The Romany Rye: A Sequel to "lavengro
1857
In the 1820s, a young George Borrow abandoned the expectations of respectable society to live among the Romani people of the English countryside. The Romany Rye, the term Borrow himself coined for a 'Gypsy Gentleman', an educated outsider adopted by the road-wanderers, became his own title and his testament. This sequel to Lavengro follows Borrow through dusty encampments and moonlit lanes, where he learns the Romani tongue, shares fires with horse-dealers and hedge-preachers, and chronicles a world of fierce independence that England is already forgetting. The railroads are coming. The old ways are dying. Borrow, pen in hand, records it all with the eye of an anthropologist and the heart of a romancer. What emerges is neither mere travelogue nor nostalgic fantasy: it is an eyewitness report to a vanishing civilization, rendered by a man who lived inside it and loved it without condescension. The Romany Rye is irreplaceable precisely because its subject disappeared. No other Victorian writer entered this world as Borrow did, and no writer has matched his access since.
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