Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Banyuls-sur-Mer, le¹ 20 Février 1895

Dear D^r H. Schuchardt,

I think that during the interval since our last exchance of letters reflection will have shewn you that I had some right to complain of you. I do not at all want to lose your friendship or your acquaintance. But I must say that hitherto I have received from you more insults than instruction. And yet I feel sure that there is much that I coud learn from you, and that you can be aimiable when you like. Confess now that I am right in saying that part of the last seperatabdruck which you sent me was taken from one of my notes to you written just after my visit to Bayona in Galicia, & that your answer to my question about elbico in Euskara was taken from a note in which I informed you that Arana and Harriet had explained the word as you do in that answer. I cannot of course prove that these notions were not in your head before I communicated them to you. Life is too complicated to make it possible to remember the whence of all our mental material; but between you and me, both fond of linguistic and especially bascological studies, it is not hard to draw a line between meum and tuum. I am quite willing to let bygones be bygones, if you care to resume your correspondence with me. I have kept all your letters. If you have all mine, and we put them side by side, we should see that you have left many of my questions unanswered. If I was not the first person to claim Baiae as a Basque place-name who preceded me? If I make mistakes sometimes, on no matter what subject, I am always ready, as I have already told you, to be corrected and make amends when the mistake is brought home to me. But your vague accusations and insinuations serve only to irritate not to edify your unluckly correspondent.

You will readily understand that many of the misprints in my edition of Capanaga are also misprints of the original. I hope soon to be able to publish a completer list, which would serve for the making of a third edition better than either. I fear that Vinson will not keep his promise to let me publish a corrigenda to my 3 articles in the Revue de Linguistique for 1894 for neither of which I received any proof. And if he did the list of corrections and additions would be very puzzling to most of his readers and only serve to make them still less favourably inclined towards Basque. But I shall see if the Société Ramond will let me publish all that I wish still to say about Capanaga. That Société is about to send me the separatabdruck of my 2^nd study on Basque. It will contain a list of the corrections to make in the first which I graced with your name at the head. I am told that a Zarzuela in Azkuence was lately performed with success in Bilbao. I have not heard if The Academy has published any letter from me since Dec: the 29^th when I wrote on Capanaga. I am hoping to hear that M^r. Thomas was elected Principal of Jesus College last Monday. I hear that some more of Pierre D’Urtes minor works will be published by a society in Bayonne very shortly. Websters latest pamphlet is full of errors and also incomplete. He says several things about me that are untrue. M^r G. F. Barwick of the British Museum has read for me the articles on Yztueta in the Foreign Review. I owe to Webster the knowledge of their existence. I think the Jesuit Meagher mentioned in Yztuetas History of Guipuzcoa must be their author. He was born according to Aranas lives of eminent Jesuits of Irish parents at Donostia and so may well have been able to write in English and about Basque. To judge by Websters specimens the Basque is full of misprints and the English version a hollow sham. Mr Barwick says that the manuscript of Rafael de Micoletas Biscayan grammar dialogues vocabulary and poetics may be the autograph of the author 1653. It is very well written. He finds that a facsimile of |3| it would cost 50 pounds for 100 copies. Whence can one raise such a sum? He offers to correct the proofs for the printed edition which I am planning. But alas I am full of debts at present. My Basque library is here at present, but as usual at the station & so useless. It [is] a costly travelling companion indeed. Barwick says that the Lords Prayer and Apostles Creed at the end of Micoleta were added by an Englishman about 1700. The former comes from Leiçarragas version of S^t Matthews Gospel, but is taken from that as quoted by Paulus Merula in his Cosmographia published at Amsterdam in 1606, 1620, 1626. The Creed comes I think from Leicarragas minor works. Vinson says that the edition of Voltoire that I bought in Madrid is quite a novelty for him. I saw an edition in the Bordeaux library, and read all through another in the Bibliothèque Nationale. Do you still contemplate an edition? Stempf told him he thought it not worth while. Van Eys told me that he found last summer in the Darmstadt library an unknown Basque book, some proverbs printed in the same year as Ostolaza. He means to publish it soon. I received today a beautifully clean and solidly bound copy of N° 221 in Vinson, in very bad Guipuzcoan, & full of misprints. Murillo the bookseller of 7 Alcala Madrid who sent it has some other Bascological books on sale including the first edition of Larramendis grammar. I found in the British & Forane Bible Societys shop at Barcelona two editions of S^t Luke in Guipuzcoan omitted by Vinson. I sent copies to him and Linschmann. They have now only that of 1881 left to sell, that which you called attention to. The French of |4| the Catalans of Banyuls s. Mer is noteworthy. I have heard habiter in the sense of living as opposed to being dead, taisez vous in the sense of be motionless, keep your hands still. I find a few mistakes in the Grammaire Catalan by Albert Saisset published in Perpignan 1894. I returned to France on the 5^th. My chief companion in this inn is a Russian professor from the University of Odessa. He is studying at the Aquarium here and trying to learn to speak English and French. You know that gako in Basque means both hook and key. I believe keys were in former times a kind of hooks. I am tempted to compare with it Armenian gap a hook and also to explain by it Gâche, terme de serrurerie which Littré fails to account for. I expect an anarchistal bomb to explode from your pen at this suggestion, but is there not an old High German or Slavonic hako to defend myself with? I have not seen Euskara no 16 or received any proofs for my contributions thereto. Mr Linschmann said that perhaps you would soon take over the editorship thereof. It might be a good move. I think I have already made the suggestion to some one a good while ago. Inchauspe sent me about a month ago his new Month of Mary in Souletin. I have sent him a huge list of criticisms and questions on it. He admits I am right sometimes. He makes one strange Theological blunder saying on p. 46 Hain eder agertu zen chahutarzuna eta Birginitatia Mariaren begiétan, non haren amorekatik, ukho egin beitzian salbazaliaren Ama izateko esperantzari ere. As you know Isaiah and the other Jews believed the Messiah would be born miraculously of a Virgin as Adam was made by the hand of God of virgin earth. A German bookseller in Barna shewed me Gabelentz on Berber & Basque and bought 12 copies of my Capanaga for 10 pesetas. D. Julio de Urquijo é Ibarra recently bought 6. Of those put in the booksellers hands at Bilboa (as English seamen always call it) and Donostia very few have been sold. I return to Basqueland I hope next month or April.

E. S. Dodgson.

|1|² I requested the Publisher of Revista de Ciencias Historicas at Barna to tell you about the numbers which contain Basque. I was unable to pay his price. If you get the Micoleta number you will see how the misprints swarm &³ spoil the whole thing. My edition of Dechepare will end in May. Dubarat refuses to go beyond the words Amorosen Gaztigua. He returned my continuation of the rest of the religious part as⁴ containing some things trop crues – He is too cruelly squeamish.

|2|⁵ You say that I dont know how to make a Bibliography. Will you teach me? I found in the polyglot edition of the poems of Rubio y Ors of Barcelona some Basque versions omitted by Vinson and some Bable ones in which en sin⁶ meaning without, gabean, is used as in the Cuentu Narigudu in Olla Asturiana to which you told me that Priebsch had called your attention when I spoke of it at Munich.

|3|⁷ It is a pity that Euskara and the Californiako Euskalherria are printed on such thin paper. I gave to the University of Barcelona the volumes of the Eskualduna and La Gaseta Romontscha (of Disentis) for 1894 bound. Those of the preceding year I left in the University Library at Coimbra also bound and complete.

⁸ Basque onanza from Spanish bonanza is suggestive of many things.

Banyuls-sur-Mer, le 20 Février 1895⁹

I suppose urco = vicinus comes from ur = near.