[SOLO] Lavengro: The Scholar, The Gypsy, The Priest, by George Borrow-ans

[annise]

Me too - I hate the Disney Pooh Bear

We have the Decline and Fall in the catalogue - it was read in 2007. Some good readers too. All of LV was very much "an
all pitch in to every project" in those days. (bit before my time though)
Anne

[Sunrise2020]

I have uploaded:
Section 021: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_021_borrow_128kb.mp3 (12:52)
Section 022: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_022_borrow_128kb.mp3 (16:42)

SOME NOTES ON CHAPTER 21

For a little more information on the East Anglian painter for whom Borrow expresses such admiration in Chapter 21, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Crome.

I have never before heard of the Battle of Minden, but Borrow refers to it several times in this work.

According to Wikipedia "The Battle of Minden was a major engagement during the Seven Years' War, fought on 1 August 1759. An Anglo-German army under the overall command of Prussian Field Marshal Ferdinand of Brunswick defeated a French army commanded by Marshal of France, Marquis de Contades.... The decisive action of the battle came when six regiments of British and two of Hanoverian infantry, in line formation, repelled repeated French cavalry attacks, contrary to all fears that the regiments would be broken...In Britain the result at Minden was widely celebrated and was seen as part of Britain's Annus Mirabilis of 1759 also known as the 'Year of Victories'."

SOME NOTES ON CHAPTER 22

"(A)n antinomian is one who takes the principle of salvation by faith and divine grace to the point of asserting that the saved are not bound to follow the moral law contained in the Ten Commandments." (Wikipedia).

The followers of Ludowick Muggleton sound interesting. Again, from Wikipedia:

"The Muggletonians, named after Lodowicke Muggleton, were a small Protestant Christian movement which began in 1651 when two London tailors announced they were the last prophets foretold in the biblical Book of Revelation. The group grew out of the Ranters and in opposition to the Quakers. Muggletonian beliefs include a hostility to philosophical reason, a scriptural understanding of how the universe works and a belief that God appeared directly on Earth as Jesus Christ. A consequential belief is that God takes no notice of everyday events on Earth and will not generally intervene until it is meant to bring the world to an end.

Muggletonians avoided all forms of worship or preaching, and met only for discussion and socializing. The movement was egalitarian, apolitical and pacifist, and resolutely avoided evangelism. Members attained a degree of public notoriety by cursing those who reviled their faith."

The book the narrator receives as a gift appears to be a copy of Anders Vedel's "Hundredvisebogen" (1591)... a hundred Danish ballads which became a solid foundation of later knowledge of the older Danish literary tradition. It was published with the support of Queen Sophie ... Vedel's one hundred songs were republished by Peder Syv in 1695, as half of his collection of 200 folksongs...In the Faroe Islands, texts from "Hundredvisebogen" have been in use among folk singers right up until today." (Wikipedia)

Thank you for these explanations. I wondered about the meaning of these words!

[Sunrise2020]

I wonder if it’s the same Minden which is close to my hometown in Germany.

[Sunrise2020]

PL are of sections 21-23 is fine.

[TheBanjo]

I wonder if it’s the same Minden which is close to my hometown in Germany.

It's about 105 km south of Bremen via the B61.

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded:
Section 024: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_024_borrow_128kb.mp3 (14:25)
Section 025: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_025_borrow_128kb.mp3 (17:13)

"Pightle" is an archaic, Eastern England term meaning a small enclosure or paddock.

At the time Borrow is writing of (before "Queensberry rules" had even been heard of) a boxing match would typically have been a bare-knuckled fight, of rather dubious legal standing (though boxers while practising for a bout might have worn some form of padding on their hands).

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded section 026: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_026_borrow_128kb.mp3 (16:58)

Alas, we can now add the most rabid antiSemtism to the reservations we may already hold about Borrow for his extreme antiCatholicism.

In other notes about this chapter:

• When we learn that one of the 'bruisers' travelled with 'peers' in his carriage, this means he travelled with an entourage that included titled members of the aristocracy, ie, most likely an earl or a duke or two.

• There is an article on Wikipedia about the famous English boxer James Belcher (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Belcher) and his younger brother Tom, also a boxer. It seems from this article that boxing fights could, in extremis, be pretty long-drawn out affairs in those days. The article mentions that in 1799, James Belcher drew a 51 bout fight with Jack Bartholomew.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of section 24 is fine.

In section 25 please check for repetition of “Yes, I think I am, under favorable circumstances.” at about 4:44.

I like your singing !

[TheBanjo]

PL of section 24 is fine.

In section 25 please check for repetition of “Yes, I think I am, under favorable circumstances.” at about 4:44.

I like your singing !

Very good pickup. Thank you so much. I have now uploaded a fixed version, I hope (please do a spot check).

As for the singing... well, don't know. Actually, I searched high and low for the real tune, but couldn't find anything, so what you hear here is my, ahem, 'interpretation'. (I do always look for the real tune in the first instance.)

I have uploaded:
Section 025: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_025_borrow_128kb.mp3 (17:09) — hopefully now fixed
Section 027: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_027_borrow_128kb.mp3 (16:44)
Section 028: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_028_borrow_128kb.mp3 (5:04)

Tippoo Saib, mentioned late in section 27, was also known as Tipu Sultan (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tipu_Sultan). In the late eighteenth century, he ruled a significant amount of territory in southern India. Among other things, he was a pioneer in the use of rocket artillery. In 1799 he suffered a crushing military defeat at the hands of a coalition of local forces and British East India Company troops under the leadership of Arthur Wellesley, who would be later known as the Duke of Wellington, and would command the (very different) coalition of forces that defeated Napoleon at Waterloo. It is intriguing to me, in the twenty-first century, that Borrow chooses to call Wellesley, whom his father had met, the conqueror of Tippoo Saib, rather than the conqueror of Napoleon at Waterloo. To a mere reader of Wikipedia, the relative significance of these two victories for Borrow's father is not immediately evident.

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded section 029: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_029_borrow_128kb.mp3 (8:39)

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded section 030: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_030_borrow_128kb.mp3 (14:14)

A pretty sardonic view of the publishing industry circa 1825. I can honestly say (from first-hand experience) that not a lot has changed, except that publishers now don't generally sound like Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon.

From Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Dairyman%27s_Daughter): "The Dairyman's Daughter is an early 19th-century Christian religious booklet of 52 pages, which had a remarkably wide distribution and influence. It was a narrative of the religious experience of Elizabeth Wallbridge, who was the person after whom the book was named." Sold four million copies — but not yet on Librivox, it seems (and no, I'm not about to...).

I've not been able to track down info on "The Miller of the Black Valley", also mentioned in this chapter.

The phrase "under the rose" which the publisher uses several time in this chapter, means "in secret". I'd never heard the phrase before. Today, we'd possibly say "under the table" to convey a similar meaning.

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded:
Section 031:https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_031_borrow_128kb.mp3 (13:53)
Section 032:https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_032_borrow_128kb.mp3 (12:06)
Section 033:https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_033_borrow_128kb.mp3 (10:30)

SECTION 31

We get here a most vivid impression of how the city of London struck a self-educated young Englishman who had never before visited the place in the early to mid 1820s, about 15 years before Dickens wrote "Oliver Twist". We will learn subsequently that the narrator is in London at the time when Byron's funerary procession passes up the streets, so that dates the events of this chapter to 1824 at the latest.

"Long before the roses, red and white, battled in fair England..." This is a reference to the so-called "Wars of the Roses" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wars_of_the_Roses) that took place between 1455 and 1487 between the houses of Lancaster and York, and that would later form the basis of many of Shakespeare's history plays.

The book the old lady on the bridge is reading is "Moll Flanders" by Daniel Defoe (who is also the author of "Robinson Crusoe", which the narrator loved as a child). In the course of the novel, the eponymous heroine is transported to British America.

The old lady says that her son is at "Botany". This is a reference to "Botany Bay", a general term used to describe Australia's first penal settlement in what is now called Sydney. In this context, the term "transported" doesn't just mean "sent", it means "sent as a convict".

SECTION 32

A "lustre" in this context is a chandelier from which hang cut-glass drops.

[Sunrise2020]

PL of sections 25-29 is fine.

[TheBanjo]

I have uploaded:
Section 034: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_034_borrow_128kb.mp3 (5:15)
Section 035: https://librivox.org/uploads/annise/lavengro_035_borrow_128kb.mp3 (10:33)

[Sunrise2020]

PL of sections 30-34 is fine.