Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Dear D^r Schuchardt,

I was very tired and very hurried this afternoon when I wrote. At Burgos where there are now over a thousand Basque soldiers I met a charming youth from Legorreta near Tolosa who told me that como te llamas tu is nola deitzen zaik iri: this zaik had been zain if a woman had been addressed. Speaking to a man I dont know is etzakiat and to a woman etzakiñat. J. I. de Arana will have it that Basque berde does not derive from viridis via Spanish but from bedar = herba and that olloa has nothing to do with pollo but to translate it. He forgets the analogy of otchoa = the wolf and potchoa = the dog. At Santa Comba Dão where I slept last night I saw a beautiful dog born of a she-wolf by a St Bernard dog as I was told. At Burgos there is a promenade called Espolon. It made me think of Spoleto and Ezpoleta. At Salamanca I lodged in the fonda de la Bascongada kept by a Basque woman from Donostia. The two youngest of the 8 boys now residing in this college speak English very well as they have had at their quinta 3 governesses to teach English of whom one was a German. I detest the German in their accent. The headmaster here seems very stupid – he was destined to the priesthood and studied in the seminary here but has now a wife and one child. He was born at O Porto. Does the Portuguese arraia meaning a kind of fish come from Basque or is it from the same source as the English ray. But you never answer my questions. I hope to draw up a list of Portuguese place names of Basque origin. I feel like a fish out of water.

E .S. Dodgson.
12 Sept: 1893.

¹ Or-pela = orri bela = black leaf – cf: belea – It means leaf-mould-manure.