Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Dear Professor Schuchardt,

I have not received a word from you since I left from Donostia on the last Monday in August. Did Cluzeau send you Haurren Liburua? I shall send you tomorrow a packet of basque publications scientiae causâ. Did the Academy publish my letter about the Aizpitarte Dictionary which I visited at Loyola? Has it or any other paper noticed your book on the Basque verb? What am I to do with my superfluous copy of the first half thereof? If I send it to Coimbra will you send the rest to complete it? Here are two cases from recent newspapers of something like bearnais que in Portuguese “Medonho o dia de hontem. Desde a una hora da madrugada, que un aguaceiro constante nos fazia antever ja os horrores de proximo inverno” & “Desde hontem que está no Tejo, a bordo do vapor cabo Verde, o cadaver do duque de Uzes”. Can Portuguese Leiláo = Spanish encante, encanto, come from Basque lelo, or latin lallare? In Esthonian laul is song, and lelo-tama (tama = re of the latin infinitive) = to sing, especially to improvise. All mere gleichklang I suppose! I find that aro in Basque means not merely garland or crown but round space. Coelho derives Portuguese aro = environs of a town, from latin ānus or annus – may it not be Basque? or is Basque aro itself of latin descent? The ideological transit from Basque mamua, scarecrow, bogy, to Portuguese mamoa = dolmen, cromlech, seems natural among primitive people. I don’t much like my new position.

E. S. Dodgson,
Vizeu, 24 Sept: 1893.