Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Dear D^r Schuchardt,

I forgot to tell you that Marcelino Soroa dined with me on Saturday, and gave a halfpromise to translate Don Quixote. He shewed me a letter which you wrote him some 6 years ago. Basque literary inventiveness is poor enough. they ought to translate the great works of Spanish, Portuguese, and French literature to attract educated Europe to their language and get mentioned in catalogues of booksellers and libraries. As Van Eys says there is not a single Basque who knows his language. Yesterday I put on my bathing dress inside out. the bathing-men said alde gaishtoa, just our “wrong side out”. When the oxen work too violently they say ezti, ezti, = doucement = gently – when they go too slowly they say haida! haida! Do you think that ikasi = ”to learn” comes from ik = to see and asi to begin. To learn is to begin to see (intellectually) what one is learning. In the Calle de San Geronimo one sees on a barbers shop this inscription Bizartegia ta ille – apainketa. Inside the poets Juan Ignacio Uranga and Felipe Casal minister to all comers. My little Dictionary translates chirla by almeja – but the people here apply the word chirla to the few small shells which one finds buried in the sand of this unsurpassed concha, pebbleless, rockless, seaweedless, jelly fishless, drainless, dangerless, and ever tempting by the πoντιων τε κυµατων ἀνηριθµoν γελασµα.¹

E. S. Dodgson.
á la lista San Sebastian 18 August 1893.

Notes and Queries of 12 ^th August has a letter from me signed Heuscarologus Anglicanus³ with a quotation in Biscayan.

⁴ Still no money from Portugal.