186 PRINCE— SLAV AND CELT. 



the distinction between them and also their common bond is one 

 of language and not of race. It may be predicated that language 

 really carries with it a well-marked aura of influence which perme- 

 ates a people to the very marrow. While language is in one sense 

 merely a vehicle of expression, it also aids thought and directs 

 trends of mind. It would be difficult otherwise to explain the 

 striking similarity of these various Slavonic nationalities to one 

 another, because they come racially from many stocks. 



For example, the Bulgarians are really Huns, whose parent 

 tribe in the latter days of the Byzantine empire, swept across 

 southern Russia like a storm and either drove out or dominated the 

 Serbo-Slavs of the Balkan peninsula. The invaders soon lost their 

 original speech and adopted a modified and corrupted form of the 

 local Slavonic idiom which has since developed into the modern 

 Bulgarian language. The Bulgarian is the enfant terrible among 

 these nations, selfishly bound up in his own tribe and hating bitterly 

 his neighbors, the Serbs and Croats. The Bulgarian is to this day 

 in his trends and habit of thought, in short, in all but his speech, 

 more of a Hun than a Slav. The Serbs and Croats are also of 

 fairly mixed race, although they are chiefly descended from original 

 Slavonic speaking tribes which came from the north into the Balkans 

 in the sixth Christian century. This clan has always been a strong 

 warrior nation distinguished by its love of reasonable freedom. 

 The Bohemians and Moravians have a very strong Germanic ad- 

 mixture of blood, for which reason they are politically the most 

 stable-minded of the entire family. The Hungarian Slovaks cannot 

 boast of a pure Slavonic speaking origin, as they became mixed in 

 early times with Tatar^ (Turkic) tribes and more recently with 

 their Finno-Ugric Magyar neighbors and former overlords, a 

 double admixture which has given to the Slovak the low forehead 

 and broad features suggestive of non-Indo-European origin. These 

 Slovaks are essentially a laboring class, highly industrious, but 

 rather addicted to drink. 



The Poles assert that they are the only pure Slavonic stock, 

 but even among them appears the blond Scandinavian and North 



1 Cf. J. D. Prince, "Tartar Material in Old Russian," Proc. Amer. 

 Philos. Soc, 1919, pp. 74-88. 



