More on Romano Lavo-Lil

In the 1870s Borrow had been largely forgotten as a writer, but now he was being sought out by a new generation of Gypsy scholars, notably William Knapp, an American missionary who later wrote the first biography of Borrow, and the folklorist Charles Leland, also American.

 When Borrow learned that Leland was writing a book about Gypsies in England and their language, he was determined to get there first. His book, a hastily assembled collection of bits and pieces about Gypsies, included a vocabulary of the English Romani and examples of their songs and conversations as well as some of Borrow’s translations of religious texts and several descriptions of contemporary Gypsy life in their winter quarters around London.

When  Romano Lavo-Lil was published in 1874, a year after Leland’s book The English Gypsies, it was apparent that Borrow’s understanding of Gypsy life and language had been superseded by a more professional, academic approach and the book has long been out of print. Nevertheless, when Leland helped found the Gypsy Lore Society in 1888, along with F H Groome, the two men acknowledged that they had been inspired by Borrow’s lifetime interest in Gypsies.