George Borrow | Page 2

is now one of the most
unforgetable of heroes; the name is the man, and for many Englishmen
his form and character have probably created quite a new value for the
name of Jasper. Well, Jasper Petulengro lives. Ambrose Smith died in
1878, at the age of seventy-four, after being visited by the late Queen
Victoria at Knockenhair Park: he was buried in Dunbar Cemetery. {2}
In the matter of his own name Borrow made another creative change of
a significant kind. He was christened George Henry Borrow on July
17th (having been born on the 5th), 1803, at East Dereham, in Norfolk.
As a boy he signed his name, George Henry Borrow. As a young man
of the Byronic age and a translator of Scandinavian literature, he called
himself in print, George Olaus Borrow. His biographer, Dr. William
Ireland Knapp, says that Borrow's first name "expressed the father's
admiration for the reigning monarch," George III.; but there is no
reason to believe this, and certainly Borrow himself made of the
combination which he finally adopted--George Borrow--something that
retains not the slightest flavour of any other George. Such changes are
common enough. John Richard Jefferies becomes Richard Jefferies;
Robert Lewis Balfour Stevenson becomes Robert Louis Stevenson. But
Borrow could touch nothing without transmuting it. For example, in his
Byronic period, when he was about twenty years of age, he was
translating "romantic ballads" from the Danish. In the last verse of one
of these, called "Elvir Hill," he takes the liberty of using the Byronic
"lay":

'Tis therefore I counsel each young Danish swain who may ride in the
forest so dreary, Ne'er to lay down upon lone Elvir Hill though he
chance to be ever so weary.
Twenty years later he used this ballad romantically in writing about his
early childhood. He was travelling with his father's regiment from town
to town and from school to school, and they came to
Berwick-upon-Tweed: {3}
"And it came to pass that, one morning, I found myself extended on the
bank of a river. It was a beautiful morning of early spring; small white
clouds were floating in the heaven, occasionally veiling the
countenance of the sun, whose light, as they retired, would again burst
forth, coursing like a racehorse over the scene--and a goodly scene it
was! Before me, across the water, on an eminence, stood a white old
city, surrounded with lofty walls, above which rose the tops of tall
houses, with here and there a church or steeple. To my right hand was a
long and massive bridge, with many arches and of antique architecture,
which traversed the river. The river was a noble one; the broadest that I
had hitherto seen. Its waters, of a greenish tinge, poured with
impetuosity beneath the narrow arches to meet the sea, close at hand, as
the boom of the billows breaking distinctly upon a beach declared.
There were songs upon the river from the fisher-barks; and
occasionally a chorus, plaintive and wild, such as I had never heard
before, the words of which I did not understand, but which at the
present time, down the long avenue of years, seem in memory's ear to
sound like 'Horam, coram, dago.' Several robust fellows were near me,
some knee-deep in water, employed in hauling the seine upon the
strand. Huge fish were struggling amidst the meshes--princely
salmon--their brilliant mail of blue and silver flashing in the morning
beam; so goodly and gay a scene, in truth, had never greeted my boyish
eye.
"And, as I gazed upon the prospect, my bosom began to heave, and my
tears to trickle. Was it the beauty of the scene which gave rise to these
emotions? Possibly; for though a poor ignorant child--a half-wild
creature--I was not insensible to the loveliness of nature, and took

pleasure in the happiness and handiworks of my fellow-creatures. Yet,
perhaps, in something more deep and mysterious the feeling which then
pervaded me might originate. Who can lie down on Elvir Hill without
experiencing something of the sorcery of the place? Flee from Elvir
Hill, young swain, or the maids of Elle will have power over you, and
you will go elf-wild!--so say the Danes. I had unconsciously laid
myself down on haunted ground; and I am willing to imagine that what
I then experienced was rather connected with the world of spirits and
dreams than with what I actually saw and heard around me. Surely the
elves and genii of the place were conversing, by some inscrutable
means, with the principle of intelligence lurking within the poor
uncultivated clod! Perhaps to that ethereal principle the wonders of the
past, as connected with that stream, the glories of the present, and even
the history of the future, were at that moment being revealed! Of