, discoursing on the
affairs of Egypt, the aspect of which, he assured me, was becoming daily
worse and worse. 'There is no living for the poor people, brother,' said
he, 'the chokengres (police) pursue us from place to place, and the
gorgios are become either so poor or miserly, that they grudge our cattle
a bite of grass by the way side, and ourselves a yard of ground to light
a fire upon. Unless times alter, brother, and of that I see no
probability, unless you are made either poknees or mecralliskoe geiro
(justice of the peace or prime minister), I am afraid the poor persons
will have to give up wandering altogether, and then what will become of
them?

"'However, brother,' he continued, in a more cheerful tone: 'I am no
hindity mush, {18b} as you well know. I suppose you have not forgot how,
fifteen years ago, when you made horse-shoes in the little dingle by the
side of the great north road, I lent you fifty cottors {18c} to purchase
the wonderful trotting cob of the innkeeper with the green Newmarket
coat, which three days after you sold for two hundred.

"'Well, brother, if you had wanted the two hundred, instead of the fifty,
I could have lent them to you, and would have done so, for I knew you
would not be long pazorrhus to me. I am no hindity mush, brother, no
Irishman; I laid out the other day twenty pounds, in buying ruponoe
peamengries; {19a} and in the Chong-gav, {19b} have a house of my own
with a yard behind it.

"'_And_, _forsooth_, _if I go thither_, _I can choose a place to light a
fire upon_, _and shall have no necessity to ask leave of these here
Gentiles_.'

"Well, dear reader, this last is the translation of the Gypsy sentence
which heads the chapter, and which is a very characteristic specimen of
the general way of speaking of the English Gypsies."

Here be mysteries. The author of "The Bible in Spain" is not only taken
for a Gypsy, but once upon a time made horse-shoes in a dingle beside the
great north road and trafficked in horses. When Borrow told John Murray
of the Christmas meeting with Ambrose Smith, whom he now called "The
Gypsy King," he said he was dressed in "true regal fashion." On the last
day of that year he told Murray that he often meditated on his "life" and
was arranging scenes. That reminder about the dingle and the wonderful
trotting cob, and the Christmas wine, was stirring his brain. In two
months time he had begun to write his "Life." He got back from the Bib