Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Dear D^r. Schuchardt,

I had thought of writing to you today as the festival of linguists brought you before my mind. Would that we coud all learn languages as easily as the Apostles did in the upper Chamber of Jerusalem! Do you believe that “there is any Holy Ghost” capable of enlightening our minds and endowing our tongues? - The Old Testament, in Genesis, makes the old serpent (the devil is dracul in Roumanian) speak to Eve - what was the language of Satan? - perhaps philologists of Vinsons school coud tell us! The New Testament sends tongues of flame upon the heads of Christs Apostles - Can any philologist tell us how many were the languages there spoken in the Pentecostal Chamber? I feel sure that Basque was of the number - Oh if the Apostles had kept a phonograph! All the inscriptions and old manuscripts fail to give us the pronunciation of the words as used by the tongue. M^r. Gaidoz told us on Saturday in his class which consists of Ferdinand Lot, the abbé Cadic a Breton (who tells me that gol in Breton means the same thing as gal in Basque) that your article on Vinsons Bibliographie had appeared in the Leipzig Litteraturblatt and tonight I have received and ¹|2| hereby thank you for the separatabdruck therefrom. The next number of La Revue des Bibliothèques will contain an improved edition of my catalogue of omissions, to which you so kindly refer in a note. I shall add, with a mention of your article, Raymonds book. I think I noticed the omission of that when I was at Bayonne last August, but forgot it afterwards. I had a talk for about an hour with M^r. D’Abbadie at his house this evening - though usually avoiding Vinsons Revue he bought the last number containing my Helaine. If you can do anything more to help me against the world, and alas “domestici” mei, I shall be thankful. How can I study when at every moment I feel like the man with his head in the hole of the Guillotine, when my future prevents my profiting by the present? Priebsch goes to England on the 15^th and will write to you thence. I have advised him to stay longer in Oxford than in London. He is I fear a worldling, ²|3| and a republican. What have you gained about Basque from your colleagues in the Academy at Vienna? Can you persuade some Archduke to pay my expenses for publishing Capanaga, or for a philological visit this summer to all Basque villages where I have not yet been? M^rStempf has been in Paris again since Thursday. I have seen him and quarrelled! His wife and his son are opposed to his studying Basque. I have to ask you to return in my Domum to my original reading Canta dezagun lagunac in the first line. Inchauspe made me adopt “dugun canta o -” but not liking the hiatus after o I sent orders at the last moment to change that into Canta dugun o having first got Vinsons opinion that this was admisible - now everyone, Vinson included! says this is wrong - first thoughts are sometimes the best counsellors - I am complimented however on the rest of my version. Harizpe has finished the translation ³|4| undertaken at my request of the first 95 lines of La Chanson de Roland, and Vinson at my request has consented to print it in the R. de L. for July. Harizpe promises his best attention to your letters, and would go to Graz to teach you if you paid him! He was born at S^t. Jean de Luz, and his sister and her daughter and two boys live at Paris - He has under press a book in French about the Pays Basque, and ready for the Press a play in Basque called Carmela about Roncevaux, and containing the Basque numeral song with its delicious music. As for “Vallis” and “fallen” = dutch vallen and perhaps fallere in latin (to fall, erorten, into error) I did not forget German thal or English dale but may not th become f? think of the Russian pronunciation of καθoλιkos and of Irishruadh by the side of rufus, ru ben, = ερυθρos. I have read what Skeat and Wedgewood say about vale and fall, but I do not think they cover all the facts and possibilities, and may have fallen into error. ⁴|5| I think of leaving for Bayonne on the 8 ^th of July. I have hitherto supposed Andorra to come from andura or andora = sauco, sure]e[au, dwarf elder, ebulus, like Andurrain, Andueza, and anduraga etc: but if the oriental Iberians spoke the same language as the occidental and influenced Armenian, may not the Armenian word andorr, meaning quiet, calm, tranquill, peaceful, at ease be Iberian and show us why andorra that calm group of valleys which I walked through in 86 got its name? The Assyrian inscriptions, and the non Aryan inscriptions of Armenia itself show us some ancient place-names in Armenia which have at least every appearance of being Basque e.g. urarte, nairi, arran, Azkenaz, Araxes - Armentia a mountain range in Basqueland at once suggests Armendia and as the Haiks or Armenians say that the name Armenia was applied to their contry by a different race of people, their own name being Haiastan why should not both names |6| be Iberian for extension de montañas as I said to Oregui in 87 before seeing the same explanation in Guisasolas writings later on? Yztueta and Andres de Poça whose Basque words and etymologies, (Bilbao 1597) are most interesting and often correct, both make the Basques come from Armenia. I am tired myself and shall be wearying you, so I will close my letter by assuring you how much I esteem all I have read from your pen, & how much I desire your friendship to promote my material welfare in this nigaristan as a writer in “the 19^th Century” of 1891 calls hell - is it a Basque word with an Iranic termination? Let me know if you wish any special observations made during my next tour in Basqueland. I hope to visit Roncal and Aezkoa. Azkue was to arrive at Pamplona on a visit to Campion yesterday. His behin ta betiko will be printed this summer.

I remain yours Vasconically
Edward S. Dodgson.
June 6, 1892
.

I see you also notice the omission of the Oroimengarriac of the

Fiestas de Navidad. I put them in my list

which went to press yesterday