versified 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 s