Souvenir of the George Borrow Celebration | Page 5

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 "coloured up and poetized" in "Lavengro," of Borrow's earliest journeyings and adventures; truly in his case adventures were to the adventurous. Having had all the wild experiences just outlined, small wonder that the strange lad was not very adaptable when, as a free scholar, he came under the rule of the Rev. Edward Valpy at Norwich Grammar School.

Section II. NORWICH (1816-24)--SCHOOL, LAW, AND LANGUAGES.
The criss-cross experiences of his boyhood, together with