The Romany Rye

G >> George Borrow >> The Romany Rye

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"We reached Leghorn at last, and glad I was to leave the ship and
the master, who gave me a kick as I was getting over the side, bad
luck to the dirty heretic for kicking a son of the church, for I
have always been a true son of the church, Shorsha, and never
quarrelled with it unless it interfered with me in my playing at
cards. I left Leghorn with certain muleteers, with whom I played
at cards at the baiting-houses, and who speedily won from me all
the ha'pennies and sixpences I had won from the sailors. I got my
money's worth, however, for I learnt from the muleteers all kind of
quaint tricks upon the cards, which I knew nothing of before; so I
did not grudge them what they chated me of, and when we parted we
did so in kindness on both sides. On getting to--I was received
into the religious house for Irishes. It was the Irish house,
Shorsha, into which I was taken, for I do not wish ye to suppose
that I was in the English religious house which there is in that
city, in which a purty set are educated, and in which purty doings
are going on if all tales be true.

"In this Irish house I commenced my studies, learning to sing and
to read the Latin prayers of the church. 'Faith, Shorsha, many's
the sorrowful day I passed in that house learning the prayers and
litanies, being half-starved, with no earthly diversion at all, at
all; until I took the cards out of my chest and began instructing
in card-playing the chum which I had with me in my cell; then I had
plenty of diversion along with him during the times when I was not
engaged in singing, and chanting, and saying the prayers of the
church; there was, however, some drawback in playing with my chum,
for though he was very clever in learning, divil a sixpence had he
to play with, in which respect he was like myself, the master who
taught him, who had lost all my money to the muleteers who taught
me the tricks upon the cards; by degrees, however, it began to be
noised about the religious house that Murtagh, from Hibrodary, {1}
had a pack of cards with which he played with his chum in the cell;
whereupon other scholars of the religious house came to me, some to
be taught and others to play, so with some I played, and others I
taught, but neither to those who could play, or to those who could
not, did I teach the elegant tricks which I learnt from the
muleteers. Well, the scholars came to me for the sake of the
cards, and the porter and cook of the religious house, who could
both play very well, came also; at last I became tired of playing
for nothing, so I borrowed a few bits of silver from the cook, and
played against the porter, and by means of my tricks I won money
from the porter, and then I paid the cook the bits of silver which
I had borrowed of him; and played with him, and won a little of his
money, which I let him win back again, as I had lived long enough
in a religious house to know that it is dangerous to take money
from the cook. In a little time, Shorsha, there was scarcely
anything going on in the house but card-playing; the almoner played
with me, and so did the sub-rector, and I won money from both; not
too much, however, lest they should tell the rector, who had the
character of a very austere man, and of being a bit of a saint;
however, the thief of a porter, whose money I had won, informed the
rector of what was going on, and one day the rector sent for me
into his private apartment, and gave me so long and pious a lecture
upon the heinous sin of card-playing, that I thought I should sink
into the ground; after about half-an-hour's inveighing against
card-playing, he began to soften his tone, and with a long sigh
told me that at one time of his life he had been a young man
himself, and had occasionally used the cards; he then began to ask
me some questions about card-playing, which questions I afterwards
found were to pump from me what I knew about the science. After a
time he asked me whether I had got my cards with me, and on my
telling him I had, he expressed a wish to see them, whereupon I
took the pack out of my pocket, and showed it to him; he looked at
it very attentively, and at last, giving another deep sigh, he
said, that though he was nearly weaned from the vanities of the
world, he had still an inclination to see whether he had entirely
lost the little skill which at one time he possessed. When I heard
him speak in this manner, I told him that if his reverence was
inclined for a game of cards, I should be very happy to play one
with him; scarcely had I uttered these words than he gave a third
sigh, and looked so very much like a saint that I was afraid he was
going to excommunicate me. Nothing of the kind, however, for
presently he gets up and locks the door, then sitting down at the
table, he motioned me to do the same, which I did, and in five
minutes we were playing at cards, his reverence and myself.

"I soon found that his reverence knew quite as much about card-
playing as I did. Divil a trick was there connected with cards
that his reverence did not seem awake to. As, however, we were not
playing for money, this circumstance did not give me much
uneasiness; so we played game after game for two hours, when his
reverence, having business, told me I might go, so I took up my
cards, make my obedience, and left him. The next day I had other
games with him, and so on for a very long time, still playing for
nothing. At last his reverence grew tired of playing for nothing,
and proposed that we should play for money. Now, I had no desire
to play with his reverence for money, as I knew that doing so would
bring on a quarrel. As long as we were playing for nothing, I
could afford to let his reverence use what tricks he pleased; but
if we played for money, I couldn't do so. If he played his tricks,
I must play mine, and use every advantage to save my money; and
there was one I possessed which his reverence did not. The cards
being my own, I had put some delicate little marks on the trump
cards, just at the edges, so that when I dealt, by means of a
little sleight of hand, I could deal myself any trump card I
pleased. But I wished, as I said before, to have no dealings for
money with his reverence, knowing that he was master in the house,
and that he could lead me a dog of a life if I offended him, either
by winning his money, or not letting him win mine. So I told him I
had no money to play with, but the ould thief knew better; he knew
that I was every day winning money from the scholars, and the sub-
rector, and the other people of the house, and the ould thaif had
determined to let me go on in that way winning money, and then by
means of his tricks, which he thought I dare not resent, to win
from me all my earnings--in a word, Shorsha, to let me fill myself
like a sponge, and then squeeze me for his own advantage. So he
made me play with him, and in less than three days came on the
quarrel; his reverence chated me, and I chated his reverence; the
ould thaif knew every trick that I knew, and one or two more; but
in daling out the cards I nicked his reverence; scarcely a trump
did I ever give him, Shorsha, and won his money purty freely. Och,
it was a purty quarrel! All the delicate names in the 'Newgate
Calendar,' if ye ever heard of such a book; all the hang-dog names
in the Newgate histories, and the lives of Irish rogues, did we
call each other--his reverence and I! Suddenly, however, putting
out his hand, he seized the cards, saying, 'I will examine these
cards, ye cheating scoundrel! for I believe there are dirty marks
on them, which ye have made in order to know the winning cards.'
'Give me back my pack,' said I, 'or m'anam on Dioul if I be not the
death of ye!' His reverence, however, clapped the cards into his
pocket, and made the best of his way to the door, I hanging upon
him. He was a gross, fat man, but, like most fat men, deadly
strong, so he forced his way to the door, and, opening it, flung
himself out, with me still holding on him like a terrier dog on a
big fat pig; then he shouts for help, and in a little time I was
secured and thrust into a lock-up room, where I was left to myself.
Here was a purty alteration. Yesterday I was the idol of the
religious house, thought more on than his reverence, every one
paying me court and wurtship, and wanting to play cards with me,
and to learn my tricks, and fed, moreover, on the tidbits of the
table; and to-day I was in a cell, nobody coming to look at me but
the blackguard porter who had charge of me, my cards taken from me,
and with nothing but bread and water to live upon. Time passed
dreary enough for a month, at the end of which time his reverence
came to me, leaving the porter just outside the door in order to
come to his help should I be violent; and then he read me a very
purty lecture on my conduct, saying I had turned the religious
house topsy-turvy, and corrupted the scholars, and that I was the
cheat of the world, for that on inspecting the pack he had
discovered the dirty marks which I had made upon the trump cards
for to know them by. He said a great deal more to me, which is not
worth relating, and ended by telling me that he intended to let me
out of confinement next day, but that if ever I misconducted myself
any more, he would clap me in again for the rest of my life. I had
a good mind to call him an ould thaif, but the hope of getting out
made me hold my tongue, and the next day I was let out; and need
enough I had to be let out, for what with being alone, and living
on bread and water, I was becoming frighted, or, as the doctors
call it, narvous. But when I was out--oh, what a change I found in
the religious house! no card-playing, for it had been forbidden to
the scholars, and there was now nothing going on but reading and
singing; divil a merry visage to be seen, but plenty of prim airs
and graces; but the case of the scholars, though bad enough, was
not half so bad as mine, for they could spake to each other,
whereas I could not have a word of conversation, for the ould thaif
of a rector had ordered them to send me to 'Coventry,' telling them
that I was a gambling cheat, with morals bad enough to corrupt a
horse regiment; and whereas they were allowed to divert themselves
with going out, I was kept reading and singing from morn till
night. The only soul who was willing to exchange a word with me
was the cook, and sometimes he and I had a little bit of discourse
in a corner, and we condoled with each other, for he liked the
change in the religious house almost as little as myself; but he
told me that, for all the change below stairs, there was still
card-playing on above, for that the ould thaif of a rector, and the
sub-rector, and the almoner played at cards together, and that the
rector won money from the others--the almoner had told him so--and,
moreover, that the rector was the thaif of the world, and had once
been kicked out of a club-house at Dublin for cheating at cards,
and after that circumstance had apparently reformed and lived
decently till the time when I came to the religious house with my
pack, but that the sight of that had brought him back to his ould
gambling. He told the cook, moreover, that the rector frequently
went out at night to the houses of the great clergy and cheated at
cards.

"In this melancholy state, with respect to myself, things continued
a long time, when suddenly there was a report that his Holiness the
Pope intended to pay a visit to the religious house in order to
examine into its discipline. When I heard this I was glad, for I
determined after the Pope had done what he had come to do, to fall
upon my knees before him, and make a regular complaint of the
treatment I had received, to tell him of the cheating at cards of
the rector, and to beg him to make the ould thaif give me back my
pack again. So the day of the visit came, and his Holiness made
his appearance with his attendants, and, having looked over the
religious house, he went into the rector's room with the rector,
the sub-rector, and the almoner. I intended to have waited until
his Holiness came out, but finding he stayed a long time I thought
I would e'en go into him, so I went up to the door without anybody
observing me--his attendants being walking about the corridor--and
opening it I slipped in, and there what do you think I saw? Why,
his Holiness the Pope, and his reverence the rector, and the sub-
rector, and the almoner seated at cards; and the ould thaif of a
rector was dealing out the cards which ye had given me, Shorsha, to
his Holiness the Pope, the sub-rector, the almoner, and himself."

In this part of his history I interrupted Murtagh, saying that I
was afraid he was telling untruths, and that it was highly
improbable that the Pope would leave the Vatican to play cards with
Irish at their religious house, and that I was sure, if on his,
Murtagh's authority, I were to tell the world so, the world would
never believe it.

"Then the world, Shorsha, would be a fool, even as you were just
now saying you had frequently believed it to be; the grand thing,
Shorsha, is to be able to believe oneself; if ye can do that, it
matters very little whether the world believe ye or no. But a
purty thing for you and the world to stickle at the Pope's playing
at cards at a religious house of Irish; och! if I were to tell you
and the world, what the Pope has been sometimes at, at the
religious house of English thaives, I would excuse you and the
world for turning up your eyes. However, I wish to say nothing
against the Pope. I am a son of the church, and if the Pope don't
interfere with my cards, divil a bit will I have to say against
him; but I saw the Pope playing, or about to play, with the pack
which had been taken from me, and when I told the Pope, the Pope
did not--Ye had better let me go on with my history, Shorsha;
whether you or the world believe it or not, I am sure it is quite
as true as your tale of the snake, or saying that Finn got his
burnt finger from the thaives of Loughlin; and whatever you may
say, I am sure the world will think so too."

I apologized to Murtagh for interrupting him, and telling him that
his history, whether true or not, was infinitely diverting, begged
him to continue it.

CHAPTER XLVI

Murtagh's Story continued--The Priest, Exorcist, and Thimble-engro-
-How to Check a Rebellion.

I was telling ye, Shorsha, when ye interrupted me, that I found the
Pope, the rector, the sub-rector, and the almoner seated at the
table, the rector with my pack of cards in his hands, about to deal
out to the Pope and the rest, not forgetting himself, for whom he
intended all the trump-cards, no doubt. No sooner did they
perceive me than they seemed taken all aback; but the rector,
suddenly starting up with the cards in his hand, asked me what I
did there, threatening to have me well disciplined if I did not go
about my business; 'I am come for my pack,' said I, 'ye ould thaif,
and to tell his Holiness how I have been treated by ye;' then going
down on my knees before his Holiness, I said, 'Arrah, now, your
Holiness! will ye not see justice done to a poor boy who has been
sadly misused? The pack of cards which that old ruffian has in his
hand are my cards, which he has taken from me, in order to chate
with. Arrah! don't play with him, your Holiness, for he'll only
chate ye--there are dirty marks upon the cards which bear the
trumps, put there in order to know them by; and the ould thaif in
daling out will give himself all the good cards, and chate ye of
the last farthing in your pocket; so let them be taken from him,
your Holiness, and given back to me; and order him to lave the
room, and then, if your Holiness be for an honest game, don't think
I am the boy to baulk ye. I'll take the old ruffian's place, and
play with ye till evening, and all night besides, and divil an
advantage will I take of the dirty marks, though I know them all,
having placed them on the cards myself.' I was going on in this
way when the ould thaif of a rector, flinging down the cards, made
at me as if to kick me out of the room, whereupon I started up and
said, 'If ye are for kicking, sure two can play at that;' and then
I kicked at his reverence, and his reverence at me, and there was a
regular scrimmage between us, which frightened the Pope, who,
getting up, said some words which I did not understand, but which
the cook afterwards told me were, 'English extravagance, and this
is the second edition;' for it seems that, a little time before,
his Holiness had been frightened in St. Peter's Church by the
servant of an English family, which those thaives of the English
religious house had been endeavouring to bring over to the Catholic
faith, and who didn't approve of their being converted. Och! his
Holiness did us all sore injustice to call us English, and to
confound our house with the other; for however dirty our house
might be, our house was a clane house compared with the English
house, and we honest people compared with those English thaives.
Well, his Holiness was frighted, and the almoner ran out, and
brought in his Holiness's attendants, and they laid hold of me, but
I struggled hard, and said, 'I will not go without my pack; arrah,
your Holiness! make them give me my pack, which Shorsha gave me in
Dungarvon times of old;' but my struggles were of no use. I was
pulled away and put out in the ould dungeon, and his Holiness went
away sore frighted, crossing himself much, and never returned
again.

"In the old dungeon I was fastened to the wall by a chain, and
there I was disciplined once every other day for the first three
weeks, and then I was left to myself, and my chain, and hunger; and
there I sat in the dungeon, sometimes screeching, sometimes
hallooing, for I soon became frighted, having nothing in the cell
to divert me. At last the cook found his way to me by stealth, and
comforted me a little, bringing me tidbits out of the kitchen; and
he visited me again and again--not often, however, for he dare only
come when he could steal away the key from the custody of the thaif
of a porter. I was three years in the dungeon, and should have
gone mad but for the cook, and his words of comfort, and his
tidbits, and nice books which he brought me out of the library,
which were the 'Calendars of Newgate,' and the 'Lives of Irish
Rogues and Raparees,' the only English books in the library.
However, at the end of three years, the ould thaif of a rector,
wishing to look at them books, missed them from the library, and
made a perquisition about them, and the thaif of a porter said that
he shouldn't wonder if I had them; saying that he had once seen me
reading; and then the rector came with others to my cell, and took
my books from me, from under my straw, and asked me how I came by
them; and on my refusal to tell, they disciplined me again till the
blood ran down my back; and making more perquisition they at last
accused the cook of having carried the books to me, and not
denying, he was given warning to leave next day, but he left that
night, and took me away with him; for he stole the key, and came to
me and cut my chain through, and then he and I escaped from the
religious house through a window--the cook with a bundle,
containing what things he had. No sooner had we got out than the
honest cook gave me a little bit of money and a loaf, and told me
to follow a way which he pointed out, which he said would lead to
the sea; and then, having embraced me after the Italian way, he
left me, and I never saw him again. So I followed the way which
the cook pointed out, and in two days reached a seaport called
Chiviter Vik, terribly foot-foundered, and there I met a sailor who
spoke Irish, and who belonged to a vessel just ready to sail for
France; and the sailor took me on board his vessel, and said I was
his brother, and the captain gave me a passage to a place in France
called Marseilles; and when I got there, the captain and sailor got
a little money for me and a passport, and I travelled across the
country towards a place they directed me to called Bayonne, from
which they said I might, perhaps, get to Ireland. Coming, however,
to a place called Pau, all my money being gone, I enlisted into a
regiment called the Army of the Faith, which was going into Spain,
for the King of Spain had been dethroned and imprisoned by his own
subjects, as perhaps you may have heard; and the King of France,
who was his cousin, was sending an army to help him, under the
command of his own son, whom the English called Prince Hilt,
because when he was told that he was appointed to the command, he
clapped his hand on the hilt of his sword. So I enlisted into the
regiment of the Faith, which was made up of Spaniards, many of them
priests who had run out of Spain, and broken Germans, and foot-
foundered Irish, like myself. It was said to be a blackguard
regiment, that same regiment of the Faith; but, 'faith, I saw
nothing blackguardly going on in it, for you would hardly reckon
card-playing and dominoes, and pitch and toss blackguardly, and I
saw nothing else in it. There was one thing in it which I
disliked--the priests drawing their Spanish knives occasionally,
when they lost their money. After we had been some time at Pau,
the army of the Faith was sent across the mountains into Spain, as
the vanguard of the French; and no sooner did the Spaniards see the
Faith than they made a dash at it, and the Faith ran away, myself
along with it, and got behind the French army, which told it to
keep there, and the Faith did so, and followed the French army,
which soon scattered the Spaniards, and in the end placed the king
on his throne again. When the war was over the Faith was
disbanded; some of the foreigners, however, amongst whom I was one,
were put into a Guard regiment, and there I continued for more than
a year.

"One day, being at a place called the Escurial, I took stock, as
the tradesmen say, and found I possessed the sum of eighty dollars
won by playing at cards, for though I could not play so well with
the foreign cards as with the pack you gave me, Shorsha, I had yet
contrived to win money from the priests and soldiers of the Faith.
Finding myself possessed of such a capital, I determined to leave
the service, and to make the best of my way to Ireland; so I
deserted, but coming in an evil hour to a place they calls Torre
Lodones, I found the priest playing at cards with his parishioners.
The sight of the cards made me stop, and then, fool like,
notwithstanding the treasure I had about me, I must wish to play,
so not being able to speak their language, I made signs to them to
let me play, and the priest and his thaives consented willingly; so
I sat down to cards with the priest and two of his parishioners,
and in a little time had won plenty of their money, but I had
better never have done any such thing, for suddenly the priest and
all his parishioners set upon me and bate me, and took from me all
I had, and cast me out of the village more dead than alive. Och!
it's a bad village that, and if I had known what it was I would
have avoided it, or run straight through it, though I saw all the
card-playing in the world going on in it. There is a proverb about
it, as I was afterwards told, old as the time of the Moors, which
holds good to the present day--it is, that in Torre Lodones there
are twenty-four housekeepers, and twenty-five thieves, maning that
all the people are thaives, and the clergyman to boot, who is not
reckoned a housekeeper; and troth I found the clergyman the
greatest thaif of the lot. After being cast out of that village I
travelled for nearly a month, subsisting by begging tolerably well,
for though most of the Spanish are thaives, they are rather
charitable; but though charitable thaives they do not like their
own being taken from them without leave being asked, as I found to
my cost; for on my entering a garden near Seville, without leave,
to take an orange, the labourer came running up and struck me to
the ground with a hatchet, giving me a big wound in the arm. I
fainted with loss of blood, and on reviving I found myself in a
hospital at Seville, to which the labourer and the people of the
village had taken me. I should have died of starvation in that
hospital had not some English people heard of me and come to see
me; they tended me with food till I was cured, and then paid my
passage on board a ship to London, to which place the ship carried
me.

"And now I was in London with five shillings in my pocket--all I
had in the world--and that did not last for long; and when it was
gone I begged in the streets, but I did not get much by that,
except a month's hard labour in the correction-house; and when I
came out I knew not what to do, but thought I would take a walk in
the country, for it was spring-time, and the weather was fine, so I
took a walk about seven miles from London, and came to a place
where a great fair was being held; and there I begged, but got
nothing but a halfpenny, and was thinking of going farther, when I
saw a man with a table, like that of mine, playing with thimbles,
as you saw me. I looked at the play, and saw him win money, and
run away, and hunted by constables more than once. I kept
following the man, and at last entered into conversation with him;
and learning from him that he was in want of a companion to help
him, I offered to help him if he would pay me; he looked at me from
top to toe, and did not wish at first to have anything to do with
me, as he said my appearance was against me. 'Faith, Shorsha, he
had better have looked at home, for his appearance was not much in
his favour: he looked very much like a Jew, Shorsha. However, he
at last agreed to take me to be his companion, or bonnet as he
called it; and I was to keep a look-out, and let him know when
constables were coming, and to spake a good word for him
occasionally, whilst he was chating folks with his thimbles and his
pea. So I became his bonnet, and assisted him in the fair, and in
many other fairs beside; but I did not like my occupation much, or
rather my master, who, though not a big man, was a big thaif, and
an unkind one, for do all I could I could never give him pleasure;
and he was continually calling me fool and bogtrotter, and twitting
me because I could not learn his thaives' Latin, and discourse with
him in it, and comparing me with another acquaintance, or bit of a
pal of his, whom he said he had parted with in the fair, and of
whom he was fond of saying all kinds of wonderful things, amongst
others, that he knew the grammar of all tongues. At last, wearied
with being twitted by him with not being able to learn his thaives'
Greek, I proposed that I should teach him Irish, that we should
spake it together when we had anything to say in secret. To that
he consented willingly; but, och! a purty hand he made with Irish,
'faith, not much better than I did with his thaives' Hebrew. Then
my turn came, and I twitted him nicely with dulness, and compared
him with a pal that I had in ould Ireland, in Dungarvon times of
yore, to whom I teached Irish, telling him that he was the broth of
a boy, and not only knew the grammar of all human tongues, but the
dialects of the snakes besides; in fact, I tould him all about your
own sweet self, Shorsha, and many a dispute and quarrel had we
together about our pals, which was the cleverest fellow, his or
mine.

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