Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Ipuskotarren artean, Igeldoko “Restaurant Campestre”-an, 1893 ko abuztuaren hamaseigarren egunean.

Dear Professor Schuchardt,

I found á la lista this morning your letter of the 12^th of August. I thought it was you who were confusing forms of deitu and eritsi and I believe I said so when you sent me a list of words for the abbé Harizpe. I have never I think mixed them up. Yes, Webster has excommunicated me and I dont lose much by it. His prostrate adoration of Vinson is supremely ridiculous, especially when he calls himself “a priest of the Church of England”! I look upon him as a vain, coldblooded, insincere, inaccurate, and falsely reputed learned, mischiefmaker. I will tell M^rThomas, indeed I think I have already told him that you would be glad to see the proofsheets of his Edition of D’Urte. I have told Inchauspe that matsi is not an Esthonian word and that gymnites does not mean frondeurs, but naked athletes. I coud not fix on a definition or translation for diraustaçu, and so I threw the burden on Inchauspe in a note published in the Etudes at Pau. My epitaph on Webster is this “Here lies a little person who lived for twenty years among the Basques without learning their language”. I sent you on Monday the 701^st number of La Union Vascongada containing my poem Kiriskiletachoa. The 6 ^th number of La Concha will be out tomorrow I think, containing, like its predecessors, of which I sent you the first, a poem in Basque. I have excommunicated Arzac, and look upon him as a thief and a liar. Vinson says he has sent me a proof of my article on Dechepares metre, but I have not got it. Don José Maria Arrue has shewn me his father Gregorios manuscript of 790 pages well written in Guipuzcoan. It is a life of S ^t Ignacio de Loyola which the provincial Diputacion to whom it is dedicated ought to publish as they have suppressed Oreguis chair. I walked up in a trifle over an hour to Igueldo to see the barbarous basque agricultural sport called idi- (almost iri) dema. It is going on at this moment before the church, and consists of a ring of betters (who ought to know better than to aid and abet such beastly cruelty) watching two oxen yoked who have to draw two huge stones while a furious basque calling out haida, haida, savagely pricks their hindquarters and flanks with a goad till the blood flows. The judges sit a little way off at a table and the object of the performance is to test the relative strength of the poor oxen. Send your work well-bound to the Queen of Spain as well as to V. L. A. Stempf, 15 Pavé des Chartrons, Bordeaux, and R. M. de Azkue, 1 Campo Volantin 1,¹ Bilbao.

²E. S. Dodgson,
(Donostia)

³ The arga is called by the Basques on its banks UGELA.