Hugo Schuchardt Archiv

13 July 1896.

Dear D^r. Schuchardt,

I leave Gijon after a sojourn of one week this afternoon. I hope to find a letter from you en lista, Coruña, on arriving there on the 23^rd. I shall go along the coast as far as possible. The lands end will turn me southward again. If Africa begins, as they say, at the Pyrenees, Portugal begins at the z. I have not yet finished the book numbered 92. a. in Vinson. It contains a good many misprints some of the most important being faulty punctuation. On page 232 occur two cases of ta ori which added to similar expressions which I have found since editing Capanaga convince me I was wrong, as indeed my conscience told me at the time, in omitting a before zabalac on p. 153. You would do me an important service if you would obtain Van Eys copy of Capanaga on loan, and find out in how many places I have unduly turned initial b into d, or omitted it altogether, in the verbal forms. I did not in 1893 fully realise how often such contractions of the prefix ba occur in Biscayan. I sent you a week ago from Gijon a small packet of Basque and Bable books, some for your University Library. In the Durango verses read aztu = forgotten instead of artu = taken. I am still reading the fables of Goyhetche, uncle of the mayor of Sare with whom you lodged. M^r. Maurice Harriet told me he was consulted about them by the author & partly wrote the first. I find throughout that the worst misprints are in the punctuation. A new edition would be a blessing. I have noted a good many mistakes not merely in the printing of Saleberrys Navarrese Dictionary. I was hoping to publish these in Euskara. The new edition of Dartayet (1893) reproduces all the mistakes of the 2^nd and introduces a new one namely montre for monture. Something ought to be written about the too numerous homonyms in the Basque verb. Calagurris stands on a red hill & is built of reddish brick. The river Gurri at dusty Ausa, or Ausona (Vicus) in Cataluña is red from its soil; one of the many rivers bearing colour-names. At San Asensio, P^a de Logroño, these words are painted on a posada se alkylan corambres. In the chapel of S^a. Rosa at Corao, P^a de Oviedo, an inscription of 1696 has Qapellan i Ɋura. I have seen this Ɋ for Q in the word Quincalheria on a shop at Tavira or Tavila in Algarve, and of course we all have it in the minuscule. On an inn at Camaleño, on the river Deva, P^a de Santander, an inscription painted outside ends with EɊUIDAZ. I find that the inscription of 1603 on the escutcheon of the castle of Butron runs thus nuixica areriocaz aguica butroe celangoa da oroc daquie in which you will recognise two of Van Eys proverbs: p. 18, 38. It ends as follows garaian nago erria gordeago: or perhaps garai añago: there is but one ñ, with a tilde¹ the g s are all Q on the stone.

²Yours truly
E. S. Dodgson.

³ The inscriptions on my Iberian coins occur among the Legendas Ibericas in the first volume of Delgados numismatic work but I have ΙΜʘΝEZ⁴ = ISONES

I heard the Bishop of Oviedo preach yesterday.