Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration | Page 5

the Fenland
between Lynn and Wisbech, of a monstrous giant, by slaying him with
the axle-tree of his cart. I gave the full story of this Norfolk giant-killer
in the Gentleman's Magazine, for January, 1896. The boy's genius for
story telling was quite exceptional, and when he was at Norwich
Grammar School, as his schoolfellow Dr. Martineau informed me, "He
used to gather about him three or four favourite schoolfellows, after
they had learned their class lesson and before the class was called up,
and with a sheet of paper and book on his knee, invent and tell a story,
making rapid little pictures of each Dramatis Persona. The plot was
woven and spread out with much ingenuity, and the characters were
various and well-discriminated. But two of them were sure to turn up in
every tale, the Devil and the Pope: and the working of the drama
invariably had the same issue--the utter ruin and disgrace of these two
Potentates."
At Clonmel it was his good luck to make friends with one more notable
character, another figure in his gallery of strange personages--Murtagh,
a Papist gasoon, sent to school by his father to be "made a saggrart of

and sent to Paris and Salamanca." But the gasoon loved cards better.
George had a new pack, which soon changed hands. "You can't learn
Greek, so you must teach Irish!" said George. "Before Christmas,
Murtagh was playing at cards with his brother Denis, and I could speak
a considerable quantity of broken Irish."
In January, 1816, the regiment was moved on to Templemore, a
charming town in mid-Tipperary, where the Borrows remained but a
short time, reaching Norwich again on May 13th, and tarrying at the
Crown and Angel till they settled at the historic little house in King's
Court, Willow Lane, which they leased from a builder named Thomas
King. At the instance of Sir Peter Eade, it was re-named Borrow's
Court, and the tablet commemorating the residence there of George
Borrow was affixed on November 6th, 1891. Now, by the generosity of
the Lord Mayor of Norwich (Arthur Michael Samuel), in this year of
grace 1913, it has become a possession of the City of Norwich as a
Borrow Museum in perpetuity.
At Templemore George Borrow, tall and large-limbed for a lad of
thirteen, still had adventures; for on an excursion to visit his brother at
Loughmore, he encountered the fierce "Dog of Peace" and its master,
Jerry Grant, the outlaw--"a fairy man, in league with fairies and spirits,
and able to work much harm by supernatural means, on which account
the peasants held him in great awe." The account of Sergeant Bagge's
encounter with this wizardly creature is in Borrow's best style. The
sergeant thought he had the fellow fast by the throat, but suddenly "the
man seemed to melt away from his grasp, and the wind howled more
and more, and the night poured down darker and darker, the snow and
the sleet thicker and more blinding. 'Lord have mercy upon us!' said
Bagge, who concluded that the tussle was 'not fair but something Irish
and supernatural.'" "I daresay," comments George to his brother, "he's
right. I have read of witchcraft in the Bible."
At Templemore, too, our boy of thirteen learned to ride, mounted on a
tremendous "gallant specimen of the genuine Irish cob," said by
Borrow to be nearly extinct in his day. This horse had been the only
friend in the world of his groom, but after a blow would not let him

mount. So young Borrow mounted the animal barebacked, for, said the
groom, "If you are ever to be a frank rider, you must begin without a
saddle; . . . leave it all to him." Following the groom's directions, the
cob gave his young rider every assistance, and great was the lad's joy!
"Oh, that ride! that first ride!--most truly it was an epoch in my
existence; and I still look back to it with feelings of longing and regret.
People may talk of first love--it is a very agreeable event, I daresay--but
give me the flush and triumph, and glorious sweat of a first ride, like
mine on the mighty cob! . . . By that one trial I had become free . . . of
the whole equine species." Thus began Borrow's passion for the equine
race, and he avows that with him the pursuit of languages was always
modified by his love of horses. As a wonderful pendant to this riding
exploit, Borrow tells the tale of the Irish smith who, by a magical word,
which thrilled the boy, absolutely maddened the cob, until the wizard
soothed it by uttering another word "in a voice singularly modified, but
sweet and almost plaintive."
With this weird episode ends the tale, as