When we get a bit of sustained good weather, we are all changed. Life is great, the world is a wonder, we are lucky to be alive. But when things are not so good? Listen, once again, to the simple words of the Romany or gypsy talking with George Borrow:
"Life is sweet, brother." "Do you think so?"
"Think so! There's night and day, brother, both sweet things; sun, moon and stars, brother, all sweet things; there's likewise a wind on the heath. Life is very sweet, brother; who would wish to die?
"I would wish to die..."
"You talk like a gorgio - which is the same as talking like a fool were you a Romany Chal you would talk wiser. Wish to die, indeed. A Romany Chal would wish to live for ever."
"In sickness, Jasper?"
"There's the sun and the stars, brother.
"In blindness, Jasper?"
"There's the wind on the heath, brother; if I could only feel that, I would gladly live for ever. We'll now go to the tents and put on the gloves; and I'll try to make you feel what a sweet thing it is to be alive, brother."
Walter Starkie, a former Professor of Trinity College, Dublin, himself spent time with gypsies on the Continent and wrote a book about his experiences. In the foreword he wrote to Borrow's Lavengro, from which the opening quotations are taken, he reflects on the character of Borrow who, as a boy describes himself as for ever wandering about in search of strange crypts, crannies and recesses. He was, wrote Starkie, "in fact like a changeling, one touched by the hand of some wild fairy, such as we so often meet in Irish folk tales."