Friday, November 7, 2014

“Footpads and knaves”

From Patrick Leigh Fermor’s A Time of Gifts: On Foot to Constantinople: From the Hook of Holland to the Middle Danube (1977), the first of three volumes recounting the writer’s 1933–1934 walk across Europe. In Vienna, Leigh Fermor meets up with a man named Konrad, a pastor’s son whose command of English comes largely from reading Shakespeare:

“We must beware,“ he said. “Among good and luckless men there is no lack of base ones, footpads and knaves who never shrink from purloining. Some love to filch.”
Related posts
From A Time of Gifts : Leigh Fermor’s Brueghel : Leigh Fermor’s eye : One word from A Time of Gifts

[In a month I’ve traveled only forty pages. Too much else to do.]

comments: 1

Daughter Number Three said...

Footpad has always been one my favorite archaic words.