Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

The Recess, Kandy, Ceylon. 13th Sept /99
Dr Hugo Schuchardt
Graz, Elisabeth Street
Vienna

Dear Sir

You will be not a little surprised at this distance of time, to hear from your quondam correspondent. After all my wanderings I came back to Kandy in Dec 1895 to practise my profession as an Advocate. Today, while looking over a file of letters, I came across one written to me by you over ten years ago; and as I find in it a temperance song written by me, referred to – and an explanation of one of the lines in it asked for. I felt sure that the only chance I have of recovering that Temperance Song is to ask you to oblige me with a copy of it. I haven’t a scrap of the original with me. I lent my copy to some of the Portuguese mechanics that came from Galle to Kandy some years ago and they have |2|either lost the copy or given it to somebody whom they have forgotten – and so I am without a copy of it. I wonder whether you have preserved a copy of it. It is most likely I sent you a copy tho’ I don’t remember having done so. But there can be no doubt you had the song before you when you wrote your letter of 19th June 1889; for you quote two passages from it. The Song commences with the words “Curre vi, irmãos” and in quoting line, you refer to the song to which the words are set, vez – “Marguerita, Maria, Marguerita: Marguerita Senhora”. The next quotation is from the line (the last I think in a stanza) – “ Lingoa de Patani”. Now my dear Sir, you will be conferring an irredimable [sic] favor [sic] on me, if you can send me a copy of that song. I am making a collection of all I have written in English and in Portu|3|guese and I should above all things, be sorry not to have “Curre vi irmãos” in that collection. The associations connected with that Temperance Song are very precious to me; and therefore I should like to keep it by me. That song is one of two pieces that I had thought were unrecoverably lost. The other is a ballad, in English, entitled “Fiscal de Foe”, describing the attempt on the part of the hare-brained Dist. Judge who wanted to take up on a civil warrant for damages (pecuniary) Commodore Foucier of the French Navy, who was going on a special embassy from Emperor Napoleon. The fort of Galle, was very nearly being blown up by the Commodore; and the whole of the attempt to capture, and the fiasco in which it resulted, I described in a theatrical ballad published in the Ceylon Times of 1867. But |4|I have lost my copy and strange to say, in the Govt Collection of The Times of that day, and in the copies of The Times preserved in other places, that particular no. is missing. If you can kindly send me the Portuguese Temperance Song – my loss will be reduced to 1. Are you still engaged in your Creole Studies? Do you still care for specimens of the Ceylon Portuguese? Did I send you a copy of my Portuguese Hymn book – not the “Cantigas and Louvors” which I sent up to you. I have now more leisure than I ever had before and will be glad to answer any inquiries [sic] to which I may be able to give replies.

Believe me, Dear Sir
,
Yours very sincerely

J H Eaton