Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.
The story so far.
In 2017 I read The Old Ways by Robert Macfarlane which was without question the best non-fiction book I'd read that year. I chatted about it at the time on this blog. Now he lauded about the 19th century writer and linguist George Borrow Now as it happened there were loads of his books available for free on my Kindle. So I thought "Great. I'll download them", Which I did.
And so far I've hated every one I've read.
I've just finished reading three of them which trust me as I will explain as we go along is not the great achievement that it appears to be.
The Songs Of Ranild is presumably the lyrics without a tune. I read it quickly. I wasn't impressed. Did not last long.
Letters To His Wife - The worst of the three. If only because there were just twelve yes twelve letters. And they were just mundane. Nothing important. Him asking for money I can recall. Really just not worth the paper this ebook wasn't printed on.
The Zincali:an account of the gypsies of Spain is the most substantial of the three but not great. Basically he was trying to flog the bible to this "tribe". And yes tribe is the right word because throughout the book the impression he gives is of a man looking down at a group of people he probably considers a few notches above savages.
The only bit that made me smile was when he was describing the Zincali women as basically lascivious. You know full well that the rich male readers were bellowing their disapproval whilst planning to visit the area in the summer.
In short then nothing has changed. George Borrow is a blog villain.
Until the next time.
