that in mind; and now pray take up your money.’

“‘That man is a gentleman,’ thought I to myself, ‘whether poet or not; but I really believe him to be a poet; were he not he could hardly talk in the manner I have just heard him.’

“The man in grey now filled my glass, his own and that of his companion. The latter emptied his in a minute, not forgetting first to say ‘the best prydydd in all the world!’ The man in grey was also not slow to empty his own. The jug now passed rapidly between my two friends, for the poet seemed determined to have his full share of the beverage. I allowed the ale in my glass to remain untasted, and began to talk about the bards, and to quote from their works. I soon found that the man in grey knew quite as much of the old bards and their works as myself. In one instance he convicted me of a mistake.

“I had quoted those remarkable lines in which an old bard, doubtless seeing the Menai Bridge by means of second sight, says: ‘I will pass to the land of Mona notwithstanding the waters of Menai, without waiting for the ebb’—and was feeling not a little proud of my erudition when the man in grey, after looking at me for a moment fixedly, asked me the name of the bard who composed them—‘Sion Tudor,’ I replied.

“‘There you are wrong,’ said the man in grey; ‘his name was not Sion Tudor, but Robert Vychan, in English, Little Bob. Sion Tudor wrote an englyn on the Skerries whirlpool in the Menai; but it was Little Bob who wrote the stanza in which the future bridge over the Menai is hinted at.’

“‘You are right,’ said I, ‘you are right. Well, I am glad that all song and learning are not dead in Ynis Fon.’

“‘Dead,’ said the man in grey, whose features began to be rather flushed, ‘they are neither dead, nor ever will be. There are plenty of poets in Anglesey. . . .’”

The whole sketch is in Borrow’s liberal unqualified style, but keeping on the right side of caricature. The combination of modesty, touchiness and pride, without humour, is typical and happily caught.

The chief fault of his Welsh portraits, in fact, is his almost invariable, and almost always unnecessary, exhibition of his own superiority. He is nearly always the big clever gentleman catechizing certain quaint little rustic foreigners. He met one old man with a crabstick who told him his Welsh was almost as bad as his English, and a drover who had the advantage of him in decided opinions and a sense of superiority, and put him down as a pig-jobber; but these are exceptions. He is not unkind, but on the other hand he forgets that as a rule his size, his purse, and his remarkable appearance and qualities put his casual hosts very much at a disadvantage, and he is thus led to exaggerate what suspiciousness he observed.

His success is all the more wonderful when his position and his almost total lack of condescension and concession are considered, but considered they must be. When he met a Welsh clergyman who could talk about the Welsh language, Huw Morus and ale, he said nothing about him except that he was “a capital specimen of the Welsh country clergyman. His name was Walter Jones.” Too often he merely got answers to his questions, which break up his pages in an agreeable manner, but do little more. In such conversations we should fare ill indeed if one of the parties were not Borrow, and even as it is, he can be tedious beyond the limits necessary for truth. I will give an example:

“After a little time I entered into conversation with my guide. He had not a word of English. ‘Are you married?’ said I.

“‘In truth I am, sir.’

“‘What family have you?’

“‘I have a daughter.’

“‘Where do you live?’

“‘At the house of the Rhyadr.’

“‘I suppose you live there as servant?’

“‘No, sir, I live there as master.’

“‘Is the good woman I saw there your wife?’

“‘In truth, sir, she is.’

“‘And the young girl I saw your daughter?’

“‘Yes, sir, she is my daughter.’

“‘And how came the good woman not to tell me you were her husband?’

“‘I suppose, sir, you did not ask who I was, and she thought you did not care to know.’ . . .”

To multiply instances might cease to be amusing. It may have been Borrow’s right way of getting what he wanted, though it sounds like a Charity Organization inquisitor. As to the effectiveness of setting down every step of the process instead of the result, there can hardly be two opinions, unless the reader prefers an impression of the wandering inquisitive gentleman to one of the people questioned. Probably these barren dialogues may be set down to indolence or to the too facile adoption of a trick. They are too casual and slight to be exact, and on the other hand they are too literal to give a direct impression.

Luckily he diversified such conversation with stories of poets and robbers, gleaned from his books or from wayside company. The best of this company was naturally not the humble homekeeping publican or cottager, but the man or woman of the roads, Gypsy or Irish. The vagabond Irish, for example, give him early in the book an effective contrast to the more quiet Welsh; his guide tells how they gave him a terrible fright:

“I had been across the Berwyn to carry home a piece of weaving work to a person who employs me. It was night as I returned, and when I was about half-way down the hill, at a place which is called Allt Paddy, because the Gwyddelod are in the habit of taking up their quarters there, I came upon a gang of them, who had come there and camped and lighted their fire, whilst I was on the other side of the hill. There were nearly twenty of them, men and women, and amongst the rest was a man standing naked in a tub of water with two women stroking him down with clouts. He was a large fierce-looking fellow, and his body, on which the flame of the fire glittered, was nearly covered with red hair. I never saw such a sight. As I passed they glared at me and talked violently in their Paddy Gwyddel, but did not offer to molest me. I hastened down the hill, and right glad I was when I found myself safe and sound at my house in Llangollen, with my money in my pocket, for I had several shillings there, which the man across the hill had paid me for the work which I had done.”

The best man in the book is the Irish fiddler, with a shock of red hair, a hat that had lost part of its crown and all its rim, and a game leg. This Irishman in the early part of the book and the Irishwoman at the end are characters that Borrow could put his own blood into. He has done so in a manner equal to anything in the same kind in his earlier books. I shall quote the whole interview with the man. It is an admirable piece of imagination. If any man thinks it anything else, let him spend ten years in taking down conversations in trains and taverns and ten years in writing them up, and should he have anything as good as this to show, he has a most rare talent:

“‘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?’

“‘I am not, your hanner—I am a Catholic to the backbone, just like my father before me. Come, your hanner, shall I play ye “Croppies Get Up”?’

“‘No,’ said I; ‘It’s a tune that doesn’t please my ears. If, however, you choose to play “Croppies Lie Down,” I’ll give you a shilling.’

“‘Your hanner will give me a shilling?’

“‘Yes,’ said I, ‘if you play “Croppies Lie Down”: but you know you cannot play it, your fingers never learned the tune.’

“‘They never did, your hanner; but they have heard it played of ould by the blackguard Orange fiddlers of Dublin on the first of July, when the Protestant boys used to walk round Willie’s statue on College Green—so if your hanner gives me the shilling they may perhaps bring out something like it.’

“‘Very good,’ said I; ‘begin!’

“‘But, your hanner, what shall we do for the words? Though my fingers may remember the tune, my tongue does not remember the words—that is unless . . .’

“‘I give another shilling,’ said I; ‘but never mind you the words; I know the words, and will repeat them.’

“‘And your hanner will give me a shilling?’

“‘If you play the tune,’ said I.

“‘Hanner bright, your hanner?’

“‘Honour bright,’ said I.

“Thereupon the fiddler, taking his bow and shouldering his fiddle, struck up in first-rate style the glorious tune, which I had so often heard with rapture in the days of my boyhood in the barrack yard of Clonmel; whilst I walking by his side as he stumped along, caused the welkin to resound with the words, which were the delight of the young gentlemen of the Protestant academy of that beautiful old town.

“‘I never heard those words before,’ said the fiddler, after I had finished the first stanza.

“‘Get on with you,’ said I.

“‘Regular Orange words!’ said the fiddler, on my finishing the second stanza.

“‘Do you choose to get on?’ said I.

“‘More blackguard Orange words I never heard!’ cried the fiddler, on my coming to the conclusion of the third stanza. ‘Divil a bit farther will I play; at any rate till I get the shilling.’

“‘Here it is for you,’ said I; ‘the song is ended and of course the tune.’

“‘Thank your hanner,’ said the fiddler, taking the money, ‘your hanner has kept your word with me, which is more than I thought your hanner would. And now, your hanner, let me ask you why did your hanner wish for that tune, which is not only a blackguard one, but quite out of date; and where did your hanner get the words?’

“‘I used to hear the tune in my boyish days,’ said I, ‘and wished to hear it again, for though you call it a blackguard tune, it is the sweetest and most noble air that Ireland, the land of music, has ever produced. As for the words, never mind where I got them; they are violent enough, but not half so violent as the words of some of the songs made against the Irish Protestants by the priests.’

“‘Your hanner is an Orange man, I see. Well, your hanner, the Orange is now in the kennel, and the Croppies have it all their own way.’

“‘And perhaps,’ said I, ‘before I die, the Orange will be out of the kennel and the Croppies in, even as they were in my young days.’

“‘Who knows, your hanner? and who knows that I may not play the ould tune round Willie’s image in College Green, even as I used some twenty-seven years ago?’

“‘O then you have been an Orange fiddler?’

“‘I have, your hanner. And now as your hanner has behaved like a gentleman to me I will tell ye all my history. I was born in the city of Dublin, that is in the village of Donnybrook, as I tould your hanner before. It was to the trade of bricklaying I was bred, and bricklaying I followed till at last, getting my leg smashed, not by falling off the ladder, but by a row in the fair, I was obliged to give it up, for how could I run up the ladder with a patten on my foot, which they put on to make my broken leg as long as the other. Well, your hanner; being obliged to give up my bricklaying, I took to fiddling, to which I had always a natural inclination, and played about the streets, and at fairs, and wakes, and weddings. At length some Orange men getting acquainted with me, and liking my style of playing, invited me to their lodge, where they gave me to drink, and tould me that if I would change my religion and join them, and play their tunes, they would make it answer my purpose. Well, your hanner, without much stickling I gave up my Popery, joined the Orange lodge, learned the Orange tunes, and became a regular Protestant boy, and truly the Orange men kept their word, and made it answer my purpose. O the meat and drink I got, and the money I made by playing at the Orange lodges and before the processions when the Orange men paraded the streets with their Orange colours. And O, what a day for me was the glorious first of July when with my whole body covered with Orange ribbons I fiddled “Croppies Lie Down”—“Boyne Water,” and the “Protestant Boys” before the procession which walked round Willie’s figure on horseback in College Green, the man and horse all ablaze with Orange colours. But nothing lasts under the sun, as your hanner knows; Orangeism began to go down; the Government scowled at it, and at last passed a law preventing the Protestant boys dressing up the figure on the first of July, and walking round it. That was the death-blow of the Orange party, your hanner; they never recovered it, but began to despond and dwindle, and I with them, for there was scarcely any demand for Orange tunes. Then Dan O’Connell arose with his emancipation and repale cries, and then instead of Orange processions and walkings, there were Papist processions and mobs, which made me afraid to stir out, lest knowing me for an Orange fiddler, they should break my head, as the boys broke my leg at Donnybrook fair. At length some of the repalers and emancipators knowing that I was a first-rate hand at fiddling came to me, and tould me, that if I would give over playing “Croppies Lie Down” and other Orange tunes, and would play “Croppies Get Up,” and what not, and become a Catholic and a repaler, and an emancipator, they would make a man of me—so as my Orange trade was gone, and I was half-starved, I consinted, not however till they had introduced me to Daniel O’Connell, who called me a credit to my country, and the Irish Horpheus, and promised me a sovereign if I would consint to join the cause, as he called it. Well, your hanner, I joined with the cause and became a Papist, I mane a Catholic once more, and went at the head of processions, covered all over with green ribbons, playing “Croppies Get Up,” “Granny Whale,” and the like. But, your hanner; though I went the whole hog with the repalers and emancipators, they did not make their words good by making a man of me. Scant and sparing were they in the mate and drink, and yet more sparing in the money, and Daniel O’Connell never gave me the sovereign which he promised me. No, your hanner, though I played “Croppies Get Up,” till my fingers ached, as I stumped before him and his mobs and processions, he never gave me the sovereign: unlike your hanner who gave me the shilling ye promised me for playing “Croppies Lie Down,” Daniel O’Connell never gave me the sovereign he promised me for playing “Croppies Get Up.” Och, your hanner, I often wished the ould Orange days were back again. However as I could do no better I continued going the whole hog with the emancipators and repalers and Dan O’Connell; I went the whole animal with them till they had got emancipation; and I went the whole animal with them till they nearly got repale—when all of a sudden they let the whole thing drop—Dan and his party having frighted the Government out of its seven senses, and gotten all they thought they could get, in money and places, which was all they wanted, let the whole hullabaloo drop, and of course myself, who formed part of it. I went to those who had persuaded me to give up my Orange tunes, and to play Papist ones, begging them to give me work; but they tould me very civilly that they had no farther occasion for my services. I went to Daniel O’Connell reminding him of the sovereign he had promised me, and offering if he gave it me to play “Croppies Get Up” under the nose of the lord-lieutenant himself; but he tould me that he had not time to attend to me, and when I persisted, bade me go to the Divil and shake myself. Well, your hanner, seeing no prospect for myself in my own country, and having incurred some little debts, for which I feared to be arrested, I came over to England and Wales, where with little content and satisfaction I have passed seven years.’

“‘Well,’ said I, ‘thank you for your history—farewell.’

“‘Stap, your hanner; does your hanner think that the Orange will ever be out of the kennel, and that the Orange boys will ever walk round the brass man and horse in College Green as they did of ould?’

“‘Who knows?’ said I. ‘But suppose all that were to happen, what would it signify to you?’

“‘Why then Divil in my patten if I would not go back to Donnybrook and Dublin, hoist the Orange cockade, and become as good an Orange boy as ever.’

“‘What,’ said I, ‘and give up Popery for the second time?’

“‘I would, your hanner; and why not? for in spite of what I have heard Father Toban say, I am by no means certain that all Protestants will be damned.’

“‘Farewell,’ said I.

“‘Farewell, your hanner, and long life and prosperity to you! God bless your hanner and your Orange face. Ah, the Orange boys are the boys for keeping faith. They never served me as Dan O’Connell and his dirty gang of repalers and emancipators did. Farewell, your hanner, once more; and here’s another scratch of the illigant tune your hanner is so fond of, to cheer up your hanner’s ears upon your way.’

“And long after I had left him I could hear him playing on his fiddle in first-rate style the beautiful tune of ‘Down, down, Croppies Lie Down.’”