24 EEADE ON BASQUES 



certain possibilities which it suggests, when considered in connection with the peculiar 

 structure common to the Bascjue language and some American families of speech. 



" I must not mention these amalgamating languages," writes Dr. Farrar, " without 

 calling your attention to the fact that one of the very few isolated languages of Europe 

 exhibits, strange to say, the only cis-Atlanlic instance of this very peculiar structure. It 

 is the Eskura or Bascjue, spoken in the valleys of the Pyrenees, on the borders of France 

 and Spain in an angle of the Bay of Biscay. The ethnological and linguistic affinities of 

 this language, though repeatedly inquired into, have never yet been satisfactorily ascer- 

 tained. Its existence there remains at present an insoluble problem, but what is certain 

 about it is that its structure is polysynthetic, like the languages of America. . . . The most 

 daring of all the hypotheses which have been suggested, points to the conceivable exis- 

 tence of some great Atlantis — to the possibility of the 'Basque area being the remains of 

 a vast system, of which Madeira and the Azores are fragments, belonging to the Miocene 

 period.' Be this as it may, the fact is indisputable and is eminently noteworthy, that, 

 while the affinities of the Basque roots have never been conclusively elucidated, there has 

 never been any doubt that this isolated language, preserving its identity in a western 

 corner of Eiirope between two mighty kingdoms, resembles in its grammatical structure 

 the aboriginal languages of the A'ast opposite continent, and those alone ' " 



Prof W. D. Whitney writes on the same subject : " Before leaving the Eastern Con- 

 tinent, we must return to Europe for a word or two upon one language which has as yet 

 found no place for notice — the Basque, now spoken in four principal dialects and a number 

 of minor varieties, in a very limited mountain district of the angle of the Bay of Biscay, 

 astride the frontier, but chiefly on the Spanish side. It is believed to be the modern rep- 

 resentative of the ancient Iberian, and to have belonged to the older population of the 

 Peninsula, before the irruption of the Indo-European Celts. Traces of local nomenclature 

 show it to have occupied also at least the southern part of France. The Basques may 

 then be the sole surviving relic and witness of an aboriginal western European popula- 

 tion, dispossessed by the intrusive Indo-European tribes. It stands entirely alone, no 

 kindred having yet been found for it in any part of the world. It is of an exaggeratedly 

 agglutinative type, incorporating into its verb a variety of relations which are almost 

 everywhere else expressed by independent words. The Basque forms a suitable stepping- 

 stone from which to enter the peculiar linguistic domain of the New World, since there 

 is no other dialect of the Old World which so much resembles in structure the American 

 languages. -" 



" The language of the Iberians", says M. Demogeot, " which by themselves was called 

 Escara or Euscara, has been the subject of curious researches. It seems to be certain that 

 it did not differ essentially from the Bascjue, which is still spoken on both sides of the 

 Pyrenees." * Again the same author writes : " The Iberians, a remnant of whom sur- 

 vives in the Basque population, are probably the most ancient people in Europe. They 

 seem to have been the vanguard of that great migration which, from the highlands of 

 Asia, invaded the West in successive waves. By what route they came we do not know ; 

 but they covered with their tribes the south of Gaul as far as the Graronne, perhaps even 



' " Families of Speecli " in Language and Languages, pp. 397, 398. 



' Life and Growtli of Language, pp, 258, 259. ■* Histoire de la Littérature Française, p. 12. 



