while Dalrymple confined himself to the less compromising duty of
"gathering horse-pistols and potatoes." If the boys robbed their
father's till, why did they beg? In the ballad entitled The
Wandering Children and the Benevolent Gentleman, Borrow depicts the
"eldest child" as begging for charity for these hungry children, who
have had "no breakfast, save the haws." This does not seem to
suggest that the boys were in the possession of money. Again, it was
the father of one of their schoolfellows who was responsible for
their capture, according to Dr Knapp, by asking them to dinner whilst
he despatched a messenger to the Rev. Edward Valpy. The story of
Borrow's being "horsed" on Dr Martineau's back is apocryphal.
Martineau himself denied it. {25b}

There is no record of how Captain Borrow received the news of his
younger son's breach of discipline. It probably reminded him that
the boy was now fifteen and it was time to think about his future.
The old soldier was puzzled. Not only had his second son shown a
great partiality for acquiring Continental tongues, but he had
learned Irish, and Captain Borrow seemed to think that by learning
the language of Papists and rebels, his son had sullied the family
honour. To his father's way of thinking, this accomplishment seemed
to bar him from most things that were at one and the same time
honourable and desirable.

The boy's own inclinations pointed to the army; but Captain Borrow
had apparently seen too much of the army in war time, and the
slowness of promotion, to think of it as offering a career suitable
to his son, now that there was every prospect of a prolonged peace.
He thought of the church as an alternative; but here again that fatal
facility the boy had shown in learning Erse seemed to stand out as a