Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Dear D^r. Schuchardt

at last I am able to thank you for and reply to your letter of the 1 ^st April which I was very pleased to get and interested in reading & which I shall keep. I wish I were able to reply to you in Basque. Do you not think that you might banish your malady by spending the summer at one or some of the many mineral springs in either French or Spanish Basqueland? - they claim to cure nearly all diseases - One meets many well informed people too about them at that season - the sea bathing along the coasts of Guipuzcoa & Viscaya is most delightful, as I found in 1887, for instance at Zarauz, which I take to mean “flat heaps of sand” which so well describes its situation. I had thought that Van Eys made too much of the connection between Provençal and Basque; but you think ere comes from it - I think there is a great difference between encore and aussi though encoresometimes means aussi - Coud [sic] not the |2|er and ar of old Portuguese which you mention & the eir of Roumansch be relics of the primitive Iberian? Again Deus re-sapit seems to mean something different from Dieu aussi sait - I think you might almost as well say that the er of English never and German nimmer come from the Latin re with the signification of repetition - I know that in Roumansch ar & al represent the Latin re of repetition as in recognosco - Do not the pleonasms of Spanish grammar & of Portuguese, which distinguish them from the other Latin idioms, look as if they were due to Basque influence with its highly relationised & so to speak sympathetic verb? - “voy darle lo á Vsted” “que no vale la pena de repetirlo” etc: I knew that Isard was in modern Basque basahuntz; but that merely means goat of the woods, and it seems to me that sheep of the hunt, or wildsheep, or game-sheep, sporting-sheep, would be |3| equally appropriate so far as the nature of the animal is concerned, and in entire conformity with the manner of thinking of a primitive pastoral people like the Basques - the sarri of Bearnais, sarrio of Spanish, may come from that, and so may usarn of Provençal & the Catalan sicart which perhaps shews it was once “ihizik-ardi”, for does not ardo become arno in some dialects? I found some at Bayonne, where I made this suggestion in a paper called the “Courrier” on S. Leons day, inclined to agree with me - I read what Larousse & Littré say first. I knew also that Elster was German for magpie, & I think I noted somewhere a good while ago the resemblance of termination to Kentish hagister - I also knew that hegazti was connected with hego, but I thought that hagi might also be; and now that you mention old high German agalstra I would suggest that the root of |4|that word and of the Basque are the same - writing is most unsatisfactory. I would gladly talk with you and learn all that you have to teach me. I have not yet received your Romano-baskisches I which you kindly say that you were sending me. I left Biarritz last Saturday fortnight, and arrived here in Bordeaux, where the first Basque book was printed in 1545, on Good Friday - I have been walking in the departments of the Landes and Gers, at the risk of being molested as a German spy as I was last year several times at different places along the Pyrénées - about Sare you are still believed to have been one! Address till 7 May, Place 29 Pey-Berland, au 2^nd chez Brateuil, Bordeaux - I hope to reach Paris the 1^st of July & to visit next day the original Dechepare which I have just mentioned. On my way I call at La Rochelle, where the 2 ^nd Basque book was printed in 1571 – I remain, Dear Sir, yours gratefully¹ Edward Spencer Dodgson 23 April 1889. how do you explain the Catalan va auxiliary of the past tense, and the Basque and Gascon que or ke preceding verbs?

|1|² The Dictionary of the Spanish Academy says that agur comes from Turkish - it is surely Basque - it is used nearly all over Spain and sometimes becomes abur or avur.

|2| The Public Library at Bayonne is most wretchedly managed - the fine collection of Basque books being almost inaccessible.

|3| I suppose you know that the Bulletin Catholique de Bayonne gives the Sunday gospels in Basque and Béarnais, I take it in for that reason.