re, 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 stran