and was free to
wander alone by Whittlesea Mere. There he met the old viper-hunter and
herbalist, into whose mouth he puts the tale of the King of the Vipers.
There he met the Gypsies. He answered their threats with a viper that
had lain hid in his breast; they called him "Sapengro, a chap who catches
snakes and plays tricks with them." He was sworn brother to Jasper, the
son, who despised him for being puny.

The Borrows were at Dereham again in 1811, and George went to school "for
the acquisition of Latin," and learnt the whole of Lilly's Grammar by
heart. Other marches of the regiment left him time to wonder at that
"stupendous erection, the aqueduct at Stockport"--to visit Durham and "a
capital old inn" there, where he had "a capital dinner off roast Durham
beef, and a capital glass of ale, which I believe was the cause of my
being ever after fond of ale"--so he told the Durham miner whom he met on
his way to the Devil's Bridge, in Cardiganshire--and to attend school at
Huddersfield in 1812 and at Edinburgh in 1813 and 1814.

He mentions the frequent fights at the High School and the pitched
battles between the Old and the New Town. Climbing the Castle Rock was
his favourite diversion, and on one "horrible edge" he came upon David
Haggart sitting and thinking of William Wallace:

"And why were ye thinking of him?" Borrow says that he asked the lad.
"The English hanged him long since, as I have heard say."

"I was thinking," he answered, "that I should wish to be like him."

"Do ye mean," Borrow says that he said, "that ye would wish to be
hanged?"

This youth was a drummer boy in Captain Borrow's regiment. Borrow
describes him upsetting the New Town champion in one of the bickers.
Seven years later he was condemned to death at Edinburgh, and to earn a
little money for his mother he dictated an account of his life to the
prison chaplain before he died. It was published in 1821 with the title:
"The Life of David Haggart, alias John Wilson, alias John Morison, alias
Barney M'Coul, alias John M'Colgan, alias David O'Brien, alias the
Switcher. Written by himself, while under sentence of death." It is
worth reading, notable in itself and for its style.

He was a gamekeeper's son, and being a merry boy was liberally tipped by
sportsmen. Yet he ran away from home at the age of ten. One of his
first exploits was the stealing of a bantam cock. It belonged to a woman
at the back of the New Town of Edinburgh,