Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

Bagnères de Bigorre, H. P. 18 April 1895.

Dear D^r. Schuchardt,

you accuse me in your card received this morning of having borrowed from you, and without acknowledgement published, the derivation of acheter, proposed in my last letter in The Academy. You say you sent me an extract from Gröbers Zeitschrift in which you made the same suggestion. I have no recollection of having received or seen any such article. I thought the etymon was really a new one coined in my own brain. It occurred to me last July or June if I recollect rightly and as I was reading an article in some French review I think the Revue des Deux Mondes, and I think it was at Coimbra in the University Library. It was about the administration of some Belgian town in the 15^th century I think. I remember telling Madame C. de Vasconcellos about it at Vizella. And I remember proposing it in a card to you and you never answered it. When I am again in possession of my Basque library which I had to leave at Banyuls I shall seek for the article, and, if I find it in my possession, and if the date suits your accusation, I shall, if I remember, having read it, have only to say that I had forgotten it when the origin of acheter occurred to me last summer. I never accused you of borrowing from me the connection between land in Basque and other languages. That is as old as the hills. I think Poça, Perochegi, and even Merula mention it. So does Van Eys. But I do feel convinced that in a recent article about Baiae and a certain fountain in Biscaya you plagiarised from a certain card that I wrote just after my visit to Bayona in Galicia last year, because the concatenation¹ of ideas is so wonderfully similar.

Yours
E. S. Dodgson.