Lavengro, The Scholar—The Gypsy—The Priest

Lavengro, The Scholar—The Gypsy—The Priest, a narrative by G. Borrow, published 1851. ‘Lavengro’, in Gypsy language, means ‘philologist’. The name was supplied to Borrow in his youth by Ambrose Smith, who figures in this work as Jasper Petulengro.

This work purports to be the story of Borrow's own wandering, restless life, but in it, as in his other works, fact is mingled with fiction. The son of a professional soldier, he had followed his parents while they moved from station to station around England, Scotland, and Ireland, visiting strange places and striking up unusual friendships on his travels—he became attached to a family of gypsies and met tinkers, including the Flaming Tinman, with whom he had a memorable fight, horse-copers, an old apple-woman (also a receiver of stolen goods), and a brace of future murderers. He tells the reader much of his comparative study of languages (though his scholarship is often suspect); he had violent prejudices, including a savage hatred of the Roman Catholic Church, that frequently overflow into his books. The book closes in the midst of the romantic episode with Belle Berners, an Amazonian vagrant, which is resumed in The Romany Rye.