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The Pocket George Borrow by George Henry Borrow
page 6 of 145 (04%)
After the days of the great persecution . . . Zincali




GEORGE BORROW
SELECTED PASSAGES


It is very possible that the reader during his country walks or rides has
observed, on coming to four cross-roads, two or three handfuls of grass
lying at a small distance from each other down one of these roads;
perhaps he may have supposed that this grass was recently plucked from
the roadside by frolicsome children, and flung upon the ground in sport,
and this may possibly have been the case; it is ten chances to one,
however, that no children's hands plucked them, but that they were
strewed in this manner by Gypsies, for the purpose of informing any of
their companions, who might be straggling behind, the route which they
had taken; this is one form of the patteran or trail. It is likely, too,
that the gorgio reader may have seen a cross drawn at the entrance of a
road, the long part or stem of it pointing down that particular road, and
he may have thought nothing of it, or have supposed that some sauntering
individual like himself had made the mark with his stick: not so,
courteous gorgio; ley tiro solloholomus opre lesti, _you may take your
oath upon it_ that it was drawn by a Gypsy finger, for that mark is
another of the Rommany trails; there is no mistake in this. Once in the
south of France, when I was weary, hungry, and penniless, I observed one
of these last patterans, and following the direction pointed out, arrived
at the resting-place of 'certain Bohemians,' by whom I was received with
kindness and hospitality, on the faith of no other word of recommendation
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